“No,” Luke said. “You’ve called me an ass, a jerk, and a dumb jock, but you only called me an idiot once. I’m considering doing you the same favor.”

“I believe I said you were not a dumb jock,” Gavin said, trying to derail the discussion before he had to be truly offensive. He leaned against the mantel and cast around for a topic that would deflect the persistent ex-quarterback’s attention from Allie. “By the way, I hired your friend Ron Escobar to do some investigating for me.” Too late he realized that he had opened himself up to more questions.

“Investigating what?” Luke asked.

“My mother’s whereabouts.” He tried to say it casually.

The silence indicated that no one had taken it that way. Which was the disadvantage of having perceptive friends. Or any friends at all.

“That’s quite a change of heart,” Nathan said.

“I found some cards she sent me after she left, cards that my coldhearted rat bastard of a father withheld from me.” He held each man’s gaze with his own for a long moment. “And don’t mouth any platitudes about not speaking ill of the dead. My father made me believe that my mother had abandoned me without a backward glance.”

“I’m not arguing with your evaluation,” Nathan said.

Luke’s expression had gone grim, and he nodded his agreement. “How did you find them?”

“My stepsister sent them to me. She was cleaning out my father’s old papers in the attic and unearthed them.” Gavin had no idea where Ruth had come across the cards, but it sounded plausible. No need to mention who had been with him when he opened the cards.

“I’m sorry, man.” Luke lifted his beer again, this time in a gesture of sympathy. “That’s a hell of a thing to discover so many years later. I hope Ron finds your mother.”

“I like to think that even my father wouldn’t have been so cruel as not to tell me if she had died, but—” Gavin shrugged.

“You’ll find her,” Nathan said. “You’ll make it right.”

“How do you ever make it right?” Gavin didn’t know, but Allie would, and she had promised to come with him. The tension pounding at his temples eased.

That was the effect just thinking of Allie had on him. She was like a healing balm on his old wounds.

“Don’t let pride get in your way,” Nathan said, his voice filled with regret. “It’s the great destroyer.”

“Or fear,” Luke said. “You think you want to avoid getting hurt, but that’s no way to live, man.”

Gavin knew the two men spoke from their own hard-won experience, so he weighed their words instead of dismissing them with a sarcastic comment. Pride and fear were emotions he had become far too comfortable with. Yet when he was with Allie, they skittered away to cower in a far corner of his mind.

He straightened in his chair and turned back to Luke.

“You’re right,” Gavin said. “I’m an idiot.”

Chapter 27

“You know what I want to do right now?” Gavin asked, tugging on one of Allie’s carefully coiled ringlets in the dimly lit luxury of the Bentley’s backseat. “Tell Jaros to turn the car around and go home so I can wrinkle the hell out of that pretty dress while I make love to you.”

Allie laughed, even as desire lapped at her. “All this work to look beautiful, and you just want to mess it up?”

“The irony has always struck me.” He moved aside her hair and laid his lips against her neck, his touch radiating through her. “Women spend immense amounts of time dressing up for men, and men would rather they just took it all off.”

“Ha! That’s where you’re wrong. We dress up for ourselves. If men like how we look, that’s because we are projecting self-confidence.”

He took her earlobe between his teeth, letting her feel just the tiniest pressure before he let go. “So I’ve been flattering myself all these years that the fair sex is preening for me.”

“Depends on what they’re wearing. Some clothes are meant for male appreciation.”

A chuckle rumbled in his throat. “Like the dress you wore to meet me at the door of your apartment.”

Allie tilted her head sideways so he could kiss behind her ear and send shivers down to swirl around her tightening nipples. “Those are made to tantalize.”

“And to be removed as swiftly as possible.” He brushed his thumb against the bare skin of her cleavage.

“Gavin, this dress is not that kind. It takes a lot of work to get it off and on.”

“Then we won’t take it off,” he said, leaning down to work his hand under the long skirt and stroke up her bare thigh to her panties. He’d been touching her more than usual ever since they’d returned from Chloe and Nathan’s house, which made her wonder what he and his friends had talked about.

“You’re taking advantage of the fact that you look gorgeous in a tuxedo,” Allie said, remembering the moment she walked down the stairs in her ball regalia to find Gavin standing in the entrance foyer in his tux. His hair had been tamed into smooth waves that flowed neatly back from his face. The brilliant white of the pleated shirt with a wink of diamond-and-onyx studs contrasted with the black of the supple, perfectly tailored wool draped over the breadth of his shoulders. The tux jacket followed the nip of his waist and drew the eye to his long, elegant legs accented with the satin side stripe. When she reached his feet, she had burst out laughing. He was wearing well-weathered boat shoes. He had grinned and said, “Easy on, easy off.”

Her mind was brought back to the present when he found the edge of the lace between her legs and slid his finger under it. “Men wear tuxedos purely for the effect they have on women,” he admitted.

Allie’s already weakened willpower deserted her, and she opened her thighs for him, letting her head fall back as his fingertip glided downward. He dipped inside her to wet his skin, then massaged the most sensitive spot on her body until she moaned and arched against his hand. He thrust inside her with first one and then two fingers. Little nips at her neck sent spikes of sharpness down to where he worked her with his fingers and thumb, until she bowed up from the leather seat while her internal muscles clamped around him in a convulsion of exquisite release.

When she sank back down on the seat and opened her eyes, he slipped his fingers out of her and sucked them into his mouth, his eyes glittering in the semidarkness. “I could live on nothing but the taste of you,” he said before his gaze swept over her. “And the look of you after you come.”