He startled a little. Cassie so rarely used strong language. It was almost like hearing one’s grandmother call someone an asshole. “Strong words coming from the woman who invokes pasta instead of swearing. What’s with the pasta, anyway? I’ve been meaning to ask.”
“I used to work in an Italian restaurant.”
“No,” he said. “What’s with the granny-style cursing?”
“I don’t know.” She dropped her gaze to the floor and sighed. “Well, I do know. My mother swore a lot. It embarrassed me when I was a kid.” She shrugged. “So I never really took it up myself. That sounds stupid.”
Apparently he wasn’t the only one with family baggage. He could respect that. Time to change the subject. “Carl wants us to start a swear jar in the new year.”
“What? So he can steal some more from you? I wish he was still here, I’d plant him a facer.”
“You’d plant him a facer? What century is this?” In truth, though, it tickled him to hear her jump so indignantly to his defense, in her quaint, non-threatening way.
“Anyway, the best revenge is doing this Wexler deal without him, isn’t it? Get Wexler to sell to you, and then get rid of Carl.”
“That’s the idea.”
“Okay then, enough chat.”
Jack sat back and watched Cassie’s amazing mind click into some other mode. Sparks might as well have been raining off her head, so absorbed was she in her work. He clicked when she ordered him to, pulled up supplementary data when commanded. Although she was engrossed, she kept asking him questions. Not about numbers, but about the context.
“This number seems high,” she would say.
“Is that the May travel budget?”
“Yeah.”
“Amy had to go to Mexico a bunch of times with very little notice. We had to charter a private jet—it was killer.”
Then she would nod and sink back into her trance-like state, utterly riveted to the screen, so much so she hadn’t noticed the sun going down. She didn’t blink when he got up and switched on the lamps. She didn’t even notice when, the room having grown cold, he took off his blazer—she’d left hers in reception—and hung it over her shoulders. She held out her arms obediently when prompted, never once breaking concentration as she sat on the edge of her chair and stared at floor plans of the Mexico resort.
Just when he started to wonder if he should start feeding her bites of one of the granola bars he kept in his desk, she snapped out of it, Sleeping Beauty coming to after a long nap. She yawned and looked around as if she was seeing the room for the first time. “It’s dark.” Her brow furrowed.
“That’s enough for tonight,” he said, touching her arm, trying to draw her back to the material world. Another yawn while she nodded her agreement. Then she stretched—God help him. Before his very eyes she transformed from the avenging accountant back into the siren in the red dress. All the blood that had been working so diligently to nourish his brain as he took her through the financials suddenly hit the road for a more southerly locale. Stretching her arms over her head caused her breasts to jut out, and suddenly he hated that dress. Somehow it managed to be wanton at the same time that it was too modest, allowing him to see only the shape of her and none of…the actual her.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, looking at her arms and realizing the blazer she wore was not her own. “This is yours!”
“Don’t,” he groaned, feeling like if he saw even an inch of her bare skin, he might combust. Too late—she stripped off the blazer and handed it to him. The contrast between the bare arms and the black-tights-clad legs did something to his already on-alert dick.
As she tossed the blazer at him, her eyes grazed over his crotch. He should have used the blazer to cover himself. Instead he let his hands fall to his sides, the better for her to see what she did to him.
“Ready to go?” she asked, smiling a little, though her tone was completely unreadable.
Okay, so it was time to be prudent. “Yeah. You must be hungry. Are you hungry?”
“Starving,” she confirmed, letting herself be herded out of his office. In the reception area, he stooped to pick up her abandoned blazer and then retrieved her coat from the closet where he’d hung it, holding it out for her to slide into.
The air between them was charged, heavy with something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He pressed his hand against her lower back as they made their way out of the office. He was supposed to be prudent, he knew, but he couldn’t keep his hands off her.
Was it possible that she was walking inappropriately close to him? It wasn’t overt, like Droppy from the bar the other night—or like all of the other women he slept with. In fact, if it wasn’t all in his mind, if she was, in fact, listing slightly toward him, he didn’t think it was intentional. It was as if there was an invisible current swirling around them, drawing them infinitesimally but inexorably closer, like they were a binary star system, two burning nuclei rotating around each other.