He moves his hands to my hands, holding them gently. “Is never getting anything done such a bad thing?”
I’m almost panting. “It is when you have a huge monthly rent bill.” I want to arch my back and grind on him, but I don’t. I want to do so many things with this man.
“Two can live much more cheaply than one.” He pulls me even closer.
Doesn’t he know that he’s driving me crazy? “I like my space.” I like this space, too. He surrounds me, but I feel no claustrophobia.
He kisses the top of my head. “I’d give you your space.”
“I like my freedom.”
He drops his head and looks me in the eyes. “I’d give you all the freedom you needed.” He kisses my lips lightly. “I’d even give you an entire bedroom of your own at my house in Great Neck.”
We’ve just kissed. My stomach is fluttering. I hope it’s from the kiss and not the wine. “Is it a big house?”
He kisses my cheek, oh so softly. “It’s more of a bungalow, and it’s only half paid for. The taxes are ridiculous, but ...”
And then we kiss for real, his hand holding my chin, and it’s the kiss you’ve wished for since you were first hitting puberty and noticed that boys were sort of cute sometimes when they weren’t being so stupid, and it’s a real, deep, soul-stirring, tears-causing, toe-curling kiss that sends shivers up and down your spine and back again and makes you want to sing “A Whole New World” while soaring on a flying carpet.
So I liked
Aladdin.
It was
that
kind of a kiss.
I am never leaving this room.
Ever.
I am never leaving this man’s arms.
Ever.
Shoot.
I have to pee.
Chapter 17
I
break lip-lock and roll out of his lap. I go into the bathroom, do my business for a very long time, wash my hands, and return to the couch, moving as far away from him as I can, squirming my toes under the cushion.
“Why are you way over there, Shari?” Tom asks.
I’m hiding. “I can’t think objectively about anything if I’m touching or kissing you, okay?”
He, too, moves farther away from me. “Neither can I.”
That didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. He was supposed to come down here to
keep
me from thinking.
I lean into the arm of the couch and catch my breath. “Tom, we barely know each other.” Okay, I know I let him see most of me. “I’ve only been a voice on the phone for five years and a person for you to follow around for the last two. And now you’re asking me to change my life completely. You’re asking me to jump, and it sounds like you’re asking me to jump over to Great Neck.” Well, maybe he is. I know I’m jumping to a pretty big conclusion here. “Tom, I love Brooklyn. I don’t want to leave it.”
“So you’ll keep your apartment. We can commute. Weekdays in Brooklyn, weekends in Great Neck.”
That sounds ... doable. And logical. But
way
too fast. Shacking up after truly only knowing each other in the flesh for one day. It’s crazy!
Only I don’t want to stop him, especially the flesh part. I need my life to start now!
“I’ve been scouting out locations for an office,” he says. “You wouldn’t believe how many empty floors there are in Manhattan alone. But we wouldn’t need an entire floor. We wouldn’t even need a real office. We could work out of your apartment or out of my house.”
This is starting to sound less like a spur-of-the-moment proposal. He has really thought a lot of this out. But working out of my tiny apartment? We’d bump into each other every two minutes. . . which does have its advantages, but ...
“What about a production crew?” I ask.
He smiles. “You’re looking at him.”
“Right.”
“I have many skills.”
Whoo. I’ll bet he does. Sorry, Lord. He has to. Just look at him! You made him that way.
“As I told you, Shari, I’m doing this project old school. Pen, ink, camera, Photoshop if necessary. I have all the machines in the studio at my house. My gear isn’t as high-tech as what the real professionals have, but I know how to use what I have. And we can be old school together.”
“I don’t know, Tom. I’m ...” I hesitate. “I don’t have any artistic skills or technical skills.”
“You have art in your bones, Shari.”
This from a man who’s seen most of my bones. I’m blushing.
“It’s in your blood, Shari. And you have fresh ideas, and they’re fresh because you haven’t been infected by an ad agency that promotes crap and calls it gold.”
“MultiCorp shines up a lot of crap, too,” I say. I sigh. “I just don’t ... know. You know?”
“No.”
“No more no’s!”
“I like your nose.”
