For a moment, he said nothing, but his mouth twisted into a doubtful frown. "You think?"
Her heart tightened at the vulnerability in his voice. "He talked about you all the time." Desperately wanting him to believe her, she touched his arm, waiting for him to meet her gaze before continuing. "About how smart and clever you were. How hard you worked in college. His son, Reid, who was off getting his MBA at Stanford. That"s the way he said it, with his voice just booming with pride."
That was when it hit her. Her fascination with Reid had started long before she"d ever met him. It had started back in her earliest days at Forester+Blake, listening to the senior Mr. Forester brag about his son.
She"d been just twenty-one, fresh out of college, when she"d been hired on at Forester+Blake. It was the only job she"d ever had. The only one she"d ever wanted. Still, she"d been fascinated by Reid, who"d begun his MBA at Stanford not long before she was hired. Even then he"d been almost legendary for his hard work and his hard play. Rock climbing in Utah. Kayaking in Costa Rica. Scuba diving off the coast of British Columbia. It was all so daring and adventurous.
She"d never had a chance, really. She"d been primed to fall in love with Reid before she"d even met him.
Not that she was in love with him now, she rea.s.sured herself. This was just l.u.s.t. Puppy love gotten out of hand. Mixed with respect. And this weird, inexplicable protective urge. And, sure, maybe the slightest hint of affection thrown into the mix.
Oh, no.
She felt a sinking sensation in her belly.
This was bad. This was very bad.
She was in way over her head.
After all, this was short term. That was what they"d agreed upon. She was having enough trouble getting her body to remember that without complicating matters by getting her heart involved, as well.
"What about your parents?" Reid asked.
"Huh?" It took a second for her attention to snap back to the moment.
"Are they proud of you?"
"Oh, I don"t know...I guess Mom is. I"m financially independent and that"s huge with her. I think as long as I"m regularly contributing to my personal retirement plan, she"s proud."
"What about your dad?"
"I don"t know. We never talk about it." She laughed at the irony. "Actually, we never talk about anything. My dad"s pretty much a birthday-and Christmas-card kind of guy. I don"t think I"d even get those if it wasn"t for Christine."
"Christine?"
"Wife number three. The overachiever. Before she came along, my sisters and I hadn"t heard from him in years."
"Your parents divorced?"
She nodded, but couldn"t quite find the words to talk about it.
"That must have been hard," he murmured.
He was watching her so closely. Really listening to her. So many times she"d imagined being the center of his attention, but she"d never imagined it like this. Talking about her parents" divorce. Dredging up all those awful memories. All the fighting. Then her father"s abrupt-but permanent-absence from their lives.
"Tell me about it."
She looked up at him, surprised. "You don"t really want to-"
"Yes, I do. I really want to hear about it."
He had that tenacious, determined gleam in his eyes. She sighed, knowing he probably wasn"t going to let this go, so she made as light of it as she could. "After Dad moved to Florida, Mom got a job at Texas Instruments and worked a lot. Elizabeth, my oldest sister, decided that meant she was in charge. So she spent most of her time bossing everyone around. And Katie, my little sister, just turned into a rebellious h.e.l.lion. She used to-"
"What about you?" he interrupted her to ask.
"Me?"
He brushed a lock of hair from her eyes. "Yeah, you."
Her stutter had gotten much worse, exacerbated by her mother"s growing impatience and by her sisters" outrageous behavior. There had been times, in fact, when it had seemed easier not to speak at all. So she hadn"t. For days at a time, sometimes. Once for more than a week.
None of which she wanted to share with him. So she shrugged. "I got by."
He continued to watch her, his expression making it clear he knew there was more to her story. "So if your older sister was the bossy one and your younger sister was the rebellious one, which one were you?"
"I was the quiet one, I guess. I just sort of slipped under everyone"s radar and tried not to get caught in the crossfire."
Then, suddenly, it occurred to her how absurd it was for her to be complaining about all of this to him. Given his past, her family angst seemed petty and a little pathetic, so she hastily tacked on, "Hey, don"t get me wrong. It wasn"t that bad. My mother, sisters and I are really close now. We get together when we can for holidays and stuff."
