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She knelt to gather her papers. “Not long enough, Sam,” she said, but scrambling around on the floor sort of ruined her haughty tone.
He squatted to help, bringing him that much closer to her. He breathed in her scent and drank in the sight of her. Despite the passage of time and all the water under their respective bridges, he felt the impact of her in his gut, the same as he had the first time he’d met her. Back then, she’d worn her brown hair long and pulled up in a clip. Now she sported a sleek chin-length bob with red highlights. “I like your hair, it suits you.”
“That’s a load off my mind,” she said without looking at him. She leaned forward to pick up the last piece of paper but he beat her to it. He held it out. Her eyes met his, and the rest of the world faded to nothingness. Once again, he was lost in those hazel eyes, and despite her sarcasm he recognized the flare of desire in their depths.
“Obviously, you’ve met before,” the other woman in the cubicle said, jerking him back to the rest of the world. Sam had forgotten she was there.
He stood and slipped his hand beneath Giselle’s elbow to help her up. She straightened, shrugging off his touch. His gut knotted from just that brief contact with her.
He turned to the other woman and extended his hand. “Sam McKendrick, Giselle’s new love slave.”
The woman snickered. Giselle glared.
She shook his hand. “Monica Dixon, department secretary extraordinaire.”
Monica Dixon radiated curiosity.
“Sam was my sister Helene’s first husband,” Giselle said.
Clean, simple, straightforward. She deliberately ignored his love slave reference.
“Your ex-brother-in-law? No kidding. Small world.” Monica looked from him to Giselle and shrugged. “At least it’s not your ex-husband. That would be uncomfortable.”
“The ninth ring of hell,” Giselle said.
Hot damn! She wasn’t pining for Barry post-divorce. The guy had never been right for her. Standing by and watching Giselle marry a man who was obviously all wrong for her, who didn’t appreciate her, was one of the hardest things Sam had ever done. But he’d been married to Helene and there’d been no other option, no other choice. Now was a whole new ball game. Sam was single and, according to Darren, as of mid-September, so was Giselle. “I heard you and Barry had split.”
Monica backed out of the cubicle opening. “I’ll just leave the two of you to play catch-up and sort things out. I’m going to lunch.”
Giselle slanted her an amused glance. “I thought you were skipping lunch today.”
The woman offered a conspiratorial smile. “Not now. See ya.”
Obviously an inside joke.
Giselle turned to face him, her hair framing her face. Her earlier amusement disappeared, leaving her hazel eyes curiously flat.
“I don’t want to work with you,” she said, crossing her arms over her rounded breasts, which were impossible to ignore in a curve-hugging T-shirt beneath her well-cut pantsuit jacket. He’d never forgotten that red bra beneath her white T-shirt when he first met her. Forget, hell. He thought of it often. Was she wearing a red bra beneath her T-shirt now?
“Really? And I thought son of a bitch was an exclamation of delight.” He propped himself against the other end of her desk. “Why wouldn’t you want to work with me? I’m very good at what I do.”
“Maybe I object on moral grounds.”
“We’re mature adults. I’m sure we can both make it through four days and remain civil and professional.”
Any further objections on her part would paint her as being immature and unprofessional. He’d learned at an early age that you couldn’t wait for life to hand you things. If you wanted something, you worked your ass off and made it happen. He’d worked hard at school and a career that took him far from the housing projects he’d grown up in. But it was true enough that you could take the man out of the projects but you could never take the projects out of the man. Sam would never be content to sit back and take what life gave him. He wanted Giselle. He would’ve never, ever approached her as long as either of them were married, but now he wanted to see if there might be something there, if what he’d felt the first time he saw her, if what he sensed from her was real.
She narrowed her eyes, fully realizing he’d just backed her into a corner and thrown down the gauntlet. Meeting his challenge head-on, she set her chin at a determined angle. “Fine. I’ll e-mail you the briefing notes this afternoon. I’ve got a few updates.” Her lips tightened, precisely the same way Helene’s did when she was pissed. “Since we’re discussing professionalism, we’re sharing a two-bedroom cottage. I’d prefer you not entertain while we’re there.”
“I think I can manage. It’s not as if I keep a harem.”
