asked them for.
If Jonah was smart, he’d put Noah to work full-time on corporate fund-raisers. His best job fit might be applying that skill to encourage rich people to part with their money. In this economy, FlynnSoft wasn’t able to raise as many outside dollars for charity. Noah might make the difference.
That is, if his unorthodox loan didn’t cost them a huge contract and put all their donation programs on hold.
Jonah leaned back in his chair and took a bite of his bagel. The day was so complicated already and it wasn’t even 9:00 a.m. yet. Two weeks. He had to figure out how to replace or bury the stolen money until Noah came back. And then find some way to put it back in without raising more flags.
Until then, he had to find a way to get around Emma’s defenses. The direct approach wasn’t working and he didn’t want to strong-arm her. He’d never had to beg or coerce a woman to go out with him in his life and he wasn’t about to start now. It didn’t exactly set the right mood. He wanted her ready and willing, not even more stiff and distant than she already was.
It really was a shame. Emma was a beautiful woman. A sensual woman, although she seemed determined to keep that fully under wraps. He could tell by the luscious sway of her hips and the way her full lips parted slightly when he leaned near to her. She had a reaction to him. Certainly. She just wasn’t willing to do anything about it. Yet.
But he could plant the seed. Get under her skin. Whether or not she agreed to let him wine and dine her, he was going to do everything in his power to make sure she went home every night and thought about him. Whether it was with irritation or suppressed lust, he didn’t care. Either would be enough to help her lose focus, and that was the most important part.
It would take Paul a couple more days to get the money. Until then, he had some unofficial FlynnSoft business to tend to.
Popping the last of his bagel in his mouth, Jonah got up from the desk and went in search of his curvy, uptight auditor.
Emma had rarely been as happy to get home as she was tonight. It seemed like no matter where she went or what she was doing, she would run into Jonah. Not like he was following her; he was just always there. She’d look up from the copier and see him down the hall talking to someone. He’d look at her and smile, the charming grin chipping away at her defenses before he turned back to his discussion. He was in the cafeteria, the coffee bar, passing her in the hallway...constantly.
And when Jonah wasn’t there, she found herself thinking about him anyway with a confusing mix of irritation and, if she was honest with herself, desire.
She didn’t want to admit it, but no red-blooded woman could resist Jonah’s charms. Emma had tried her best, but he was infuriatingly persistent and wearing her down. Their past didn’t help. Knowing what he could coax from her body, knowing what it felt like to cling to him, uninhibited and anonymous, made it that much worse. She couldn’t concentrate. The lines of the financial records blurred together, the math not adding up in her head no matter how many times she ran the figures. Her focus was not on the audit and it absolutely had to be—charming, sexy CEO be damned.
It was a relief to get home, the one place where she knew she was safe from Jonah Flynn. There was something about the feminine fabrics, soft throw pillows and cheerful colors that instantly made her entire body and mind relax. She’d decorated her Upper East Side apartment to look like a cozy retreat out of Country Living magazine, casual and inviting.
And yet, when she slipped out of her work clothes and into something more comfortable, she realized she wasn’t even safe from Jonah here. As she stood in the bathroom, clutching a worn T-shirt to pull over her head, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. There, just above the bare swell of her breast, was the blasted tattoo staring back at her.
She could still see him standing there, his mask obscuring everything but the same boyish grin, sharp jaw and dark blue eyes that seemed to rid her of all her good sense.
“Let’s get a tattoo,” he’d said.
Emma hadn’t realized they’d stopped on the sidewalk outside a tattoo parlor until he said that. It wasn’t the kind of place she typically took notice of. Or had any interest in going to.
“Two halves of one heart,” he’d lobbied and pressed the palm of his hand against the bare skin of her chest exposed by the low neckline of her top. His fingertips had gently curved around the edge of her breast, sending an unanticipated wave of pleasure through her. He had the uncanny ability to render her brain butter with the simplest touch.
“Right here.” He’d traced his skin at the juncture of his thumb and index finger, then across her skin, showing how their touch would make the heart whole. “If we’re meant to be together after tonight, I’ll find you. And this heart will be how we’ll recognize one another.”
Emma’s heart had swelled in her chest. His suggestion had been romantic and spur-of-the-moment and completely stupid. Not once in her life had she ever considered getting a tattoo, but that night had included a lot of firsts for her. With his hand gently caressing her and those ocean-blue eyes penetrating her soul, she couldn’t help but follow him into the shop.
Looking in the mirror now, she let her fingertip trace the heart the way his had done. Just imagining it was his hand instead of her own sent a shiver of longing through her body and her skin drew tight with gooseflesh. He’d been the last man to touch her, three long months ago. Her realization that she was pregnant with the stranger’s child had been a big enough disruption, making her physical needs easy to ignore, but now, knowing how close he was, it was as though her libido had flipped a switch.
Flustered by her wanton response to the ghost of a man she couldn’t have, she pulled the T-shirt over her head and marched back into the living room to make dinner.
It was Tuesday and if she kept daydreaming, the girls would arrive and she wouldn’t be ready.
Every Tuesday, Lucy, Harper and Violet gathered at Emma’s apartment for dinner and their favorite television series. They took turns cooking or buying takeout. Tonight, she’d promised Lucy she would make her favorite baked ziti and she hadn’t even boiled water yet.
In the kitchen, she busied herself by preheating the oven and gathering the ingredients for the family recipe. The ziti recipe was one of the few valuable things her older sister had taught her before she’d died.
Everything else she’d learned from her sister was more of a cautionary tale. She’d been sixteen when Cynthia died, barely dating herself, and yet the truth of her sister’s secret life had scared her parents enough to clamp down on Emma with an iron fist. She was hardly a problem child, but of course, Cynthia had always seemed perfect on the surface, too.
When she was old enough to be in charge of her own life, she’d thought about rebelling. Her hunt for a sorority had been a start, but instead, she went the other direction and chose Pi Beta Phi, the sorority of proper, well-off ladies out to do community service and build sisterhood. She’d seen how her sister’s scandal had hurt her parents and she didn’t want to be the one responsible for putting that look on their faces ever again. When she finally lost her virginity in college, it was to a well-groomed, polite premed major she’d been dating for nearly six months and had hoped to marry. She pretended to be the proper, sophisticated society darling her parents wanted, and after a while, it just became who she was.
She’d
