She gave a little snort of laughter. "Most people don"t invent alter egos to hide behind, though."
"You"re more creative than most people."
"Right."
"You think I always feel confident? I don"t. I spend about half my time at work worried I"m making the wrong decisions. That something I"ve done is going to ruin my father"s company."
He glanced up to find her studying him, her forehead puckered into a frown.
"You"re a wonderful CEO. I can"t believe you"d doubt that."
"You think that because I make you believe it. People need to see the strong CEO, so I act like a strong CEO. It"s a persona, just like your Sasha."
"Except that you are a wonderful leader."
"As good as my dad?"
Her frown deepened as she considered the question. "Different. He seemed to...I don"t know."
"Enjoy it more?" he asked ruefully.
"Maybe." She shot him a cautious look from under her lashes. "I only worked for him for a year, but he seemed more...relaxed. More comfortable."
Before he could ask her what she meant by that, the door to the cathouse opened and a family poured through, the children"s energetic laughter ringing off the concrete floor. Definitely a mood killer. Which was probably no worse than he deserved for trying to have a serious conversation at the animal shelter.
Before Jane could slip away from him, he pointed to the cats and asked, "What about you? Which cat do you like?"
She looked a little startled by the question. Her gaze darted to a cage a few down from Sasha"s. "Does it matter?"
"I"m just curious." He moved down to the cage Jane had glanced at. Inside sat a bulky gray cat. The cat watched Reid through wide green eyes, but when she caught sight of Jane, she started purring and pawing the air.
"She seems to like you," he pointed out.
Jane sighed, sticking her fingers through the grid so the cat could nuzzle them. "Yes, Midge and I are old friends. She"s been here for months now."
"Really?"
"No one wants to adopt an older cat. People always go for the pretty cats, like Sasha, or the cute young kittens, like Toby there. They overlook cats like Midge. Don"t even notice how sweet she is."
Was this more of her keeping her expectations low? Because she thought people would always overlook her?
The thought unsettled him. She was so bright, with her quick wit and her gut-wrenchingly erotic imagination. She had so much to offer, yet she seemed determined to let life pa.s.s her by.
He felt a powerful surge of emotion that he could hardly understand, coupled with a sudden need to touch her.
Standing this close to her, he noticed things about her that he"d never noticed before. Without the heavy coverage of makeup, her skin appeared pale to the point of near transparency, almost luminous. He could see the spattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, the flush that ran across her cheeks and the length of her neck, the faint crinkles at the corners of her eyes and the worry lines between her eyebrows.
But it was her lips that caught and held his attention. Without the coating of red lipstick, her lips were a pale pink, bare even of lip gloss, dry until she skimmed her tongue over them to moisten them. A part of him had always felt weird about kissing a woman wearing lipstick. Glosses were too oily, lipsticks too cakey. Both kept him from enjoying what he really wanted, the taste and sensation of the woman he was kissing. It was like inhaling a woman"s perfume when what he wanted was the scent of the woman herself.
But today, Jane wasn"t wearing lipstick. If he kissed her, he"d taste only Jane. Pure, unadulterated Jane.
Her gaze softened and he felt her sway towards him. Her lips were soft and moist, the ultimate enticement. His resolve to keep this encounter non-s.e.xual crumbled to dust.
He felt her shiver, and suddenly something that was meant to be purely comforting became more. Heat curled through his body, urging him to pull her even closer. To lower his lips to hers and explore her mouth. She raised her head, ready for his kiss, her lips moist and enticing. Enticing him not just to kiss her, but to mold her body to his, to back her against the wall and take her. To make her his.
"Jane," he murmured, lowering his mouth towards hers.
But before he could kiss her, she jerked away from him. She pulled her arm from his grasp and pressed her lips into a narrow and reproachful line. For a few seconds, she stared at him, her expression clouded and impossible to read. Then she turned to one of the cages and spoke as if nothing had happened.
"This calico here would be ideal for someone away from home a lot. She"s sweet-tempered, but very independent. She"s..."
