She’d been right to hit the brakes and shake on the deal. She needed to be incredibly disciplined about sticking with her decision.
“So, then, the trick is just...how do I not have sex with him on my desk?”
“Did you have sex with him on your desk?” Elisa demanded.
“No,” said Haven. “Not exactly.”
Elisa crossed her arms and waited, but Haven held firm. Rehashing what had happened would only make it harder to hold onto her resolve.
Elisa thought for a moment. “Even though you pay me to, I don’t have all the answers. But it seems like you should start by canceling the date with Mr. Seems Like a Good Guy. It’s just going to make you bored and twitchy. Beg off that one, and we’ll go back to the database. You need an effective distraction.”
Haven sighed. “A distraction sounds good.”
But she knew it was going to take one hell of a distraction to get her mind off what Mark Webster had to offer. And even more self-control not to indulge it and make her life—and his—even more of a mess.
* * *
HAVEN GAVE MARK a narrow-eyed look that both pissed him off and turned him on. That took some skill.
“Where are your new clothes?” she asked.
They’d met in the shoe department of Nordstrom. He was wearing jeans that, admittedly, had seen better days, another gray T-shirt and a zip-up hoodie. No way he was giving up that hoodie—it was the only thing he’d felt normal in since Haven ran off with his jacket. Which reminded him...
“You have my bomber jacket.”
“It’s at my place,” she said.
“I want it back.”
“You don’t need it. At least, not until after the tour.”
“I don’t feel like myself without it.”
“Can I help you?”
That was the shoe saleswoman, distracting Haven from Mark’s sartorial sins—she hadn’t even had time to comment that he’d failed to shave the last two days. Before long, they were on a whirlwind tour of the world of men’s shoes, and Mark was tucked into one of the leather benches with a stranger’s hands on his feet.
As the saleswoman whipped out her shoe horn and wedged him into another pair, Mark’s heel began to hurt. There were four pairs in the yes pile, and—he guessed—twenty discards, stacked precariously high in shoeboxes. Haven kept coming up with new kinds of shoes he needed. He’d never known there was so much subtlety to men’s shoes, or that there were so many official names—longwings, toe-cap Oxfords, monk straps, penny loafers. He’d only ever referred to running shoes, dress shoes and casual shoes.
“I’m straight,” he murmured to Haven when a pair of gray desert boots joined the to-buy stack.
“I have no doubt about that.”
Their eyes met, and she looked away quickly but not before he saw that she, too, was thinking about what had happened between them the other day. Good. If he had to be awake nights, suffering the horniness of the damned, she wasn’t going to get off any easier—no pun intended, even if it did send a quick visual through his dirty mind.