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“Does she need a new pack?”
“I remembered you’d said you were going to the outlet mall. Could you look for a purple backpack? I checked Deal-Mart but they didn’t have purple, and I don’t have the time to run around town looking for one.”
“Sure, I can look around,” Carly said.
“Would you do that for me? There’s no rush. She can do with her old one for a while, but I’ve got finals—”
“Mom, it’s no problem. I’ll find Jodi a purple backpack.”
“You’re my saving grace, sweetheart. Listen, I’ve got to get dinner going before her practice, but we’ll see you for Jodi’s game Friday, right?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Love you, hon,” her mother said before the phone went dead.
Carly pressed the off button, then placed the phone on its cradle and sighed. A purple backpack at the end of the school season. No problem.
Moving back to the entryway to fetch her dinner, she now wished she’d skipped the burrito and made something at home. She could use her seven dollars back. Not that she didn’t make a good living at Hall Technologies. It was just that she had steep goals for her finances.
Carly insisted ten percent of her income went into a retirement fund. Add to that the two-bedroom bungalow she’d purchased last year, payments on her student loans, an unexpected transmission overhaul on her 2001 Grand Prix, and it was no wonder at the end of each pay period she was down to her last dollar. It didn’t help that her mother and sister were barely scraping by thanks to a father who considered child support optional.
It was a constant struggle for Carly, trying to help her family on one hand yet still protect herself from ending up like her mother—unskilled, unsupported and still in love with a man who’d never learned to care for anyone but himself.
Not as hungry as she’d been a moment ago, she picked up the paper sack and carried it into her pale pink kitchen. If things kept going the way they were, she’d have to live with the previous owner’s decor longer than she’d hoped—a fact that could likely cause her to go insane.
Though the house had come with a good-size yard and solid bones, cosmetically it was like living inside a giant bottle of Pepto Bismol. To say the former owners liked pink was an understatement. Every room had been painted, floored and tiled in some various shade of fuchsia, and though Carly had made progress in some rooms, ripping up carpet and priming walls, the kitchen and lone bathroom still thrived in their pristine bubblegum state. Only one corner of her eat-in kitchen had seen the threat of demolition, and that was where Bev had tried to tear off a loose corner of wallpaper, only to discover that beyond that four-inch square, the cheery pink teapots with the pale violet flowers were virtually cemented to the drywall, destined to rival the ancient pyramids in their time-tested strength.
But that was okay. Carly owned the home, and that was all that mattered. She’d qualified for the mortgage with her salary alone and, in the process, bought a slice of land in an old but desirable Marin County neighborhood. It was the security she’d never had growing up, and once she doubled the value with her pink-extinguishing transformation, it would be the bank account she’d never had, as well.
She unrolled the burrito from the foil paper and plopped it on a plate. The rustling in the kitchen was like a dinner bell for her cat, Mr. Doodles, who didn’t waste time jumping up on the counter to see what she’d prepared.
Carly pushed the cat to the floor and spat, “Bad kitty!” but her efforts to train the cat had long become futile. Mr. Doodles—the name given the gray tabby by her little sister Jodi—was a horribly ill-behaved cat who roamed the house as if he owned it and did as he pleased. Carly had no idea how to correct his behavior, none of the advice she’d been given making any lasting progress. So she’d begun to accept the fact that Mr. Doodles wouldn’t change and she’d have to love him despite his faults.
Moving to the fridge to fetch him his own dinner, her phone rang again, and Carly assumed her mother had forgotten to mention something else.
“Hello?” she asked, crinkling the foil in one hand and dropping it in the wastebasket.
“I’m in.”
She paused for a moment, not immediately recognizing the voice.
“Brian?”
“I amaze even myself sometimes.”
Yes! she thought. She hadn’t wanted to get her hopes up even though Brian had assured her he could get to the Singles Inc. database where they’d input their answers. With his frat-boy immaturity, she sometimes suspected Brian overstated his abilities.
“You’ve got Matt’s answers to the survey?”
“I’ve got everyone’s answers to the survey. They’ve used a special code to isolate ours from the main population.”
Her excitement was tempered by a flush of heat to her cheeks. It hadn’t occurred to her that by asking Brian to get Matt’s survey answers he’d end up privy to all of them—including hers.
Oh, to heck with it. If Brian wanted a thrill over her answers, he could have it. Getting on this project was worth whatever he might end up thinking about her and her sexual outlook.
“There’s just one problem.”
“Problem?”
“Do you have Matt’s code name?”
“Code name?”
