wanted. “I’m fine. Nothing to worry about.”
“Men can be a real pain.”
“Men?”
“I couldn’t help but notice Ethan Williams joined your meeting. I assume he’s the reason you’re out of sorts.”
Carla Juarez’s pitying look stoked Kelly’s temper back to life. This ridiculous crush had gone on long enough.
With impeccable timing, Ethan rounded the corner. Of course, he would choose now to make his appearance.
And walk toward her.
There’d been a day when she’d waited for him to lounge on the corner of her desk. She’d lived for the occasional invitation to join him for a sandwich in the cafeteria where they would discuss his latest overseas jaunt. Not today.
Not anymore.
Ethan cruised to a stop beside her. The spicy mix of aftershave and masculine sweat wafted her way. Her heart pitched. Damn.
“Kelly, I guess we should get together and review before meeting with Director Hatch later.” He sat on the corner of her desk like countless times before.
“Whatever you say.” She scraped stray paper clips into her hand and dumped them into the magnetic holder as if cleaning her desk might somehow restore her chaotic emotions to order. “You’re the hotshot agent. I’m just a desk jockey.”
Confusion flashed in those sapphire eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
The docu-binder suddenly looked like a not-so-shabby weapon after all if she used it to clock him upside his thick head. She spun her chair to meet him face on—and came a little too close to his knees for her comfort level. “Could you have been any more obvious in there?”
“What do you mean?”
“Quit being dense.” She inched her chair back. “You know exactly what I mean.”
His face blanked. “Help me out here.”
She forged ahead. “Can you imagine how embarrassing it was for me?”
Still he didn’t move or speak. No emotion showed at all, darn his strong, stubborn chin. He was going to make her spell it out.
“That you don’t want to work with me.”
He scooped up her Eiffel Tower paperweight, studying it as if the snowglobe held answers. “You’re a top-notch informations agent, but you’re still operational support. You’re a rookie in field craft. If you can’t pull your own load, it puts me in danger.”
That gave her pause. The story of the mythological Aries teased through her mind, how the ram was sacrificed after his mission to save the Greek twins. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if Ethan died or ended up with a bullet in his back because of her. Old insecurities marched over her.
Careful, Kelly. You know how easily you break things.
Watch your step, Kelly. Don’t trample Mama’s flowers.
After a litany of warnings, the dance had left her feet altogether until she found her sedentary refuge in books, the one place she never stumbled.
Cubicle walls threatened to close in on her with a familiar loneliness. Something she refused to let happen again. She wasn’t thirteen anymore, and no one would ever steal the dance from her steps again.
Kelly snatched the paperweight from Ethan and slammed it on her desk. Did he even remember he’d bought it for her? Was he laughing inside over her keeping it?
She launched to her feet. “Director Hatch wouldn’t have put me on the assignment if he didn’t have faith in my abilities.”
The cubicle closed in on them both now in a totally different way. She tried to inch away from the insistent heat of him radiating toward her belly.
Kelly backed farther until she bumped the wall. A picture on the other side rattled, then thumped. Kelly winced at her clumsiness. She would apologize to Carla later.
Ethan rose from the desk, brows pinched and his eyes filled with concern or sympathy. She didn’t know which but couldn’t bear either.
She’d had enough of that from Carla and everyone else in the office. No more hiding behind her hair and her fears. Kelly flipped the too-convenient camouflage of her brown mane over one shoulder and met him nose-to-nose.
Well, nose-to-neck actually, given their height difference. “Can’t you at least be honest with me?”
“About what?”
Damn him, always the agent on the job answering a question with a question. She would give him some answers guaranteed to knock him on his fine butt. “About why you don’t want to work with me.”
His jaw flexed with his gritted teeth for a few telling seconds too long.
Fine. She wanted it out there and acknowledged so they could sweep it away. “It’s because of that ridiculous moment before you left for Gastonia.”
His head angled toward her, his voice lowering. “Kelly, there’s no need to—”
“My work is the most important thing in my life.” This assignment offered hope for finding her voice. She refused to give ground, even though the scent and heat of him swirled through her until she could have sworn she’d pirouetted herself dizzy. “There’s no great risk in saying you feel the same about your position here. That being the case, there certainly is a need to discuss anything that interferes with job performance.”
He glanced down the length of twenty cubicles, then grabbed her elbow. “Okay, you want to talk, we’ll talk. But not here.”
She jerked free. “Why not here?”
“Geez, Kelly.” The force of his whisper caressed over her. “Do you really want to unroll this for everyone to overhear? Even if they’re polite enough to slap on their dicta-phones, every word spoken in this building is taped.”
“So what?” She rubbed her tingling elbow.
“Kel, I’m just thinking of your feelings here.” He reached toward her hair, then stopped midair.
That ripped it.
There was only so much pity a woman could be expected to take in one day, even a woman well-versed in submerging her feelings. First Ethan in Hatch’s office. Then Carla. Even Cupid in his fuzzy felt heart, mocking her from behind his Post-it Note mask.
She hated the way her body reacted to Ethan almost as much as she hated the new awkwardness between them. She wanted this dead-end infatuation gone so she could move on with her life and her dreams.
Kelly cursed Cupid yet again for threatening to ruin what should be an incredible day. Nothing, especially not Ethan Williams, would stand in her way. She wasn’t the studious mouse any longer, afraid to leave her room for fear of causing ripples in her mother’s perfect world. She wasn’t the shy student afraid to report a pervert professor to the dean.
