Sleeping With Her Enemy(20)

All of which was why he sped up a little as he passed Amy’s office, which was on the way to Jack’s. He didn’t even look in.

“Dax!”

Damn. His heart sped up as if he’d been caught doing something illegal.

He backed up and glanced inside her office. Relief replaced trepidation as he realized Jack and Cassie were there, too.

Amy, looking fresh-faced and pretty and not at all like she’d just been epically and publicly dumped, waved him inside. Maybe he’d been right, and Amy was already over Mason.

“Dax!” Amy said again, waving him inside the office. Obeying her summons, he felt a little like he was walking a gangplank to his doom.

A very stylish doom, he thought, taking in the space that looked like it belonged in the pages of a design magazine. He’d been in her office only once before, and that had been last Saturday afternoon, and he’d been focused on her, weeping and heartbroken, and not on her surroundings. The office felt like her, though, from its huge, teal overdyed Persian rug to the crystal chandelier that hung above her desk. He smiled in spite of himself. An office fit for a Strawberry Girl.

“There you go,” Jack said. “You can take Dax.”

“He can be your knight in shining armor again,” Cassie said, laughing. “You two can bicker through the whole game.”

Amy narrowed her eyes. “Yeah. He’s probably a Yankees fan.”

In addition to being confused about what they were saying, Dax was struck dumb by Amy. She wasn’t sitting behind her desk, and she wasn’t dressed for work. She was sprawled out on a sofa in a small meeting area in a corner of the office, where Jack and Cassie also sat on armchairs. And she was wearing shorts. Short shorts. White short shorts. He also couldn’t help but notice that when you looked close, her eyes were all red and bloodshot. Maybe Cassie had been right after all, and Amy was putting on a brave face.

“Well, okay, if neither of you is going to budge, I’ll resort to Dax. Dax, you want to go to a Blue Jays game with me?”

Somewhere in his brain, he knew that Amy was a Toronto Blue Jays fan, and she was wearing a tank top branded with their logo to prove it. He squinted at her. And little blue jay earrings. Damn. “Excuse me?” was all he could manage.

“Jack’s making me take two weeks off, so I’ve been forced to be a lady of leisure, and it’s driving me bonkers. I’m going to a game today, and I’m trying to rustle up a date.”

“Hey, that’s not true!” Jack protested. “I just said you could come back Monday.”

Amy smirked. “Right. One week off. Jack needs me for a new deal we have in the works, otherwise he wouldn’t have even let me in the door today.” Then she grinned at Jack. “You only love me for my crack real estate negotiating skills.”

“Damn straight!” Jack said. “And you’d better thank your lucky stars, because if we didn’t have this deal with McQuade going down, I would be making you take another week off.”

“McQuade the golf course guy?” Dax asked.

Jack nodded. “You know that crappy old course in Scarborough? He’s closing it. We’re trying to get him to sell us the land.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. Something. It’s not out in the boonies like it was when it opened. It’s surrounded by city now, so it’s prime for developing.”

“Anyway,” Amy said, pitching her voice over them. “I am, at this moment, on forced vacation, and I have two tickets to the 2:05 Jays versus Yankees game, and I can’t convince either of these two workaholics to come with me.”

“You all forget that I don’t actually work here,” Cassie said. “I’m just here having lunch. I have another job.” It was true. She was an analyst at a nearby bank.

“I know, I know.” Amy mock-scowled at Jack. “And you’re too busy plotting to pave over the world.” She sat up straight and pointed melodramatically at Dax with both hands. “Sometimes a girl has to settle for her third choice. What do you say?”

“I can’t,” he started, casting around for a reason that didn’t sound lame. “Even if I wasn’t slammed with work, I don’t really do third-choice duty.” He could feel himself falling into that old sparring pattern with her, which, after all that had happened, was both strange and familiar.

“Oh, right,” she said, “I forget that you have women lining up for the honor of your company. Silly me.”

“Welcome to the Amy and Dax show,” Jack said. “You guys should start charging for tickets.”