Annoyed by her dismissive att.i.tude, he grabbed her arm again and swung her around to face him. "Stop it, Jane."
Her eyes flashed with unsuppressed emotion. "Stop what, Reid?"
"Stop pushing me away."
"I"m not pushing you away."
"All you do is push me away." The firm line of her lips softened and her eyes widened. She was weakening; he could sense it. He raised his hand to her cheek, grazing his fingers against the delicate skin at her temples. "Come on, Jane, give me a break. This is special, and if it"s ever going to go-"
She cut him off, averting her face and leaving his hand hanging in midair. "This? What "this"?"
And just like that, he lost whatever advantage he"d momentarily gained. "This thing between us."
She shook her head emphatically, her ponytail swinging from side to side. "There is no us. There is no this. All this-" she waved her hand back and forth between them, lowering her voice to a whispered hiss that wouldn"t be overhead "-was supposed to be just s.e.x. That was the deal, remember? That"s what we agreed on."
"I want more," he insisted, jerking her closer to him, wanting to shake some sense into her. Wanting to force her to acknowledge what was happening between them.
"You can"t have more." She wrenched away from him and paced to the far end of the room.
And that was when it hit him. Some time in the past few minutes her stutter had disappeared completely.
Suddenly angry, he followed her to the corner and blocked her in. "So that"s it, is it, Jane? Or should I call you Sasha?"
She spun around to face him, her eyes wide. "I don"t know what you mean."
"Your stutter"s gone." She blinked but said nothing, so he pressed further, his total frustration with the situation edging his words. "Here we are in the middle of an important conversation about our relationship, and you"re pretending to be someone else."
"Am I? Because as far as I know, you don"t have a relationship with Jane. You have one with Sasha."
"That"s not fair. Not when you won"t let me get close to you." She opened her mouth to protest, but he didn"t let her. "You didn"t really think I wouldn"t notice, did you? How every time we"re alone together you try to distract me with s.e.x?"
"Come on, Reid. You can"t really expect me to believe that you want to get close to me. Not when you go to such trouble to keep everyone else at a distance."
"You"re right. I do keep people at a distance. Especially people at work. I have to do that. I"m the boss. I can"t be everybody"s best friend and still make the tough decisions when people need to be let go. I can"t risk making decisions about the company based on my emotions."
"Well, then," she quipped sarcastically, "you should be thankful that you and I aren"t best friends."
"But you"re different, Jane. I"m not going to have to fire you. You"re too d.a.m.n good. Surely you can see that."
"All I see is that you don"t really know what you want. You may think you want the real Jane, but you don"t even know who she is."
When she met his gaze, her eyes were cold and emotionless. The conversation was over and there was nothing he could say to change that.
Jane was wrong. He did want the real her. He just had no idea how to convince her of that. And it made him furious that she wouldn"t even let him try.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
"WE HAVE a problem."
Instead of taking the seat Reid had offered, Jane glanced from him to Matt, trying to quell the sense of disaster in her belly.
This was it. She was going to be fired. At the very least, he was going to pull her from the Tres Bien project.
Why else would Reid have asked Matt to sit in on this meeting?
After the whole animal shelter/Sasha debacle, Reid must have decided she was borderline psychotic. And now he undoubtedly didn"t want her working on the most important project Forester+Blake had ever tackled. Could she blame him?
Still, after all she"d been through to keep her job, she wasn"t about to just walk away now. "Look, I can understand why you might be feeling cautious about having me on the team, but if you"ll give me another chance to-"
"This isn"t about yesterday," Reid interrupted her. Matt raised his eyebrows in question, but Reid kept talking. "It"s about Martin."
"Who?"
"Roger Martin," Matt said. "His team took over the Butler account."
"Oh, right." The guy who thought she was a moron. The Jerk, as she"d taken to calling him.
So, why was she here?
"Martin is leaving. He accepted a job with Blume & Blume."
