An Unexpected Love (2 page)

I sat on the couch and tried to turn on the TV in the living room but was immediately stumped by the plethora of remotes and cable boxes. So I wandered across the room and stared out the window instead. I was a model of indecision. I wanted to stay, but I wanted to go home. I wanted to snoop some more, but I hated how it made me feel like a sick voyeur. What finally pushed me to a decision was the thought of Jack’s face when he woke up tomorrow and looked at me, and wondered what the hell I was doing there.

So I called a cab and went home.

Chapter Two

The next morning I dragged myself into the office, my legs so weak and wobbly I felt like one of those marionettes from
The Sound of Music
. I was two hours late, and the look Dan gave me could have curdled cheese, but I knew he wouldn’t say anything. My sixty-hour work weeks made it possible for him to stay afloat, and he was smart enough to leave me alone when I needed the occasional hour or two.

“How was Beefaroni?” he muttered from behind his computer screen.

“What?” I was distracted, my ability to engage in repartee with Dan cut off by the endorphins staging a fiesta in my brain. He sighed, disgusted that I was late
and
loopy as hell.

“Nothing. Please call Joseph Trimble over at AFC. He’s emailed me for that damn hedge fund prospectus half a dozen times, and I’m running out of excuses.”

“’Kay,” I mumbled, stuffing my purse in my desk drawer. While I was leaning down, I noticed a light bruise, the exact shape of Jack’s thumb, on the inside of my arm. I stared at it for a second, mesmerized. He’d held me so tightly, pumped me so savagely…my entire body throbbed with the memory. Not that I had any complaints—

“
Lexi!”
I almost jumped out of my skin. “Will you be making that call, or can I expect a full day of slack-jawed drooling from you?” Dan’s voice wasn’t just exasperated—he was pissed. Something was up.

“Is there a problem?” I asked.

“I don’t know, is there?”

“Not at all.”

“Good. Get to work.”

“Fine.”

Screw it—I had too much on my plate to worry about Dan’s mood swings. For the next three hours we worked in tense, hostile silence. At noon, when he went downstairs to check the fax machine, I took the opportunity to leave for lunch. I called my best friend April, and we met at the Thai place down the street, where I knew we could talk. And boy, did I talk.

“Did you spend the night?” she asked breathlessly, her Thai noodles forgotten in their huge soup bowl.

“No. God, no. April, I’m not even sure if his divorce is final. When I went to the bathroom I saw his kid’s bathtub toys in the sink.” I closed my eyes and rubbed my fingertips against my temple. “God, I’m such a whore.”

“You’re not a whore.”

“A slut, then.”

“What’s the difference?”

“A slut doesn’t get paid.”

“Oh, yeah. But you’re neither,” she added quickly.

April’s green eyes were clear and earnest. If it weren’t unreasonable and a little creepy, April would start the Lexi Watts fan club. She loved me unconditionally and was either unwilling or unable to see anything I did as negative or wrong. She was the best person I’d ever met, and I couldn’t make it through most days without her.

“Who goes home with a shit-faced coworker and screws his brains out?” I asked in a semi-hysterical voice.

April was silent, unable to think of a response that made me look good or noble.

I took an aggressive bite of my curry chicken and gulped my tea. “In what possible scenario does this end with me not being fired, or at the very least, humiliated?”

April focused all her concentration on her noodles, and I couldn’t bear her stoic silence any longer.

“All right, I’m out,” I announced suddenly, like a schizophrenic, throwing down my fork and grabbing my purse.

“What? Wait, Lexi, where are you going?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t sit still. Here.” I threw a twenty on the table and gave her a quick hug. “I love you. I’ll call you tonight.”

I left her staring after my backside, and I know it sounds like I’m a horrible bitch of a friend, but I’d spent the entire summer doing the
Biggest Loser
workout in her living room, listening to why her ex-boyfriend Preston was scared of commitment, so I felt like I had a cushion.

When I got back to the office, I was surprised to see Dan standing at my desk. His expression was still pissed, but now he was pissed and mobile. Jesus Christ, what was
up
with him?

