"A woman who watches sunsets from the roof and eats my favorite sandwich? You may be my soul mate."
She gave an exaggerated wince. "Ah, that"s quite a pick-up line. You use it often?"
"Ouch."
She laughed and picked up her drink. "You"ll survive."
"If you"re trying to distract me, it"s not working."
"Distract you from what?" she asked, her voice all mock innocence.
"From noticing that you still haven"t told me where you live. Or what your last name is, for that matter."
"I just don"t see the point," she admitted. She gestured to the sandwich, the rooftop, and the two of them. "This is nice. But I"m not foolish enough to think two strangers sharing a sandwich is anything more than what it is."
"Have dinner with me tomorrow. Then we won"t be strangers. It"ll be our first date."
She arched her eyebrow. "Our first date?"
"Or our second, depending on whether or not you want to count this one."
"That"s a little optimistic of you. Tonight"s not even over."
"Which means I have plenty of time to convince you."
"Maybe you should have waited. You may decide you don"t want to see me again."
His gaze drifted over her face. Not that he could see much in the dark, but it was enough. She wasn"t Jane. Thank G.o.d.
It was a such a relief to find himself attracted to a woman he could actually be with, he chuckled as he said, "That"s not going to happen."
She tossed aside the remains of her sandwich and wiped her fingers on one of the napkins. She stood and reached for her purse.
"I should be going."
He felt a flash of panic. If he didn"t stop her, she"d walk right out of his life and he"d never know who she was. He grabbed her wrist. "Don"t."
She tugged her arm, but not firmly enough for him to believe she really wanted him to release her.
Her wrist felt small in his hand. Her bones delicate. Her skin silken and smooth. He felt her pulse under his fingertips and his own pulse leapt to match hers as it pounded with awareness.
He forced himself to release her. "Don"t go."
Her arm dropped to her side and she looked up at him from under her lashes. Humor and heat mixed in her gaze.
So that pounding pulse wasn"t caused by fear, but by desire. The same as his.
"You only want me to stay because you think I won"t."
There was a petulant quality to her voice. As if she wanted to be convinced. As if she wanted him to grovel.
Well, he wasn"t going to beg. Not yet, anyway. "So, you think I"m like a child? I want only what I can"t have?"
"No. But I do think if you had me, you"d be very disappointed with what you got." But the saucy tilt of her head and the mischievous tone of her voice said something else entirely.
He wouldn"t be disappointed. Neither of them would be and they both knew it.
"You underestimate your effect on me."
"Perhaps you overestimate it."
"You"re a remarkable woman, Sasha."
"On the contrary, I"m quite ordinary. Yesterday you would have pa.s.sed me on the street without even noticing me," she teased. "And by tomorrow, you will have forgotten all about me."
"You"re wrong. By tomorrow I"ll be bribing the concierge to learn your full name."
"You"re welcome to try." She might as well have double-dared him. "But it won"t help you find me."
"But I will find you." He couldn"t say why he was so sure of himself, but he felt his conviction deep in his gut. He"d do whatever it took to find Sasha again.
What had started as gentle teasing had become much more. This was no longer simply a matter of pa.s.sing the evening with a stranger. By refusing to give him her full name, she"d issued a challenge, one he intended to take her up on. Besides, he needed the distraction from Jane.
He followed behind her as she made her way to the stairwell that would take her back into the building. But instead of escaping down the stairs, she stopped.
An aluminum safety light hung over the door. She stood just outside the circle of light cast by its bulb.
"Please don"t follow me." For the first time, she sounded serious. They were no longer playing.
"Give me a reason not to." She shook her head, but he ignored her. "Are you here with a husband? Is that why you won"t see me again?"
It was a question he knew he had to ask, but it curdled his stomach.
Her eyebrows snapped together and she stiffened in indignation. "Of course not! If I were married, I certainly wouldn"t be here with you."
Thank goodness.
Then another thought fell quickly after the last. "A fiance? A boyfriend?"
"No. Neither."
"Then see me tomorrow night."
She frowned and her gaze darted away from his. She was wavering; he could sense it. He closed the distance between them. Though he ached to touch her, he didn"t. He didn"t want to scare her off.
So instead of pulling her into his arms, he braced his hand on the wall beside the door. He inhaled the scent of her.
Beneath her expensive perfume, he caught a whiff of sandwich-the spicy pepper sauce, the oregano, and capicolla ham. And beneath that, something else. Something fruity and light. He leaned in closer; it was her hair. She washed her hair with apple-scented shampoo. Just one more fascinating contradiction. One more reason he couldn"t let her go until he"d unraveled the mystery.
"I"ll find you again either way, so you might as well agree. You"ve made yourself too intriguing for me to simply let you slip away."
She looked up at him, her eyes huge and startling in the light. "You"re not going to make this easy, are you?"
"Not at all."
She sighed, a sound so annoyed...so petulant, he couldn"t resist leaning down and pressing his lips to hers. To his surprise, her mouth opened immediately beneath his. Her lips were pliant. Soft and warm.