"Blume & Blume, our compet.i.tors?" B & B was the biggest agency in town. She didn"t wait for Reid or Matt to answer. "So wh-what does this mean? Do Pete and I need to go back to w-working on the Butler account?"
"No," Matt said. "You need to come up with a new pitch for Tres Bien."
"What? Y-you"re kidding, right?" But the grim expression on Reid"s face confirmed he wasn"t. "Why would Martin leaving have any effect on the Tres Bien ad? He w-wasn"t even working on the account. It"s not as if we need him..." She trailed off as she saw where this was going.
"He wasn"t working on the account," Reid said, "but he did sit in on key meetings."
"You think he"ll take our idea to them."
Reid stood, rounded the desk, and propped his hip against the edge. His posture was relaxed, but there was nothing tranquil about the hard glint in his eyes or the tightness in his jaw. Those hinted at the anger simmering beneath his professional facade.
She"d worked with him for five years and had never seen him angry. Now she"d seen it twice in two days. But this time, was he angry at Martin or at her? Or at himself?
"Blume & Blume isn"t hiring," he said. "If they took Martin, it"s because he was able to sell them on a great idea for the Tres Bien ad."
"But that"s illegal. Unethical, at the very best." She protested more out of anger than anything else. In a situation like this, ethics meant very little.
"And if we had more time, maybe we could do something about it. Even if they don"t use your original idea, we can"t risk it. If we both show up with the same campaign, it"ll ruin us. They"ll go with another company."
Reid"s gaze met hers as he spoke. "We need a new pitch. I need you, Jane. Be brilliant for us."
I need you. Words he"d never said to her outside the bedroom.
The bad news was, he didn"t really need her. He needed her ideas. The really bad news was, she was fresh out of ideas.
Jane couldn"t get out of there fast enough. Too bad Reid followed her. His pounding footsteps behind her seemed to echo her pounding heart. He caught up with her right outside her cubicle.
"Jane, I know you"re upset that we"re not going to use the original idea, but-"
She ducked into the cubicle, hoping to defray whatever damage he was doing by chasing her down the hall. Thankfully Pete wasn"t at his desk and no one else seemed to be paying them any attention. "That"s not why I"m upset."
"Come on, I saw your expression in there. You don"t want to give up the elevator idea."
"Of course I don"t want to give up my initial idea. It"s a good idea. But that"s not why I"m upset."
Hoping he"d just leave it at that, she flopped down into her desk chair and wiggled her mouse to turn off her screen saver.
"Look, if I"m going to come up with another idea, I"ve got to get to work. So, if that"s all..."
Reid braced his hand on the back of her chair and turned it to face him. With one hand on the edge of her cubicle wall and the other by her shoulder, he"d effectively trapped her.
The hard edge still hadn"t left his eyes. Nothing he"d said during the meeting had indicated he was angry with her, which should be a relief, but wasn"t. Something was still eating at him. Something that had made him pull back from her.
Or maybe he was just respecting the boundaries she"d insisted on. She was the one who"d wanted to keep their s.e.xual relationship separate from their working relationship. So why did his chilly att.i.tude now bother her? "Talk to me, Jane. If you"re upset, I need to know why. I can"t fix it otherwise."
"Are you sure you can fix it at all?"
"What"s that supposed to mean?"
Not even sure where to begin, she shook her head in frustration. "Look, I"d love to come up with another great idea for Tres Bien. Nothing would make me happier. But I"m just not sure there are any great ideas left in me."
"I don"t believe that." Shaking his head, he pulled back from her, straightening as he tucked his hands in his pockets. "I know the way your mind works. You"ll come up with something. You always do."
She wanted to hear at least a hint of sensual promise in that compliment, but his tone was all business. However, that didn"t stop the heat curling through her belly. Which was d.a.m.n annoying, since she really wanted to be angry with him for putting her in this position.
She didn"t resent having to come up with a new idea-that was all just part of the business. Just part of her job. But she did resent feeling so confused about their relationship. Feeling so off balance.
Things were so much easier back when she had been just Jane.