“Remember the code names Hall gave us to protect our privacy? That’s the only identifying information attached to each person’s survey. I couldn’t decipher individual workstation IDs—which is actually impressive. Singles Inc. has some pretty decent security considering they designed this in-house. I don’t usually see homegrown applications this good.”
“So what does that mean?”
“It means unless you know what code name Matt was given, we can only guess which one is his.”
Carly’s mind raced in search of a solution. There had to be a way to figure out which survey was Matt’s.
“How many people have filled out the survey so far?”
“Sixteen, which is two short of the people we have on staff. I’m guessing that’s Holly and Paul.”
The number didn’t surprise her. She’d asked around this afternoon, and though the survey had been optional, everyone had decided to fill it out, curious to be included in the results. Even though a few weren’t terribly interested in the project, everyone wanted to know who they most closely matched at Hall Technologies, if just for the fun of it.
“Now, we could eliminate some through logic,” Brian added. “I know mine, you know yours, and I can obviously separate the men and women based on the code names.” Since Carly was given the code name Gidget, she guessed Brian was right. “But that’s still leaving you with almost ten men. You’ll have to find a way to get his name without raising suspicion.”
She stared at her pink linoleum floor, disappointed but not defeated. Though she had no idea how, sometime between now and Thursday she’d get Matt’s code name. Already several ideas spun through her brain—all of them bad, but ideas nonetheless. She’d simply have to give it more thought, maybe consult with a trusted friend or two, but some way she’d figure it out. This was her career, her financial stability and her future at stake, all three of those things definitely worth it.
Two days to get one silly little code? No problem.
MATT LOOKED UP from his computer screen to see a pair of beautiful aqua-blue eyes staring back at him over the cubicle wall.
The sight gave him a start. Carly Abrams had never paid him a visit, nor had those dark coral lips ever been curved in a smile while pointed in his direction. Which meant he’d either fallen asleep at his desk and was dreaming or something strange was up.
She circled around and stepped into his cube, giving him a close-up view of his very favorite shirt—a low-slung wraparound that hugged her curves and accentuated her breasts in a way that should be outlawed in the workplace. The whole thing was held together by a simple bow at the waist, a bow that taunted him with the knowledge that just one tug could expose the delightful presents inside.
He dragged his eyes away and looked up at her smile. “Carly,” he said, the word raspy from a mouth that had just gone dry. He cleared his throat and straightened in his chair. “What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering if you were through with my book. I need to take a look at it.”
“I put it back on your shelf yesterday.”
Her brows arched and those soft lips formed an O, the way they did in the fantasy he hadn’t been able to shake since he’d seen those two blasted survey answers yesterday. Except, in his dream it was the look she had after he drizzled caramel syrup on her breasts and topped his Carly sundae with a dollop of whipped cream.
“Stupid me, I didn’t even look.” She shrugged her shoulders and chuckled nervously. “I get distracted and lose half my brain.”
He knew the feeling. It was the same thing he’d been dealing with since it had sunk in that his available and most desirable coworker had a secret fetish for kinky sex. It had culminated this morning around two o’clock, when he’d been startled out of a dead sleep by a hard-on and the echoing sound of Carly Abrams’s orgasmic screams.
And he’d been walking bull-legged ever since.
It was difficult enough trying to focus on the job this morning; that she’d picked today of all days to make her maiden voyage to his side of the floor had to be some sort of cosmic joke.
She leaned against his desktop and casually crossed her long, slender legs. Her silky flowered skirt reminded him of a cottage garden, and he tried hard to restore the longtime image he’d had of her. The safe image. The one that allowed him to forget the sexy body and concentrate on getting ahead at the firm. Mary Quite Contrary, the sunny, friendly girl-next-door who always referred to Brayton as Mr. Hall, brought in plates of homemade zucchini bread and gave people rides to the mechanics when their cars were in the shop.
“Well, um, since I’m here…” she said. “About yesterday—I was out of line and I wanted to apologize.”
He blinked. “Yesterday?”
“You know, about the survey, you having to compete to get the Singles Inc. job.” She fidgeted with the edge of his desk, trailing a finger along the grain of the fake oak veneer. “You caught me at a bad time. I was cranky and it was rude of me to take it out on you. So I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
Matt tried hard to rewind the whole incident. Yes, she’d popped off in a way that had had him questioning her stability, but he knew he’d been the one to start it by teasing her about her survey answers. If anyone should apologize, it should be him.
“I hadn’t exactly started the conversation off on the right foot,” he admitted.
“But that was no excuse for attacking you like that, so…” She let go of the desk and held out a hand. “Truce?”
