And she knew for certain she'd lost her mind when she looked up to see Ryan coming in the door that led from the building's lobby. This couldn't be happening, it just couldn't! What on earth was he doing here?
"Hi," he said. He looked incredibly sheepish. And incredibly handsome. How had she not noticed that before? Her skin tingled. "I was hoping you might be here."
"Hi," she replied, but she felt her eyebrows knitting and her lips pursing, and knew she must look as glad to see him as she would an IRS auditor.
Wearing faded jeans and a polo shirt that revealed just a hint of the muscles she'd felt beneath her fingers last night, he stepped up to the bar, his earnest brown gaze shining on her. "Um, I was wondering if I could talk to you alone for a minute."
They both glanced at Patti, whose pale blue eyes were as round as two beer mugs. "Don't mind me," she said awkwardly. "I'll just … put this change away in the office." Hefting the satchel from the bar, she gave Penny a quick last glance, then flurried into the back.
Penny nervously returned her attention to Ryan. He'd taken a stool at the bar and was leaning forward on his elbows, bringing himself closer to her than she expected. She caught her breath, then said, "What's up?" as if they were casual friends or something.
"I just … wanted to make sure you're all right."
"Oh," she replied. Very clever response, Penny.
"Because last night you seemed pretty upset. I felt bad leaving you."
Oh wow, how sweet. She lifted her gaze to his and realized he'd been doing a much better job of looking her in the eye than she'd done with him so far. Still, she pulled herself together and gave what she thought was a much more convincing answer than she had last evening. "I'm really fine," she lied. "I mean, I was certainly shocked." She even faked a good-natured laugh. "But there's really nothing to do other than put it behind us."
He smiled again, a big, wide, what-a-relief smile. "Good. I'm glad you feel that way, because as it turns out, you and I are going to be working together."
Her mouth dropped open. "Pardon me?"
He added a shrug to his smile. "I just found out Martin assigned me the job of designing your computer system."
"Oh."
"So, is that all right with you?"
"Yeah. Sure." Of course it wasn't all right, but what would Martin think if she refused to work with Ryan? What possible reason could she give? "We'll just have to … put last night behind us, like I said," she added, wondering why she was still talking about it if she was so eager to put it behind them.
"Definitely." He nodded vigorously.
"Of course." She nodded right back.
"I'm really sorry. I know this will be awkward."
"It'll be fine," she insisted too desperately.
"Although I don't know why Martin wouldn't do the job himself, being … so close to you and everything."
She almost laughed then, considering that she'd physically been much closer to Ryan now than she'd ever been to Martin, but the word close just stirred up too many sensual memories. "Actually, Martin doesn't do much designing anymore now that the company's grown, so I knew he was assigning it to someone else."
"And I was, uh, wondering about something else, too. Martin's instructions said we were meeting at your house?"
She nodded some more. "I've been typing all my notes into my computer at home, but I've suffered a series of mishaps over the last few months."
"Mishaps?"
"Well, first, my printer broke. I bought a new one, but something's wrong with the connection, because it won't print. After that, I managed to get a diskette jammed in the floppy drive. Then last week, during a thunderstorm, lightning zapped my modem."
"Wow." He looked dumbfounded by her streak of bad luck.
"So the computer still works," she went on, "but I don't have any way to move the information out of it. Martin has promised to get it all fixed, but he hasn't had time yet, so he suggested that rather than wait, we just work from my place." Then it occurred to her to ask, "Is that all right? I mean, will you be okay with that?"
"Sure. Of course." He nodded.
"Okay." She felt herself nodding again, too. "Good."
"Well then," he said, pushing to his feet, "I'll, uh, look forward to getting together, talking about your needs, and trying to fulfill them." Then he cringed. "Your system needs, I mean."
More nodding on her part, repeatedly, almost convulsively. "Yes, right, my system needs."
"See you then," he concluded, disappearing out the door before Penny could utter another word. She finally quit nodding and simply stood there, staring after him, then reached behind her for a bottle of rum. Maybe adding just a dollop to her drink wouldn't hurt, after all.
"Wasn't that the new guy who works for Martin?"
Penny looked up, this time caught in the act of spiking her own drink, as Patti peeked cautiously from the office.
"Yeah." Penny tried to sound very casual as she wiped the bottle off with a rag-dusting, she was just dusting it, that was all-and returned it to the shelf behind the bar.
"Cute," Patti said, then gave her head a suspicious tilt. "Why did he want to talk to you alone?"
Swallowing, Penny pasted on a fake smile, something this whole bizarre situation was giving her a lot of practice with. "He's going to design our computer system. Just wanted to touch base, that's all."
"But … alone?" Patti raised her eyebrows.
Penny replied with a shrug. "Weird, I know, but I guess it's just because my name is listed as the main contact. Maybe he thought you were a spy or something." Then she made herself laugh, as if she'd just said something terribly humorous. "Who's on the schedule to tend bar tonight?" she asked, effectively steering Patti onto another subject, since she had no intention of discussing this one any further. Or thinking about it, either.
But that part was harder. Because if she'd started to calm down at all about last night, that was over now. Her insides had resumed doing flip-flops.
Partially because she felt sick about Martin and what she'd done and what he didn't know. And partially because she was so darned excited about seeing Ryan again.
* * *
3
On Monday afternoon, Penny sat on the couch in her small, tidy house, nestled on a quiet Hyde Park street, waiting for Ryan to arrive and thinking about her sister's unspoken suspicions.
"So, big meeting with that cute systems guy today, huh?" Patti had asked right in the middle of the lunch rush a couple of hours ago, customers and servers navigating the pub around them.
"Uh, yeah." Again, Penny had been the queen of casual.
Not that Patti bought it. A wicked grin had graced her face. "Is there something going on between you two that I don't know about?"
"Something going on?" Penny had repeated as if it were the most preposterous accusation she'd ever heard. "I don't even know the guy."
Now, as she waited for this guy she didn't know, but with whom something had definitely gone on, she asked herself why she hadn't just told Patti the truth. Even as mortifying as it was, and even if she often found herself at odds with her sister when they discussed their love lives, they'd always been honest with each other. Penny knew everything about Patti's sex life, from the moment she'd lost her virginity right up to the guy she'd slept with for the first time just last weekend, and Penny usually felt as equally compelled to confide in her sister.
This situation felt different, though, as if it were something so intimate she simply couldn't share it. Her silence was about more than her embarrassment over what had happened; it was about her fantasies, and for the same reason she hadn't told Patti about those either. There were just certain moments, she decided, that a woman wanted to keep all to herself, moments so intense even sisters couldn't be let in. Like her fantasies, she wanted to keep her limousine encounter with Ryan entirely private, belonging to her and no one else.
Well, it belonged to him, too, of course, but guys just didn't treasure the outstanding, individual moments of their lives the same way women did, did they? No, surely not.
And then it hit Penny-hard.
She treasured what happened! In fact, hardly a moment had passed since Friday night that their lovemaking hadn't permeated her thoughts and senses.