I like
his
nose. I want it nuzzling me. “Are you this witty all the time or are you only witty after, um ...” How to put this into one phrase? Hmm. “Are you only witty after drawing a semi-naked drunk woman, putting her to bed,
not
taking advantage of her, telling her you’ve been protecting her from afar, and then giving her the best kiss she’s ever had?”
“Yes.”
Good answer. The
only
answer. “Do you mind if I think it all over?”
“I expect you to. No deadline, no pressure.”
Man, he is like a fresh, cool breeze on a hot day. “Thank you.”
He turns slightly.
I hop up onto my arm of the couch.
He laughs. “I’m not coming down there.”
“You, um, startled me.” I like this coy part of me. I think I should expand on it.
“Just know, Miss Shari Nance, that I am going to kick your pretty, sexy booty all over that conference room next week.”
“You wish,” I say, wishing he was kissing on me some more.
“Well, let’s put a wager on it.”
Another bet? I want to win this one. “Okay. When I win the account, you have to ... do what we just did, even the drawing. There are other parts of my body I’ve never seen.” I smile. “You can even use a magnifying glass if you want.”
“So if you win,” he says, “I have to snuggle with you and maybe more.”
I nod. I also want to drop the “maybe.”
“And I get to draw more of your sexy body.”
Hmm. Yeah. It doesn’t sound like much of a hardship for him. Or me. “And ...” Hmm. A bet we both can win? I like it. “No. That’s it.”
“Okay,” he says, his hand sneaking across the couch, which is silly. That hand could never sneak anywhere, as big as it is. “When I win the account, you’ll have to quit MultiCorp and join my new ad agency.”
He has a one-track mind. “You’d hire a loser?” I ask.
“I’d hire my favorite rival.”
“And what would be the name of this new agency? Sexton Nance or Tom and Shari?”
His body follows that hand across the couch, and his hand gets to my right thigh before I can blink. Tall people sure have it easy. It would have taken me another five seconds to cross that distance.
“Nothing as ordinary as Sexton Nance,” he says. “Tom and Shari sounds nice.”
It does. Kind of just ... rolls off the tongue I want to use on him.
“I’d let you name it, Shari.”
“I’m not very good at naming things.” I slide off the arm of the couch and scoot closer to him. “I named my first dog Methuselah. He was a shar-pei. All wrinkly. I named my first car Hiccup because that’s about all it did.”
“The Methuselah’s Hiccup Ad Agency. Trendy.”
“The word is
edgy
.”
“The sharpest.”
“But I wouldn’t name it that,” I say, sliding up onto his lap again, this time deciding to straddle him because, I’m, um, cold, and it’s, um, much more comfortable, for, um,
him
, and it’s easier to talk to him, you know, face-to-face.
Okay, I’m tripping. It feels really good down there. My “happy space” is rejoicing.
“I’d probably name it Breezy,” I say.
“Breezy?” He holds me closer.
I am definitely warming up. Good thing I, um, straddled him, so I could, well, capture all that warmth. “You had no problems with Methuselah’s Hiccup, but you have concerns about Breezy?”
“Not very edgy.” He pulls me even closer to him, and I don’t fight it. I want to smell like oranges and lemons for days.
“It’s family friendly,” I say. “It’s cool. You know, breezy.” I sneak my hands around to his back. Geez, I can barely reach around this guy.
“Not very avant-garde. Sounds like a lot of wind to me.”
I begin to massage his lower back. “Hush. It’s how I feel right now with you. Breezy.” And very juicy. Well, I
am.
His body feels nice to mine.
“Why not ... Methuselah’s Breezy Hiccup?” he says.
I hunch farther up his lap, locking my feet around his back. I am about as close to this man as the law—and God—allows. “We’d be an ancient, windy burp.” I dig my fingers lower into his back, and he sighs. “I’m not hurting you, am I?”
“No.” He closes his eyes. “We should, um, separate soon.”
Not while I’m this close to you. “Separate? Why?” I slide my hands under his shirt and rub his back, his skin so smooth and hot.
“The game’s afoot at six a.m. tomorrow.”
I stop rubbing. “You’re getting up at six?”
“I booked the earliest flight I could get,” he says. “I have to get back to the city fast. Otherwise, I won’t be able to kick your booty.”
I dig my nails into his back. Ow. I think I just bent a few nails. “So you’re leaving me ... now?”