He stared at those slim fingers, those perfectly polished nails, and found it ironic that she’d come here seeking exactly what he’d hoped to accomplish yesterday. His attempt at broaching a friendship had failed, but if things went his way, she’d be his employee very soon, and he should thank the stars for this second chance.
Taking her soft hand in his, he gave it a welcome shake, trying hard to ignore his body’s reaction to the sizzling warmth of her touch. “Forgive me and I’ll forgive you.”
“It’s a deal.”
She slid her palm off his and smiled brightly. “So did you choose to fill out the survey?”
Straightening in his seat, he cleared his throat and said, “Yeah. I figured, why not?”
“So that makes everyone, then. I’m surprised. Some people don’t like working on the bigger projects, but I guess it was the intrigue of the survey that had them going along.”
“Hall did say something about everyone getting some sort of results.”
“I heard that, too.” She tucked a strand of brown hair behind her ear and nodded while she spoke. “I don’t know what, though.”
“Me, either,” he replied.
Then an awkward silence fell between them. She glanced around his cube, trying to appear casual but not pulling it off, and the longer she stood there tapping a fingernail on his desktop, the more Matt began to wonder what she was really doing there.
He opened his mouth to inquire, but she cut him off.
“It sounds like Mr. Hall has an interest in movies.”
He pursed his brow. “I didn’t know that.”
“Well, those code names we all got for the survey seem to be characters from films. At least that’s what we’re guessing.” Grinning, she added, “Mine was Gidget.”
Matt couldn’t hold back his burst of laughter, though it occurred to him too late it might destroy their newfound truce—and the quirky look in her eyes said it might have.
“I’m sorry,” he quickly shot out. “It’s just so…perfect.”
She shrugged good-naturedly, making Matt feel like a cad.
“I can’t argue with that. I suppose some people might see me as…”
“Bubbly?” he offered.
A faint blush colored her cheeks, and he wished like hell he could learn to keep his mouth closed. For some reason, whenever she was near, he ended up either tongue-tied or blurting the wrong thing. It was the main reason he’d gone into Frank’s office and asked to handle that first project on his own. He’d wanted to make a good impression at the new firm and he’d quickly discovered that wasn’t going to happen in proximity to Carly, where his cock forever vied for attention and his brain wouldn’t shift into gear.
Apparently, two years later, nothing had changed.
“Anyway,” she said, “we’ve been comparing code names around the office. Do you know what Neil got?”
Matt shook his head.
“Patton!” She laughed more heartily than the situation warranted. “Is that a riot?”
“Yes, that’s a good one.”
“And who else?” she pondered, holding her chin and staring wistfully off into space. “Oh, Bev got Scarlett, and Brian got Hal. We’re guessing Hal’s the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Matt nodded and smiled, trying to will himself to stay relaxed, keep his mouth shut and not inadvertently embarrass her again. If she agreed to work for him, he’d have to get past this magnetic field between them that continually garbled his thoughts and had him chewing shoe leather. But it wasn’t easy when those breasts jiggled as she laughed or that flowery scent swarmed his nose, or those Caribbean eyes sparkled with such sweetness he wanted to scoop her up and take a bite or—oh, hell. Maybe they were better off hating each other.
Her smile slowly faded and she returned to the awkward fidgeting that had left him suspect before. Okay, so apology for yesterday accepted and a truce agreed. What was with the sudden small talk and this apparent desire to gab after two years of total avoidance?
“So what Hollywood feature did Mr. Hall put you in?”
He shook off his thoughts. “Pardon?”
“Your code name. Who did he give you?” Then she quickly held up a hand. “Not that you have to answer that. I realize they’re confidential. We were just having fun with it, you know, seeing what Mr. Hall had assigned to each of us.” Giggling, she added, “Heck, for all I know, his wife might have made them up. Or maybe he picked them off a list from Singles Inc.” She blushed again and began to back toward the entrance to his cubicle. “Mr. Hall might not have picked them out at all. I don’t think anyone asked. Or it could have been random or—”
“Rocky.”
She stopped her rambling and stared. “Huh?”
“Rocky. He gave me Rocky.”
Her mouth hung ajar for a moment before a twinkle lit in her eyes. It was a gleam too bright for simple amusement and it struck him as odd. Something was definitely hanging under the surface here, but what? She’d wanted his code name? It wouldn’t get her anything without the password. So why the sudden interest in bringing him in on the office chatter?
“I like it,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Rocky. I’d be flattered if I were you.”
Matt hadn’t given it any thought, though now that he did, he wasn’t sure he agreed. “Rocky wasn’t the brightest of bulbs.”
She raised a sarcastic brow. “Neither was Gidget. But at least Rocky was a hero. He represented strength and determination.”
