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haircut. All elegant and cool and remote, and your nape so exposed like that. You have a beautiful neck.”
    She couldn’t stop shivering. It was the strangest thing. As if that one involuntary and perfectly natural shiver that had come from a finger brushing such a sensitive spot just kept going. Shivering and shivering through her, this tiny subtle earthquake whose aftershocks were bringing down defenses she’d been taking for granted for decades. Defenses older even than their friendship.
    “You’re going to be so embarrassed in the morning,” she told him desperately. The desperation pissed her off. If she didn’t let an idiot grand jury make her desperate, she didn’t see why she should give the power to him.
    He snorted. “Can’t remember the last time I was embarrassed. No, I take that back. When my own daughter was getting headlined as a chocolate thief, that was pretty bad. She finally managed to beat out Jaime’s headlines for G8 protests with that one. If I can handle that, I sure as hell can handle the embarrassment of knowing I hit on a woman who froze me out. Especially when she has that little V of pale hair pointing right down to her nape that way.” He followed it with his finger again, and again the touch shivered everywhere. “How is a man supposed to keep himself from touching that?”
    “I’ve had this haircut for several months,” she said dryly.
    “We’ve been friends for a long time, Anne. I’m used to respecting those walls of yours. But you did agree to be my date for this damn thing, you know.”
    “I was doing you a favor!” The underhanded—
    “I even brought you flowers,” he added smugly.
    He had, too. Of course, he always brought her flowers when she agreed to go with him to a function. They’d been doing that kind of thing for at least a decade now. It had started, what, a couple of years after the walks on the beach? He’d just asked her, out of the blue, while they were strolling past a beautiful piece of driftwood, to help him out by being his companion at some charity dinner, and what was she supposed to do? Leave him hanging alone?
    “Mack Corey. If you want to find yourself fending off money-grubbing, twenty-year-old, wannabe kept women at every single dinner you go to for the rest of your life, just keep this up.”
    He winced. “Jesus, Anne. That’s nasty. All you have to do is raise your eyebrow to wither them, and you’re going to abandon me? Cade’s based in Paris now!”
    Cade had a pretty effective way of raising her eyebrow at younger women who wanted to date her father, too.
    “You’re bluffing,” Mack decided firmly.
    Anne raised an eyebrow at him. Nobody knew when she was bluffing, not even Mack. You didn’t create a billion dollar empire from scratch by being an easy read.
    He didn’t noticeably wither at her raised eyebrow, however.
    “The thing is, Anne, I’m pretty sure after three dates, a man’s supposed to be able to at least get a kiss. And I’ve lost track of how many dates we’ve been on. I’d have to lock you up against your doorway when I got you home and kiss you all night before I’d even start to make a dint in the ones you owe.”
    A sudden and dissolving image of herself locked up just like this between his body and a door, only they were all alone on her porch, sheltered by the climbing roses, with no one to see or stop them but…them. And Mack talked as if he had no intention of stopping.
    So…that left it all on her.
    “You know what I thought about two seconds after I dashed a glass of ice water over my dick?”
    “‘Ouch’?” She could not believe Mack Corey was using the word dick in front of her. He did believe in calling a spade a spade, but that didn’t usually extend to calling a penis a dick. He’d had to watch his mouth raising two daughters. Although Cade had once confided that her father had personally taught her to say, Fuck you. He’d said she would need to be able to at least say it in her