Page 31 of Honk if You Love Real Men (Tempting SEALs 1)

“So you’re in town for the weekend?”

“I’m here on business.”

True, though not the kind of business he had in mind. Monkey business.

“Wow. Well, we’ll have to get together.”

“How about tonight?” Bree asked, cursing herself immediately. Jeesh, could she sound any more desperate?

You are desperate.

“Well, I don’t know—”

But it was too good an opening to miss. The whole way over, she’d wondered how to excuse her presence at his job site. She’d been sitting in front of the place contemplating that very problem when he’d begun his striptease and she’d become . . . distracted. Now she saw an answer.

“It’s been so long, Trent,” she said, giving him a wide smile, even though inside she quaked in her pointed-toe boots. “And just think what a huge coincidence it is that I stopped here. Right here,” she repeated. “To, umm, look up directions.” She absently reached for the map that she kept nearby, only to shove it away when she spotted the giant, black X, that marked his job site.

“Tonight?” he repeated.

She nodded.

But then his face cleared, his eyes doing some kind of smoky, sexy thing that made her nervous. “Okay. Sure.”

She almost lifted her hands in victory. Step one accomplished.

“What time?” he asked.

“Why don’t you meet me at my hotel—the Embassy Martinique—around six?”

“The Embassy Martinique,” he said back. “That sounds great.”

Now if she could just get through step two: having sex with him.

______

Bree told herself she had nothing to worry about. She’d just meet him for drinks. Nothing had to happen—not if she didn’t want it to. He’d never have to know the truth behind her sudden appearance at his construction site. He never needed to know that she’d traveled all this way to see him again because of something they’d shared in their past.

But that didn’t stop her from dressing the part, in something sexy, not slutty. After all, she didn’t want to scare the man away—jeesh, she still couldn’t believe he’d recognized her. But as she dressed in a little back dress, the tight halter top and long, flared skirt a perfect re-creation of Marilyn Monroe’s famous white dress, she wondered if she’d gone off the deep end.

You haven’t even finished dressing and already your hands are shaking.

“I can do this,” she told the mirror. “It’s going to work out.”

But what if Trent had a girlfriend and he didn’t want to sleep with her?

You’re making excuses, Breanna girl.

It was true, because the truth of the matter was, the thought of having sex with Trent Walker scared her to death.

But you have to.

She’d come too far to back out now. And if she didn’t push herself to do this now, she was desperately afraid all the therapy to put Humpty Dumpty back together again would be for nothing.

So she slipped on black, strappy heels, ran her hands up her long legs to ensure they were smooth as glass, and brushed her loose hair one last time. When she’d finished, she forced herself toward the door. Forced because there was a part of her that still balked.

______

She knew the moment she entered the crowded bar that the dress had worked. Male heads turned to stare appreciatively, more than one woman took one look at her, narrowed her eyes, then dipped her head to complain to a friend who would also turn and glare. It’d be kind of gratifying, if she weren’t shaking in her stiletto heels.

---