She gave an impatient toss of her lively curls and glared at him. ‘Don’t play dumb, Mr Black. You know very well who I’m talking about. You have a standing order for white roses and they come every Friday and they’re always for a woman, aren’t they?’
‘Well…yes,’ he admitted, admiring her spirit. ‘You’re absolutely right. The roses are most definitely for a woman.’
Sally blinked hard and looked away. ‘Does she know you’re having dancing lessons with me?’
‘No. She has no idea.’
‘Are you planning to inform her that you’ve invited me to dinner?’
‘I must admit I haven’t given it any thought, but I don’t see why I couldn’t tell her.’
In the face of his calm responses, Sally’s self-righteous certainty lost a little of its starch. She cast an anxious glance about the meeting room, then lifted her shoulders in an annoyed shrug. ‘We’d better get this place tidied up.’
‘There’s no need. The cleaners will appreciate having a cleared floor to work with and they’ll rearrange the furniture in the morning.’
‘Fine.’ Mouth tightly pursed, Sally unplugged Logan’s player and wound the cord rapidly and neatly.
‘Thank you,’ he said as she handed it to him. ‘Now, about dinner.’
To his dismay, Sally closed her eyes as if the very idea of dinner with him was upsetting.
Unwilling to be put off, he said quickly, ‘You’re right. I should clear this with the white roses woman, as you call her.’
Her blue eyes flew open.
‘Why don’t you come with me to meet her, Sally?’
Her jaw sagged and Logan watched the play of emotions on her expressive face as her anger morphed into doubt and confusion.
He pressed his advantage. ‘We can kill two birds with one stone. You can make sure that our dinner is not interpreted as a date. And she’ll enjoy meeting you very much.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘I’m sure of it.’
Sally let this sink in. After a bit, she said, ‘I would certainly be much happier if everything was out in the open. Where I come from, I’m used to people being up front and honest and I’d hate to go behind another woman’s back.’
‘That’s very commendable,’ Logan agreed with necessary gravity. ‘Why don’t you come with me tomorrow when I deliver the roses? We’ll clear the air and then we can have dinner.’
It seemed an age that she stood there, considering this. He held his breath, bracing himself for her refusal, but then she shrugged. ‘That seems reasonable.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
SALLY tried to carry on at work as if nothing in her life had changed, but it was a tall order considering that everything had changed while she’d been dancing with Logan Black.
To start with she’d discovered she’d fallen helplessly in love with him, which was a whopping big problem on its own. But then he’d made everything worse by moving in close to her. She’d felt his body heat and every inch of her skin had tightened…
Tingled…
Yearned…
It could have been a delicious moment, might have become a delicious moment, if her mind hadn’t flashed to that other time. That other dancing partner.
Instead of bliss, panic had flared without warning.
The only good thing was that she hadn’t dissolved into a quivering, gibbering mess. She’d been pleased, actually, that she’d managed to recover fairly quickly. But then Logan had complicated everything again by asking her out to dinner.
He’d made it sound so simple and straightforward—nothing more than payment for the lessons. But any way Sally looked at dinner with Logan Black it was complex, thorny, problematical…
To start with, every girl knew that dating the boss was a lightning-rod for trouble. If the rest of the staff found out, they would immediately conclude she was hungry for a fast-tracked promotion. And if office gossip wasn’t something huge to fret about, there was the whole business of the white roses.
Talk about confusing. Sally suspected that very few women—even women as sophisticated as Chloe had been—had the savoir faire to meet their boss’s current lover and then head off to dinner with him.
But Logan had assured her there’d be no problem and, in the end, his unruffled certainty had tipped the balance. It was why she’d said yes.
After all, he stood to lose more than she did if news of their dinner date became water-cooler gossip at Blackcorp. And it was his problem if their dinner upset his lover. If he could be calm about that, why shouldn’t she?
Nevertheless, whenever Sally thought about that evening, she discovered it was possible to look forward to a date and dread it at the same time.