by Lynne Silver
“Casey annoyed? No. She’s always in a hurry, which is why I called her over. You have to get in her face so she remembers you.”
“Oh, well, thanks. I never would have had the courage. I’ve been debating when to contact the marketing team again.”
Eve shrugged. “You want something in life, you go after it. Nobody’s gonna hand it to you on a silver platter.”
She was giving up on Sark showing up. A bar and dancing didn’t really seem like his scene anyway. “Now can we go? I’m ready to get out of here.”
“Me too.” Eve raised her voice, “Okay, people. We’re heading to Lola’s. Let’s go.”
The group shuffled toward the exit of the building, out into the cool evening, and then down three blocks to Lola’s. Michelle wrapped her coat around her thin sleeveless blouse and tried to put on a happy face to get in the spirit of the night. Not an easy task. For one, a sleeveless top and strappy stilettos on a cold night wasn’t her brightest move, and two, she couldn’t stop thinking about Sark. Why hadn’t he called her or even returned her e-mail?
You know what? Forget it. Forget him. She was in Chicago with a group of new potential friends and they were going dancing, one of her favorite activities. It was going to be a great night.
…
Around ten o’clock, Sark finally pushed his way out the glass doors of the office building. He was tired, but he’d received a text from Eve informing him of a gathering of the usual crowd at Lola’s. She’d added a postscript that she was dragging Michelle along for the ride. Which settled it in his mind—he was heading to Lola’s for a few minutes, and then home to bed.
He hadn’t heard from Michelle since he’d left his confession letter on her desk, and he didn’t know what her silence meant. He’d written several drafts of the note and was on version four when Ted, the COO, along with a handful of company VPs, surrounded his desk to pull him into a conversation. He’d had to quickly shove the note into an envelope and hope it was acceptable.
Her radio silence made him nervous. Was she spitting mad and refusing to talk to him? Was she waiting for him to make a move? He had no idea, but the only way to find out was to see her. Face to face. Therefore, he was standing at the top of four wide metal stairs squinting down into the crowd of gyrating bodies looking for anyone he knew.
He spotted Eve first. No surprise—she tended to stick out in a crowd. He pushed his way through the people toward his friends. As he got closer, a few people greeted him.
“Sark.”
“Hey, Sark, glad you could make it.”
“Eve,” he shouted over the blaring music. “Hey. Is Michelle here?”
Rather than try to go hoarse attempting to be heard, she simply pointed behind him. He whirled. The dance floor was full of energetic bodies showing their moves. Michelle danced with a group he recognized from the office, an amber bottle of beer in her hand. She looked incredible. He’d only seen her dressed professionally for the office, but now, in her revealing tank top and tight jeans, he wanted to grab her off the floor and find some private space.
But he couldn’t—not until he knew how she felt. If she cracked her beer over his head, he’d know and try to take it like a man.
Taking a deep breath, he started toward her. He got close enough to tap her on the shoulder, his stomach in knots anticipating the verdict. She whirled in a sexy dance move before he could touch her.
“Sark,” she squealed, and plastered herself against him, pulling him onto the dance floor. “You came!” The cold condensation of her beer bottle dripped on the back of his neck as her hands clasped over his shoulders.
He smiled down at her and wrapped his arms loosely around her hips. He tried to move in rhythm, but the beat of the song was something too arrhythmic for him. Weird how he could be coordinated at biking yet suck on the dance floor. One of life’s mysteries. Michelle didn’t seem to notice or care about his awkward side-to-side shuffle, though. She pulled in tighter and made as if it were a slow song.
Much as his body enjoyed the feel of hers against him from chest to toe, he had to verbally confirm she wasn’t mad at him. He pulled back a little.
“Michelle,” he shouted over the music. “Are we okay? You’re not mad at me?”
“Mad?” She hugged him then stepped back.
He dodged, avoiding her beer bottle smacking him in the cheek.
“Yes, I’m mad at you. You’ve been avoiding me all week. I missed you,” she shouted back, but the huge grin on her face told him it wasn’t really true.
He smiled at his amazing fortune and tightened his grip, pulling her against him again. She’d been waiting for him. A friend shoved a vodka Red Bull in his hand, his usual drink. Careful not to let it spill down Michelle’s back, he hefted it for a large gulp. They stayed entwined for the rest of the song, and when the DJ switched it up to a slow beat, she threaded her fingers through his hair and rested her cheek against his chest.
The drink in his hand was messing with his need to touch her and cup her bottom as they swayed to the music. His hands couldn’t go where they wanted, but his mouth could. He leaned down to kiss her, and she met his mouth halfway. She tasted like beer and warm, sexy woman. The kiss grew deeper, stronger. Around them other couples clung to each other and used the slow dance as an excuse to get close to their partner.