“You did while you were married.” She lobbed the accusation at him.
He took the hit. He’d wondered how long it would take her to bring it up. Less than fifteen minutes. One drunk night. One woman. One big-ass mistake. Getting drunk had not been the best response to finding a guy in his bed with his wife.
Had Helene told her family she’d been sleeping with not just any guy but Sam’s best friend for months before he found them in bed together? Probably not. And it didn’t really matter because it didn’t exonerate him. Sleeping with a stranger because he was angry and hurt had been wrong. And playing the blame game accomplished nothing.
“Hardly a harem. But to put your mind at ease, I’m not going there to look for another woman. I will, of course, expect the same courtesy from you.”
For a moment she looked startled, as if she hadn’t expected that. “Not a problem. You know Helene’s remarried.” She relayed the news, ever the big sister. It had shades of the day she’d pointed out Helene’s homecoming accomplishments.
“Of course I know.” He laughed. “Danny was still mid-proposal when she phoned to tell me.”
Giselle didn’t appreciate his dry sense of humor. “She’s very happy now.”
“That’s a relief.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, again—she had the eye-narrowing down to a fine art. She’d mistaken his comment for sarcasm. Although he wasn’t happy that Helene had slept around on him with his best friend, and God knows he still missed Danny, Sam had known their marriage was over before then. After his initial bout of anger, he’d realized he was actually relieved that their mistake of a marriage was over.
Giselle ignored his comment and shoved her laptop into a padded carrier. “I need your e-mail to forward the project outline.”
He plucked a business card from his jacket pocket and handed it to her. “I’m looking forward to Sedona.”
She took the card, not touching him in the exchange, and dropped it in her laptop satchel. “So am I.” She offered him a smile he thought was meant to be professional but came across as slightly grim. “I’ll send the file later.”
She slung her handbag over her shoulder and he stepped out of her cubicle ahead of her, into the hallway. “Thanks. I’ll see you Sunday.”
He turned on his heel and made his way down the hall toward the elevators. What he wanted to do was the same thing he’d wanted to do since the first time he met her. He wanted to pull her into his arms, bury his hands in her hair, kiss her senseless and then make love to her until she couldn’t remember her own name.
That, however, would have to wait another few days. But it would happen. He’d come for her and he was ready to lay siege.
GISELLE LOCKED the doors of her VW Bug and collapsed against the upholstered seat, determined to pull herself together. The parking garage’s top deck was mercifully deserted on the Friday before Christmas. Lots of people must have left work early to shop, or they were taking the following week off and had gotten a head start, she absently speculated.
She welcomed the car’s near-freezing temperature. She felt hot and confused and generally a mess. Gray clouds covered the sky like a woolen winter blanket. They seemed somewhat appropriate.
She fished her cell phone out of her satchel, scrolled through the stored names and hit the speed dial.
“Do you know why I’m calling?” Giselle asked without preamble, speaking into her hands-free set even though she was still sitting in her parked car. She didn’t dare drive during this conversation. She’d probably crash. Not that she had anywhere to go. She’d just wanted to get rid of Sam before she did something stupid like step between his splayed legs, wrap her arms around his neck and give in to the plaguing temptation to discover what his mouth felt like against hers, how he tasted and just how good it might feel to have all of his parts close to all of her parts that tingled and throbbed for his touch.
That, however, might send a mixed signal following her declaration that she didn’t want to work with him or even talk to him. Although what she had in mind wasn’t technically working or even talking. Moaning and heavy breathing did not conversation make.
Not to mention that if it did happen, news would spread through the entire office in a heartbeat. And last, but definitely not least, she would never be able to face her family afterward and live with herself.
All in all, getting him out of her office had been the better plan.
“You’re calling to thank me for being a good friend?” Darren said.
Giselle snapped.
“What were you thinking? What did you tell him? Oh, and remind me to never split a pitcher of margaritas with you again. Ever. And you are a major chicken-shit that you didn’t tell me this to my face.” She finally ran out of steam and ended her rant.
“Relax. I was subtle.”
Yeah. Darren was to subtle what she was to beauty-queen beautiful. Giselle groaned. “There’s nothing subtle about you.”