"Do they all live up in Dallas?"
She slanted him a look of surprise. "My mother and older sister live there. How"d you know that?"
"You mentioned it when we met on the roof. And-" he ducked his head as if embarra.s.sed "-your personal file at work lists an Elizabeth Demeo of Highland Park as your emergency contact."
"You looked in my personal file?" she asked, incredulous.
He shrugged, his lips curving into an impish smile that did very naughty things to her insides. "What can I say? You make me weak."
At his words, her stomach seemed to drop clear to the floor. She made him weak.
How many times in her fantasies had she imagined him saying that exact thing to her? How many times had she imagined him looking at her like that, in that heated, hungry way of his? With the mischievous smile and the knowing glint?
Hundreds? Thousands? Countless, certainly.
And yet...and yet he wasn"t really saying those words to her. It wasn"t Jane Demeo who fascinated him. Who piqued his curiosity and made him weak. It was Sasha.
For five years he hadn"t been the least bit interested in Jane, but one evening with Sasha had him violating company policy.
In short, Sasha made him weak. Jane just made him money.
CHAPTER TWELVE.
STANDING just behind Jane, Reid ran his hand up her arm to her shoulder, brushing aside her hair in a gesture that was disturbingly familiar.
Her stomach flipped over at his touch. She leaned into the caress as the heat of sensual promise swirled through her body to pool between her legs and a whimper of longing stirred in the back of her throat.
But what was it she longed for? The raw pounding heat of s.e.xual gratification, or the simple pleasure of a lazy Sat.u.r.day afternoon watching DVDs?
Sasha would have stayed in control. Would have sidestepped these emotionally dangerous minefields. But how would she have done it?
With s.e.x, of course.
And s.e.xual gratification was so much easier than all these emotions tripping her up.
Jane let her eyes drift closed and allowed the sensations she"d been trying to keep at bay to flood over her. Reid standing so close behind her. His fingers on her neck. His heat and scent filling the air. The memory of his powerful reaction to her the previous night.
Sasha had tremendous power over this man. She had power over him.
Slowly she turned to face him. They both still held gla.s.ses of wine, so she took his into her other hand and then set them both on a nearby end table.
Wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her body to his, she murmured, "I can only stay a couple of hours. You don"t really want to spend them talking about my family, do you?"
Triumph pulsed through her as she felt his body"s response to her actions-the tightening of his muscles, the quick intake of breath, the subtle throbbing of his p.e.n.i.s against her belly.
Her satisfaction dipped when he untwined her arms from around his neck and distanced himself from her. "Actually, I thought we might have some dessert."
"Dessert?"
He pointed to the coffee table, where, she noticed for the first time, sat a take-out box, a napkin and a couple of forks.
"I got takeout from Sweetish Hill." Grabbing her hand, he pulled her around the coffee table to sit on the sofa. He popped open the box and displayed it proudly. "Chocolate-mousse cake and a strawberry tart."
She nearly closed her eyes and groaned. Chocolate-mousse cake? How could she resist?
"And you haven"t tried the wine yet," he pointed out. "I could build a fire in the fireplace."
She shifted in her seat to face him, pulling her leg up onto the sofa and tucking it under her. "A fire? It"s nearly seventy out."
"I can b.u.mp down the air conditioner," he reasoned.
His arm stretched out along the back of the sofa to toy with her hair. To mess with her senses and keep her off balance.
The wine, the dessert, the fireplace, they made her want to give in. To give up control. And she was tempted-oh, so tempted. It was all so romantic.
But that was the problem. It was all so romantic.
She could imagine it in perfect detail. In an instant, the full-blown fantasy popped into her head. Not of s.e.x and Reid, but of romance and Reid. Spending the rest of the evening curled up on the sofa with him, sipping the wine, feeding each other bites of cake and strawberry tart, watching the fire or maybe popping in one of the DVDs. Something scary so that she could curl against him and hide her face against his chest.
