Fortune's Valentine Bride Part 13

What he obviously wasn't familiar with, he thought ruefully, was the ordinary calendar. He'd been so busy with the campaign and with learning all the different things that Katie had come up with to help him win Brittany's heart, he'd somehow remained totally oblivious to the fact that today was Valentine's Day.

How could he have been this blind? He hadn't even sent Brittany a card. If his plan had only gone a little faster, he would have taken her out on the big day instead of having dinner with Katie. Well, there was nothing he could do about it now, he thought with resignation.

He was definitely going to have to pick up something to give to Brittany as a gift at the fundraiser. A belated Valentine's Day present, he thought wryly. He knew without being told that women didn't like being forgotten on this all-important day. But there was still Sat.u.r.day. He managed to convince himself that it would be more surprising that way. Brittany definitely wouldn't be expecting a Valentine's Day gift three days after the actual day had gone by.

Maybe a pair of diamond earrings would do the trick.

No, diamond earrings would be too common a present for someone like Brittany. No doubt she probably owned at least half a dozen pairs.

He'd ask Katie, he decided.

Katie had had her fingers on the pulse of this thing right from the beginning-she'd know what kind of a gift to suggest to him. No point in his racking his brain about it now.

Katie, he couldn't help thinking with more than a trace of admiration, seemed to be up on just about everything. Lucky thing she had decided to come work for him when she graduated rather than pick some other, possibly more lucrative firm. Otherwise, who knew if he could even begin to pull this off? Her suggestions had been invaluable.

Because of her, he was more than confident that he was going to be successful. This time next week, Brittany and he would be back together and very possibly on their way to planning a wedding.

Blake glanced at his watch. Katie should have been here by now.

Where was she?

It wasn't like her to be late. She was usually early. He had offered to pick her up, as usual, but Wendy had insisted that he go on to the restaurant, pick out a table and wait for Katie there. She'd told him that Marcos would bring Katie with him when he returned from his break. Since she'd come home from the hospital, he looked at every break as an opportunity to drive home and look in on her.

Had to be nice, Blake mused, to be in love that way. He wanted what Wendy and Marcos had. What Scott and Christina had.

He wanted a woman to love who loved him back.

He wanted Brittany.

Growing a tad impatient, Blake scanned the dining area, looking to see if Katie had arrived yet. But the only woman he saw walking in was a really hot-looking young woman who appeared, at least from where he was sitting, as if she was loaded for bear. She was certainly turning heads as she moved through the room.

Some guy was really going to have his socks knocked off tonight, Blake mused as he continued scanning the immediate area.

Okay, so where was Katie?

Most of the tables were full. The entire dining area was filled with couples.

And him, alone, he thought, darkly.

Maybe he should just postpone this, take Katie out to dinner some other time when there was more light available, he thought philosophically.

Tonight the tastefully decorated restaurant seemed fairly dim, due to the fact that a tall, white candle burned brightly in the center of each table. Including his.

Blake rose to his feet. He was going to go find Marcos and leave a message with him for Katie. Maybe Katie hadn't even come with Marcos, but if that was the case, wouldn't Marcos have come to tell him that? Of course, maybe they were stuck in traffic.

Preoccupied, Blake pushed in his chair.

Maybe- "Hi, Blake, you're not leaving, are you? Am I that late?"

Recognizing her voice, Blake turned to answer Katie and the words dried up on his tongue, along with his ability to draw a sufficient breath. The s.e.xy woman he'd noticed walking into the dining area just a couple of seconds ago had just walked up to his table-and him.

She was Katie.

Chapter Thirteen.

"Katie?" Blake heard himself asking uncertainly. "Is that you?"

"Of course it's me," she said, sliding easily into the chair opposite his. "I am the only one you asked to meet you here tonight, right?" And then she looked up at him and saw the strange expression on his face. As if he was still trying to place her. "Why are you looking at me like that? Do I have a smudge on my face or a leaf in my hair?" she asked.

As she spoke, she shrugged off the shawl she had wrapped around her shoulders. The weather outside, blessedly, was unseasonably warm right now, but she was still a bit chilly in this dress that Wendy had insisted in no uncertain terms that she wear. Marcos had let her off right at the door, but that was still enough time for the evening breeze to find her and weave itself around her naked back.

She had to admit that the look in Blake's eyes did go a long way in heating her up again.