He stopped pretending and gave in to what he really wanted. Keeping his mouth on hers, he backed them off the dance floor to a quieter corner of the club. Somewhere along the way, they lost their drinks on a table, on the floor. He didn’t know, didn’t care. What mattered was keeping his connection with Michelle.
They reached the wall of the club and he turned to push her back against it, all the while keeping the kiss going. Their bodies pressed together, and he’d give anything to get her alone and naked. His desire was bordering on painful.
A sharp whistle from behind him jolted them both out of the moment.
“Get a room, you two,” Eve shouted, and a large group of their friends laughed and a few handfuls of peanuts were thrown.
He laughed and protected Michelle from the tiny flying missiles. She laughed too, and the intense, heated moments of the kiss ended. She clung to his hand, which he liked. “I have to get home,” he shouted over the music. “I have more work to do and an early meeting tomorrow. Can I get you a ride?”
She leaned in to his ear. “I came with Eve and I should stay with her, but not too much longer, since I’m interviewing with Casey and the marketing team tomorrow.”
He pulled back to frown. He wanted to make sure she wouldn’t be taking the El alone at night.
“Eve drove me. She’s my designated driver,” Michelle said, obviously seeing something in his worried expression that relaxed as soon as he heard her words, “and this has been my one beer. I can’t be hungover tomorrow.”
“Okay. Good luck, and have fun tonight.” He turned to walk toward the exit, but she tugged him back.
“Are you sure you won’t stay?” she asked.
He loved that she wanted him there, and if he kept looking at her full pink lips, nothing was sending him away. Except the fact he was dead on his feet and knew he had to be up in five hours for an international call. The Red Bull hadn’t been a brilliant idea. “I have to go. You could come home with me,” he suggested.
She bit her bottom lip and eyed him shyly. “I’m not sure I’m ready for that. We’ve barely been on an official date yet.”
She was right, and he was embarrassed she thought he was simply trying to get in her pants. “This weekend, then. I’m taking you on a real date. Are you free Sunday?”
Her smile was huge and warmed him from head to toe. “Can’t wait.”
Knowing he was playing with fire, he kissed her again, quickly, and got out of Lola’s while he still could.
…
Three days later, Michelle straddled the narrow seat of a bike, looking down a dusty path, then over to Sark. He sat astride his bike as comfortably as if it
were an extension of his body. She gave the rented helmet’s chin strap another tug. “Are you sure about this?”
Sark grinned sideways at her. “Relax. It’s a beginner trail. I promise you’ll be safe.”
She shifted in her seat again, grateful Sark had told her to wear spandex pants instead of the pretty dress she’d wanted to wear on their first official date. Back in Minsker, dates were a movie followed by dinner at the diner or spaghetti at Cucina. “I’m not much of a rider,” she told him. “I think the last time I was on a bike, I was twelve riding to my best friend’s house.”
He grinned at her again. “Ready? You go first, so I can help out if necessary. But you won’t need help,” he was quick to add. “This is a flat trail.”
Summoning her sense of adventure, she put the pedal to the metal and got her wheels in motion. For the first few minutes, she focused solely on the twenty feet ahead of her and gripped the handlebars tight enough to leave indentations in her palms. After riding in silence for a while, she glanced up and got a good look at the scenery. Autumn everywhere. Leaves burst with fiery color, and her breath caught in her throat.
The path was wide enough here for Sark to pull up alongside her. “Gorgeous, huh?”
“It’s amazing,” was all she could manage. She’d seen fall before, of course, but never like this with the wind whipping past her cheeks and her body sailing on air as if she were one of the early fall leaves breaking apart from its home tree.
“It is,” he agreed. “No matter how bad my week has been, I come out here, and all is right with the world.”
She kept pedaling and smiling. All was right with the world.
“How did your interview go?” he asked.
“Uh-uh. We are not talking about work. I’m instituting a no-work-talk rule for today.”
“I can live with that, after you tell me how the interview went.”
She glanced at him for as long as she dared. “The interview went great. They won’t make a final decision until tomorrow, but I think I nailed it.”
“Michelle, that’s awesome. I’m really happy for you.”
“And now, no talking about work. Instead, tell me about your…” She flipped through a mental Rolodex of date conversations. “Childhood. Were you always interested in computers?”
“I thought we weren’t talking about work,” he called over his shoulder. Every so often, he’d speed ahead, then stop pedaling so she could catch up. Though he’d been right, this kind of biking was easy and fun.
“I’m not talking about work. I’m talking about you.”
He slowed to ride alongside her. “In a word, yes. I’ve always loved computers. I hated computer class in school. We were only allowed to do research or go to the computer lab to type papers. I wanted to know how they worked.”