“I called him under the guise of talking about a couple of his pieces in a small gallery, you know, one photographer to another. I hadn’t even gotten around to working you into the conversation when he brought you up.”
“He brought me up?” she echoed rather stupidly, her pulse moving into overdrive. She idly smoothed her hand over the gearshift’s rounded knob.
“Apparently he recognized my name and knew I worked with you. Said he reads the magazine. He asked about you. I mentioned the divorce, yada, yada, yada, he asked for your number.”
A raindrop splattered against her windshield. Then another and another.
“He called and left a message a couple of weeks ago,” she told him.
“Let me guess, you didn’t call him back.” Giselle could practically see his eyes roll.
It began to rain in earnest. “What was the point? My intention is to get over him, not talk to him.” “Did you ever think, Girl Genius, that talking to him, going on assignment with him is just the way to do that?”
“Actually, no. It strikes me as dangerously stupid.” Case in point: she’d told Sam she didn’t want to work with him. That was the sensible, cautious side of her. However, there was a part of her deep down inside that wanted to give in to the opportunity to spend four torturous days with him. In the last half hour, she’d felt more alive, more tuned in to everything, as if she’d finally fully awakened since…well, the last time she was around Sam McKendrick. What she felt around Sam was what she’d wanted to feel when she’d married Barry—an electric sizzle, an almost frantic compulsion to touch and be touched, a restless ache deep inside that seemed an instinctive response to him.
She slammed the lid shut on that Pandora’s box. Not only had Sam been her sister’s husband, he’d cheated on Helene. Strictly off limits. Verboten.
Frustration welled inside her, a countermeasure to her incendiary sexual response to Mr. Wrong. “Riddle me this. How am I supposed to get over him when he’s right frickin’ there?”
“Selle, honey, haven’t you ever been shopping, seen a wickedly expensive dress and known that even if you were willing to eat beans for the next two months, you still couldn’t have that dress?”
“Um…no. I don’t really wear dresses,” she said, “so I’ve never been in that situation.” He deserved a dose of obtuse.
Darren offered a long-suffering sigh. “For hypothetical situations, we’re going to pretend you have. What should you do?”
He loved constructing these little illustrative vignettes. What the hell, she’d play along. He usually made a point…sooner or later. “Walk away and look for a knockoff I can afford in another store.”
“That’s your first mistake.” Darren pounced on her. “And that’s why you wound up with a man who didn’t suit you. You settled.”
“Sometimes you’re amazingly insightful.”
“I know.” She sensed his grin on the other end. “What you need to do is march into that store and try on the dress. You always try it on and then when it doesn’t look as good as it should on your bodacious self for that kind of money, you can walk away from it feeling good about not buying it.”
The idea of “trying on” Sam instantly gave her a mental image of the two of them engaged in hot, sweaty sex, which actually was a mental image that was never very far away. “I’m not trying him on.” “I didn’t mean literally…although that could work. I meant that if you spend a couple of days with him, you might find out you don’t really like him.” She heard Gerald’s voice in the background. “Hold on a sec,” Darren said to her, and then he was talking to Gerald. “Yeah, I’m almost through. I’m talking Giselle off a ledge.”
She snorted in his ear. “Humph. Talking yourself out of hot water is more like it.” He laughed, and she continued, “And what if you try on the dress and it looks even better than you thought and you still can’t have it?”
“You’re screwed.” He didn’t have to sound so cheery about it. “But at least you can admire the way you look in it for a few minutes. Or sell your soul to the devil and buy it anyway.”
“That’s so helpful…and reassuring.”
“I’m always here for you, hon. Listen, gotta run. Give me a call when you get back and you can thank me then.”
“Or not. I’d suggest you spend the next few days getting your affairs in order,” she suggested darkly.
Another laugh, followed by, “Ta,” and Darren was gone.
Giselle disconnected the call on her end. She tucked the phone back into her case and watched the rain form rivulets on her windshield. She still didn’t know how Sam had wound up on this assignment. And it didn’t really matter, did it?
Come hell or high water, she was getting over Sam on this trip. The alternative wasn’t an option.
