He moved toward the fridge and pulled out a bottle of wine.
“She was on about those shares again. I swear, if Jim’s getting a cent from them I’d be amazed. But he loves cranking her up. He keeps hinting at things every time she makes contact. It’s like a hobby for him,” Sam said, shaking his head in disgust.
He poured two glasses of wine, sliding one toward her before leaning back and sipping from the other. Delaney stared at her wineglass as reality crashed in.
“I—I can’t stay, Sam,” she said. Whatever impulse had brought her to his door had dissipated now, and all she could think about was what had happened between them—and how he hadn’t even acknowledged it.
“Oh. Right.”
A dull blush colored his cheekbones, and he fumbled the glass as he poured the wine down the sink. Suddenly, constraint was like a third presence in the room.
Delaney stared intently at him, willing him to say something. Earlier, at the office, she’d dreaded their inevitable confrontation, fearful that he might have guessed her true feelings. But not talking about it was worse. Far worse.
Sam didn’t pick up on her cue. Instead, he avoided eye contact and tucked his hands into his pockets. “Thanks for coming to my rescue, anyway.”
She bit her lip. If he wasn’t going to say anything, it was up to her. She was part of this, too. She opened her mouth.
“It was no biggy,” she said. Not quite the brave words she’d framed in her mind. Not even close, in fact.
“Yeah, it was.”
Sam glanced up at last, locking eyes with hers. She saw gratitude and friendship and warm, fraternal love in his gaze, and her courage failed.
She wanted him to be the one to bring it up, she realized. She’d pined for him for years. Obsessed over him, fantasized over him. She was sure that her true feelings had been more than obvious as they thrashed around on her living room floor—what woman ravished her best friend that way without being secretly in love with him? It just didn’t happen. She’d already exposed herself enough. She needed him to take a single, small step in her direction.
And he wasn’t going to take it. Because Sam saw her as a friend. Just a friend.
While she stood in front of him, quivering with the need to touch him, to have him touch her, to have him inside her again.
Hurt and humiliation and regret welled up inside her, and she said the first thing that came to her mind.
“Have you spoken to the bank about buying me out?” she asked abruptly.
Sam’s face stiffened.
“No. Not yet.”
“Do you want me to set up a meeting?”
“I can do it,” Sam said tersely. “I said I’d do it.”
“I’m free most mornings for the rest of the week. I’d really like to get the ball rolling,” she said, pushing. She needed to get this done fast, try to minimize the pain.
Sam’s eyes flickered with anger. “Fine. I’ll set it up.”
Delaney nodded tensely, then turned for the door. He didn’t say another word, and she kept her back stiff until she heard the door close behind her. Her shoulders instantly sagged and she closed her eyes for a long moment. One breath…two, three.
Then she opened her eyes again, straightened her shoulders and went back downstairs to her solo dinner.
SAM CHECKED HIS WATCH for the fifth time.
“She should be here soon,” he told their bank manager, a stiff-backed, balding man named John.
“Perhaps we could discuss the preliminaries?” John said, opening up the thick folder in front of him on the conference room table.
Sam forced his concern at Delaney’s no-show to one side. It was Friday morning, four days since he’d slept with her. He’d put a call through to the bank the first thing Wednesday morning, and arranged for John to come out ASAP. That was what Delaney wanted, right? So he was giving it to her.
Why had he jumped his best friend? It was the burning question that occupied all his waking hours. The way she’d run interference for him with his mother had driven home to him just how much he stood to lose if he let sex come between them. They had barely spoken all week, and already he missed their dinners, their banter, their comfortable silences. She was the last person he could afford to screw with—literally and figuratively. She meant too much to him, and God only knows, as soon as sex entered the equation where he was concerned, Disasterville was just around the corner. It was in the blood, as inevitable as death and taxes. He had to get things back to the way they’d always been, with Delaney as his best, uncomplicated, platonic buddy.
He was still convinced that his original decision to forge on with business as usual was the best move he could make. The awkward post-mistake stage he’d anticipated was stretching out a little longer than he would have liked, true, but he and Delaney had years of friendship to fall back on. One stupid, misguided roll in the hay couldn’t wipe all that out. Could it?
“Sorry I’m late.”
Sam’s head shot up as Delaney spoke from the conference room doorway. She was wearing a neatly tailored white shirt and a just-above-the-knee skirt, and she looked harried, her hair tousled, her cheeks a little flushed. Not unlike a certain morning just a few days ago, when she’d climbed on top of him and taken them on the ride of a lifetime….
Sam clenched his jaw. This was the problem. In his mind, when he thought about his relationship with Delaney, getting things back on track seemed easy. Natural. Then she walked into the room, and all he seemed to be able to think about was sex.
Which just went to show what a swamp-dwelling lowlife he really was. No wonder he’d blanked out the fact that she was a woman all these years.
“I had a flat tire,” Delaney said as she pulled up a seat. “Have I missed out on much?”
“Why didn’t you call me?” Sam said. “I would have taken care of it.”
Four days ago, she wouldn’t have hesitated, he knew. Now she just shrugged and avoided his eyes.
“I handled it okay.”
Signaling that the issue was closed, she focused on John and smiled encouragingly.
“Where do you want to start?” she said.
“I thought we could take a look at the general health of the business before we start talking about valuations and equity,” John said.
Sam took a deep breath and willed himself to concentrate on the matter at hand. Which meant not noticing Delaney’s alluring new perfume, or the fact that she’d tucked her hair behind one perfect, shell-shaped ear to reveal the elegant, sensual curve of her neck.
She’s your friend, jerk, he reminded himself. Start acting like one.
“I’ve taken a look at these profit projections you’ve put forward. They’re pretty ambitious,” John said.