“I really should, Shari. I wouldn’t want to wake you in the morning.”
No. He can’t leave. Not now! “I want you to wake me in the morning. You have to stay.”
“I’m afraid we’ll, um ...” He frowns. “I know I might try to ...” He sighs. “I’m worried that if I stay ...”
The man just read my mind exactly. I can’t finish a sentence in my head either.
“We don’t have to do anything but keep each other warm,” I say.
He nods. “I think I can manage to do only that, but what if we get too hot?”
Yeah, what if. “I’ll turn down the thermostat.”
He smiles. “Okay, I’ll stay.”
He puts those big meat hooks under my shirt, rubbing on my lower back. Yeah, buddy. Tear it up. Nice. “But I must leave at four,” he says.
“Why?” I kiss his chin. I kiss just above his chin. I have to strain to kiss his lower lip.
“I turn into a pumpkin.”
“This isn’t
Cinderella,
Prince Charming.” I nuzzle his neck with my nose. “You’re not leaving me.”
“I don’t ever want to leave you, Shari.”
No one has
ever
said that to me. I might start crying. I move my hands around to his front and start feeling me a real man’s chest. Geez, I’m jealous. Not too much hair, bigger nipples than mine, definite cuts.
“But to get you to work with me for the rest of my life, Shari,” he says, “I have to win this competition, and I can’t win it if I’m only thinking of you. Or what you’re doing to me right now.”
He noticed. That spot must be especially tender. I graze his nipples with my nails. I don’t play fair.
“Shari,” he groans, “it took me five years to get you, and I don’t want to lose you.”
“You got me, Mr. Sexton.” I’d be certifiably insane to let this man go!
He rubs the back of my neck. “I ... want to kiss you again.”
I climb as far up his body as I can, and we kiss, tenderly, soulfully, our eyes open the entire time. And despite all the wonderful things I just know that his body can do to me, these kisses turn my legs to rubber and make me juicier than anything he’s done or said to me so far.
I pull back. “Promise not to leave me.”
“I promise.” He holds me close.
“Don’t leave me, Tom,” I whisper.
“Never,” he whispers.
And as I listen to his heartbeat, I realize that win or lose, I win.
I win... .
Winning is the
junk.
Chapter 18
S
ince we both decided that the bed would be too great a temptation, I awake the next morning on the couch smelling like citrus fruits. I also have a headache, cotton mouth, and a stitch in my side.
And no Tom.
Tom is not in this room.
He broke his promise!
Wait. The shower’s running. He’s humming? Imagine that. A man is humming in my shower.
He stayed.
I’m not going to cry. He said he would stay. I still might cry. He does what he says he’s going to do. I’ll have to nominate him for a Nobel Prize.
I search for my glasses and find them on the coffee table. How’d they get there? He must have taken them off when I dozed off. I go to the bed, take off the bedspread, wrap it around me, and shuffle to the bathroom, where I stand there watching a god wash himself. Oh, I can’t see much because of the curtain. And the steam billowing above and below the curtain steams up my glasses.
And my loins.
I want to join him in there so badly.
“Morning,” I say brightly. I start brushing my teeth with cold water.
He sticks his head out of the curtain. “Morning. Hope you don’t mind.”
Me? No, I do not mind that a god is showering in my bathroom. Heavens no. Feel free to invite me in and wash my back. And the rest of me. “Just leave me some hot water.”
He smiles, returns to his shower, and continues humming.
I rinse my mouth and spit. “You stayed.”
“You asked.” He laughs. “Nice hair.”
I look at my natural tresses flying every which way. I am such a wild woman. I shake my head, and my hair doesn’t move. And now I know what he’s been humming: “Natural Woman”!
So I have to sing the words.
We make a nice duet.
“I’m going to buy you breakfast after all, Mr. Sexton.”
He shuts off the water. I watch his arm come out and grab for a towel. I could get the towel for him, but I have to, um, see how far he can reach. A long, wet leg and half a
perfect
booty leaves the shower. I’ve never seen one of those. I don’t even see him take the towel or return his leg and half booty behind the curtain. I’m still blinking at where his leg and booty were when he slides open the curtain and stands there with just the towel around his waist.
“I hope they have omelets,” he says.
I drape my arms around him, and the towel stays around his hips. He must know a special towel trick. “You like eggs Benedict?”