I was honestly confused, because Dan was usually a pretty good boss. I’d moved to his department three years ago, and we’d always worked well together. We weren’t friends, and we didn’t talk much outside of the normal office pleasantries, but as bosses go, he was fair and appreciative, and never expected me to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. Which made his sudden bad temper all the more…vexing.

“May I help you?” My voice dripped with fake decorum. His sour face brought out the worst in me.

“Where have you been?” he demanded.

“At lunch. Am I not allowed to eat anymore? Did I miss a memo?” Which really wasn’t fair. He usually encouraged me to get out of the office for a few minutes in the afternoons, but more often than not I just went down to McAllister’s and got a salad to eat at my desk.

“Just let me know when you go next time. Why was Jack Brogan up here looking for you?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“I…I don’t know. What did he say?” My heart was thwomping in my chest, and I developed a sudden, intense interest in the corner of my desk.

“He said, ‘Is Lexi around?’” He spoke as if I were a particularly slow preschooler. “Why is he looking for you?”

“I have no idea, but I’m not sure—”

“This is really inappropriate, Lexi.”

My eyes darted to him quickly. There was no way…even the gossip web at T&G didn’t move that fast…did it?

“What exactly are you talking about?”

“If they want you up in corporate, they need to go through
me.
Guys like Brogan think they can come steal every halfway competent person we get here in research, without a thought to how long I spend training them. What we do might not be flashy, but it’s vital. And I can’t do it without help, dammit.”

It was the most I’d heard him talk in three years. His eyes were burning with anger, so brown they were almost black.

“Dan, Jack doesn’t want to move me to corporate. And even if he did, I’d never go. I can’t think of a job I’d hate more.” It was true. The wining and dining, the high-profile mergers, dealing with the press… I was a woman destined to work behind a desk, and I was perfectly happy about it.

“Then why else would he come sniffing around here? God forbid I compliment anyone—the next day someone’s trying to steal them out from under me.”

“You complimented me?”

“I might have complimented your work,” he said grudgingly. Clearly he didn’t want me to get a big head about it.

“Look, if Jack came by to see me, I’m pretty sure it was for something, umm…personal.”

His brow furrowed briefly, and then his eyes went wide with understanding. “Oh.”

I felt the color rise on my cheeks and hurried behind my desk. I don’t know why I cared what he thought, but I did. However, it didn’t look like Dan was ready to sit down over a cup of Earl Grey and share his advice about office romance. In fact, he walked silently back to his desk, sat for two or three minutes while I booted up my computer, and then he got up to leave.

“Where are you going?” I asked as he shrugged into his jacket.

“To lunch.”

“Why?” I blurted. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Dan leave the building for lunch. Truthfully, I didn’t think I’d ever seen him leave the building.

“Aren’t I allowed to eat? Did I miss a memo?” he sneered, and stormed out before I could even apologize.

That night, Jack came to my house late, because we both worked insane hours, and because he probably didn’t want to be seen. When I opened the door, he said hi, told me I looked pretty. Then his eyes headed south, and I knew he wasn’t interested in sitting on the couch and engaging in the chitchat of a new relationship—
Do you have any brothers or sisters? If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?—
and, truth be told, in all the years I’d fantasized about Jack, very rarely had I dreamt of leisurely talks about politics or the role that spirituality played in our lives. I wanted his heat, his strength, his body consuming mine again. We went straight to the bedroom.

Once we were in bed, things went from zero to flaming in about three seconds. It felt like he was made for me, as if I’d called up and ordered him from “Lexi’s Custom Male”. His smell was the exact smell that drove me wild, his hands the ideal shape to cup my breasts, his skin the perfect texture to bring me alive.

Sex with Jack was better than anything I’d dared to imagine. We came together tirelessly, until I lost track of time, lost hold of anything that existed outside of the mattress underneath us. Finally, when we were both so spent we were actually wheezing instead of breathing, we slumped in a heap at the foot of the bed.

As my body calmed, I waited for his words, his praise. A reiteration of my beauty from the night before. Even a “holy crap, that was
hot
” would have sufficed. But his breathing grew slow, then slower, then really loud. He wasn’t searching for the perfect phrase to describe his ardor. He’d fallen asleep.

