"I knew sleeping with you was a terrible idea."
She might have been insulted at the gruff words had he not raised her hair and kissed the nape of her neck as he said them. Then, even more sneakily, he slipped a hand beneath his robe and found her breast. She let herself give in to pleasure but only for a moment. He might call her interfering, but she knew helping him get his books straight would do him a lot more good than another session of rolling around together on the bed, the floor, this dining room table even...
Resolutely she put the image away for now. "Later," she said. "You will feel so much better when your finances are organized. Trust me."
He grumbled some more, but went back to the drawer and started dumping all the bills, receipts and statements onto the dining table.
"Do you want some wine?"
"Mmm," she said absently. Really, she just wanted to get hold of those receipts.
However, as he turned away and she simultaneously lunged for the heap of crumpled paper, he suddenly leaned over and stopped her with a hand on her wrist.
Startled, she glanced up to find him staring at her with a negotiator"s impa.s.sive face. "You really want those receipts, don"t you?"
She wanted them so bad her calculator hand was itching. It would be nice to act casual about this, but she was currently sprawled across his dining table, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s squished against his robe, one outstretched hand almost touching the papers.
"I only want to help you," she managed.
"I don"t know." Not letting go of her wrist, he hoisted one hip onto the table, giving her a great view of his abdomen, tight with muscle and decorated with a s.e.xy arrow of hair. "I"d say this is bringing the office home. Something we"ve never done."
"But you need-"
"I"m not saying you can"t have a few, but there should be something in it for me." He shot her a teasing glance, which immediately made her squished nipples stir causing simultaneous pleasure and discomfort.
"Like what?" She tried to sound business-like and faintly annoyed, but her voice betrayed her, coming out in an excited whisper.
"Well, let"s see. If I let you pound a calculator in our s.e.x time, then the fairest exchange would be for us to have s.e.x during worktime."
"You mean play hooky?" She was shocked. She never goofed off from work and she would have said Daniel didn"t either.
"No. I mean have s.e.x at the office."
"The office?" she squeaked.
He rubbed his chin with his free hand. "Yep. My office has no window and the door locks." He let her go and she sagged back into her seat feeling as though the b.u.mpty cotton of his robe were imprinted on her flesh. "I"ll check my schedule, but I think I"m free midafternoon tomorrow. How about you?"
"Midafternoon. For s.e.x. In your office."
He picked up a handful of receipts and placed them within reach, but kept his hand over them. d.a.m.n the man, how could he torment her like this? She wanted to organize his finances the way a chef might crave a kitchen full of raw food, or a decorator might be compelled to fix beige walls and a s.h.a.g rug.
Naturally, she"d refuse-if the very idea of having s.e.x in his office tomorrow in the midafternoon didn"t have her exhausted body perking up again. But she wasn"t a pushover. She tried to mirror his negotiator face. "Two handfuls of receipts."
His eyes narrowed. "Okay, this better be done in half an hour, so we can get back to the real reason you"re here."
"Agreed."
"And you"d better get out your electronic organizer and schedule our private meeting right now."
"All right." Ridiculous to feel so excited at the prospect, but she didn"t think tomorrow afternoon could arrive fast enough. She pictured them having s.e.x at Daniel"s desk, in Daniel"s chair, against the walls in his office, the filing cabinet. Oh, the possibilities were endless. She might have to stuff his Nerf ball in his mouth to keep the rest of the office from hearing. He had a way of roaring sometimes when he climaxed.
"Two o"clock all right?" she asked.
He checked his own schedule. "Yep."
"Fine." At last, she had her hands on those receipts. She wondered what she"d have to do to get to the rest of the pile, and licked her lips at a couple of the ideas that flickered through her imagination.
"We"ll start with a simple system. Income. Expenses. Under expenses, you"ve got two sections. Essentials and nonessentials. It helps you budget." She glared at him. "Don"t groan. Budget is not a dirty word. Essentials are things like heat and light."
He picked up a restaurant receipt and handed it to her. "Here"s one for essential."