“No.”
“Good.” I kiss him on the chin. “You’re gonna have to bend down lower.” I keep my eyes down as he does, we kiss, and the towel still stays put. Hotel towels need to be smaller. I bet they’d be easier to dry.
“We need to get a move on,” he says. He collects his clothes, gives me a hug and a kiss, and leaves my hotel room only wearing that towel.
I close my door quickly. I hope no one saw. I crack the door and take another peek. I close the door. Only
I
want to see that.
After I dress and do nothing more than shape my hair, I decide to check in on Corrine, even though I have no idea what time it is in Australia. It rings this time, so I wait.
“Shari! It’s about time!”
The wench is awake and is obviously off her meds. “I had my phone turned off, Miss Ross. I’ve, um, been having some trouble with the, um, battery.”
“But I got your message, Shari!”
Oh yeah. Hmm. “It was working when I called you
then
, Miss Ross.” That was weak.
“Have you been able to contact Tom yet?” she asks. “He called my cell twice while I was heavily sedated, but he didn’t leave me a message. I have been leaving him messages for the last four hours!”
Where do I begin to answer her question? Let’s see.... Yes, I was able to contact Tom, repeatedly in fact, all night if you really want to know. You might even call it some serious contact. “I haven’t been able to call him, Miss Ross.” Because he’s right here! Well, he’s walking to his room in only a towel right now. “My phone is so messed up.”
“I don’t think he’s coming to see me, Shari!”
I bite my tongue. I want to say, “Ya think?”
“I must have left him a thousand messages, and I’ve heard nothing! Not a peep!”
Well, I heard him snoring last night. He kind of growls. It’s sexy.
“Where could he be, Shari?”
Well, he’s in the room below me. I just watched a very mean towel stay on his perfect booty.
“At any rate, Shari, I am coming home immediately.”
Oh no! You can’t come back yet! “You’re, you’re all better, Miss Ross?”
“I may never be completely healed,” she says. “There is still so much swelling. I had to buy some bras off the rack here.”
Not off the rack! The horror! But you still can’t come back!
“And they have the strangest numbers for sizes. I’m not staying here another minute. Did you air out my apartment?”
I never even went there. “Yes, um, you have such a beautiful place, Miss Ross. Do you want me to shut your windows before you return?”
“Of course, Shari.”
Then I’ve already done it. That was an undone task done without me doing anything. Or something like that. But she can’t come back now! I need a few more days!
“Didn’t you say you were sending me flowers, Shari?” she asks.
Oops. “Miss Ross, they, um, they didn’t have the bird-of-paradise flowers at the florist there.” I
might
be right about that. “I know you like them, Miss Ross. I only wanted to send you the best.”
“It’s just as well. I’m about to go into the terminal now.”
Already!
“Which terminal? The one on, um, Dunk Island?”
“The one in Brisbane. I left Dunk Island hours ago. Why do you ask?”
Why do I ask? “Um, no reason.”
“Shari, you sound stressed. Is there anything I need to know?”
“No.” I said that
way
too quickly. “Will you, um, be recovering at your apartment then, Miss Ross?”
Please
don’t come in to work, not until after Thanksgiving, you wench!
“What day is it there, Tuesday?”
“Yes.” She doesn’t even know what day it is! Oh yeah. The International Date Line thing.
“Well ...”
I hold my breath.
“I’ve already taken the week off.”
Sort of. You were in Macon, Georgia, yesterday and today. You ate at H&H, and oh, you even drank a bottle of wine with your, um, friend, who didn’t sleep with you but really wanted to, I’m sure. You had a busy night.
“And I need to see my doctor right away,” she says. “Set up an appointment.”
She has so many doctors! “Which doctor, Miss Ross?” She
needs
a witch doctor.
“Dr. Fine, of course.”
Her GP? “But don’t you need a specialist, Miss Ross?” One who specializes in box jellyfish stings and blown-up breasts?
“Dr. Fine will decide that, not you, Shari dear.”
I reach into my tote bag for some paper. “What day should I set it up for, Miss Ross?”
“Thursday.”
I write it down.
“I won’t be getting in to JFK until late tomorrow night.”
