Sleeping With Her Enemy(45)

Tinder, his ass. With her, it was a five-alarm fire. A goddamned inferno. They probably only had a few seconds before the elevator arrived at their floor, so he threw caution and good judgment to the wind and pulled her more firmly against him, reveling in the feeling of her soft breasts against his chest, tangling his fingers in her hair, and inhaling the maddening strawberry scent of her.

When she made a soft little moan, he was about to hit the emergency stop button. But he wasn’t fast enough. On a ding, the elevator ground to a halt and the doors opened.

She reared back, stepping away as if he were radioactive. They stared at each other, panting. He hoped his eyes weren’t as wide and lust-glazed as hers.

“Ahem.”

He turned. Shit. It was Jack Winter along with Marcus Rosemann, the CEO of the eponymous ad agency that, along with Dax’s and Jack’s companies, rounded out the forty-ninth floor of the Lakefront Centre.

“You two getting off here?” His friend—and Amy’s boss—smirked. “In a manner of speaking, I mean.”

Marcus, normally a serious-minded workaholic who wouldn’t know a joke if it bit him in the ass, let loose a peal of laughter.

Amy touched a palm to her forehead for a moment. She was clearly mortified. But she summoned a bright smile and stepped off the elevator, and he followed, holding the door for the still-smirking Jack to enter.

They stood there staring at each other as the doors closed on Jack. She licked her lips. She was probably waiting for him to apologize. Or at least to say something meaningful to make sense of that lapse. He searched his brain.

“Enjoy your dates this weekend.”

…

Amy did not enjoy her dates that weekend. Date number one was like having a conversation in the kitchen at work, except the conversation never ended. It turned out she could only converse so much about Doctor Who, food court cuisine, and Game of Thrones—the books, not the TV show—before she was just…bored.

It wasn’t Steve’s fault. He was sweet and cute and obviously trying very, very hard. It was just that she wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, and she’d already ruled out sleeping with him. Even though she was looking for casual, after all the weirdness with Dax, she wasn’t stupid enough to mix it up with someone from the forty-ninth floor. After all, she still had to have kitchen conversations about Doctor Who, food court cuisine, and Game of Thrones—the books, not the movies.

So what was she doing? They didn’t have any chemistry. Not even friend-chemistry.

“So what do you like to do outside work?” See? Steve was trying.

She thought about it. “You know what? If I’m being honest, I’d have to say that what I do outside work is look at real estate ads. Go to open houses.” She winced, facing the fact that she was a one-trick pony. “I’m sort of working on developing new interests.” She fiddled with the stem of her empty wineglass. “Wait! I did recently go stand-up paddleboarding. I loved it! I think I’ll be doing more of that.”

“Dax is into that.”

“Yeah. He’s the one who took me.”

Steve cocked his head. “I thought you two hated each other.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve come to a truce of sorts.”

“Amy, can I ask you a serious question? And you answer honestly, even if you think I’m not going to like the answer?”

She sat up straight, startled by the abrupt question. “Okay.”

“I have no chance with you, do I?”

She blinked and could feel herself starting to flush.

“Please tell me the truth.”

Steve really was a good guy. Tall and dark, he had pale skin, probably from all the time he spent inside coding. But the effect was nice—kind of vampiric, but in a good way. And he was nice. Polite and interested in her. She owed him the truth. “No. I’m sorry.” But then she rushed to soften the blow. “It’s not you. It’s me. I’m just out of this long relationship, as you know.” Heck, he’d been at the wedding and so had witnessed her humiliation. “So I’m not even sure what I want right now.”

“Maybe what you want is Dax.”

“What? No!” Why was everyone always trying to push them together? “Dax is a total player.”

Steve shrugged. “I guess so.” But the way he said it made her think he didn’t really believe it. “We should probably go.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again, wishing she had a gaggle of girlfriends so she could set up Steve with one of them.

He smiled then and offered her a hand. “Don’t be. And don’t be offended when I tell you this, but getting you to go out with me also won me a bet with the other guys.”