At three in the morning, I pulled my numb, tingling arm from under Jack’s shoulders and stumbled in the dark to the bathroom. When I returned, I was surprised to see he was awake, propped up on two pillows, looking at me. I grabbed a T-shirt off the top of my dresser and slid it on quickly.

“Why the false modesty?” he asked.

“I’m pretty sure it’s not false.”

“You could’ve fooled me. I can think of a hundred words to describe you, Lexi, but modest isn’t one of them.”

I wasn’t sure how to take that, so I stored it in my brain to examine later.

“Sorry I woke you.” I mumbled, doing my best to slide gracefully back in between the twisted sheets.

“Sorry I fell asleep. Being with you…I don’t know, it kind of takes it out of me, I guess.” He sounded a little embarrassed, which made me smile. He slid over, put his arm around me, and touched his lips to my hair. We lay in silence for a long moment. Despite my reluctance earlier in the evening, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we should, you know…
talk
. About something. Sex was great, Jesus, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t want to be Jack’s fuck buddy. I wanted more.

So when I felt his hand slide down my side to massage my ass, my body tensed. I mean, I was pretty sure I’d permanently damage something if we did it again. But more importantly, I didn’t want sex, I wanted answers—answers to questions I dared not ask:
Are you divorced yet? Did you think about her while we were doing it? Now that you’re not drunk…did you like it? Did you mean it when you said I was beautiful?

What I got was talk about work. Jack was so used to being the crown prince of T&G, it was as if the real world didn’t exist. I discovered over the next few nights that if we weren’t covering sex or the office, Jack’s conversational skills were sketchy at best. I knew that he was in the final stages of his divorce, that he and Julia were working out a joint custody arrangement with Brooklyn (another question I was dying to ask—who names their kid Brooklyn?). I knew he was putting his house on the market soon. I knew he liked a girl who swallowed. But other than that, my knowledge of Jack Brogan was about the same as before.

“I think he’s still in love with his wife,” I pronounced the next night over cookie dough ice cream and the “Real Housewives” of some metropolis. It was Saturday—Jack had Brooklyn for the weekend, and I had April.

“No way—if he’s still in love with Julia, why would he be carrying on with you?”

“April, he’s a
guy
—I mean, the sex…well, shit, the sex is phenomenal, but…” I trailed off. I waited for April to tell me that he would come around, that he was probably just shy, or wary of a new relationship coming off his marriage. After I got tired of waiting, I spoke for her. “I mean, maybe he just needs time before he feels like he can make an emotional connection with someone else.”

“You’re probably right,” April slurred over a mouthful of gooey ice cream. “Omigod
,
look, Charlene is getting
more
lipo!”

But I couldn’t embrace the carousel of crazy on my TV screen—I had my own problems, and they weren’t the kind that Botox and Pilates could solve.

Chapter Three

Strangely enough, work became the place I went to relax, where my emotions could take a breather and my mind could focus on something other than Jack and what was—and wasn’t—happening between us.

Then one day in late January, I entered the office and found myself inexplicably alone. I was struck dumb, as Dan’s presence was as steady and predictable as that of the copy machine in the corner. I checked email and voicemail for messages, then walked to his desk, searching for clues to his whereabouts. Folders and spreadsheets were strewn everywhere, growing like tumors, leaving almost no room for his telephone, his computer monitor and keyboard, his tape dispenser. Had he jotted something down on his desk calendar? I glanced quickly, saw a few reminders, saw “Sterling Ridge Asst. Lvg.” scrawled across Sunday, with a phone number. But there was nothing else for the week—no doctor’s appointment, no working breakfast with scary Edward Monahan, the VP of Research. Wherever he was, he’d left no trail of crumbs in his wake. I supposed he’d probably—

“What are you doing?”

Dan didn’t speak loudly, but I jumped back a full foot and let out a cry that sounded kind of like “Maah!” I clutched my hand to my chest, my mouth open in surprise, like a pin-curled heroine in a silent movie.

“I…I was…where
were
you?” I demanded suddenly. Wasn’t I the wronged party here? He’d scared the crap out of me.

“None of your business. What do you need?” His hands were on his hips, his expression one of supreme annoyance. But he looked different for some reason, and it took me a minute to put my finger on it.