“Not when you consider that the extreme sports industry has grown in double figures for the past four years, with predictions suggesting that we’ve barely seen the tip of the iceberg,” Delaney said, smoothly clicking into business mode. “Our readership has increased more than ten percent every year for the past three years, and our advertising sales have grown proportionately.”
She shot a look at Sam. With the ease of long experience, he fielded her pass.
“Take skateboarding, for example. It’s not just a fad for boys anymore,” he said. “It’s an industry. At present, there are several hundred men and women around the world who make a good living from doing nothing but skating in comps and exhibitions. The big names are millionaires several times over. We don’t think we’re being too optimistic in anticipating our slice of the pie. X-Pro has been there since the beginning of the wave in Australia. It’s well-respected, credible. Our readers value our opinion, they trust us.”
Sam shot his eyes to Delaney, signaling for her to take the lead once more. She stepped in without hesitation, as always. He felt the adrenaline buzz he always got when a meeting was going well.
“Have a look at these results from a recent reader survey we did,” Delaney said, sliding a document toward John. “We rated above all the other competition in every area. Even above the more specialized surfing mags out of the U.S.”
While John ran his eye over the figures, Delaney flicked Sam a quick look, the confident lift of her eyebrow telling him that she thought they were kicking goals left, right and center, too.
A warm glow started in Sam’s belly as he realized that the tension that had sat between them since The Incident had dissolved. The old teamwork was once more in play—the Sam and Delaney show was back in town.
His shoulders relaxed. He’d just found the key to resolving things with his best friend. Meetings. Lots and lots of meetings. Once the initial awkwardness was gone between them, it was just like old times. He should have forced more interaction between the two of them earlier—they’d both been avoiding one another so much this week that this was the longest time they’d spent in the same room for days. But now Sam saw that the more time they spent together, the more relaxed and comfortable they both became. They were a team. He simply had to remind Delaney of that, and the rest of it would melt away. A wave of relief washed over him. It was going to be okay. He felt almost euphoric.
A few more meetings like this, and they could consign those mad moments in Delaney’s flat to the dustbin of history—memories to be locked away and sealed and buried deep, never to see the light of day again.
Balancing back on his chair, Sam put his feet on the table, a goofy smile on his lips as he watched Delaney talk with John. In light of all that he’d almost lost, Delaney wanting out from the business didn’t seem like the insurmountable barrier that it had on Monday. At the end of the day, if it made her happy to stretch her wings and try something else, he was happy. Their friendship was the important thing. And who was to say, anyway, how long this bug about leaving the business would last? If he kept reminding her of how good they were together, there was every chance she’d change her mind about that, too.
“Man, I need some caffeine, bad,” Delaney suddenly announced, pushing her chair back and standing in one smooth, athletic movement. “You want a coffee, John?”
“Black with one, thanks, Delaney,” John confirmed.
She cut her eyes across to Sam. “I won’t even bother asking you, since you’re just a big caffeine pig,” she said wryly.
“Oink, oink,” Sam agreed. “Actually, make it a triple oink—I missed my morning hit.”
Delaney shook her head at him as she crossed to where the espresso machine sat on the sideboard near the window.
“You’re looking at a man who can single-handedly chew through a catering-sized bag of coffee in a week, John,” she teased as she hit the button to grind the beans.
Sam opened his mouth to respond in kind just as Delaney stepped into the streaming sunlight pouring through the window. Instantly her newly tinted hair caught fire, and her white shirt became virtually translucent. He nearly choked on his tongue as he stared at the perfectly outlined contours of her breasts in a lacy white bra. All rational thought fled his brain as the bulk of his blood supply rushed south. He closed his eyes for a long, long beat, powerless to stop the unwanted images flashing across his closed eyelids—Delaney’s breasts puckering under his hands, the arch of her back as she asked for more, the unfocused passion in her face.
He opened his eyes and blinked, but nothing had changed. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her breasts, even though he knew he should. Was that really a hint of nipple darkness he could discern through the layers of shirt and bra? He got harder just thinking about it, and he bit back a groan of despair. The guy from the bank was sitting opposite him, for Pete’s sake! It didn’t get less sexy than that, as far as Sam was concerned. Yet there he was, practically howling at the moon.
“Sam? Did you hear what I was saying?” Delaney asked. Sam swallowed and realized that Delaney had been talking to him. Possibly for some time.
“Um. Sorry,” he said, rocketing his feet. “I, ah, I just remembered something.”
And then he bolted for the door. Feeling like a complete and utter loser, he slammed his way into the washroom and braced himself against the sink. This had to stop. Delaney was not up for grabs. She was not one of his bed buddies, an easy shag he could blow off at will. She was his lifelong friend. And he knew that unless he could keep his sudden aberrant lust for her under control, he was going to lose her forever.
Lifting his head, Sam stared at himself in the mirror. He was crap with women—fine in the bedroom, but useless at anything else. Always had been, always would be. But Delaney was sacred, special. Unique.
“Don’t stuff it up,” Sam warned the man in the mirror. Problem was, he wasn’t sure if the guy was even listening.
AT FOUR O’CLOCK, Delaney looked at the clock and willed the last few hours of the working week to pass. She wanted to go home, lock herself in her apartment and mourn the loss of her old life. No matter how many times she told herself she was making the right decision, she still felt vertiginous every time she thought about walking away from X-Pro and her friendship with Sam. Since the meeting with the bank that morning, she’d been experiencing odd, jolting lurches of anxiety as she contemplated the fact that in a few weeks’ time, she would be free to step out the doors off their small office and never return.
Shuffling papers on her desk, she sighed heavily. She hated being angry with Sam all the time. It was such an alien emotion in their relationship—it made her feel more heartsick than all her unrequited longing ever had. She was the one who’d stuffed things up, after all. Sam just wanted to be her friend—and who could blame him for that?