Katie leaned forward over the table. "Blake?" she prodded when he remained silent.

An uneasiness began to spread through her. Oh, who was she kidding? She was playing dress-up in fancy clothes that no more fit her personality than a leopard-skin bikini. He probably looked that way because he was trying not to laugh. She felt a blush creeping up her neck.

"Say something," she begged, unable to endure the silence much longer.

Blake leaned back in his chair as if he had been punched in the gut and was only now able to react. "Wow."

That wasn't the something she was expecting to hear. "Excuse me?"

"Wow," Blake repeated, unable to tear his eyes away from her. Half words were flashing in and out of his head like Fourth of July fireworks. "You look-wow," was all he could manage.

The silver tongue he had developed over the years was nothing more than a lead weight in his mouth right now as words continued to completely elude him. All he could think was that she was absolutely gorgeous.

How could he have missed that?

He'd seen her practically every day for the past two years, had known her since she was a gangly kid, playing dress-up with Wendy and staging sleepovers. When had all this happened?

He felt like Rip van Winkle, waking up to a whole brand-new world.

"Thank you," Katie murmured uncertainly. Still feeling self-conscious and not knowing what to do with her hands, when she saw a goblet of wine next to her plate, she gratefully reached for it.

Blake momentarily came to. "Oh, I told the waiter it was all right to pour the wine," he said, and then gave a small, self-deprecating laugh. "I don't even know if you drink wine," he admitted. By the time he finished his sentence, she had already raised the goblet to her lips and drank deeply, emptying half the contents. "I guess you do." He smiled to himself and then raised his goblet. "To surprises," he said just before he sampled his own wine.

Feeling oddly loose and at ease now, Katie asked, "Did you order dinner, too?"

"No," he answered quickly, then explained, "I didn't order anything else because I wasn't sure what you'd like to eat."

He usually had far less trouble talking, he upbraided himself. Even with strangers. Why was he tripping on his tongue now, with Katie of all people? She was just like another sister to him. He realized that he was watching the way her chest moved as she breathed-well, maybe not quite like a sister, he amended.

"Marcos tells me that everything on the menu is excellent," he added awkwardly.

"So I hear," she replied just before she took another long sip of wine from her gla.s.s.

She found, to her delight, that her nerves were no longer jumping around quite so much and that an easy, happy calm had begun to descend over her. This was much better, she thought.

Opening the menu, she scanned the two sides, then turned a page. While she was deciding, the waiter, on his way to another table with a full bottle of wine, paused over her goblet, a silent query in his manner.

Ordinarily, she didn't drink at all, but what the heck? she thought, stifling an unexpected giggle that rose to her lips. This was Valentine's Day, wasn't it? And most likely, her first and last dinner with Blake before he became part of the duo of Blake and Brittany, or, more likely, Brittany and Blake. Either way, he was going to be forbidden fruit to her.

"Yes, please," she said in response to the waiter's silent question, moving her goblet closer to him. The waiter filled her goblet, then automatically did the same with Blake's.

It was then that Blake realized he must have emptied his own goblet without even being aware of it. He was apparently that mesmerized by this new version of Katie-or had she just been downplaying what she looked like all these years?

He really didn't know.

He was staring and that was rude, he scolded himself.

Forcing himself to relax, he said, "You know, I really want to thank you for putting up with all this." Katie raised her eyes to his, a surprised expression on her face. That made two of them, he thought. He hadn't realized he was going to phrase his thanks just that way until the words were out of his mouth. He needed to rephrase that.

"I mean..." His voice trailed off as he searched for the right words.

The search came up empty. His mind was just not functioning tonight, he realized in no small frustration. It wasn't functioning, he knew, because completely alien thoughts kept insisting on getting in the way. Alien thoughts such as wondering if that one time he'd kissed Katie and she had brought his world to its knees had been a fluke.

There was, of course, only one way to find out, but he wasn't all that sure she would welcome being kissed by him again. After all, she had just spent all this time helping him with his campaign to land the woman of his dreams. Having him kiss her might make her angry....

He blinked, looking hard at Katie. Was Brittany really the woman of his dreams, or was he just caught up in this whole thing because he felt she was an opportunity he'd lost? Was it the whole "you want what you can't have" syndrome, or-?

Or what? he demanded the next moment, his thoughts growing progressively fuzzier and utterly unfocused. What was focused was all centered around Katie.