Whew. With her taking the rest of the week off, that gives me today through Friday to nail this thing. I can call in sick next Monday and Tuesday, and Corrine will be none the wiser. This
could
work, but it would stress me out less if ...
“You could probably take all next week, too, Miss Ross,” I say. “Like you said, we’ve been really slow. All our clients seem to be content.” Just not the newest one yet.
“I’ll let you know. Keep your phone on at all times from now on, Shari.”
“I will, but I don’t know if it will work, Miss Ross.”
“Get a new phone then.”
Click.
Yeah. On my way back to JFK, I’ll just pick one up somewhere. What a wench.
I pack what little I brought, check all over the suite for anything incriminating, find nothing, put my picture in the tote bag, grab my tote bag, and open my door. Tom stands there blinking.
“She left me seventy-three messages,” he says. “What kind of woman leaves seventy-three
three
-minute messages, all of which essentially say the same exact thing?”
The desperate kind of woman might do that. “I just called her myself. She’s on her way back. She’ll be in the city on Thursday.”
He hums a little. “So soon? Hmm. That scrambles things a bit, doesn’t it?”
Like a bunch of eggs. “She’s still taking the rest of this week off, though.”
He lifts my chin. “That’s ... that’s good, isn’t it?”
I step into him, feeling his warmth. “It doesn’t give me much time, but I’ll manage.”
“And next week?”
“That ... that could get tricky. I guess I’ll just ...” Shoot. I haven’t thought that far ahead. So many variables. “If she
should
come in this week and Mr. Peterson calls and asks for her, I mean, me, what am I supposed to do?”
He wraps his arms around me. “You’ll just have to be her again.”
“Our desks are a few feet apart, Tom.” Think! “Tia will just have to route everything to my cell.”
“A solution.”
Sort of. Tia does have duties of her own that don’t include being
my
assistant.
He grinds me a little. “Remember to keep your phone charged.” Then he hugs me. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure this out together.”
I kiss his chin. “Thank you for the hug.”
“You are so welcome. Now where are the omelets?”
Watching Tom eat an omelet is an erotic experience. I may not ever be able to watch him eat again. He slurps, he tears, he sucks. If it weren’t for the green peppers, I might think he was working on me. But I’m not yellow. Hmm. What do I eat? Pancakes and link sausages, the three-inch kind. Yep. They’re disappointing, and no matter how much I try to annoy him by drizzling syrup on them and eating them end-to-end, he isn’t fazed at all.
He looks at his watch. “We need to get a move on if we’re going to make our flight.”
“
Our
flight?”
“I, um, looked at your ticket,” he says. “I wanted us to travel together.”
“And we’ll be driving together! Thank you!” I really need some more sleep.
“We don’t have enough time to drop my car off and make our flight.”
I shrug. “I can drop mine off.”
“The bike might not fit in the Mustang.”
Oh yeah.
“Wanna race?” he asks.
“What does the winner get?” I ask. I love betting with this man.
“A kiss,” he says.
Another bet I can’t lose. “You’re on.”
After collecting our statements from the front desk and turning in our card keys, we race out of Macon on I-16. My GMC has some horsepower, but I have difficulty keeping up with Tom’s Mustang zipping in and out of traffic.
Traffic thickens when we hit I-75, and Tom slows to a reasonable speed. I take a moment to call Tia.
“How did it go?” she asks.
“Okay,” I say. “Anything from Mr. Peterson?”
“All quiet.”
“Can you route anything from him to my cell?”
“Will do.”
I hesitate to say the next thing. “And if Miss Ross should return, um, early, like maybe Monday, can you still transfer all calls, especially if they’re to her, to my cell?”
“She is coming back early?”
“Yes. As early as Monday morning, I think.”
“But that means ...” Tia’s voice trails off.
“I know, I know.”
“We will think of something. Oh, I am sorry. I should have told you this immediately. Mr. Dunn called this morning and wants an update from Corrine.”
No! “I’ll have to give him the update.”
“But what if he wants to talk directly to Corrine?”
Yeah, what if? Hmm. “I’ll just tell him that Corrine has been working on it while on vacation, became temporarily incapacitated, handed the reins to me, I ran with it, here it is.”
“Mr. Dunn is no fool. Why would Corrine go on vacation in the middle of a project, especially if she is in Georgia now?”