She knew herself well enough to know that that meant excising Sam from her life. Just the thought of it made tears well up in her eyes as she stared bleakly out her windshield. She couldn’t imagine her life without Sam in it. He was her best friend. Her business partner. The one who finished her sentences. He could always make her smile, and he could infuriate her like no one else on the planet. It would be like losing an arm or a leg.
Or a heart.
But there were no half measures with this thing, she could see that. She’d be cheating her future husband if she remained friends with Sam. She had to at least be open to the possibility of loving someone else.
She felt sick to her stomach. Their lives were impossibly intertwined. She lived beneath him, for Pete’s sake. She worked with him. No, not just worked—she owned half the business, he owned the other half. It really would be like lopping off a limb.
But she didn’t see that she had much choice. It wasn’t as though her love for Sam would just curl up and die of its own accord one day. It had been nearly sixteen years and it showed no signs of waning. So, she was faced with a choice—Sam, or a family of her own.
Sitting in her car, Delaney felt the panic rising again. She forced herself to think practically and push the panic away. It was nearly a quarter past ten. She needed to get in to work. At the very least, there would be a big pile of paperwork in her in-tray that needed to be dealt with.
Starting her car, she drove the remaining short distance to the office and parked in her spot. Taking a deep breath, she exited the car and beeped it shut. For the first time ever, the sight of her red-and-white MINI Cooper didn’t bring a smile to her face.
“That bad, huh?” she asked herself wryly as she turned toward the entrance to the building.
She blinked as a startling vision almost plowed in to her.
“Careful!” the woman said, pursing hot pink lips. Delaney’s gaze swept from the woman’s honey-blond mane of tangled hair past impossibly blue eyes, cute little ski-jump nose and neon mouth, only to come to a grinding halt on the woman’s truly spectacular breasts. Whoa! They were so large and so tightly outlined by a white tank top that Delaney could barely pull her gaze away. And she was a woman! She felt a small stab of pity for the male of species. Against breasts like these, most men were powerless.
“Sorry,” she muttered, stepping aside to let the other woman pass.
Jessica Rabbit flashed a tight little smile before strutting away, ass wiggling in her high stiletto heels and short leather miniskirt, despite the fact that there was no one but Delaney to notice.
A true professional, Delaney thought, always committed to the cause.
She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to look like that and walk like that and behave like that. She and Jessica Rabbit might as well come from different planets. Delaney glanced down at her own slim, boyish figure. If the bra manufacturer was on the generous side with their measures, she was a B cup. But more often than not she was an A. And where the other woman’s waist swerved in and out again like the corner of a racetrack, her own body sort of ran straight down, sidestepping the need for such womanly accoutrements as an hourglass waist or childbearing hips. Narrowing her eyes, Delaney decided that she might rival the other woman in the legs department, however. She had a good four inches in height on Jessica, and much of that was leg. And she’d been told she had a nice ass, firm and small.
She sighed and pushed her bangs off her forehead. Why was she standing on the threshold of her business taking stock of herself like this?
Because you know what that woman was doing in this building, she told herself. Or, more accurately, who.
Steeling herself, Delaney pushed open the door and strode into the reception area of their small offices. Debbie looked up from her computer screen and broke into a welcoming smile.
“Hey, Delaney! Thank God you’re here—Sam has been driving us crazy, asking if anyone’s heard from you,” Debbie said.
Delaney’s treacherous heart leaped in her chest, but she barely gave it the time of day. She was used to the damned thing lurching around inside her whenever Sam was in the vicinity. Occupational hazard of having an unrequited crush on her best friend.
“He’s highly excitable,” she said, and Debbie blushed a little.
Delaney gave Debbie an intent look. Yep, all the signs were there—Debbie had a crush on Sam. The poor fool.
Great. Another receptionist bites the dust.
Delaney wondered how long it would take before Sam had to deliver the “I don’t dip my pen in the office ink” speech to Debbie, leading their receptionist to quit so he could go out with her. Judging by the depth of Debbie’s glow-on, not long.
“Your messages are in your office. Sam handled most things, but a few clients only wanted to speak to you and they said they would wait until you got back,” Debbie said.
Delaney nodded her acceptance of this. She was largely responsible for the advertising sales side of the business, while Sam supervised and wrote for the editorial half of the magazine. While he could step into her shoes on occasion and schmooze with the best of them, it wasn’t his natural element.
“About time, lazybones,” a deep male voice said from behind her, and all the small hairs on her forearms stood on end.
“Sam,” she said, bracing herself for the first sight of him after two weeks away.
As usual, absence had made the heart grow fonder. He looked taller, broader, sexier than ever in his worn, faded denims, crumpled T-shirt and scruffy skate shoes. His skin was always tanned thanks to his weekly surfing sessions, and he was still sporting the ridiculously clichéd dreadlocks that he’d been cultivating for the past year. A mixture of his natural chestnut and sun-bleached blond, they hung to his shoulders in thick, matted ropes. On any other thirty-year-old man dreadlocks might look like a pathetic attempt to cling to their youth, but Sam pulled it off with ease.
Bright blue eyes sparkling with pleasure, he stepped forward.
“Laney!” he said, scooping her into his embrace.
For a few heady seconds she was held tight against his hard, hot chest, and his smell swamped her—a mixture of sun and pine forest and spice. Probably soap and laundry detergent, knowing Sam. He famously decried aftershave as being “one step too close to being a she-male” for his tastes, and any scent he had was all his own.
If Calvin Klein bottled it, he could buy himself the World Bank, she figured.
“Sorry I’m late. I had some stuff to take care of,” she said evasively as she extracted herself from his embrace. She swallowed a lump of lust and forced a smile.
“How’re things? No problems while I was gone?” she asked.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Sam said.
