Momentary Marriage(8)

Jared shuffled the ad layouts.

Kelsey glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, I didn’t realize you were there.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he replied easily. “I just want to double check the ad. Go ahead with whatever you’re doing.”

She turned slowly back to her address book, reluctant, he guessed, to make personal phone calls in front of a client. Then again, maybe she didn’t want him to hear her angling for a date.

“Go on,” Jared urged her.

“Okay.” Kelsey dialed again. “Is Stan Samuel in? Stan! How are you? Oh, really.”

Jared’s amusement and interest grew as he listened to her work her way through the last part of the alphabet. No doubt about it, if she lived in a smaller town, she’d have exhausted the male population.

A less confident man might have felt intimidated. Jared felt challenged. She intrigued the hell out of him.

“Ron Tompkins…. No, I understand.”

“David Vanagas?”

“No! Bill, if the Wallace family is having a family reunion     and your dying grandmother will be there, you have to go.”

“Sam Yancy. Tell me you’re not busy tomorrow night. Not one, but two dates?” Kelsey raised her hand in protest. “No, don’t cancel them for me. Please.”

What Jared couldn’t understand was the fact that she kept coming up empty. A few times, she’d muttered a name to herself and then shook her head decisively. She had standards, apparently, and some of the guys in her book didn’t measure up. Two names even merited her searching for an eraser.

“Is Tom Zmikis there?” Kelsey asked wearily, closing her address book. “Out of town…South Africa for three months? Okay, thanks.”

“No luck?” Jared asked when she put the receiver down.

“No,” Kelsey sighed, leaning back in her chair with a rueful smile on her face. “Ten million people in the naked city and I can’t find a date for tomorrow night.”

“If you didn’t really have a date, why did you lie about it to Doug?” Jared asked, mild curiosity in his voice.

“Because Doug would have insisted on taking me if he knew I didn’t have an escort lined up and my sister doesn’t like being left home alone while the guy she’s in love with runs me around.”

Bingo. Bless Amy. He suppressed a smile.

“I didn’t know Doug and your sister were dating,” Jared said, bending the truth.

Kelsey’s face turned sardonic. "That’s part of the problem. Amy’s really interested in him, but Doug’s not getting a clue.”

“Really. And all this time I thought Doug had a crush on you,” Jared said, letting amusement glimmer in his tone.

A little sympathy and some fresh mocha roast was all it had taken to get the low down from Amy on the situation between Kelsey, her sister and Doug.

An expression he couldn’t interpret flashed across Kelsey’s face. A mixture of sadness and guilt?

“I’ve always thought he had good taste,” Jared observed.

Kelsey smiled wryly. “Thank you.”

“You’re certainly my pick to ride elevators with.”

She laughed, her blue eyes turning thoughtful as she looked across the desk at him. Did he see speculation suddenly dawning? Would the woman put aside the cautiously professional tone of their interaction and actually ask him out?

“The initial campaign we did for The Meriton is up for an award tomorrow, isn't it?” she asked.

“In three different categories, I believe,” he acknowledged, his instincts telling him where she was heading. She knew he was single.

Her blue pencil, clasped in slender fingers, started tapping on the desk again. “I suppose…you have a date for the banquet.”

Bingo again. Score another point for instinct.

“Is that the question of a desperate woman?” he asked with a grin, gambler enough to push the odds.

Kelsey’s smile broadened. “Yes, actually.”

“Honesty in a beautiful woman. Amazing,” he murmured. “I’ll return the favor by acknowledging that I’d planned on going to the banquet stag.”

“Oh,” she said, hesitating only a moment. “Well, unless you’re going there to pick up women, maybe we could go together, for Doug's sake.”

“I’d love to escort you,” Jared said with amused satisfaction. “For Doug's sake.”

***

As soon as she left the elevator later that day, heading for the front door, Kelsey saw the downpour and groaned.

Summer thunder bursts in New York City invariably meant you couldn’t find a cab. Kelsey had long suspected the cabbies gleefully hid out somewhere just to remind people how dependent they were in a city where few people actually drove their own cars to work.