water.
She smiled at that. Two rounds with Jay. When she couldn’t even write out his name. What’s wrong with this picture?
Maybe I’d be better off cutting my association with this place. If I never saw him, I’d forget about him. Maybe even become interested in someone else.
I could go out with the girls. They always invite me to their sorority parties, and I never say yes. That’s it, of course. I’m going to go. I’m going to take a risk and see what happens. Who knows? It might turn out to be fun.
The line about the monkeys and her posterior came up again, only, this time it wasn’t quite so amusing.
Why can’t I get over this crippling shyness? What lesson am I supposed to learn, huh? To be brave? How can I be brave when I feel like I’m going to pass out? I hate this. I want to be someone else, anyone else. Donna or Kathy or Tabby. They all lead such exciting, wonderful lives. No wonder they leave the dishes for me. What else have I got to do?
She frowned. Not exactly her best attempt at cheering herself up. Before she could make things worse, she saved her work and logged off from the Web site. With forty minutes still to go on her time, she debated working on her paper, but decided instead to do something more uplifting. She typed in the address for her favorite online bookstore, and lost herself in page after page of book descriptions, knowing she could only buy one. She’d narrowed her selection down to three, when a shadow darkened her monitor.
Expecting Brian, she turned to find him standing not a foot away. Her heart slammed into her chest and she nearly pulled the mouse out of the computer.
“Did you drop this?”
She blinked.
“Miss…?”
Speak, dammit. Say something. Anything. “Edwards.”
He smiled. Oh God. He smiled in a way he’d never smiled before. Sweet. Sexy. Her fantasy come to life.
“Did you drop this?”
She forced her gaze from his face to his hand. He held a ballpoint pen out to her. It was white with a blue cap, and she’d never seen it before. “No.”
“Oh. I thought maybe you had.”
She shook her head. “I don’t have a pen like that.”
His head tipped slightly to the side. “Would you like to?”
“Like to what?”
His grin broadened. “Have this pen?”
She blinked again.
He laughed. A lovely, rich sound that stirred something deep inside. It wasn’t derisive at all. In fact, if she hadn’t known better, she’d swear it sounded as if he found her…charming.
She reached out for the pen, her hand only trembling a bit, and when she touched it, his hand moved, brushing against hers, exactly as she’d imagined it a few minutes ago. Was she psychic? She’d never had a precognitive notion before in her life, but this…this was spooky.
“I’m Jay. Jay Wagner.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
She shouldn’t have said that. Oh dear.
“And how do you know my name, Miss Edwards?”
“I’ve, uh, seen you in here. With Brian.”
“Is that all? And here I was hoping you’d done a little digging.”
“Me?”
He nodded.
“You must have noticed how I look for you every time I come in here.”
“Me?” she asked again, feeling more and more like this had to be a dream. Nothing of this magnitude could possibly happen in real life. Not her life.
“Yes, you.”
“Oh.”
His gaze moved down, and she followed the glance to the pen, to both their hands still holding it. She let it go as heat filled her cheeks. At least there’d been a few seconds before she’d humiliated herself.
“I’ve never seen anyone blush so beautifully,” he said, leaning over to put the pen on the table. And then his mouth was scant inches away, his warm breath fanning across the tender skin beneath her ear.
She froze. What was she supposed to do now? If she moved even a little, they’d touch. His lips… She couldn’t faint now. She’d die. Only, she’d forgotten how to breathe.
“Amelia,” he said, so softly she might have wished it. “I know who you are, Amelia.”
Her heart stopped. The whole world stopped.
She felt his lips touch the shell of her ear. An almost-kiss. She quivered right down to her toes.
He pulled back, stood straight, captured her gaze. He didn’t say another word. He just smiled before he walked away. To the door. Outside.
She collapsed. Not on the floor or anything. Mostly inside. Her heart resumed beating, her lungs filled with air, but she was boneless, weak as a kitten.
What in the world had just happened? Had she finally gone mad? Jay Wagner couldn’t have… He wouldn’t have…
Her gaze darted to the table. To the pen. Evidence! Then she turned quickly to the girl on the Power Mac. There. Proof. No one ever looked at her that way. She never made anyone jealous.
Okay, so it had been real. But how? Why? He’d known her name. He’d flirted with her.
It was flirting, she felt sure of that. Especially the whispering part. It was exactly the way she’d pictured it. Only a thousand times scarier. More wonderful. There had to be a fairy godmother floating around Washington Square, because this kind of thing simply didn’t happen. She was Amelia. She was invisible.
Not anymore.
JAY WALKED INTO HIS OFFICE and slammed the door. He grinned as he sat down on his battered leather chair. Sliding down, he put one ankle over the other, crossed his arms and congratulated himself.
This was excellent. She was even prettier up close. Her perfume had knocked him for a loop, which was some trick, because the scent was as subtle as a rose behind a fence. Everything about her was subtle, almost hidden. The green of her eyes. The way her lips curved. The sound of her sigh.
It was like finding buried treasure. A far cry from the women he’d been with in the past few years. They’d mostly been into bikes, into leather, into hot, sweaty sex at four in the morning. Which wasn’t a bad thing. But it sure as hell wasn’t subtle.
Amelia Edwards would need a deft touch. Before she knew what to make of him, he’d have her in his bed. God, he wanted to see her naked. She was a mystery, and that
