Who Needs Decaf?

“It’s all right,” she told him, feeling guilty now for not having shared her misgivings about the Backstage. “Maybe it’ll be…” She hadn’t been able to think of a word, but it hadn’t mattered because then it was their turn to hand over their tickets and find their seats.

Now, it was intermission, and Sheryl didn’t know how much more she could take. The play had begun with slightly altered characters Claire and Franz giving disturbed soliloquies on their relationships with their parents. Due to a dysfunctional home life, they joined a gang led by an underworld figure known as the Rat King. Then followed several violent, badly choreographed street-fight/dance numbers accompanied by an overpowering electric guitar. The program promised that in the next half of the show, the traditional dance of sweets was being replaced by Claire hallucinating that different narcotics had come to life.

As soon as the lights went up in the auditorium, Sheryl bolted for the main lobby, a dazed Jonathan following behind. Was there a polite way to ask him if they could just cut their losses and leave? He’d been the one to invite her, and if she suggested going now, she might make him feel worse. Please, get us out of here, she willed him, feeling the bright red walls around them closing in on her.

He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. “Um, Sheryl, I was wondering if—”

“Yes?” she prompted, trying not to sound too eager while fighting the urge to shout, “Race you to the car!”

“—you’d like a drink?”

Damn. So close. “Yes, please. A drink sounds…” Necessary. “Refreshing.”

He told her he’d see if they served any white wines and shuffled off through the crowd of theater-goers, some of whom looked appalled, some of whom were raving about the “bold, new vision,” and some of whom were laughing hysterically and cracking jokes about how the play should end. Finding a few of the alternate endings humorous, Sheryl stood near the top of a stairwell and shamelessly eavesdropped, occasionally scooting over to make room for someone to get by, but not really paying attention to her surroundings until she experienced a little jolt. It felt like a mild, but not unpleasant, electric shock.

Glancing around to make sure there were no exposed wires anywhere near her, she caught the dark-roast gaze of Nathan Hall. The fact that his mere presence had given her a warm tingle was more disturbing than the on-stage spectacle.

Now what? She didn’t particularly want to speak to him, but since he was standing only yards away and they were staring into each other’s eyes…She blinked purposefully.

Nathan walked around the people surrounding him and strode toward her. Not as dressed up as she in her velvet or Jonathan in his suit, Nathan looked great in a long-sleeved graphite shirt and black pants that were mercifully baggier than the jeans she’d last seen him in.

Of course, instead of evaluating his sartorial choices, she should have been working on an opening line, because when he stopped directly in front of her, what she unthinkingly blurted was, “What are you doing here?”

His eyes narrowed as he scowled, and she immediately regretted her words. She shouldn’t further antagonize the very columnist Brad aspired to win over.

Before Nathan could retort to her rudeness, she hastily amended, “I didn’t mean that personally, it was more a what-would-any-right-thinking-person-be-doing-here kind of question.”

Oh, hell, had she just insinuated he wasn’t right-thinking? Worse, what if he actually liked this type of theater? How had she landed a job in public relations, anyway, if her communication skills were this bad?

But Nathan smiled at her comment, though unintentionally by the looks of it. His quick, genuine grin gave way to a slightly startled expression, then a carefully neutral mask. “You aren’t enjoying the ballet?”

She shuddered. “It’s awful.”

“I know. Kaylee’s gonna owe me big time for this.”

“Kaylee?” Maybe he had a sister, she thought hopefully. Annoyed for caring, she mollified herself with the rationalization that she had kind of flirted with him the other day and she would feel bad about flirting with another woman’s boyfriend.

“My date,” he said. “She writes for the Arts section and was sent to cover this nightmare. You can read all about it in the Sojourner.”

“As it happens, I don’t spend my money on that publication.” Too late, she bit her tongue, wondering what had happened to her resolve not to antagonize.

But he made the switch to antagonism without missing a beat. “I understand I have an appointment with you next week. I appreciate your going through conventional channels, but if you’re coming to grovel, I should tell you now your time would be better off picking out a Christmas tree or something. I’m not backing off your crooked employer.”

“Crooked! Brad Hammond is a great man. Not just as a business visionary and software genius, but a legitimately nice person.”

“If your definition of nice involves stealing,” Nathan retorted. “Are you telling me you honestly believe the similarities between Brad Hammond’s game and Kendra Mathers’s story—a story that first appeared on her site long before the public had any information on Xandria Quest—can be chalked up to coincidence?”

Not about to comment on the case, she focused only on his first sentence. “My definition of nice sure as hell doesn’t involve making snap judgments about people I don’t know, but am more than happy to vilify in order to sell a few papers!”

“I do not make snap judg—” But Nathan cut himself off. She wondered if it was because he had in fact recently leapt to a conclusion about someone, or simply because he’d noticed people were beginning to stare.