She tasted like the peppers from her sandwich, hot and sweet. Fiery and spicy, with a hint of honeyed compliance.
The heat from her kiss spilled over to fill his blood. The urge to deepen the kiss, to mold her body to his, to trap her against him pounded through his veins. He heard her moan, felt her hand flutter by his side, then land on his hip.
That simple touch broadcast her acquiescence. He"d won and that was enough. For now.
He was a breath away from ending the kiss when he felt her melt against him. Total surrender. Her body arched towards his and her hands clutched at his hips, then his arms, then buried in his hair. He angled his head to deepen the kiss but her mouth tore away from his as she moaned low in her throat.
The sound pulled at something deep inside of him, heightening his own arousal. In an instant, he went from merely wanting her to needing her. Pa.s.sionately. Desperately. Immediately.
CHAPTER FIVE.
"OH, REID."
He barely heard Sasha cry out over the pounding of his own blood.
"Wait."
He stilled instantly.
"We should-"
"Wait," he said, panting. Of course.
Of course they should wait. They"d just met. They were on a rooftop, for Pete"s sake. Without a bed nearby. What had he planned on doing? Taking her up against the stairwell door?
Laboring to control his breath-not to mention his desire-he wrapped his arms around her and held her to his chest. "You"re right. We should wait."
She leaned into him as if absorbing his strength. Which was ironic considering how unbelievably weak he felt around her.
"Meet me tomorrow night," he asked again. Begged was more like it.
"Yes."
Triumph surged through him at that simple word.
"Tomorrow night," she repeated. "In the lobby of the hotel."
"Tomorrow," he agreed. Then it hit him. The meeting with Tres Bien in New York. There was no way he could get out of it. "No, wait. Not tomorrow. I"ll be out of town. I might be away all week. What about Friday? Will you still be here then?"
He held his breath, waiting for her answer. Maybe Matt could go to New York.
Even as the thought flickered through his mind, he knew it wasn"t possible. He couldn"t throw away a shot at the biggest account the company had ever had over a woman he"d just met.
Thankfully, he felt her nod against his chest. "I"ll still be here."
Her arms tightened around his waist and he felt her sigh against his throat, inhaling deeply as she nuzzled his neck.
Suddenly, standing like that in the dark, with her in his arms, this all felt like much more than a playful bout of l.u.s.t. More than desire heightened by curiosity.
This woman, with her compelling blend of sensuality and self-consciousness, with her beauty and quick wit, spoke to him as no other woman had. And holding her in his arms almost drove from his mind every other woman he"d ever known. Almost.
Even Sasha couldn"t make him completely forget Jane, or the troublesome and inconvenient appeal she held for him.
But taking Sasha to bed would drive Jane from his mind. He was sure of it.
"Promise you"ll meet me on Friday," he begged, now more desperate than ever.
"I-"
"Promise me," he said again.
Finally she nodded. "I"ll meet you Friday. In the hotel lobby. But you have to promise not to follow me tonight."
"Done."
And like that, she was gone. She slipped through the door behind her and disappeared. He stood there for a long minute, hand still braced on the wall beside the door, head ducked, breathing deeply of the air still filled with her scent. Her complex, many-layered scent.
He gave her enough time to make it down a flight of stairs, and out into the hall, before grabbing his jacket from the ground and following her. He bypa.s.sed the elevator and used the stairs to go straight to the lobby.
If she was staying in the hotel, she"d have to go all the way down to the lobby to get to the other tower. However, if she got off on one of the floors between here and there, he was screwed. He"d have no way of knowing which one. As he"d threatened, he"d have to resort to bribing the concierge, though he doubted he"d have much luck.
By the time he made it to the first floor, his heart was thundering, though he wasn"t sure if it was from running down the stairs, or from the excitement of chasing Sasha. At the door to the lobby, he paused to catch his breath and straighten his jacket. He swung open the door and stepped out, immediately scanning the lobby for her.
After a moment, one of the elevators chimed and opened. Sure enough, there was Sasha. From this distance, he could see her features no more clearly than he"d been able to up on the roof. He didn"t dare get closer.
She seemed to hesitate, but then with a firm shake of her head she spun around and headed straight for the hotel"s courtesy phone. One phone call and fifteen minutes later, she was picked up outside the hotel. Not by a taxi. Not by a rental car. But by a man in a mud-splattered Jeep, with no top.
As he watched her through the plate-gla.s.s window of the hotel lobby he felt a surge of totally irrational jealousy. She"d said she didn"t have a boyfriend.
Then the man chucked her on the chin, in an intimate-but decidedly not s.e.xual-gesture. Not a boyfriend, then. And, presumably, not a husband or a fiance. Her indignation on that subject, at least, had been genuine.
He could overlook the way she"d misled him on the other subjects. She wasn"t staying at the hotel. Which meant there was a pretty good chance she worked in his building.
But if she did, why call a friend to pick her up? Why hadn"t she driven herself home? And why was she so determined he not find out who she was?