3
GISELLE SHIFTED in her aisle seat on Sunday morning as the non-stop Atlanta-to-Phoenix flight continued to board.
Sam had arrived. She sensed him, felt him, as if she was tuned in to him on a level she’d never experienced with anyone else. She looked up from her magazine and her breath caught in her throat as her eyes met his. He just looked so…well, damn glad to see her. The kind of look lovers would share on a crowded plane.
And then he was there, beside her.
“Worried I wouldn’t make it?” Sam said by way of greeting. His cocky grin, however, carried an edge of uncertainty.
“One can always hope.” Instead of coming out crisp and biting as she’d intended, she sounded breathless and teasing, undone by that combination of smile and faint hesitation, as if it actually mattered to him whether she was glad to see him or not. And once again she was disgusted with herself that even though he was a cheating bastard, his blue eyes still set her heart tripping.
Giselle had arrived at the airport early enough to grab a coffee and bagel and skim the morning newspaper before she was called to board the flight from Atlanta to Phoenix. Arriving early hadn’t been a problem since she’d tossed and turned all night—yet another sleepless night compliments of Sam McKendrick.
She really hadn’t been sure Sam would show at all. But there he stood, larger than life.
Stepping closer to her aisle seat, he hoisted his equipment bag into the overhead bin, which was all good and fine except it put his other equipment right at eye level.
Look away, look away, look away, she told herself, but somewhere along the route to her brain her libido intercepted the message and she continued to stare at his crotch, the bulge between his thighs thrown into relief by his upraised arms. Finally, he settled his carryon and she hastily averted her eyes, which did nothing to abate the heat radiating from her core. One lousy Sam’s-crotch-at-her-eye-level encounter and it was as if a furnace switch had been flipped on inside her.
“Want to move over?”
He wished. “No. I don’t.” She smiled and stood, stepping out into the aisle. She always requested the aisle seat. A blonde who’d given Giselle a dismissing look earlier sat next to the window. Giselle hated being squashed into the center seat. She offered Sam a bright smile. “I believe you’re in the middle.”
Karma was a bitch. Going to Sedona, doing this story, this was her big chance to get over this…ridiculous…making-her-crazy…thing she had for Sam. This was supposed to be her cure, her fix. And then he’d ruined it by showing up. Of all the assignments to get—him…now. Seemed sort of fitting he had to scrunch his sixfoot plus, broad-shouldered, long, muscular-legged, crotch-bulging—self into the center seat. Served him right for plaguing her.
She extended her two hands, palms up, the way they did on game shows when they were showcasing a prize. “Enjoy.” She offered an evil smirk.
His blue eyes twinkled and she wanted to kick herself. She was aiming for hateful, at least sarcastic, and he seemed to think she was flirting with him. She wasn’t flirting. Nope. Because that would be like ducking under a line of yellow tape with Warning Do Not Cross in big bold black letters.
“Okay, then.” He slid in, folding himself into the tight spot.
Giselle sat back down and her space shrank proportionately to accommodate Sam next to her. Short of leaning out into the aisle, she couldn’t get away from his broad shoulder against hers. Her stomach somersaulted, and she felt even more flushed than when she’d been face to crotch two minutes ago. He dug around and clicked his seat belt into place, his muscles bunching against her arm as he completed the simple task.
And he smelled…well, good, dammit. Not that she wanted to be stuck next to him for the next four hours if he had body odor or halitosis, but she didn’t need this, either. His scent was fresh and clean, like that of a man just out of the shower with the faint blend of soap, deodorant and a hint of mint toothpaste. Enticing. Appealing. Arousing.
No doubt about it, karma was definitely a bitch. And she was paying for having developed a crush on her sister’s husband the first time she laid eyes on him and for wanting him from then to now and all the stinking time in between and for still feeling this horrible tingly, I’m-so-alive feeling when she was around him, even though she knew he was a cheat and she was a sick puppy to still feel that way. Yes, she was being punished.
He turned his head to face her. They were close enough she could see her reflection in his eyes. It was like being enveloped in a blanket of Sam, of forbidden want. Forget it. She wasn’t being punished. She was being tortured.
“I read through your notes and the article outline last night,” he said. “I wanted to bounce a couple of ideas off you.”
