He showed her into a s.p.a.cious corner office full of groovy furniture and more jewel-toned colors.
"How can you stand all these bright colors all the time?" she asked, poking a finger at his purple mouse pad.
"It"s nice. Most people like it," he said, giving her a peculiar look.
"Is that what some focus group told you? Or is it just what the interior designer said to justify his bad taste?"
Danny made a show of looking taken aback. "Yow! Saucer of milk, table two. Someone"s in a bad mood today."
Anna opened her mouth to protest, but she knew he was right. Hadn"t she just been thinking about how annoying she was finding everything all of a sudden?
"I think I got out of the wrong side of the bed this week," she said apologetically.
"Hmm, I wonder," Danny said, then his eyes slid over her shoulder and narrowed slightly. The look he refocused on her was speculative as he scanned her from head to toe. Then he nodded, and took her arm confidentially.
"Anna, I need a favor. No time to explain, but I need you to just play along with me for the next few minutes, okay?"
She"d barely nodded before Danny reached for the top b.u.t.ton on her shirt and slipped it loose. When he reached for the next one, she slapped his hand away.
"Danny! What are you doing?" she hissed at him, fingers automatically reaching up to redo her b.u.t.tons.
"Just work with me here. I need some cleavage. Come on, Anna-I"d do it for you," Danny wheedled.
Anna glared at him, and he put on his best little-boy-lost look. She"d never been able to resist it.
"This had better be really good," she said grumpily as she slid another b.u.t.ton free and pulled her lapels wide so that a substantial amount of bosom was exposed in the V of her shirt.
She turned to Danny for approval, but he was focused on the man emerging from the office across the hall.
"Hey, Ben, wait a minute," Danny called out, his tone supercasual.
A young guy in his early twenties popped in the doorway, a smile on his tanned face.
"Hey, what"s up?"
Danny shrugged. "Just wanted to ask where that new sushi place is you were talking about the other day," he said.
"Just opposite Circular Quay. Near the McDonald"s," Ben said easily.
"Right. Thanks for that," Danny said.
Then, before Ben could move off, Danny knocked a pile of papers off his desk and onto the floor. Anna stared at him, sure the move had been deliberate.
"What an idiot!" Danny said self-deprecatingly.
Laughing at Danny"s clumsiness, Ben stooped to pitch in and help collect the papers. "Hope this isn"t the Arnott"s account," he said.
Danny cut his eyes across to Anna and jerked his head, signaling for her to join Ben in collecting the papers. Anna frowned at him, and Danny grimaced, then pointed at her cleavage, then at Ben as though the connection should be obvious. Sighing heavily but knowing she owed Danny for all his vixen counseling, Anna stooped down beside Ben.
"My brother"s always been a doofus," she said as she started stacking papers.
Ben glanced up, a smile in his bright blue eyes. He was very good-looking in an aftershave-ad kind of way, with a nice straight nose and carelessly tousled blond hair.
Behind her, Danny nudged her meaningfully, and Anna took advantage of the moment to lean forward, treating Ben to a panoramic view of her supercleavage. "Not the same Danny who made the photocopier explode? I find that hard to believe," Ben joked.
"Yeah, yeah, you"re both hilarious," Danny said, finally stepping in and taking over. "Thanks, Ben, but I can clean up after my own disasters."
"Just as well," the other man said as he stood. Then he waved a friendly acknowledgment to Anna and exited.
Anna waited until Ben had been gone a good few beats before she spoke.
"You want to tell me what that was all about?"
Danny finished collecting the last of the papers and returned the now-messy stack to his desk.
"Once we"re outside the building, absolutely," he said, eyes sparkling mischievously.
Biting her tongue, Anna reb.u.t.toned her shirt and let him lead her back to the elevators and down to the street. As soon as they hit the pavement she punched him on the arm.
"Well?"
"Ow. What is it with you today? Is it that time of the month or something?"
"No! Why is it that men automatically a.s.sume that just because a woman is feeling a little emotional it"s got something to do with her hormones?" she said defensively.
"I don"t know-maybe because it usually does?" Danny returned flippantly.
Anna punched him again.
"You can stop that any time you like," Danny said, glaring at her now.
"Are you going to tell me what that little performance was all about or not?"
He shrugged. "It"s no big deal. Ben"s our new gun in creative, fresh out of university, full of vim and vigor, blah, blah. The next wunderkind to storm the ranks."
"And the reason I was throwing my b.r.e.a.s.t.s in his face was...?"
"You saw him. He"s very cute. But I can"t get a read on him, and usually my gaydar is spot on. Sometimes I think yes, then he does something or says something that just throws me right off...." Danny rubbed his chin thoughtfully, lost in the conundrum.
Anna stopped in her tracks. "Please tell me you weren"t just using my b.r.e.a.s.t.s to find out if your new work colleague is gay," she asked warningly.
"They"re very nice b.r.e.a.s.t.s, Anna Banana, if it"s not too creepy for me to say so. I figured if he didn"t go for them, he"s either gay or he"s just got a little plastic mound like a Ken doll."
She couldn"t believe it. Her brother really was completely beyond the pale.
"What? It"s not like they"re going to wear out or anything. It"s not like I just used up one of your b.r.e.a.s.t.s" nine lives," Danny said, arms spread wide in appeal.
"It"s just wrong, Danny."
