of the warm oil oozed out in his hand. He swallowed another groan and relaxed
his grip on the squeeze bottle. Her hair was pinned up in a pile of warm brown curls;
the soft lighting reflected gentle golden highlights that he doubted were the result
of any of Lillian’s capable staff. His fingers tightened against the urge to reach
out and slide the pins from her hair to satisfy his sudden need to discover what those
silky waves would look like spread over her slender neck and shoulders.
She chose that moment to turn her head toward him. “Is everything okay?” Her smile
was dazzling.
He abruptly set the bottle down on the cart before he shot the warm, sticky contents
all over her. The analogy wasn’t lost on him.
“Absolutely,” he said, pasting a bright smile on his face. He reached beneath the
table for a white linen drape and snapped it out over her, covering her from mid-thigh
to mid-back.
She laid her head back down, facing away from him again. “I can’t believe I’m doing
this.”
Tucker’s grin eased into something a bit more natural. Neither can I, he thought.
At least not professionally.
“Any back or neck problems I should be aware of?” he asked, feeling a bit more relaxed.
Something in her tone,a trace of her earlier uncertainty maybe, restored a bit of his control.
“Nope, fit as a fiddle.”
She sure looked that way to him, he thought silently. He grabbed the bottle, squeezed
some oil on his hands, and worked it into his palms. This was just a job. He should
consider himself a lucky son of a gun to have a young body with solid bones to practice
on, and get this over with. Recalling the video instructions—after all, Shiatsu was
Shiatsu, wasn’t it?—he reached for her shoulders.
“Do you need to take the towel off?” she asked without turning.
His hands froze an inch from her skin. “Ah, well, seeing as this is your first time
and all, I didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”
“Well, this does feel a little weird,” she added, sounding relieved. “But I’m not
as uncomfortable as I thought I’d be.” She let out a small laugh. “I guess you have
a good tableside manner. No need for silly modesty, right? After all, you are a professional.”
Tucker swallowed hard.
If you only knew
.
“I’ll just close my eyes and put myself into your capable hands.”
That did it. He pulled his capable hands away. He couldn’t go through with this. No
matter what he told himself—or her—he was not a professional, and even if he could
fake that on a functional level, he sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to on a personal
one.
“Listen, maybe we should—”
“No, really, just slide it out. I mean, the sheet stays on, right?”
“Right,” he said, then cleared the roughness from histhroat. What the hell. He reached for the towel. “Lift up a bit.” She did. He loosened
the back of the towel and slid it off, being careful to keep the linen sheet pinned
to the table with his free hand.
“And don’t worry,” she said earnestly as she settled her head back on her arms. “I
know you’re probably a bit nervous with this being your first day, but I’ve never
had one of these, so I won’t know if you’re doing anything wrong, anyway.”
He looked at her semidraped body. The way the sheet clung to her every curve, the
stark contrast between white linen and smooth golden skin, the hint of soft breasts
pressed against the table …
Professional wasn’t even on the list of what he was feeling at the moment.
This is ridiculous, he scolded himself. He’d protected some of the most gorgeous women
on the planet and shared various intimacies with a fair number of others—many who
hadn’t even spoken his language—and at no time had he ever felt so rattled by a woman.
He could blame it on lack of female companionship of any kind of late. What with the
funeral and all of the life-changing decisions that had