Much more thinking like that and soon she"d be imagining waking up in his arms and actually going to breakfast with him. And just like that, the image popped into her head. The two of them seated at one of the outdoor tables at Sweetish Hill, cups of coffee steaming on the table between them, nibbling on hot croissants as they read the Sunday paper, a dog lying at their feet, its leash tied to one of the chairs.
She stiffened, jerking away from Reid"s touch as well as from the image.
He didn"t have a dog. She sure as h.e.l.l didn"t have a dog. So where the h.e.l.l had the dog come from?
She was a cat person, for cripes" sake.
Panic hit her hard in the belly as she realized what she"d done. She"d just imagined getting a dog with Reid.
Getting a dog was a long-term commitment. Dogs lived, like, fifteen years or something.
This was bad. Very. Very. Bad.
Sharing childhood secrets was bad enough. Sharing pets was out of the question. She had to regain control.
She took a long drink of her wine-which she barely tasted-then set aside the gla.s.s. She ran a hand up the front of his shirt, relishing the feeling of lived-in cotton beneath her fingertips. "Dessert sounds good," she practically cooed. "But you know what I really want for dessert?"
He studied her, his expression blank, and for a moment she wondered if she"d overplayed her hand. Then he shook his head. "No. What?"
She ran a sculpted fingernail down the length of his jaw to his chin. "You."
Before he could respond, she set aside his winegla.s.s and climbed onto his lap. Straddling his hips, she brought her mouth down to his.
She poured everything into that kiss. All of her need, but all her frustrations, as well. Her frustrations with herself and her stubborn, intractable imagination, and her frustration with him, for making this so d.a.m.n hard on her.
Why couldn"t he have followed the rules? Played the game the way she"d expected him to? Didn"t he know this was about s.e.x, not romance? Why was he ruining this for her?
As if to punctuate her thought, he wrenched his mouth out from under hers, pushing her gently away from him. "Wait, Jane-"
"No." She cuffed his wrists in her hands and pressed them back into the sofa. "I"ve waited all day for this." She kissed him again, trailing her lips across his mouth, to his ear. His skin was hot beneath her lips and tasted of raw masculinity and of pa.s.sion. Of everything she"d ever wanted and never thought she could have. Of heated late-night dreams and early-morning fantasies.
Touching him made her heart pound and flesh pulse. Kissing him made her ache.
Rubbing the apex of her legs against his growing erection, she murmured, "I"ve thought about you all day. Wanted this all day."
It felt good to say it aloud. The admission thrilled her, kicking up a notch the desire already pushing against her restraint. There were a thousand other things she wanted to say to him that she didn"t dare utter, so she pressed her mouth to his, pouring her emotions into a kiss that was deep and dark and full of secrets.
He easily could have overpowered her, but he didn"t. He let her have her way with him. Still, her control was only an illusion. In truth, even while acquiescing, he filled her. Dominating her senses and sapping her will-power.
Desperate to regain some of her control, she released one of his wrists to trail her hand down his chest to his abdomen. "You want this, too. I know you do."
Grinding her mouth against his, she sought the waistband of his jeans with her fingers. The skin of his belly was hot and hard. She felt his muscles clench in response to her touch, felt his resistance weaken and then give beneath her onslaught.
She felt a surge of satisfaction at his surrender. Pure feminine power. Their coupling was faster, more impatient than before. They tugged restlessly at clothes. She yanked his T-shirt up and over his shoulders, but got his jeans and boxers only partway down his legs.
He pulled her dress over her head, but managed to only shove the straps of her bra down her shoulders without unfastening the clasp.
As her trembling fingers struggled to ease the condom down the length of his p.e.n.i.s, he merely shoved aside her panties. He rubbed her c.l.i.toris with the pad of his thumb, making her shiver with pleasure and ache with need.
His mouth rose up to meet hers and his tongue rubbed against hers. She found her control slipping away from her. With every touch, the balance of power slipped infinitesimally in his direction, until, suddenly, he was controlling the kiss.
Desire pounded through her veins, making her desperate. Frantic. Needy.