Page 43 of Where It All Began
Michael twirled her around so she was facing a grumpy looking John.
“Dude, if you can’t slap a smile on your face, someone’s going to slip you a special brownie,” Michael warned him.
“Go away, Cardona.”
“I got something to do anyway,” Michael said, his gaze already on his target.
“Good luck,” Phoebe called after him.
John slid his hands around her waist, and Phoebe instantly felt the frisson of energy at his touch. Why did it have to be him that made her feel this way? Why couldn’t it be someone else in another couple of years when and where she was ready?
“Why aren’t you dancing with your fake wife?” Phoebe snipped, hoping for at least some emotional distance.
“Is that jealousy I hear?” John asked, looking more amused than annoyed. It only pissed her off even more.
“You and this whole damn town have me all twisted up!”
“Me? What did I do?” he demanded.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You say you’re attracted to me, which puts thoughts—nice steamy ones—in my head. Then you don’t want to jeopardize our ‘working relationship,’ which just makes me want you more because I can’t have you. And then Mrs. Nordemann swoops in like a damn vulture and tries to convince me to marry you since you’re all ready to settle down! So now sex is definitely off the table. But that doesn’t stop me from not liking it when you flirt with other women.”
John dipped her with more abruptness than finesse. “You’re an intriguing woman, Phoebe Allen.”
She held on tight around his neck. “Damn it, John.”
“You really think that if I had sex with you, I’d be so overcome with desire that I’d have to marry you?”
When he put it like that, it sounded stupid. Really stupid. But she wasn’t imagining the chemistry. That moment in the kitchen, the haircut, hell, right now her skin was burning up everywhere he touched her.
John pulled her upright and into him, fitting her body against his as they moved to the beat.
“Don’t look at me like that, John.”
“Like what?”
“Like you think I’m insane. Mrs. Nordemann—”
“Jillian Nordemann is a manipulative, string-pulling, pot-stirring, pain in my ass.”
“I’ll drink to that,” a cheerful drunken hippie stumbled past them, raising his flask to John.
“She thinks I should marry you and move here.” She worried her lower lip with her teeth.
“Is that why you’ve been acting like a weirdo since the picnic?” John asked.
Phoebe shrugged, not wanting to cop to falling for what now sounded like an idiotic train of thought.
“You think you’re that irresistible?” he asked, those gray eyes dark and searching.
“Excuse me! Some people think I’m a catch,” she argued. “To put it in terms that you’d understand, some men would be thrilled to be ‘an item’ with me.”
“Guess you’ll have to take Cardona off that list,” John said, nodding across the dance floor.
Momentarily forgetting her own angst, Phoebe softened. Michael was dancing with Hazel, and the look on his face was positively sinful. Hazel didn’t look like she minded it a bit.
“It’s about damn time,” John muttered.
“If it’s about damn time, why haven’t you done anything to help him in that direction?” Phoebe wondered.
