Going All the Way

She reclaimed her arm, expecting to see some kind of thermal handprint on her sleeve, burned into place by the heat arcing between them. “With Natalie out of the office, I didn’t eat lunch.” Unless she counted the salad she’d brought from home and the bag of chips from the vending machine. Fine, two bags, but they’d been the comparatively healthy baked-not-fried kind.

David’s grin widened, and, with the clarity of hindsight, she immediately regretted her fib.

“Then I insist you let me take you out for an early dinner,” he said.

“But—”

“I won’t take no for an answer, Serena.”

An occasionally stubborn person herself, she admired assertiveness in others, but the intimate timbre of his voice was downright unfair.

“I can’t just dash off this second,” she protested.

Actually, with the slow business day she’d had, she probably could, but why tell him that? David Grant could stand for a few more people to turn him down from time to time. She loved the man, she really did—in the nonphysical best-buds-for-ages sense—but he got his way much too often.

“I don’t mind waiting,” he said. “I can step out and make a few phone calls where the reception’s better.”

At the prospect of more space between them, her body sagged in relief. “All right. Give me a little bit to wrap things up.”

“Take as long as you need.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “Anything important enough to do deserves time and thorough attention, right?”

As the president of her own company—even if it was just her and one other employee—she should agree with the work ethic of his statement. Except there was no work ethic, only veiled seduction. She recalled again the way David had pushed her to mindless limits when she’d already thought she couldn’t burn any hotter. He’d proven her deliciously wrong.

“You really do look woozy,” David observed.

Of course she did. It had been months since she’d had sex, and close to a year since she’d had fantastic sex. Suddenly, it seemed every molecule in her body was vibrating with the effects of the unplanned abstinence. It was like alcohol—if you’d given up drinking for a while, even a sip of something potent went straight to your head.

His forehead wrinkled as genuine concern replaced the humor in his expression. “Are you sure you don’t want to get out of here now and grab something to eat? Or I could run and get you a snack.”

“No, that’s not necessary.” She glanced between the receptionist’s chair and the overstuffed loveseat for guests, gauging which was closer. Deciding on the blue loveseat, she passed by David, telling herself she’d had a full five minutes to grow immune to that spicy seductive cologne. Its power over her should have waned by now.

Maybe the warm flush stealing through her body was actually embarrassment, not attraction. He was hardly the only man she’d ever been with, yet here she was in a near swoon. Real women do not swoon. Not in the last hundred years, anyway. When she glanced up, she was relieved to find him studying the surroundings instead of her.

“Nice place,” he said. “Took me a while to find, but great location. Definitely an improvement.”

Hard to believe her office would be terribly impressive to someone who’d grown up in the ancestral mansion once photographed for Southern Décor, but he was right about the improvement part. Her first site had been a one-room dive with a slight bug problem. Rent here was more, but worth every penny.

David took in the vintage lamp in the corner, the scarlet patterned swag over the miniblinded exterior window, the framed posters, and the artfully “mismatched” furniture—two chairs and a couch, each in a different primary color. “It is original.”

“Thanks…That was a compliment, right?”

“Yeah.” He sat next to her. “You have a way of making everything you come in contact with uniquely yours.”

He wasn’t crowding her, but then, he didn’t need a macho tactic to make her aware of him. Some of her best memories with this man involved a couch, and she had to concentrate to keep from swaying reflexively toward him. As seemingly relaxed as she was alert, he leaned back and casually fanned his fingers against his knee. Was he deliberately drawing her attention to his hand, daring her to remember the way he’d touched her?

She swallowed. “Well, we do parties, so I didn’t want my office to be stuffy. There are already wedding coordinators who do the whole Emily-Post-slash-Martha-Stewart thing, and planners all over the city who do the black-tie corporate banquets. We do those, too, but I try to give everything a touch of unique flair.”

“Touch is good.”

“W-we want our events to be memorable.”

“You are that,” he said softly. Just when she was starting to suspect he’d traveled all this way to drive her out of her sex-starved mind, he asked, “So, how’s business going?”

It took her a moment to adjust to the change of subject. Oh, wait, they’d been talking about work. Outwardly, at least.

“Not bad. A little slower than I’d like right now,” she admitted. “But business comes in waves. I arranged a bachelor party last week to fill some downtime.”

“Bachelor party?” An eyebrow arched up. “With a stripper and everything?”

