THE VIRGIN AND THE VAGABOND by Elizabeth Bevarly

Author:Elizabeth Bevarly
Format: epub

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Six

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Well, that certainly cut off any argument Kirby might have been ready to utter. "What?"

Unfortunately, James was ignoring her objections completely, too caught up had he obviously become in considering her from head to toe. "Yeah," he finally decided with a confident nod, "that dress is just going to have to come off. And as my father used to always tell me, there's no time like the present."

Kirby could only stare at him dumbfounded. He wanted her to take off her dress? Why? Well, of course she already knew why. He'd made that clear enough over the past few days. But here? Now?

"Not here. Not now," he said with a chuckle, as if he'd read her thoughts and found them laughable. When she continued to only gaze at him in completely befuddled silence, he smiled and added, "Come on. I'll show you."

The next thing she knew, Kirby was sitting in the back of James's Rolls-Royce, a roomy compartment redolent of leather interior. With a flick of a switch, one of the Brandenburg Concertos erupted from the speakers behind and beside her, and a smoked glass screen rose between the two of them and their driver.

James sat on the expansive cream-colored leather seat beside her with more confidence than anyone had a right to claim. Dressed in sapphire blue trousers and a white linen, collarless shirt, his black hair skimming his shoulders like silk, he was more handsome than she'd ever seen him looking.

Worse than that, however, he was studying her with more interest than she was comfortable acknowledging. She suddenly felt as if he were a womanizing Hollywood producer who had plans, big plans, to make her a star, a big star. But first, a little side trip to the casting couch.

"Yeah, that dress has got to go," he reiterated, scanning her body from the tips of her pale blue flats to the beribboned lace of her big, white collar.

In an instinctive act of self-preservation, Kirby lifted her hand to the blue satin bow that topped a good three dozen pearl buttons. "I don't think so," she told him. "This is one of my favorite dresses."

"I can't begin to imagine why."

His offhand comment stung her fiercely, even though she told herself it didn't matter. What did she care if he liked her dress or not? Anyone who would furnish his home with animal-skin prints had about as much fashion sense as Tarzan anyway.

In spite of that, she found herself asking, "What's wrong with this dress?"

"Not a thing," he told her. "If you happen to be six years old and on your way to church for Easter services. But you're a grown woman, Kirby, trying to attract a grown man. And you're going about it all wrong."

She supposed it would be pointless to deny yet again that she was trying to lure a man, especially after James had just witnessed her attempted, um … oh, what the heck—she might as well admit it—her attempted luring of Teddy Gundersen.

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