always, Sarah’s attention was immediately consumed by him. Tall and broad-shouldered, ruggedly attractive even in his dress shirt and tie, he looked more like one of the employees on Sarah’s dad’s ranch than a quiet, focused senior vice president for a software company. Sarah suspected that was why she had such a crush on him. In her mind, he combined the best of both worlds. He had the masculinity of a cowboy and the brains and conceptualizing ability of a Forbes, Ford or Gates.
His gaze flitted to the roses then swung to hers. “Well, look at this,” he said, his voice filled with that odd tone men used when they tried to be happy about something girlie, but didn’t quite know how to pull it off. Or, when they were in some way faking their response. “Somebody sent you flowers.”
It was him! Sarah thought, tamping down the unrealistic hope that he’d sent her flowers because he was interested in her. The tone of his voice was too patronizing and too brotherly. If he’d sent them, it was to cheer her up. Or—she squeezed her eyes shut then quickly opened them again before anyone noticed—because he felt sorry for her. He knew she didn’t go out on weekends. He knew she hadn’t had a date since she’d arrived in Boston.
“Yes, and aren’t they beautiful?” Carmella fingered a pristine petal. “White is for what?”
“Purity,” Sarah replied, her eyes narrowing. Purity? Purity!
“So some man thinks you’re very sweet,” Matt said, smiling his warm, wonderful, I’m-a-friendly-guy smile and Sarah wanted to deck him. The man she was crazy about thought she was pure. While she daydreamed about his kisses, he saw her as someone inexperienced and naive.
For fifty cents she’d take him to her dad’s ranch where she played poker with the hands and held her own during cattle drives when the cursing was thick and biting. She would show him firsthand that she wasn’t naive, she wasn’t inexperienced and she sure as hell wasn’t pure.
“Well, you can’t leave them here,” Carmella was saying as Sarah forced herself out of her reverie. “They’ll die over the weekend.” She smiled at Sarah. “Besides don’t you want to enjoy them?”
“No,” Sarah said, surprising herself as much as everybody else around her. “I don’t want to enjoy them, because I don’t want them at all. Penny, you can have them.”
“No!”
“No!”
“No!”
Matt, Penny and Carmella said the word simultaneously. Penny said it like a woman who didn’t want the flowers of another woman, no matter how lovely.
Carmella sounded shocked that Sarah would give away such beauty. Matt said it as if she had suggested prematurely withdrawing money from her IRA.
The red numbers on Sarah’s digital clock blinked and 4:59 became 5:00. Sarah opened her bottom desk drawer, withdrew her backpack and rose from her seat. “Then leave them for the cleaning people,” she said as she left her office.
Tears stung her eyes. Her gray skirt shifted across her calves. Her fat braid bounced along her back. Damn it! She was pure. Well, not exactly pure, more like conservative. Well, not even conservative, more like comfortable. She had thick unruly hair that fell to the bottom of her back, so it wasn’t just convenient to wear it in a braid. It was comfortable. Her glasses were less effort than her contacts. And long skirts were all-covering, easy to match and the most logical thing to wear when she was constantly bending and stretching to reach files.
She was dowdy, and conservative by virtue of the fact that she dressed for comfort, and there was no way she would have a secret admirer. She hadn’t even had a date since she’d set foot in this city! Combining her lack of dates with her dowdy clothes, Matt probably saw her as some kind of charity case. Did he know she was still a virgin, too?
Purity flowers took on a whole new meaning, sending anger careening through Sarah’s veins. The probability that Matt had sent those flowers because he felt sorry for her became more and more obvious by the second. By the time she reached the elevator, she just wanted to die.
Matt Burke stood with Carmella and Penny, watching Sarah as she marched, head high, to the elevator. His thoughts were in such turmoil and the situation was so unusual—not to mention uncomfortable—that he wasn’t sure what to do.
“Go after her.”
Matt faced Carmella. “What?”
“Go after her. She can’t leave these beautiful flowers.”
Matt almost said, “Yes, she can,” but he changed his mind. He wasn’t sure why seeing Sarah get flowers caused a tightening in his chest, he only knew it did. Now that he’d gotten over the shock that Sarah would waste perfectly good roses, he wasn’t upset to see her leave them behind. In fact, he had an ungodly urge to toss them out his office window.
“I’ll take them to her,” Penny said, grabbing the flowers and pivoting toward the door.
“No!” Carmella yelped as she caught Penny’s hand, but she lowered her voice and said, “Matt will take them to her.” She paused to lift the vase from Penny’s grasp, and her smile reappeared as she offered the roses to Matt. “You drive by her apartment complex on your way home. You can take them right to her door.”
“Oh, no!” Matt said, backing away from the flowers as if they were poisonous. “She doesn’t want these.”
Carmella chuckled. “So what? If she refuses to take them from you, the worst that could happen is that you’d get stuck with a dozen long-stemmed roses and a beautiful vase.”
Penny said, “Maybe he’s afraid someone will mistake him for a delivery man.”
Matt sighed heavily. “I’m not afraid of anything! I just know she doesn’t want them. I’ll feel like an idiot going to her door with flowers that she doesn’t want.”
Carmella sauntered around Sarah’s desk and picked up the card. “I don’t think she ran because she didn’t want the flowers.”
Matt said, “Huh?”
“I think she ran because she did want the flowers.”
“Ohhhh!” Penny said. “I get it. When I set the roses on her desk she was excited. When she saw the card, she got mad. It’s like she wants flowers from somebody, but she doesn’t know who sent these.”
Carmella nodded. “So she doesn’t know if her secret admirer is the man she wants it to be. And if it is the man she wants it to be, she’s probably angry that he wasn’t mature enough to sign his name.”
“You guys are nuts,” Matt said, though their rationale did make an odd kind of sense. Sarah might be too calm and pragmatic to behave like a swooning female. But if there was somebody she liked, somebody she really, really liked and she wanted to get flowers from him, Matt could see Sarah getting angry that the guy was too chicken to sign his name.
In Matt’s opinion, Sarah was much too good for this coward.
Penny reverently whispered, “She must really like him.”
Carmella only smiled.
Matt felt as though somebody had punched him in the stomach. He couldn’t believe that