Why hadn't he noticed that her eyes were like warm chocolate before? He had a weakness for warm chocolate. And cream. Her skin reminded him of cream.

Did it taste like cream?

What the h.e.l.l was going on with him?

Why was he looking at her like that? Katie wondered. As though he wanted to be with her, when this dinner was supposedly to thank her for the big help she'd been to him these past few weeks? Right, she was helping the man she loved win the heart of another woman-a woman who was never going to care about Blake the way that she could. The way she did.

Katie opened her mouth to say just that, but then stopped.

What did it matter?

Blake loved Brittany. He wanted Brittany and he was going to go after Brittany no matter what she said or did. h.e.l.l, she could stand on top of this table and proclaim her feelings for Blake at the top of her lungs and it would make no difference-except maybe to get him to run out of the restaurant as fast as he could.

She might as well just enjoy this meal-when had she ordered it? she wondered, looking at her plate. And when had she almost finished it?

She couldn't remember.

Couldn't remember finishing her gla.s.s of wine, either, she realized. Was it just one, or had she had a second? She tried to think and remember-and then decided that it wasn't worth the effort. And it didn't matter, she told herself again. She wasn't driving.

Smiling to herself, content with the moment, Katie played with the stem of her goblet, moving it back and forth between her fingertips. She was simply enjoying the warm, rosy feeling that was spreading through her.

With effort, she tried to concentrate on what Blake was saying. It wouldn't do to have him think that she was ignoring him.

"Excuse me?" she said, hoping he'd repeat what he'd just said, because somehow his words had all vanished without registering.

How was that possible?

"I said I'm worried about Jordana," he repeated. He'd had occasion to talk to Jordana at the hospital when she came to see the baby and he came away with the feeling that something was definitely wrong with his older sister. "I tried talking to her at the hospital, but she seemed preoccupied-and a little off," he admitted. There didn't seem to be a better way to phrase that.

Katie nodded, then thought that maybe he wanted her to say something in response. She grasped at the first thing she could remember and hoped it made sense. Hoped that she made sense. Because right now, her brain felt like a bowl of cold spaghetti.

"Maybe it's because of the tornado." She paused, then thought that maybe that didn't make sense all by itself, so she continued. "Maybe coming so close to death made her take another look at her life."

There, that sounded better, Katie congratulated herself.

Blake rolled her words over in his head, then nodded. "Maybe."

Her mouth curved. Yea! She'd said the right thing. And then another thought danced through her head. Maybe if she said, "Kiss me," he would. The thought had just popped into her head out of nowhere, but when it did, she liked it. Liked it a lot.

She drew her shoulders back, about to make the suggestion when he cut her off.

"Well, I'd better take you home," he said out of the blue.

Surprised, she felt disoriented for a second. They had been eating just a minute ago. Why did he want to leave? Was it something she'd said? She tried to think-and couldn't.

"Oh. Okay," she murmured, trying to pull her shawl from the back of the chair. She was unsuccessful. It was stuck.

Rising to his feet, Blake moved behind her to help her with her shawl. It was then that he got a really good look at her back-as well as the lack of material at that portion of the dress. He felt his stomach do a few involuntary flips, then tighten really, really hard.

The effects of the wine he'd had at dinner had long since dissipated, but this made him think that perhaps they weren't completely gone after all. Either that or he was getting intoxicated in a whole new way that he never had before.

With the bill taken care of, despite his brother-in-law's protests-how could this be a "thank you for all you've done" dinner for Katie if Marcos was the one who paid for it?-Blake took her arm and gently guided Katie through the maze of tables and to the front door.

Pushing the heavy mahogany door open, they walked out and were immediately met by an evening breeze that was far chillier than it had been earlier.

As if instinctively, Katie huddled against him, which in turn caused all sorts of havoc in the pit of his stomach again-as well as parts beyond.

That was when he realized that the effects from the wine really had completely dissipated, but the effects from Katie were definitely intensifying. There was no getting away from it. She was a beautiful woman and he was attracted to her.

But he couldn't act on that attraction, or even explore it. It wouldn't be fair to her, or Brittany. Right?

It was an argument that had no winning side, he realized.

Instead, Blake focused on getting Katie back to Wendy's house and himself back to Scott's. The first part of that was easy enough.