clearly wanted to be in control of the conversation and them seeing each other again. Unfortunately for her, so did he. And that started now. “We have a meeting.”
She slowly turned around again. “We do?”
“Just the two of us.” The idea was risky and maybe a little stupid, but he needed to stay in town until his soon-to-be sister-in-law gave birth. Derrick’s fiancée’s pregnancy was high-risk and Spence promised to help, to take some of the pressure off Derrick.
“Oh, I see.”
That tone... Abby may as well have threatened to hit him with her car. She definitely was not happy to see him. Spence got that. “No, you don’t.”
She sighed. “Oh, really?”
If words had the force of a knife, he’d be sliced to pieces. She’d treated him to a prickly, unwelcome greeting and, if anything, the coolness had turned even icier since then.
The reaction struck him as interesting, infuriating even, since he was the injured party here. She cheated on him. Well, not technically, since they weren’t officially going out back then, but she’d done the one thing he could not stand—she used him to climb the ladder to get to a stronger, more powerful Jameson: his father.
Spence glanced at Rylan. He stood there in his perfectly pressed gray suit and purple tie. He had the right watch. The right haircut. He’d shined his shoes and combed his hair. Nothing—not one damn thing—was out of place on this guy.
Clearly Rylan hoped this was a date or the prelude to a date and not an informal afternoon business meeting.
Well, that was enough of that.
“Are you done here?” Spence asked Rylan, making sure his tone suggested the answer should be yes.
“Absolutely.” Rylan’s sunny disposition didn’t dim one bit. He put a hand on Abby’s arm and gave it a squeeze. “I’ll call you tomorrow so we can go over the list of concerns.” His hand dropped as he faced Spence again and nodded. “Mr. Jameson.”
Yeah, whatever. “Rylan.”
Spence watched the engineer leave. He’d never had such a sudden negative reaction to a person in his life. Rylan could have said anything and Spence would have disliked him.
Abby leaned back with her hands resting on the table on either side of her hips. “Heavy-handed as always, I see.”
Facing her head-on, without a buffer, tested the defenses he’d thrown up against her. He shouldn’t care. It shouldn’t mean anything. If only his brain and his body would listen to that order.
Despite standing ten feet apart, Spence felt a familiar sensation spark inside him. Desire mixed with lust and a bit of confusion. The intensity hit him full force.
“Did I interrupt your date?”
She rolled her eyes. “Right. Because I’m incapable of meeting with a man without crawling all over him.”
“You said it, not me.”
She exhaled loud enough to let him know she had better things to do. “What do you want?”
She didn’t back down. He’d always loved that about her. The boss-employee boundaries didn’t mean much to her. If she had a thought, she said it. If she disagreed, she let him know. She’d been tactful in not making angry announcements in the office lunchroom, but she wasn’t the type to coddle a man’s ego, either.
He’d found that sexy. So sexy even as his life crumbled around him and his relationship with his father, which had never been good, disintegrated.
“Is that how you talk to your boss?” He figured he may as well try to reestablish the lines between them. Like it or not, they had to figure out a way to tolerate each other.
For him, it meant ignoring the way she walked and the sound of her voice. Forgetting that he once was willing to go against his father to be with her. But he had to smash all of those feelings, all that vulnerability, now.
“Is that what you are? Last I checked, you ran out of the office and never looked back. If this were a cartoon, you would have left a man-size hole in the wall.” She smiled for the first time.
“I’d had a surprise.” As if that was the right word for seeing the woman you wanted locked in the arms of a father who turned out to be a constant disappointment.
She pushed away from the table. Without looking at him, she finished straightening the stacks of files. Made each edge line up. “You still think you’re the victim then?”
“You were kissing my father.”
She glanced over at him again. “Why are you here, Spence?”
No denial, but just like the last time they’d talked—yelled and argued with each other—and a hint of sadness settled in her big brown eyes. Her shoulders fell a bit and for just a second, she didn’t look like the confident, in-charge woman he knew her to be.
He had no idea what that meant. But he did have a job to do. “This is an important project and—”
“I mean in DC.” She picked up the stack of files and hugged them tight to her chest. “Are you back permanently?”
He hated that question. Derrick had asked it. People at the company had asked. The guy at the rental car company wanted to know. Spence gave her the same answer he’d given to everyone for three weeks. “Derrick needs some help.”
“Huh.” She frowned at him as her gaze wandered over his face. “I don’t really think of you as the type to drop everything and come running to assist someone else.”
Charming. “It’s not as if we know each other all that well, do we?”
“I guess not.” She bent down and picked up her bag. She looked cleaned up and ready to bolt.
“Derrick’s fiancée has a health issue,” he said.
The anger drained from Abby’s face. So did some of the color. She took a step forward with her hand out, but dropped her arm right before she touched him. “Did something new go wrong with the pregnancy?”
“You know about that?” Sure, the pregnancy had been on the gossip sites. One of the playboy Jameson heirs settling down was big news. Their lives had been followed and dissected for years. Every mistake highlighted. Every girlfriend photographed. The rumors, the lies. But the family hadn’t confirmed the pregnancy because it was too soon and too personal. “Are you two friends?”
Abby’s expression went blank. “You sound horrified by the idea.”
Admittedly, he was acting like a jerk, as if everything was about him. Ellie, Derrick’s fiancée, needed support. Spence got that. But still... “Well, it will be a bit uncomfortable, don’t you think?”
“As uncomfortable as this conversation?”
For some reason, the response knocked the wind right out of him. He almost smiled, but managed to beat it back at the last minute. “Look, we’re
