Free Falling for the Guy Next Door by Claire Robyns Page A

these road-trips.”
    “You love
being the centre of attention,” she scoffed. He was doing a series
of seminars around the country to promote his current book, Every
Contact Counts. She’d gone along for the dinner and chat afterwards
to catch up with Gabriel, not the marketing advice. Although she
had to admit he was good. She’d come away on a buzz. When he’d
offered to hand out some of her publisher review copies at his next
seminar, she’d snapped up the opportunity.
    She was
frothing milk for her cappuccino when a new message pinged. She
concentrated on her frothing.
    “You’ve got a
message on your phone,” he observed.
    She sent up a
prayer of thanks when the espresso pot whistled. “It can wait.” She
poured two inches of syrupy coffee into each mug, stirred a heaped
teaspoon of sugar into one and took a deep sniff. “This always
smells so divine.” She pushed the mug into his hands.
    “And then you
go and ruin it with that…stuff,” he groaned as she filled her own
mug to the rim with frothed milk.
    She stuck her
tongue out at him. Had just put her mug to her lips, when another
message pinged on her phone. She glared at the offending
object.
    “Are you sure
you don’t need to get that? It could be an emergency.”
    Mentally
flexing the tension from her muscles, she set her mug down
carefully. “I suppose so.”
    What’s going on there? She scrolled down to the second
message. Stop torturing the poor man and send him
home.
    “Megan, is
everything okay?”
    “Perfect.” She
unclenched her jaw to smile at Gabriel.
    She hit the
reply button. Some men happen to love my brand of
torture.
    Any brand of foreplay is torture if it ends up going
nowhere.
    Her gaze
flashed to the wall between their kitchens. But no, if Jack had an
ear pressed to the wall, he’d know there was no foreplay going on
at all. He was guessing. Worse, he honestly believed she was too
friggin’ straight and narrow to take that foreplay to its natural
conclusion.
    She could
scream, kick and bludgeon him over the head, but he’d never wrap
his mind around the fact that she could actually want—might
actually enjoy—crave, with every sexual fibre that pulsed to the
burning heat in her veins—to have him over her, deep inside
her…trailing sensual lips down the sensitive skin of her throat,
pausing to lavish attention on her nipple before sucking it to a
throbbing peak, rocking into her, pushing her higher…
    She moved her
eyes to Gabriel. Released her lower lip from the gnawing grip of
longing. Had she moaned out loud?
    His brow was
creased in concern. “Is the news bad?”
    “No, um, no…”
She swallowed with some difficultly and shrugged. “A friend, that’s
all, in a fluster about… Oh, you know.” She flapped a hand at him.
“Nothing you’d be interested in.”
    Another
message. Gabriel sipped on his coffee, his eyes on her. She smiled
harder, took a deep breath and looked down at the phone clutched
tightly in her hand.
    You’re not going to do anything.
    An order or an
observation? With Jack, it could be either. Only he could act like
a possessive boyfriend while pushing her away. For her own good. To
pad his precious China doll in case she broke into teeny weenie
pieces from a night of unattached sex. And yes, she wanted more
from Jack. But she also knew she couldn’t have it. She was willing
to take what she could get. For as long as she could have it. Jack
didn’t have the right to decide how little or much she was allowed
to compromise.
    She tapped on
the keypad. You sure about that?
    Yes.
    Well, she
hadn’t actually bludgeoned him over the head. Yet. Maybe that would
do the trick. She closed her fingers over her phone and beckoned
Gabriel to follow her out the kitchen.
    “Make yourself
comfortable,” she said in a low voice, directing him to the sofa
furthest from the dividing wall.
    “Why are we
whispering?” he asked in a whisper.
    “My neighbour
is very, very nosy and the walls in this room