"Peanut-b.u.t.ter-and-honey wrong? Or dogs eating their own sick wrong?"
She couldn"t help herself: she laughed. He always got her like this, and always had. "You are so lucky you"re a funny guy," she told him as they crossed the street and entered a busy downtown food court.
"What do you feel like? Sushi, burger, souvlaki? My treat," Danny offered.
"Sushi"s fine, since that"s the line we fed Ben," she said.
"Hmm. The mysterious Ben Grayson," he mused as he began selecting sushi from the open display.
"Well, what was the verdict?" she said as she added some double-avocado and teriyaki chicken rolls to her brother"s selection.
"Well, he looked. He definitely looked," Danny said.
"They were right in his face, Danny. I nearly took his eye out."
"That"s true. I don"t know. Maybe my methodology was flawed."
"You could always just ask him out. Revolutionary concept, I know."
"And out myself at work? I don"t think so," Danny scoffed.
Anna shot him a curious look. He always seemed so on top of things that it was easy to forget that there was a big part of his life that he kept under wraps from most of the world. He was like a human version of an iceberg, with most of his truth lurking beneath the surface.
"Would it be a problem if your work knew?" she asked. "I thought advertising was a pretty broad-minded industry."
"Oh, they are, they are. Just ask all the straight men at the top of the pile," Danny said sardonically.
"But you don"t care about that stuff. You"ve told me over and over again that you love your job and you don"t have any ambitions to be in management," Anna said shrewdly, guessing Danny wasn"t being completely honest.
He shrugged, spearing a piece of sushi with his chopsticks. "Look, my s.e.xuality isn"t that important, you know. People don"t have to know about it. It"s not like you wear a T-shirt saying "I"m straight" or anything."
Danny stopped suddenly, then shook his whole body, like a dog shaking off water after a swim. "Right, no more on that old chestnut. Let"s tackle something a little less boring-like your love life."
Anna frowned. "Next topic."
She reached for a piece of sashimi, but it slid off her chopsticks slickly. Her frown deepened as she tried to pick it up again, and yet again, and still it eluded her.
"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l!" she swore, finally giving up and stabbing the darned thing repeatedly with a single chopstick until at last it stuck.
Dipping the fish into her soy bowl, she raised it to her mouth to find Danny staring at her in amazement.
"What?"
"You are wound tighter than a rattrap, my dear. What"s going on?" he asked.
"Nothing." She shrugged, keeping her attention on the sushi platter. She"d told Danny the bare basics of her last "encounter" with Marc, but she"d also told him it was over and done with for good this time. The last thing she wanted was to rehash the whole stupid mess.
"Nothing. Right."
She sighed, knowing what was coming. "This has nothing to do with Marc Lewis, okay? So we tore each other"s clothes off in public again. Big deal. It"s history, Danny, like I told you. The stupid dreams will disappear soon, I"m sure."
"Ah, now we"re getting somewhere. Tell me about these dreams you"ve been having."
Anna colored, realizing she"d given a little too much away. "You"re not my psychologist, so just give it a rest," she snapped.
"Hmm. Irritable. Sleep-deprived, if I don"t miss my guess. Snappy. Defensive. I"m afraid I"m going to have to diagnose this as a severe case of s.e.xual frustration," Danny said.
"I am not s.e.xually frustrated!" Anna screeched, remembering they were in a very crowded food court a few seconds too late.
"Of course not. Forgive me," Danny murmured, eyes wide at her outburst.
Anna pushed back her chair. "Look, I"m just going to go. You"re right, I am tired. I"m not very good company, sorry," she said.
She started to walk away, but Danny"s hand shot out to grab her wrist before she could move off.
"Why don"t you just call him if you can"t stop thinking about him? What have you got to lose?"
"Me," she said starkly.
Danny pulled on her wrist, obviously wanting her to sit back down. She obliged reluctantly, not wanting to even think about any of this stuff, let alone talk about it.
"Can"t I just stay in grumpy denial?" she asked wistfully.
""Fraid not. Why would you lose yourself if you had a fling with him?" Danny asked.
"I"m not like you, Danny. I realized after the first time with Marc that there"s a reason why I haven"t had a lot of men in my life, why I"ve never had one-night stands or s.e.x outside of a bedroom," she said.
"Until recently," Danny inserted pedantically.
"Until recently," she corrected herself. "I"m just not cut out for it. I can"t pull it off. The main course is delicious, sure, but dessert is a big fat serving of regret."
"Anna, it"s not like you"re running around town with a different guy every night. You just happen to have discovered great s.e.xual chemistry with a guy, and the inevitable has happened."
"In a garage and on some poor person"s desk," Anna muttered.
"So make sure you don"t get caught short again. Call the guy, have a fling with him. You said it yourself-you"re not cut out for one-night stands. I really think a fling is more your style."
"When it comes to s.e.x, I have no style," she said.
"Stop being such a scaredy-cat, Anna. What"s so bad about giving in to your desires?"
"I"m not scared of my own desires!" she said, keeping her voice low. "I"m just not interested."
"Okay, I give up. Go buy yourself a kick-a.r.s.e vibrator and forget Mr. Studly and get over it," Danny said, throwing his hands in the air.
Anna felt her mouth drop open and her shoulders creep up around her ears. She shot embarra.s.sed glances to the right and left.
"Danny!" she snapped warningly. "Do you mind? What will people think?"