Free Confidential: Expecting! by Jackie Braun Page A

studious.
    “Lower?”
    “Yes.”
    “Hmm.” His gaze turned from considering to smoldering as his hand slowly meandered south, where it kneaded the upper curve of her breast through the satiny fabric of the cocktail dress.
    “Here?” he asked.
    “Still lower,” she managed. This time her voice was a breathy whisper. She decided to show him rather than use words. Placing her hand over his, she guided it down until the fullest part of her breast filled his palm. “Right here.”
    His head dipped down and he whispered her name against her cheek as his hand’s gentle movement had her knees threatening to buckle. But she wasn’t through.
    “That’s where it starts, Doctor. But that’s only where it starts.”
    Mallory thought she heard Logan swallow, though it was hard to tell over the loud thudding of her heart. Asfor her, she had nothing to swallow. Her mouth had gone dry. So much for leveling the playing field.
    “Where does it end?” he asked.
    She should have been nervous. She had been. Now, she was anything but. She felt powerful, empowered. For the first time in her life, she knew exactly what she wanted and it had nothing to do with news beats or stories or journalism awards.
    “Let me show you.” She took his hand and turned, pulling him in the direction she wanted to take him. The direction she wanted to go, despite the lines that would be crossed on the way to her final destination.
    Logan glanced past her to the hallway that led to her bedroom. He didn’t move and she was forced to stop, as well. “Are you sure, Mallory?” His hand squeezed hers. “I want you to be sure.”
    Mallory swallowed. Something inside of her warmed. Logan was ever the gentleman, even at a time like this. He really was a special, special man.
    I’m positive, she thought, but what she told him was, “If you want to find out exactly how sure I am, you’ll have to come with me.”
     

    Logan stayed the night. The entire night. Leaving just after dawn the next morning with his suit coat slung over one arm, his tie peeking out of his trouser pocket, stubble shading his jaw and a smile of satisfaction lifting the corners of his mouth.
    “I’ve got to go.”
    “Me, too,” Mallory said. She couldn’t afford to belate to work for the second time in two days, not with Ruth watching the clock and Sandra gunning for her back.
    “Bye.”
    “Bye.”
    Even so, they lingered in the doorway of her apartment for another fifteen minutes kissing farewell.
    “I’ll call you later today,” Logan said when they finally broke apart.
    He did, though it was much, much later.
    Mallory scrubbed off her makeup and brushed her teeth, going about her nighttime routine as if nothing had happened when in fact nothing was the same. Her well-ordered world had rocked on its axis.
    She had been able to think of nothing else all day except for Logan…and last night.
    What a night it had been. It wasn’t only what had transpired in her bedroom that had her mind straying from work all day. She couldn’t stop recalling the hours that had led up to it.
    She kept trying to pinpoint the moment everything had changed. It was the look, she decided. The look on Logan’s face when he’d turned around in her tiny kitchen to find her dressed and ready for their evening out. His reaction had made her knees weak.
    Mallory still couldn’t believe that he thought she was gorgeous. Pretty? Oh, sure. She’d been called that on occasion. More often than not, though, with her oversize eyes and blunt chin, she’d been labeled cute. Add in her personality, especially while on assignment, and ruthless was the adjective that most often had been hurled. She’d taken it as a compliment, though obviously the sources who’d issued it hadn’t intended it that way.
    But gorgeous?
    She stared at her reflection now, both amazed and intrigued that Logan could see her that way. She’d barely managed to wrap her mind around the compliment when he’d all but seduced her