Blind Date Disasters & Eat Your Heart Out Read online

  “And why is that?” This was murmured into his ear, which made him let out his own helpless shiver at the feel of her lips against his skin. “You’ve threatened to coach me,” she said. “I know it. You know it. Everyone else knows it, too, and yet you’ve done nothing other than pick out a few clothes and asked me to smile. No…special lessons.”

  How well he knew it. The thought of what he’d like to teach her had kept him up at night for weeks now.

  “Know what I think?” she asked. “I think you’re all talk, Mr. Hotshot Producer. All show. Yeah, you’re big and tough and unfortunately gorgeous—” She broke off at his choked laugh and frowned. “You must know that you are. But I’m left assuming you don’t know any more than I do about…”

  He was still digesting the fact she thought him gorgeous. “About?”

  She licked her lips, then bit her lower one before leaning close. Whether it was because she didn’t want anyone to hear her words or because she didn’t want to look him directly in the eyes, he hadn’t a clue. “About…sexual stuff,” she whispered, sending more delicious shivers down every nerve in his body and making him instantly hard.

  A common reaction around her, he’d noticed. “That sounded like a dare,” he managed to say.

  She lifted one brow, and he had to laugh, because damn if she hadn’t learned far more than she thought, the little tease. “Are you hungry for pizza?” he asked.

  She didn’t take her eyes off him. “No.”

  Okay, then. “So now’s as good a time as any, right? Let’s have one of those special lessons you’re so worried about.” He held out his hand, and she slipped hers into it with no sign of hesitation other than a hard swallow.

  “Hey,” Leo called, rattling the newspaper. “You can’t leave yet, I haven’t read you—Ouch!” he yelled, glaring at Cami, who’d reached up and pinched him.

  “Let them go, you idiot,” she muttered, pulling Leo off the chair and hauling him close to whisper in his ear.

  Leo listened to her secret and grinned. “Ooh.” Enlightened, he turned to a curious Gracie and whispered in her ear.

  Gracie turned to an impatient Suzie and whispered in her ear.

  “And so on and so on,” Mitch murmured, tugging Dimi free of the crowd around them.

  “Where are we going?” she asked as he pulled her outside.

  Yeah, Mitch. Where are we going? Even knowing that being alone with her was an incredibly stupid thing to do didn’t appear to be sinking into his brain.

  Not when another part of his body had taken over the thinking process. “Somewhere more suitable,” he said.

  “Oh, boy.”

  She stared at his motorcycle with a look of terrified delight. “What’s it like to have all that power vibrating between your legs?”

  “Pretty much exactly how you’d imagine.”

  Her mouth fell open. “Can I drive?”

  He slid onto the bike and handed her his helmet. “Nope.”

  “Come on, you can make it the lesson.”

  “Get on, Dimi.”

  “You’re no fun.”

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet. Now get on.” When she did, sliding her hands around his waist and pressing the front of her glorious body to the back of his, he shuddered. “Hold on tight.”

  HE TOOK THEM deep into the night, along the Truckee River and up Highway 89 toward Lake Tahoe. The night was cold, but the engine beneath them kept them warm.

  Or maybe it was their combined body heat, mostly hers. Dimi couldn’t help it. The feel of the vibration between her thighs, matched with Mitch’s big, powerful body pressed so intimately to hers…she was truly going up in smoke, in an utterly foreign way. Never in her life had she gotten aroused for no reason other than lustful thoughts and a motorcycle beneath her, but she was aroused now.

  Since she’d never ridden a motorcycle before, she’d like to blame it on that, but her body was heating up from the inside out, not a usual com plaint of bike riders. Mitch’s hair, sleek in the wind, brushed her face. The soft leather of his jacket drew her fingers. And the scent of him—holy cow, that alone nearly pushed her over the edge.

  Then she realized he’d driven her all the way to Incline Village. “Place of sin,” she said when he pulled over and cut the engine.

  He tossed a look at her over his shoulder. “What better place, right?”

  Oh, yeah. Her lesson. She gulped hard, most of her bravado deserting her. Then she caught sight of where they were and what they’d parked in front of and nearly choked as she leapt off the bike.

  A strip club!

  Oh, my God, what have I gotten myself into, and why didn’t I bring my cell phone, and how can I tell him I no longer want to—

  Mitch’s soft laugh broke through her panic as he pulled the helmet off her head and studied her expression. “If you could see your face.”

  “Easy for you to be amused,” she sputtered, pointing at the big, siren-red sign that read, All Nude, All the Time.

  He tossed a look at the place, then grinned. Widely. “My God, you have an imagination on you.” He wrapped a hand around her wrist, redirecting her pointing finger across the street to another sign that read, Public Beach.

  “I thought we could count falling stars there on the sand,” he said. “You can’t see them in Los Angeles with all the lights.”

  “Falling stars.”

  “Yep.”

  She grimaced. “Oh.”

  “Now why don’t you tell me what you thought I was going to make you do in that strip club?” he asked softly, leaning close with a mixture of heat and amusement in his eyes.

  “Um…”

  Shaking his head, still laughing in that disgustingly sexy way he had, he linked his fingers with hers and led her across the street to an incredibly beautiful beach. The water glowed from the meager moonlight, and the sand looked like silk. Above them, the trees rustled in the light wind, and the scent of the mountain air filled her senses.

  And so did the man walking silently beside her. He didn’t look so L.A. right now. Yes, he wore that black leather jacket and even blacker jeans that screamed sophistication and a been there, done that attitude, but she was beginning to see how much more to him there was than that. She remembered how he’d distracted her from that horrible front-page headline. She remembered how in spite of his teasing during the day on the set, he never crossed the line and made her feel anything but…well, wanted. And he’d not even once tried to make a move on her, not a real one, not even when she’d wanted him to.

  An uneasy thought.

  All along she’d sheltered herself from his charms by telling herself she was just a job to him. But the way he tipped his head and looked at her now made her heart tug. It also made her blood race and all sorts of other interesting things happen inside her. And suddenly, more than ever, she wanted to be the person he’d made her on television. She wanted to be that free, that sexy, and she wanted to be that way with him. “Mitch…” She stopped and turned to face him. “What are we doing here?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “No.”

  He looked a little surprised. At the water’s edge, he sat on a large rock, then pulled her down beside him.

  They stared at each other.

  “Hell,” he said after a moment. “I was really hoping you knew what this thing is all about.”

  “You mean the thing that makes me want to both kiss you and smack you at the same time?”

  A laugh escaped him. “Yeah. That’s pretty much the thing I mean.”

  “I haven’t a clue. It scares me, you know,” she admitted. “Not just because I gave up men, or that we work together. But because when it comes right down to it, I know nothing about you.”

  Leaning back, he tucked his hands beneath his head and studied the sky. “What do you want to know? I’m an open book.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said with a laugh.

  “No, really. Ask away.”

  “I don’t want to be nosy