She steeled herself for the night ahead, for another splendid location, another attentive comment or gesture from Brandon in another devastating suit. Another night of biting her lip instead of saying what needed to be said. That she was scared. That she couldn’t keep doing this, living a half-life. That this time together in Dubai had been so bittersweet because it was a pantomime of what they might really have had in another life, if both of them were whole. If her ex hadn’t cheated with his secretary, if Brandon’s father and stepmother had been caring and supportive instead of abandoning him emotionally. If they were either of them remotely skilled at being in a long-term situation.
Which they were not.
So she sat in the dim, sumptuous restaurant, lit softly blue by the aquariums at the center, and stared at it all with a sort of disconnected wonder. It was happening to her, but it was also an illusion. She was pretending to be someone who belonged here, the beloved wife of a man who moved in these circles and to whom dining in the aqua tinted ambiance as rare fishes swam by was nothing special at all. When in fact, it was she who was nothing special in this scenario. She was a stand-in for his eventual real wife, for some future woman who could fit into his world and teach him to believe that truly good things, astonishing things happened. She was too jaded, too brash for such a task.
He talked to her about the meeting he’d left, about the customs of the area and how he greeted his associates and took their leave so formally, how it was grand to relax with her here. Clearly, he wasn’t wearing control top pantyhose that made peeing, much less relaxation, damn near impossible. But she smiled and didn’t mention those because she was here on his dime and had sworn to be pleasant. They ate, and he took her to the top viewing deck. She peered out over the water, giddy from the height and felt her stomach lurch. Because wouldn’t this be a great place to kiss? If you were with someone who loved you, you could kiss him right on top of the world. Or if you were with someone who didn’t love you back, you could stand there dumbly, admiring the view and murmuring stupidly about what an engineering achievement the place was.
They rode the elevator down and at the hotel, he had to Skype with the home office so she went to bed early. Their flight was in the morning.
Chapter 12
At the office, Brandon found that his lissome new assistant was even more perilously perfect. Holly had the minifridge stocked with his favorite bottled water plus a few cans of the lemon seltzer he liked. She had a jar of walnuts on the corner of his desk waiting beside a flier for the half marathon that was coming up in a few weeks. He drank the water without comment and did his job. When he had to buzz her to give instructions at last, she appeared in the door both as perfect as he remembered and at the same time, startlingly beautiful. She was dressed professionally, her white blouse tucked into a pencil skirt, her blond hair pinned up, tiny gold hoops at her earlobes and a long string of pearls looped twice around her collar. Nothing at all out of the common way except the fact that she could have easily stepped from the pages of a magazine, airbrushed and flawless, except she required no PhotoShop to render her so.
“How was Dubai? Did you go up the Burj?” she asked.
“It was fine. Yes. My wife liked it,” he said pointedly, giving himself credit for the mention.
“I’ve never been but it looks amazing. Did you see the flier I left out? I wondered if you’d like to train together, on days when you take lunch?” she offered. She was almost shy in her manner and he recalled again that she’d lost her mother, like him. That she ran to escape, like him, but also to remember. It was too personal, too resonant a connection to ignore.
“I’ll be busy in the run-up to the race. You’ll want to find another running partner,” he said, not unkindly.
“No problem,” she said. He respected the fact that she didn’t begin with a wheedling, ‘I just thought since you liked running and all…’ Still, he didn’t want to spend extra time with her.
“You seem tense,” she observed. No shit, he thought.
“Just preoccupied,” he said dismissively and gave his instructions for the PowerPoint handouts.
Marj had seemed thrilled with their trip but at the same time, she was oddly quiet, not making jokes all the time. He wondered if something was off with her, but he back-burnered it and got to work. Every time Holly came into his office, he wanted to throw things at the door and shout for her to leave. This was not his usual reaction to being offered useful information or coffee. It was Holly herself, temptation on the hoof—or rather on understated French ballet flats. She had one tendril of gleaming pin-straight blond hair that had somehow escaped its proper place and trailed down along her cheekbone and jawline. That itself was perfection. He wanted to sweep it aside and—never see her again for even one second. He was disgusted with himself for being attracted to her and wanted to use half of his HR team for target practice because they’d sent her up to the thirty-ninth floor to work for him. After sending her to make some fairly useless copies, he phoned his head of HR and demanded Holly be reassigned.