grim. “I’ll send the file later.”
She slung her handbag over her shoulder and he stepped out of her cubicle ahead of her, into the hallway. “Thanks. I’ll see you Sunday.”
He turned on his heel and made his way down the hall toward the elevators. What he wanted to do was the same thing he’d wanted to do since the first time he met her. He wanted to pull her into his arms, bury his hands in her hair, kiss her senseless and then make love to her until she couldn’t remember her own name.
That, however, would have to wait another few days. But it would happen. He’d come for her and he was ready to lay siege.
GISELLE LOCKED the doors of her VW Bug and collapsed against the upholstered seat, determined to pull herself together. The parking garage’s top deck was mercifully deserted on the Friday before Christmas. Lots of people must have left work early to shop, or they were taking the following week off and had gotten a head start, she absently speculated.
She welcomed the car’s near-freezing temperature. She felt hot and confused and generally a mess. Gray clouds covered the sky like a woolen winter blanket. They seemed somewhat appropriate.
She fished her cell phone out of her satchel, scrolled through the stored names and hit the speed dial.
“Do you know why I’m calling?” Giselle asked without preamble, speaking into her hands-free set even though she was still sitting in her parked car. She didn’t dare drive during this conversation. She’d probably crash. Not that she had anywhere to go. She’d just wanted to get rid of Sam before she did something stupid like step between his splayed legs, wrap her arms around his neck and give in to the plaguing temptation to discover what his mouth felt like against hers, how he tasted and just how good it might feel to have all of his parts close to all of her parts that tingled and throbbed for his touch.
That, however, might send a mixed signal following her declaration that she didn’t want to work with him or even talk to him. Although what she had in mind wasn’t technically working or even talking. Moaning and heavy breathing did not conversation make.
Not to mention that if it did happen, news would spread through the entire office in a heartbeat. And last, but definitely not least, she would never be able to face her family afterward and live with herself.
All in all, getting him out of her office had been the better plan.
“You’re calling to thank me for being a good friend?” Darren said.
Giselle snapped.
“What were you thinking? What did you tell him? Oh, and remind me to never split a pitcher of margaritas with you again. Ever. And you are a major chicken-shit that you didn’t tell me this to my face.” She finally ran out of steam and ended her rant.
“Relax. I was subtle.”
Yeah. Darren was to subtle what she was to beauty-queen beautiful. Giselle groaned. “There’s nothing subtle about you.”
“I called him under the guise of talking about a couple of his pieces in a small gallery, you know, one photographer to another. I hadn’t even gotten around to working you into the conversation when he brought you up.”
“He brought me up?” she echoed rather stupidly, her pulse moving into overdrive. She idly smoothed her hand over the gearshift’s rounded knob.
“Apparently he recognized my name and knew I worked with you. Said he reads the magazine. He asked about you. I mentioned the divorce, yada, yada, yada, he asked for your number.”
A raindrop splattered against her windshield. Then another and another.
“He called and left a message a couple of weeks ago,” she told him.
“Let me guess, you didn’t call him back.” Giselle could practically see his eyes roll.
It began to rain in earnest. “What was the point? My intention is to get over him, not talk to him.” “Did you ever think, Girl Genius, that talking to him, going on assignment with him is just the way to do that?”
“Actually, no. It strikes me as dangerously stupid.” Case in point: she’d told Sam she didn’t want to work with him. That was the sensible, cautious side of her. However, there was a part of her deep down inside that wanted to give in to the opportunity to spend four torturous days with him. In the last half hour, she’d felt more alive, more tuned in to everything, as if she’d finally fully awakened since…well, the last time she was around Sam McKendrick. What she felt around Sam was what she’d wanted to feel when she’d married Barry—an electric sizzle, an almost frantic compulsion to touch and be touched, a restless ache deep inside that seemed an instinctive response to him.
She slammed the lid shut on that Pandora’s box. Not only had Sam been her sister’s husband, he’d cheated on Helene. Strictly off limits. Verboten.
Frustration welled inside her, a countermeasure to her incendiary sexual response to Mr. Wrong. “Riddle me this. How am I supposed to get over him when he’s right frickin’ there?”
“Selle, honey, haven’t you ever been shopping, seen a wickedly expensive dress and known that even if you were willing to eat beans for the next two months, you still couldn’t have that dress?”
“Um…no. I don’t really wear dresses,” she said, “so I’ve never been in that situation.” He deserved a dose of obtuse.
Darren offered a long-suffering sigh. “For hypothetical situations, we’re going to pretend you have. What should you do?”
He loved constructing these little illustrative vignettes. What the hell, she’d play along. He usually made a point…sooner or later. “Walk away and look for a knockoff I can afford in another store.”
“That’s your first mistake.” Darren pounced on her. “And that’s why you wound up with a man who didn’t suit you. You settled.”
“Sometimes you’re amazingly insightful.”
“I know.” She sensed his grin on the other end. “What you need to do is march into that store and try on the dress. You always try it on and then when it doesn’t look as good as it should on your bodacious self for that kind of money, you can walk away from it feeling good about not buying it.”
The idea of “trying on” Sam instantly gave her a mental image of the two of them engaged in hot, sweaty sex, which actually was a mental image that was never very far away. “I’m not trying him on.” “I didn’t mean literally…although that could work. I meant that if you spend a couple of days with him, you might find out you don’t really like him.” She heard Gerald’s voice in the background. “Hold on a sec,” Darren said to her, and then he was talking to Gerald. “Yeah, I’m almost through. I’m talking Giselle off a ledge.”
She snorted in his ear. “Humph. Talking yourself out of hot water is more like it.” He laughed, and she continued, “And what if you try on the dress and it looks even better than you thought and you still can’t have it?”
“You’re screwed.” He didn’t have to sound so cheery about it. “But at least you can admire the way you look in it for a few minutes. Or sell your soul to the devil and buy it anyway.”
“That’s
