Lord, don’t let me drop this.
“Goose, what are you doing?”
Instinct had her swinging toward the voice—Carlo’s voice—but that only made her more unsteady on her business-beige heels. Before she could do more than wheeze, there were a man’s arms around her—Carlo’s arms. Her back was up against his chest, her butt pressed to his—
“Stop,” he ordered into her ear.
“I wasn’t thinking anything!”
“Obviously not. You’re too small to take care of this. I meant ‘stop trying to help.’ Let go and let me have the bottle.”
“Oh.” She dropped her hands from the heavy plastic, but that still left her in the circle of Carlo’s arms. His warmth was at her spine, his delicious aftershave in her nose, his breath stirring the hair at her temple.
As a wild rash of prickly awareness broke out like more hives over her skin, she dipped under his arm and freed herself from his faux embrace. Without a glance at her, he stepped forward to flip the bottle on top of the cooler.
He turned to find her fanning her face.
“Goo—Lucy…” His voice trailed off as his gaze dropped lower. His eyes widened, then he looked back up. “You, uh, have a couple of buttons that came loose.”
She glanced down, gasped. In her struggles with the water bottle, apparently some of the buttons on her all-business blouse had popped free, revealing most of her white lace demibra. Her face burning, she clutched the shirt’s edges together with one hand while hastily refastening with the other.
“Relax,” Carlo said. “It’s just me.”
“Yeah. Just you,” Lucy repeated.
Just the man she’d dreamed about since she was fifteen years old.
She managed to get decent once more, but was still struggling with the top buttonhole when her new boss made a brotherly noise and moved in as she continued to fumble. “Here. Let me finish it up.”
He was wearing an easy, indulgent smile as he pushed her hands away and reached toward her collar. For an instant, his fingertips brushed the hollow at her throat and she jerked in helpless reaction, her pulse pounding against his touch. He froze, his fingertips now only making contact with button and fabric.
Still, his nostrils flared and she could smell her perfume rise around them, the scent surging stronger as her heart continued to hammer in her chest.
He cleared his throat. “Goose,” he said. “You smell like a girl.”
A nervous bubble of laughter escaped her throat. “Carlo, I am a girl.”
“Right. Yeah.” He made quick work of the stubborn top button, then retreated toward the doorway. There, he shoved his hands in his pockets and cocked his head, studying her. “Actually, you’re more than a girl. You’re a woman.”
“You noticed?” If it hadn’t been obvious before, this little comment made it crystal clear that the kitchen-kiss two years before hadn’t even rated his attention.
He leaned one shoulder against the jamb and gave her a half smile. “Now I think I’ll find it hard to forget.”
The deep note in his voice stroked like a brush down Lucy’s spine, bumping against each vertebrae. Her tongue swiped at her dry bottom lip and she watched his eyes follow the movement.
Suddenly, her heart sped up again, her pulse fluttering against the place at her throat that still throbbed from his accidental touch. Was…was Carlo looking at her with a masculine kind of interest?
She took in the gleam in his deep-set, dark eyes and then tried to find more clues in the aquiline line of his masculine nose and the sensual curve of his full mouth. He was a beautiful man, every artistic angle of his face a testament to his Italian heritage—but she couldn’t read his expression.
She licked her bottom lip again.
Carlo abruptly straightened, his gaze dropping away. “So, uh, Goose—”
“Lucy.” And didn’t that answer her question? No man would feel the least bit of lust for someone he thought of as “Goose.” Disappointment coursed through her, even though she’d taken the job for this—to finally accept there was no mutual heat between her and Carlo.
No heat. No hope.
“So, Lucy, I suppose I should get back to work.”
With an inward sigh, she followed him with her gaze as he strode down the hall, admiring the way the European cut of his pale blue dress shirt accentuated the muscled leanness of his back and waist. She didn’t try to find a word for how she felt about the curve of his tight, masculine behind in the dark slacks.
Three weeks, Lucy. Three weeks to look, but not touch. Three weeks to accept, finally, that’s all you’ll ever have of him.
A few minutes before five, she was congratulating herself on making it through the could-be-disastrous initial day, when a messenger appeared with a high-priority package for Carlo. Fine, she thought, she’d deliver the slender cardboard envelope and bid him good-night at the same time. Then her first day on the job, and her first day with Carlo, would be behind her.
At her tap on his door, he called her inside. This time he was sitting behind his desk, file folders in front of him, his computer screen angled just so.
He looked up as she entered. “Lucy. Just the person I’ve been thinking about all afternoon,” he said, leaning back in his chair.
Her fingers squeezed the package. “Me?” The view behind him was still awe-inspiring, but she couldn’t drag her gaze away from his face to appreciate it. He’d been thinking about her?
“I realize I don’t know what brought you back to San Diego.”
“Oh.” What to say? Dissatisfaction with the jobs she’d found in the accounting industry she’d spent four years preparing herself for? It made her sound so flighty. So, well…ditzy and goosey, especially when every Sutton sibling had gone straight from graduation to climbing the ladder of success in the corporations they’d joined right after college. “Of course, you know I’m from here, and…”
“Your father mentioned something to mine about disappointments in Phoenix?”
She shifted her weight on her feet. “Well…um…” Her face was heating up again and she didn’t know what more to say. While she knew the jobs in Phoenix had not been quite right for her, would Carlo, like her family, only see her as unable to settle down?
“I got to thinking you might have had man trouble.”
Lucy blinked. Man trouble? The only man trouble she’d had recently was the trouble she had forgetting about Carlo and the feelings for him she couldn’t seem to stamp out. “It’s not—”
“I admit that until just a couple of hours ago I was still picturing you at about fourteen years old in my mind. Banged-up knees, a mouthful of braces and all those