He was wired about something, she noticed, studying him. A bit too perky, a little too shiny-eyed.
“Okay, what have you done this time?” she asked resignedly. She pretended to hate the practical jokes he played on her, but she secretly loved the trouble he took to amuse and annoy her.
“Nothing. Although there was an unfortunate incident while you were away….” Sam said, doing his best to sound solemn as he steered her toward her office.
She registered the Crime Scene, Do Not Cross tape across her door with a blink. Then she saw the chalk outline on the carpet, and her paperwork strewn all over her desk.
“We’re not sure how they got in, but it appears there was a falling-out between thieves, and there was a bit of a struggle….” Sam said with admirable composure.
Delaney rolled her eyes. “Puh-lease. As if you wouldn’t have called me on my cell phone if someone had bitten the big one in my office. And you’re tidying up my desk, mister,” she said, poking a finger into his chest.
He grinned, clearly proud of himself.
“Admit it—had you going for just a second,” he said.
She shook her head. “You’re too transparent, Kirk. I can read you like a billboard.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Just like I can read you, Michaels—and when you saw that police tape, you had your doubts,” he said.
She quirked an eyebrow at him as she unceremoniously tugged the crime-scene tape loose and let it flop to the floor. Entering her office, she dumped her briefcase and turned to face him, propping her butt on the edge of her desk. He hooked his hands over the top of the door frame and grinned at her. God, it was good to see him. Unable to help herself, she fished to confirm her guess about the woman outside.
“So who was the pneumatic blonde?” she asked, careful to keep her tone light and disinterested. She had a Ph.D. in light and disinterested. It was almost an art form for her.
“Coco,” he said, waving a hand dismissively.
And that, thought Delaney, is the end of that. She almost pitied Coco, but the other woman hadn’t looked heartbroken in the least.
“How long this time? A week? Two weeks?” she asked.
“Three. With time out for bad behavior,” he said.
“Bad behavior?”
“Yeah. Caught her kissing her dog on the lips,” Sam explained with a grimace. “Had to wait for the cooties to settle.”
“Ew. That’s just plain wrong, as well as giving the dog false hope,” Delaney said.
Sam threw back his head and let out a crack of laughter, and she felt a warm surge of pleasure that she’d amused him.
She realized she was staring at the strong column of his throat, her eyes caressing the firm, muscled planes of his chest and shoulders, nicely defined by the soft material of his T-shirt and his hanging-off-the-doorframe posture. She could feel her nipples tightening, and she crossed her arms over her chest. Occupational hazard number two: unruly body parts that always seemed to be on the verge of betraying her.
But not for much longer, she promised herself.
“Coco wanted us to feature her in the magazine,” Sam said.
Delaney blinked. “Does she skate or something?” she asked, her mind boggling at the effect those D-cups would have on the boys down at the skate ramp.
“Not exactly. She must have misheard me when I told her the name of the magazine. She thought it was Triple X,” Sam said, deadpan.
Delaney’s mouth dropped open. “As in…?”
“Yep.”
Delaney broke into giggles. “That’s why she was looking so pissed off outside,” she said.
“Was she?” Sam looked a little piqued. “It’s not as though we didn’t have some fun. What is it with women these days? Multiple orgasms not enough anymore?”
Delaney suddenly got very interested in tidying up her desk. Multiple orgasms with Sam Kirk. It was enough to set her underwear on fire.
“How was the holiday? Did those horrible brats of Claire’s drive you around the bend?” Sam asked, dropping onto the visitors’ couch.
“The holiday was great. And they weren’t brats. They were…perfect,” she said, her voice softening as she remembered all the special little moments from the last two weeks: Travis’s pencil drawing to say goodbye, Callum’s nightly insistence that she be the one to read his bedtime story, Alana’s repeated intrusion into her suitcase to play dress-up—a high compliment, her sister assured her.
“You catch any waves? Heard Gunnamatta was going off,” Sam said, naming a famous surf beach a few minutes drive from where they’d been staying.
“Not really. Just paddled around on the bay with the boys. Travis wants to learn how to surf,” she reported.
“Excellent. Another little grommet to clog up the waterways,” Sam said wryly.
“You were a grommet once. A particularly annoying one, as I recall, always dropping in on other surfer’s waves,” she reminded him.
“I was precocious. Oozing natural talent,” he said.
“Oozing something, that’s for sure.”
Sam just grinned at her. “Missed you, Laney,” he said, sliding a hand casually beneath his T-shirt to scratch his stomach.
She was treated to a flash of taut, muscled belly, the tanned skin sprinkled with crisp, caramel-colored curls that tapered down toward the waistband of his favorite jeans.
She snatched her eyes away and took a deep breath. Do it now, she told herself. Before you spend too much time with him and lose your nerve.
“Um, I need to speak to you sometime, too,” she forced herself to say, eyes fixed on the stack of papers she was shuffling together.
“Sure. What’s up?” Sam asked.
“I didn’t mean now,” Delaney said, panicking.
“No time like the present,” Sam said easily.
He was right, even if he didn’t know exactly how right. Suck it up, Michaels, she told herself.
Crossing to the door, she kicked it shut. Sam raised an eyebrow.
“A closed door conversation. My, my—I must have been really naughty this time,” he said lightly.
Delaney moved back to her desk and sank into her chair. Then she just stared at him for a moment, her eyes lovingly cataloguing his handsome, open face. This would be the last time she saw him without anger or confusion or resentment clouding their relationship. The last time that he would be her old, much-loved friend, no strings attached, no issues between them.
The lines around his eyes crinkled as he smiled nervously. “Okay, you’re freaking me out now. What’s going on?” he asked. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Talk to me, Laney,” he said.