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came
in.
    On way.
    She smiled at his curt note
and hurried to take a quick shower. She managed to keep her hair dry, so she
just brushed it out and rolled it back into a bun at the nape of her neck. Then
she put on a simple navy blue sheath dress with cap sleeves and an ivory
silk-knit cardigan. With a pearl choker and earrings, the resulting look was
pretty and very traditional. She nodded at herself in satisfaction before she
left her bedroom.
    Nick’s bedroom door was
closed, so he’d obviously arrived and was getting ready himself. She tapped on
the door. “We’ve got five minutes.”
    “I’m ready.”
    Relieved at this news, since
she hated to be late, she opened the door with the intention of hurrying him
along.
    She jerked to a stop when she
saw him standing in the middle of the floor, wearing nothing but a pair of gray
boxer briefs.
    He must have taken a quick
shower because his hair was slightly damp at the nape of his neck. But his hair
was not the thing that demanded Jenn’s attention. Her eyes raked over his big,
mostly naked body. His bare chest, his fine biceps, his strong thighs, the
outline of his package beneath the cotton of his underwear.
    Her body was immediately at
full attention.
    “When did we stop knocking?”
Nick grumbled, reaching for the pants of the dark gray suit he’d flung on the
bed.
    “You said you were ready.”
    “I’ll be ready in two minutes. I just have to put on my
clothes.”
    She couldn’t pull her eyes away from parts of him she
shouldn’t be staring at. When he’d covered the most interesting parts with his
trousers, her eyes raised to his flat abs and the hair on his chest.
    “Is something wrong with this suit?” he demanded, evidently
seeing and misinterpreting her distraction.
    “No. It’s a good one,” she managed to say, her cheeks
flushing in a ridiculous way. “I’ll get you a shirt and tie.”
    In his closet, she took a moment to breathe deeply and pull
herself together. She wasn’t going to embarrass herself, just because she was
finally having some really good sex. Nick was still her friend and her
husband-of-convenience.
    There was no reason to get so flustered.
    She grabbed a blue shirt she liked and a matching tie and
brought them out to him. He’d pulled on a white T-shirt and reached out to take
the shirt she’d picked out for him.
    He slanted her a curious look, but if he noticed her flushed
cheeks, he didn’t mention them. “You look very prim and proper this evening,”
he drawled.
    She glanced down at her outfit. “Is it that bad?”
    “No. It’s not bad at all. I like you all prim and proper.”
    For some reason, she blushed again. This was really getting
very inconvenient.
    She tried to avoid staring as he buttoned his shirt and
wrapped the tie around his neck. “Can you do this for me?” he asked, gesturing
to the tie. “It always takes me forever to get the damned thing to look right.”
    She wasn’t sure it was safe to be so close to him, but she
had no good excuse for refusing. She stepped over and knotted his tie, feeling
flutters in her chest and belly at the scent of him, the warmth of his body so
close to her. “There,” she mumbled when she’d smoothed it down. She avoided
looking up at his face.
    “Thanks.” He pulled on the suit jacket and patted his hair.
“Okay. Do I look all right?”
    He looked incredibly handsome in the expensive suit—one of
the suits he’d bought for the dinners he attended with her. But, as she looked
at him, the thing she noticed was that he also looked un-Nick-like. The suit
wasn’t really him.
    He was only wearing it for her. If he had a choice, he’d
have been wearing his ugly pajama pants.
    “What’s the matter?” he asked with a frown, looking down at
himself. “I thought you said this was a good suit.”
    “It is. You look great. Now let’s go before we’re late.” She
smiled at him and then went to give him a little push when he just stood and
kept frowning at