"Food is an essential, but restaurants are nonessential." She flattened out an old phone bill and scanned it, wishing she had a pencil sharpener with her. "The telephone is essential, but all those long-distance calls to Chicago-" She raised her eyebrows in a question, knowing d.a.m.n well that two-hour calls at midnight weren"t about selling planes.
"That ended a couple of months ago."
She was ridiculously pleased the Chicago thing was over. She imagined nights of phone s.e.x with some woman in Illinois, and knew the only woman she wanted him having phone s.e.x with was her. Besides, Tara thought piously, phone s.e.x with her only involved local calls, he"d save a bunch of money.
After the allotted half hour, when her body was telling her it was time to put away the calculator and get on with tonight"s program, she asked him, "Do you think you can work with this?"
"Yes. I think so." He leaned over her shoulder, pausing to nibble her neck, and stared at her neat columns of figures. "Hey, where"s the Miscellaneous column?"
Her lips tilted. "There isn"t one."
Chapter Six.
Were she and Daniel an item? As Christinas closed in, Tara began to wonder.
On the outside, nothing had changed. Every day she went to work as she always had, even if she stumbled out of bed verging on late, not because she"d slept in, oh no. She was waking up plenty early, but because Daniel had kept her in bed with his wiles and his clever moves, and she had to scramble to get to work on time.
Once there, however, the man whose lip prints she could still feel all over her body, behaved just as he always did at work. As did she. No one who saw their frigidly polite battles by day could possibly imagine the scorching intimacy they attained each night.
Her dare to Daniel had backfired in the worst way. She was pretty sure it was no longer just the s.e.x that had her longing for the day to be over and the night to begin.
What she was going to do about the foolish problem with her heart was one issue. The other, more urgent issue was what to do about a Christmas present. She could be practical and buy him a decent calculator, which he really needed now he was attempting to keep his accounts in order, but that was dull even by her standards.
Something goofy from the love shop, or a pair of silly boxer shorts with happy faces or hearts would be more in keeping with how their relationship had started. Frivolous and unattached.
But what she really wanted to buy him was a pair of gorgeous gold cufflinks from a Belltown jeweler she loved. However, cufflinks could be construed as symbolizing attachment and clinging, which was, unfortunately, exactly how she felt. Attached and clingy.
For all their intimacy, she and Daniel had never discussed their feelings. Well, the affair, for want of a better word, had only been going on for a couple of weeks, but she"d never experienced anything as physically and emotionally satisfying before. Likely never would.
She hovered outside the jeweler"s window, her breath fogging in the cold air as the cufflinks winked at her through the gla.s.s.
Well, she"d taken a risk in the first place with Daniel and it had worked out okay. Amazing, in fact.
Deciding she"d give him the cufflinks and the h.e.l.l with the consequences, she entered the store and quickly purchased them before she could change her mind.
She even had them gift-wrapped so she wouldn"t keep lifting the lid and torturing herself by staring at them, wondering if she was messing with a perfectly good casual relationship by buying an expensive gift.
They both had family in town, and neither of them had mentioned including the other in their holiday plans.
They hadn"t made a secret of their... whatever the h.e.l.l it was, but they hadn"t put a bulletin in the employee newsletter, either, and, while she"d told her close friends about her new guy, she hadn"t introduced him to anyone yet.
She felt as though she were playing wait and see. But she was getting a bit tired of waiting. Was it possible that she was nothing but a s.e.x toy to Daniel while he was the man she"d fallen in love with?
The admission, even to herself, had her staggering down the street.
Oh, Lord. She"d gone and broken all the rules. First, she"d started a steamy affair with a colleague. Now she"d done the ultimate no-brain move and fallen in love with the man.
Just what was she going to do about it?
"Not hungry?" Daniel asked.
"Hmm?" she gazed across the table at him, and realized he looked more appetizing than her dinner, even though they were in her favorite restaurant.
"You"ve barely touched your food."
"I was just thinking I"ll miss you," she blurted, then wished she"d bitten her tongue. He was leaving the following day for a three-day business trip, and, she realized with a shock, it would be the first night in more than a week they"d spent apart.
