Page 33 of Damaged Billionaire Daddy
“I won’t,” he promised. “It will be worth it to show up with you on my arm in that dress.”
“Okay,” I gave in. “I’ll try it on.”
Chapter fourteen
Richard
I couldn’t believe my ears. Most of the women I’d dated would have been delighted with the dress and had raptures over it. She sounded as if she was afraid to touch it.
But when she finally called back, she said it fit perfectly, including the green satin ballet flats. She was such a bitty little thing that I’d hesitated over the choice of shoe, but we were going to be standing a lot, and probably dancing.
There was no point in making her miserable by having her balance on top of a pair of stilts. Momentarily, I wondered if I could get her to do that sexy dance she’d indulged in the night I met her.
No, probably not — not in that dress.
* * *
I had a heck of a time waiting until the end of the week. But I managed.
Of course, the weather picked this week to rain, demonstrating that sunny California wasn’t always so sunny. It wasperfectly capable of dumping half the Pacific Ocean and maybe even part of the Atlantic on the southern end of California.
I was concerned about what the rain would do to that dress, but that was the least of my worries. We would be dancing at this event, and rain brought out the very worst part of my football injuries, especially my artificial knee and the pin in my hip.
I wanted to stroll in, show off the prettiest girl in all the fifty states and leave that prick of a bridegroom and every other male in attendance wishing they were the lucky man getting to squire her around. Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt my feelings at all to put this bride in the shade.
She’d stood me up at the altar, and now had the gall to invite me to the wedding. The official wedding. As I understood it, they went straight to a Las Vegas marriage chapel. She didn’t even change her dress.
With all this in mind, I had Caleb drive so I could stretch my legs out on the trip. It would take us at least two hours to get there. Should I get a hotel room and plan to change clothing there?
Nah. I was already putting out enough money to rent that dress. I hoped it would live up to my expectations. I wished I had been able to see Kandis in it before today.
I needn’t have worried. When Caleb brought my spacious limousine to a stop on the Quinn’s driveway, she was waiting on the porch. She looked as if she was floating as those dainty little ballet flats scampered down the steps.
The velvet top part of the gown hugged her hips, waist, and bosom like a lover’s embrace. The wide scoop neckline modestly concealed her breasts but showed off her lightly muscled shoulders and slender neck to perfection.
Drape sleeves that were as delicate as a dragonfly’s wings fluttered from her shoulders, meeting in the back to form a light cape.They were caught up at her wrist with those amazingly expensive jade buttons.
And what those buttons did! Wow. They marched in a line down her front, accentuated the swell of her bosom above the perfectly toned plane of her stomach, drew the eye of the beholder from her beautiful face and then pulled it downward to a V that pointed to other regions. Heat began to pool in my loins, remembering the rich, feminine scent of those “other regions.”
The skirt billowed out around her as she hurried down the walk. She looked as if one of her grandmother’s flowers had come unmoored from its stem and was fluttering toward me. The effect was devastating. I wanted to grab her up right then and there, run back into that tidy little room of hers and . . .
But then she was at the car. Caleb was opening the door, and helping her in, making sure that all parts of her silken draperies were inside before he closed the door.
“Well?” she asked. “Does the dress live up to your expectations?”
My mouth was dry. I rolled my tongue around in it and swallowed hard, trying to find words. “Yeah,” I replied. “I’d say that it does, and you wear it well.”
She made a face at me. “It’s floofy,” she said. “I could do with about three fewer layers of chiffon. The bodice is nice, and the beads and buttons are delightful. I do thank you for choosing ballet flats.”
She picked up some layers of fluff, stuck up one foot in a most unladylike fashion, and wiggled it to show off the slipper.
I could see what she couldn’t. The clouds of drifting silk framed her, like Venus rising up out of the sea. I imagined Kandy on the half shell, minus the bodice and buttons. Speaking of buttons, I was going to bust some if I didn’t getmy mind off what was underneath those layers of silk. Just a few more minutes of feasting my eyes, and I was going to be advertising my interests, big time.
I decided to tease her, just to break the mood that was building between us. “Didn’t your mom teach you how to sit like a lady?” My voice came out rough and husky. What the heck? I was responding to her like a kid with his junior prom date.
She got a wicked little glint in her eye. “Them’s fightin’ words, pardner,” she quipped, mimicking a certain wild, west hero. “I’m a wild west pioneer, and I’ll sit however I darned well please.”
She hiked the froth of chiffon up to her knees and placed both her dainty slippers on the air conditioner vent that ran along the base of the privacy wall between driver and passengers. Her ankles were delicate and trim. For the first time I understood why ankles were once considered erotic. Nice as they were, it wasn’t the ankles. It was the implication of the knees above them, and what lay a little farther north of that.