Jonathan appeared at the edge of the group of onlookers, and muttering pardon me to several of them, reached Sheryl’s side. “Your wine. I hope white Zinfandel is all right?”

“Sure, thanks,” she murmured, annoyed with the effort it took to pull her gaze away from Nathan’s face and turn to her date. “Jonathan Spencer, Nathan Hall.”

“Oh, the reporter?” Jonathan asked brightly. “You did a great series on industrial effects on the water-front! How you took such dry statistics and presented both the pros and cons of commercialization…”

NATHAN NODDED and managed a gracious response to Jonathan’s words, but it was difficult to concentrate on anything other than Sheryl Dayton. She riled him, no escaping that, but it helped to know he had a mutual effect on her. He doubted that a woman who made her living in PR usually lost her temper.

How devoted to her job was she, he wondered? Would she defend her company even if she knew it was in the wrong simply because she was paid to? Nathan understood the necessity of a paycheck, but in his journalism career, he’d seen too many people sell out their scruples.

Not that he should care so much about Sheryl Dayton, but it bothered him to know he might be attracted to a woman with shady ethics. And he was attracted to her. Wrapped as she was in that slinky fall of soft fabric, which hugged her body and made her eyes glow, how could he not be?

To his right, the crowd parted like a sea before Moses, and a statuesque redhead made her way up the stairs, drawing admiring male stares as she passed. Nathan was used to the Kaylee Phenomenon, but he couldn’t remember his beautiful co-worker ever delivering the kick to his libido that Sheryl Dayton did.

Kaylee stopped at his side with a sigh. “I’m back from the powder room. I suppose we have to watch Act Two now?”

“Only if you want your column to be accurate and well-informed,” he kidded his co-worker.

She wrinkled her nose. “I’m pretty sure I could just turn in the words save your money and cover it. Oh, aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?”

Nathan did so, watching Sheryl’s face as she met Kaylee. Most women looked intimidated or envious meeting the supermodel-caliber beauty for the first time, but Sheryl simply grinned and remarked on how awful the show was.

“Well,” Kaylee said, “as long as we still have a minute, I should probably excuse myself to call my—”

“You’d better hurry,” Nathan interjected. “I’m not watching this thing by myself.”

She nodded and stepped outside for a better cell connection. Moments later, the lights blinked to signal the second half, and Sheryl and her date disappeared inside the auditorium. Standing in the lobby, Nathan watched them go, wondering whether he’d interrupted his co-worker specifically so she wouldn’t have a chance to say she was calling her husband, who’d had to work tonight.

Had Nathan wanted Sheryl to think he was on a date just because she had been? Of course, Sheryl wouldn’t know how ironic the idea of his dating Kaylee was. Not only was his friend and co-worker very happily married, she was the person who routinely insisted Nathan should date more.

He changed the subject whenever Kaylee brought it up, but she’d made it clear that she thought Nathan distrusted women because of his mom walking out when he was young. Apparently, Kaylee had been exposed to too much Freud one semester in college. The problems Nathan had in relationships had nothing to do with the mother he barely thought about and everything to do with individual circumstance. Sheryl Dayton was a perfect example.

Yes, he was drawn to Sheryl, he was man enough to admit that. But the inconvenient desire he’d felt both times he’d been around her wouldn’t blur his principles. Her employer had boasted his aggressive company goals in numerous interviews, and if Nathan learned of concrete proof that the man’s ambitions had led him to take advantage of a struggling writer without the same corporate legal resources, all of Seattle would read about it.

Sheryl wouldn’t like it—wouldn’t like him—but that was just too bad. Nathan’s dad, a dedicated police officer, had spent hours lecturing him on integrity, and Nathan was determined to live up to his late father’s ideals. The very ideals that had eventually broken up his parents’ marriage.

Nathan would simply put Sheryl and his curiosity about which was softer, the velvety concoction she wore or her skin, out of his mind.

Although, he’d feel better about the sensible, uncompromising resolution if he weren’t already thinking about seeing her Tuesday.

4

REMINDING HIMSELF that he’d dealt with dignitaries, celebrities and the mob, for heaven’s sake, Nathan reached over his cluttered desktop and hit the intercom button on his phone. “Thanks for the heads-up,” he told the receptionist, who’d buzzed him to say Sheryl was coming his way.

He was not nervous about this meeting. In all actuality, his slightly energized feeling was probably anticipation and not nerves at all. Then again, being this excited about seeing her again didn’t seem like a good idea, either.

Nathan leaned back in his cheap, creaky chair—he must have unknowingly maligned the office supply manager to be assigned furniture so uniquely unsuited to sitting—recalling too late that the balance was slightly off and that the chair tilted back too far. He was scrambling to an upright position when Sheryl appeared in the open doorway. “Knock knock,” she said in a wry tone.