Ever since the night she"d done his accounts, they"d gone to bed together every night. Woken up together, either in his apartment or hers. Her wardrobe now housed a couple of his shirts, her bathroom a toothbrush and some shaving stuff, while she kept a cosmetic bag and a stash of clean underwear at his place.
They didn"t even bother with the pretense of asking anymore. Now he was going away for three days and she knew she"d hate every minute of it. He was going to Chicago. Home of the multiple-hour phone s.e.x woman.
"I"m not hungry either," he said and signaled for the check.
She felt unaccountably nervous on the way back to his place. Her stomach felt kind of squishy and she knew she had to tell him at least a little of how she felt. The pretense that this was a casual fling was fine when he was in town and they saw each other every day, but if he was going to Chicago of all places, he had to understand he was taking her heart with him. And the thought of telling him that terrified her.
He seemed as disinclined to talk as she as they purred through town in his BMW, Mahalia Jackson belting out "Oh Holy Night."
A different kind of energy than the usual s.e.xual desire sizzled between them. Oh, that was there too, but something else bubbled in the mix. Probably her own anxiety that if she admitted her feelings she"d find they weren"t reciprocated and then the whole thing would become embarra.s.sing. Worse than embarra.s.sing. She could blow the entire wonderful relationship and lose him completely, then have to quit her job because it would hurt too much to see him.
What had she been thinking?
She shuddered.
When they got to his place, she knew she hadn"t imagined the strange atmosphere. They pretty much always jumped each other the first second they were in the door, but tonight neither made a move.
Daniel took her coat and hung it along with his, then turned to her and rubbed the back of his neck as though he wanted to say something and didn"t know how.
Her stomach felt like lead. He was going to Chicago for three days. Maybe he wanted to tell her their half-a-month affair was over.
She dropped her bag on the closest chair and decided she needed to know the worst.
"I get the feeling there"s something you want to tell me," she said, crossing her arms as though giving herself a preparatory hug against bad news.
"No." He glanced at her, then down at the planked floor. "Something I want to show you."
His phone bill? she wondered sourly as he went to his accounting drawer. He pulled out his account book and flipped it open. "I wanted to show you that I"ve been keeping up the book."
"That"s good," she said, feeling as though she were having an out-of-body experience. Her heart was about to shatter and he wanted to show her his household accounts?
She walked to the table where he"d laid open his book. There was her neat writing, where she"d started keeping his books for him, and there was his much messier writing. There were copious applications of White-Out she noticed as she scanned the columns with a professional eye.
Even in her emotional state, she realized something was wrong.
"What"s this item under essentials?" She pointed to a five figure amount scrawled below his mortgage payment.
"That"s my holiday."
"Holiday? Are you planning a world tour?"
She lifted her head to stare at him, and noticed an earnestness on his face she"d seen sometimes when they were making love. He"d gaze at her that way, as though she were the most important woman in the universe.
"I"ve booked one of those luxury resorts for couples. In the Caribbean. The dates are open. You can pick the time we go. I"ll work my schedule around it."
She said the first thing that came into her head. "What is a holiday doing in your essentials column?"
He stepped closer and placed his hands on her shoulders, turning her so she looked up into his face. "You are essential in my life. It seemed the appropriate place."
Even though her vision was clouding with tears, she realized he was looking anxious.
She sniffed and blinked hard. "Yes. I think that"s exactly the right place."
He pulled her against him. "I love you."
They kissed and, even though desire was there, strong and urgent, there was tenderness.
She sighed against his chest. "I love you, too." She rubbed her cheek against him, thinking how far they"d come in such a short time. "I thought you couldn"t stand me."
"You are, without a doubt, the most stubborn, detail-obsessed, rule-oriented, hard-nosed woman I"ve ever met."
She pulled back slightly and glared up at him. So much for bended-knee declarations. "You forgot to mention ballbuster."
"Darling," he said. "You have me by the b.a.l.l.s and you know it. What you do with them is up to you."
She grinned mistily up at him, letting her fingers trail down his belly. "I have some ideas and I promise they won"t hurt a bit."
We have another wonderful Christmas anthology.
THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS,.