Now Elliot paused. Emily sank to the floor, her hand leaving a trail on the newly cleaned window. She’d liked it. She’d like to do it again. Was there any way, in this day and age, they could do it again?
Elliot cleared his throat. “I think I did see the camera’s flash. Like shooting stars. But it’s always like that with you.”
She closed her eyes. “It’s always like that with you, too.”
“Meet me after work?”
She opened her eyes. “I have to think about things. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Maybe tomorrow then.” He paused. “Love.” That was how he always signed off.
She held her breath until she heard the empty void of the connection dropping.
“Love,” she said.
****
Emily struggled with the code for yet another mobile interface for the rest of the afternoon, but her conscience didn’t let her loose. At five she was beat, the specs dancing in her head around the molten pools of emotion bubbling about her heart. Outside, the car traffic was starting to bunch up, the beginning of the commuter crawl. Funny how the slower the cars were moving the louder it sounded, even through closed windows.
But there was more shouting than usual. A gaggle gathered at the front of the office, looking out over
Market Street
. “What’s up?” Josh called out, following the trail to the windows. Suddenly nearly the whole company was at the windows.
“Boss,” Josh shouted to her across the room, “You have got to see this.”
Out the window, across the street, four lanes filled with stalled traffic growing ever more congested, three people were waving signs. A man and a woman stood in full geek dressage: blue Oxford shirt and nicely pressed khakis. They held poster-sized signs above their heads with an arrow pointing to a man between them. His sign read, “I’m an idiot.” He was wearing a classic black Playboy bunny outfit, ears to cotton tail.
“He’s having trouble standing in his heels,” Emily said.
“Sure is. But look at those gams.” Leave it to Josh to notice that.
Hold on. Emily could have sworn she’d seen that hip sway before, and those blonde arms. She leaned closer to the window.
Elliot.
Oh. My. God. She ran back for her purse and her sweater and headed for the stairs. Taking them three at a time – thanks heavens she was wearing flats – she was out the door in less than a minute.
In that time, Elliot and his friends – his driver and his security chief, Emily could now see – had drawn a crowd, most on this side of the sidewalk. The trio was backed against a parking garage. Emily prayed his car was in there and he didn’t take the BART in that getup.
She waved her sweater at the nearest car as if it were a bull. Seeing the driver nod, she passed in front. Traffic was so stalled she had no trouble speeding across all four lanes. She didn’t hear sirens yet, but then again it was San Francisco. But she was damn sure there were cameras in every phone. By the time she got across she’d terrified herself that she’d driven her lover around the bend.
She stopped directly in front of him, as if she could block anyone’s view of him anyway. “What the hell are you doing?”
“What’s good for the goose,” he said, grinning, and tilted the sign down so she could see it more clearly. She read it and looked back at him, eyebrow raised. “An idiot?”
He signaled to his driver, on her left, who flipped her card. “Please.” Security man on her right flipped his card, “Pretty please.”
Elliot – “my reputation is everything” Elliot – wiggled his shoulders and hips, almost cabbage-patching with his card. Emily heard wolf whistles from the crowd behind them. He turned his card.
“Come back?”
After he was sure the whole world had time to read it, he handed the card to his driver and spun around. He clicked on an ancient boom box, and a heavy beat rolled out into the street. Starting to shimmy, he dropped his shoulders, his chest, and put his hands on his knees, ass in the air. He wiggled it, making the bunny tail dance.
The whistles grew shrill. Still rhythmically swaying his hips, he turned his head to look back at her. He was grinning, but there was something about his eyes only Emily could read. He was unsure. No, scared. But she couldn’t help her answering smile, and his grin grew to spectacular wattage.
He lifted a hand from his knee and brought it round to pat his ass-cheek. He raised a brow, as if to say, would she?
Would she ever. Emily shouldered her purse and rubbed her palms together, getting her own cheer from the crowd. Taking the stance, to the side, she circled his cheek with her palm, grateful for his sake that the men’s version of this outfit has quite a bit more coverage in the rear. And then she whacked him, a nice little ricochet smack. She shouted her approval along with the crowd.