“She much prefers ‘exotic dancer,’ and I hired her through the same agency I contact for bartenders and black-jack dealers.”

“Hm. An evening of sex, Scotch and sin, as presented by Serena Donavan.”

“As presented by Inventive Events,” she corrected, wishing the gleam in his gaze weren’t quite so speculative. “Quit looking at me like you’re picturing I was the stripper.”

He leaned toward her, his smile naughty. “Do I have to stop picturing it, or just stop looking like I am?”

His husky tone seduced her into sharing the fantasy. It was too easy to envision giving a sultry performance for him alone—slipping buttons out of their holes, shimmying out of a blouse as she rolled her shoulders and hips to the accompaniment of pulsing background music.

She narrowed her eyes. “You are a bad influence. Can’t you see I’m trying to be a respectable businesswoman here?”

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She’d been trying for years to demonstrate that she didn’t have to fit into her estranged father’s eight-to-five, corporate-America notions of respectability to be happy and successful. The results had been decidedly mixed—prompted in part by his new girlfriend, James Donavan had decided last summer to try to be part of her life again, but his brand of support included offers of finding her a job at one of his banks if “that party thing ever falls flat.”

Then again, how reputable could she be? She had strippers on speed dial.

David shook his head, his tone laced with amusement. “Give it up, Serena. You’re not cut out to be respectable.”

She flinched inwardly. David had teased her plenty of times in the past and was only echoing what she herself had just been thinking. Yet somehow the joking indictment sounded a hell of a lot different coming out loud from a Savannah Grant.

HOLDING HIS cell phone for prop purposes, David sat in the lobby where “reception might be better,” on a decorative bench uncomfortable enough to have been used during the Inquisition. Make a guy sit on one of these long enough, he’d confess to just about anything. Like being unbelievably arrogant?

AGI had sent him here this weekend to check out apartments, but David’s personal goal had been to find out whether the burning attraction between him and Serena was as he remembered, or if his imagination and time had exaggerated it. He’d also wanted to discover if the Happy Wanderer presented any real competition. David’s earlier call as he drove though an exasperating series of one-way Atlanta streets had eased his mind on both matters. Her announcement of the breakup and the breathy, telling pauses in conversation had led him to half hope she’d fall into his arms when he walked through the office door.

Arrogance.

Instead of fawning over him, or even pushing him away so he could tell himself she was running from a powerful desire, she’d blinked off her initial shock, then approached for a depressingly casual hug. If it hadn’t been for the way she’d watched his hands while they talked on the couch, her doe eyes becoming heavy-lidded and dazed as if his fidgeting fingers were actually moving over her skin, he might honestly have worried that they were doomed to platonic friendship.

But the longer he’d sat with her, the more obvious her arousal had become. There’d been no mistaking her dilated pupils, the way she nervously licked her lips or the rapid rise and fall of her chest beneath her soft knit top. Maybe he’d only overlooked her desire at first because he’d been too consumed by his own.

Even though he’d been the one surprising her, when she’d glanced up at him with those wide brown eyes, the jolt of sensual energy that had shot through him had been like a force of nature—something meteorologists had warned was coming but that still had to be experienced to be believed.

For instance, who would have believed an ensemble as theoretically conservative as khakis and sweater could be so sexy?

Serena looked like a bad girl impersonating a businesswoman. The slacks, while the right innocuous color for casual Fridays across the country, fit very snugly across her hips and were slung low at the waist. Only the embroidered hem of her plum-colored top kept him from seeing whether or not she was wearing the bellybutton ring that glinted teasingly in his memory. The neckline of the long-sleeved shirt dipped down in a rectangle that actually laced up over her breasts. Because of her understated curves, the cleavage revealed stopped just shy of being completely inappropriate for the office, but it was plenty to make his mouth go dry.

Although David knew it was an optical fashion illusion, he couldn’t help thinking that if he pulled the ends of the string bow apart, her sweater would fall away and leave her bared for tasting. He could recall with aching clarity the feel of her velvety breasts and the peach-hued nipples that had been so sensitive to his touch. On the one occasion he’d undressed Serena, peeling off a sodden T-shirt that seemed to leave less to the imagination than actual nudity, she hadn’t been wearing a bra. Was she today?

Wanting to find out had made him restless enough to drum his fingers and tap his thumb as he sat with her.