Skintight by Susan Andersen

couldn’t stop his sudden bark of acrimonious laughter. “Captain of the football team?” he said, images of being a fourteen-year-old in an eighteen-year-old’s world looming large in his head. “Hardly.” When she just blinked at him, he admitted, “I gained my full height around the time I turned twelve, but I was in college before I developed the coordination to go with it. Hell, regular girls thought I was a nerd—never mind the most popular girls in school.”
    Arriving at the Desert Passage shopping center adjacent to the Aladdin Hotel, he looked down at Treena as he opened the door for her, taking in her pretty whiskey-brown eyes and mass of Pre-Raphaelite curls. “Believe me,” he said drily, “I admired girls like you from afar.”
    She shot him a startled glance as they walked into theNorth Africa setting that hosted the shops and restaurants of Desert Passage. “Like me?” Stopping beneath the twilight-blue domed ceiling, with its streaky clouds of gold and pink, she laughed up at him. “Trust me, you wouldn’t have admired me, from afar or otherwise. I wasn’t part of the in crowd. I was the tall girl with the unruly carrot-colored hair who only wanted to learn to dance well enough to get out of town. And since the school I went to had a student body whose biggest ambition was to kick Lehigh Valley High’s ass at football or be voted Homecoming Queen, Miss Popularity I wasn’t.”
    So she’d been a misfit like him as a teen, he thought as the maitre d’ at the Commander’s Palace perused the reservation list, then summoned a waiter who led them to their table. Big deal. She’d sure as hell clawed her way to a better place since then, hadn’t she?
    Her little tease of a dress was a prime example of just how much she’d changed her image. If he didn’t drag his gaze away from her breasts pretty damn soon, his pants weren’t going to fit.
    She had the prettiest tits he’d clapped eyes on in a long time. They were small, yet round and high, and the way her outfit’s neckline flirted with her cleavage threatened to give him the granddaddy of all hard-ons.
    Which was nuts. What was he, seventeen? He’d made a cold-blooded decision to check into the Avventurato rather than the Bellagio where the tournament would take place simply because Treena Sarkilahti McCall worked there and he’d needed the advantage of propinquity in order to carry out his plan.
    He knew he could see her breasts buck naked fivenights a week at the ten-o’clock show if he wanted. So what was the big deal about seeing them partially exposed now?
    Something, he admitted grudgingly. There was just something about the sight of her pale smooth curves straining against black fabric that he could not ignore, game plan or not.
    â€œThis is lovely,” Treena said, glancing around the dining room with its green walls and harem-tent ceiling. “I’ve heard a lot about this restaurant but I’ve never been here before.”
    â€œI haven’t been to this one, but I’ve been to the original in New Orleans. I thought you’d enjoy it.”
    â€œOh, I will. I love eating out.”
    â€œDo you? And here I’d kill for a home-cooked meal.” So invite me over, sweetheart. He gazed at her expectantly.
    She merely gave him that knowing, one-sided smile. “Are you nuts? I’d eat in restaurants every day of the week if I could afford to.”
    â€œTrust me, it gets old.” But he could see he was going to have to work harder than he’d expected to elicit the invitation he desired. He got down to some serious wooing.
    But it didn’t reap him the reward he’d hoped to harvest, and by the time he walked her back to her car, frustration was eating him alive. He could tell she liked him. They’d talked and laughed for two and a half solid hours. In fact, he’d had to