The idea grated. But it also lingered, long after he'd all but scrubbed himself raw in the shower in an effort to get rid of the warm-honey scent of her that had somehow embedded itself in his skin.
He was still poking at the wound, still turning it over in his mind, when he cruised into his brother's office an hour later.
"How was the gala?" Marc asked without looking up from where he was checking his first emails of the day.
"Enlightening," Nic answered, walking over to the window that made up one whole wall of the room. Beyond the company grounds were rocky cliffs and a small sandy beach. Beyond that was the endless Pacific. He watched the water for long minutes, saw the waves build out at sea, then crest, then roll harmlessly onto shore. It was winter, so the water was cold, but there were a few surfers out there, paddling on their boards as they waited for the next big wave.
For a second, he wanted to be out there with them. Wanted to be free, wanted-for just once in his life-to do whatever he wanted. To be whomever he wanted and to hell with the consequences.
But then Marc asked, "Enlightening how?" and the fantasy was shattered.
"What do you mean?" He turned to look at his brother.
Marc pushed back from his desk, then crossed the room to the small minifridge embedded in the bar. He grabbed a bottle of iced coffee for himself, then tossed Nic a pint of the fresh-squeezed orange juice he favored. He caught it neatly.
"When I asked you about the gala, you said it was enlightening. How so?" Marc came to stand next to him by the window, glancing out at the ocean before turning to Nic, an inquisitive look on his face.
Nic started to gloss over it, to focus on the people he'd met or the money he'd pledged from Bijoux. But Marc was his brother and his best friend, the only person he ever really opened up to. And so, before Nic even knew the words were there, he found himself saying, "I met a girl."
"You met a girl?"
"A woman," he corrected himself, thinking of Desi's lush curves and quick wit. "I met a woman."
"Do tell." Marc gestured to the chair opposite his desk, and though Nic had too much energy to really want to sit, he found himself doing so anyway. As usual.
"What's her name?" his brother asked.
"Desi."
"Desi … ?"
"That's all. I don't have her last name."
"Well, that's sloppy on your part." Marc studied him closely. "Which is not an adjective I would usually use to describe you, so … This must be big."
"It's not big. It's not anything, really." And yet Nic really didn't like the way those words tasted in his mouth.
Marc laughed. "Of course not. Which is why you look like you swallowed a bug just saying that."
"Look, it's complicated."
"Dude, it's always complicated."
"Yeah, well, this time, it's really complicated." And so he told Marc the whole story, about how he'd fallen for Desi's looks at first sight and her startling quick wit almost as fast. About how he'd taken her home … and how he'd woken up alone.
"But you have her phone number, right?" Marc asked when Nic was finished with his tale of woe. "Please, tell me you were smart enough to get her number."
"Of course I was. But I was dumb enough to promise her I wouldn't call her until she called me."
Marc rolled his eyes. "All these years and have I really taught you nothing about how to woo a woman?"
"Considering you've spent the last six years licking your wounds from Isabella, I'd have to say that your own wooing skills are pretty lacking right now."
"I haven't been licking my wounds," Marc growled. "I've been busy running a multi-billion-dollar diamond corporation."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Call it whatever you like. Besides, I've been right here with you every step of the way, turning Bijoux into the second-largest responsibly sourced diamond corporation in the world."
"I know that-I wasn't implying otherwise. I was just saying I haven't had much time to woo anyone lately. Then again, neither have you. Maybe you're rusty."
Nic shot him a look. "I am not rusty, thank you very much." Sure, he preferred quality over quantity and always had, despite his playboy image in the press. But it wasn't as if he'd gone months without sex, for God's sake. His skills weren't rusty. At least, he didn't think they were.
God, what if that's why Desi had snuck out before he'd woken up? Because she'd thought he was bad in- No, no, no. That was one rabbit hole he was not going to fall down this morning. Because if he did … hell, if he did, he was afraid he'd never climb back out of it again.
"I'm not rusty," he said again, perhaps with more force than was absolutely necessary.
"I'm not saying you are." Marc held his hands up in mock surrender. "I'm just saying, if you have her phone number, why don't you use it?"
"I already told you-"
"I know. You can't call her until she calls you. But that doesn't mean you can't text her, right? Or did you make promises about that, too? And let me just say, if you did, you're stupider than you look."
"I didn't, actually," Nic answered as the wheels started turning in his brain. "I mean, I suppose an argument could be made about the spirit of the agreement-"
"Screw the spirit of the agreement. You like this woman, right?"
Nic thought of Desi's laugh, the way it filled a room and wrapped itself around him. Thought of her eyes, soft and pleasure dazed and welcoming. "Yeah," he told his brother hoarsely.
"So text her. Make her laugh. You're good at that. Then ask her out."
He nodded. Marc was right. Nic was good at that. He was usually really good at this whole dating thing. So what was it about Desi that threw him so completely off his game? He didn't know, but he figured it was important that she did. And he wanted to find out why he found her so fascinating. Why he'd spent the whole morning thinking about her when she'd made it fairly obvious that she didn't feel the same about him.
"Okay, yeah. I'll do that." He pushed to his feet, pulled his phone from his pocket. "Thanks, man."
Marc laughed. "I didn't mean now! It's barely eight in the morning. Besides, we're both due in a meeting that started five minutes ago."
"I'm not a total idiot, you know. I was just … thinking of what I wanted to say."
His brother came up behind him and clapped him on the back. "Wow, you really do have it bad."
Nic flipped him off as he led the way out of the office and down the hallway to the meeting room-after tucking his phone back in his pants. And if he spent the bulk of the meeting mentally composing a message to Desi, well, nobody needed to know that but him.
Five
"Desi, get in here. I've got a story for you," Malcolm Banks, her boss, called to her from across the newsroom.
"On my way," she answered, grabbing her tablet and heading toward the door with an enthusiasm she was far from feeling.
"Good luck," her friend Stephanie, a junior reporter for the fashion pages, mouthed to her. "Hope it's a good one!"
But Desi just shrugged. This was going to be another society story, she just knew it. She had, in fact, pretty much given up on getting a story of genuine worth anytime in the next decade or so. Because, despite her hard work generating and following up on numerous important story ideas over the past two months, Malcolm refused to give her a chance to write a story that really mattered.
He kept telling her she had to earn her way out of the society pages, and she kept trying. But she was beginning to think that she would be stuck there until she died. Or until Malcolm did, one or the other. Because there was no way she could get a job at another newspaper or magazine, not after she'd spent the past year and a half of her life covering parties and obituaries.
She didn't let her discontent show when she went into Malcolm's office. The only thing he hated more than whiners were salesmen, or so he said. And since local solicitors had long since learned their lesson about calling him-the hard way, but they'd learned it-she had no desire to be the low reporter on his totem pole. From what she'd seen in her time at the paper, bad things happened to those reporters … and she already had the crap assignments. She'd hate to see what would happen if she actually pissed off her boss.
It had taken her less than a minute to get to his office, but Malcolm was already engrossed in something else on the computer by the time she sat down in front of his desk. His distraction wasn't that unusual of an occurrence, so she settled in for a wait, patiently thumbing through her tablet as she did so. Seconds later, her phone buzzed with a text. Though she told herself not to get her hopes up, she couldn't stop herself from glancing at it, excitement welling up inside her at the possibility that it might be-