“So what did you do?”
“My parents were great. They signed me up for programming classes at the University of Chicago. I think they regretted it, though, when they came home one day and found the family computer in pieces on the floor.”
“Oh, no.” She laughed.
“They got over it when I built it back faster and better than before.” He grinned. “Enough about me. I want to learn more about you.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Well, what made you move to Chicago?”
She pedaled while she thought about her answer. “To be honest, it wasn’t so much Chicago as the lure, as much as getting out of Minsker to move to any city. My real dream was New York, but it was too far. Chicago seemed safer.”
“Was Minsker so terrible?”
“No,” she said honestly. “It was a nice place to grow up, but small. Not much to do. I think I realized I needed to leave when I was in high school. All thanks to a map.”
“A map?”
“You know those surveys on the Internet? I took one where you clicked all the cities you’d visited in your life. I was able to click on exactly one. Des Moines. That’s when I knew I had to get out.”
“Now you can pin Chicago.”
“Yep.” She looked at him. “I bet you can pin a lot of cities. Have you ever been to New York? What about Los Angeles?”
“I’ve traveled quite a bit. More so since LightWave.”
“How cool. Have you been out of the country?”
“I have. In fact, I’m adding another stamp on my passport tomorrow. I have to go to Spain.”
“Spain?” She could hardly imagine it, and realized he must be more senior at LightWave than she thought if they assigned him to travel internationally, probably to help set up new offices. Tonight she’d go home and look up images of Spain on her phone so she could try to visualize what Sark was seeing while he was there. “I’d love to go to Europe. My parents aren’t big on traveling. They like it in Minsker. It’s why my mom was worried about me moving to Chicago—I think she knows Iowa’s lost me forever.”
“Poor Iowa,” he commented. He started veering to the side of the path, toward an open grassy field. “I’m getting hungry. Ready for a picnic?”
She followed him into the grass and stopped the bike. “Sounds great.” They sat on a blanket Sark had stashed in his backpack. The sandwiches he brought were delicious, especially since biking had given her quite the appetite. She revised her opinion about wearing dresses on dates. Bike riding and picnics kicked movie and a dinner far out of the park.
“Are you getting cold?” Sark asked.
She hadn’t been, especially while riding, but now that he mentioned it, she wouldn’t mind getting warmed up.
“A little.”
“The sun’s overhead now, since it’s noon,” he said, glancing skyward, “but we should plan on being inside by three if we don’t want to freeze.”
She scooted closer to him on the blanket and remembered one reason movies scored higher than bike rides on dates—touching. “You could warm me up,” she said with what she hoped was a suggestive smile.
“Oh.” He looked startled, then a wide smile spread his lips. “Come here.” He held open his arms and gestured that she should climb in his lap. When their bodies were entwined, he lowered his head to find her lips.
Cold was no longer the problem. Spontaneously combusting could be, though. Sark might act like the cutest member of The Big Bang Theory’s cast, but he knew how to kiss. Her arms looped over his shoulders as she leaned into him for a deep, openmouthed kiss.
For long, heated moments she forgot everything but the man who held her tightly on his lap. His mouth devoured hers. She consumed his with equal fervor. The cool fall air brushed their cheeks and chilled her hands, but the rest of their bodies steamed up the clear patch of grass.
She wanted the moment to last forever. Kissing had never felt this way, as though everything rested on staying connected to him. Finally, other bikers taking advantage of the warm-for-fall day rode by. One dinged his bell as he passed. It was as effective as dumping a bucket from Lake Michigan over their heads.
“We better get moving,” Sark said. His cheeks were flushed and his large hands palmed her waist as he shifted her off his lap. “I’ll need a few minutes before I can ride comfortably,” he muttered.
The blush she knew colored her cheeks had to have deepened a few shades. She crawled off the blanket and worked on picking up the remnants of their picnic. Sark stood and they folded the blanket into a small square, shoving it back into his backpack.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Let’s get moving.”
…
Sark gingerly straddled his bike, cursing the genius who’d planned a picnic in a public park with a gorgeous, funny woman. Oh, yeah. It’d been him. He was an idiot. Instead of taking their kiss to the conclusion they’d both wanted, he was riding home alongside her, but not in touching range.
The lower half of his body was not thanking him. He gritted his teeth and focused on pedaling. Pedaling and counting fall leaves. Counting leaves kept his gaze from being drawn to Michelle’s voluptuous rear in
her skintight spandex pants. Almost. Not at all. Idiot to the tenth power.
The best he could hope for was getting through the final three miles and hoping she was amenable to going back to his place to conclude the date. He’d driven his SUV today—he used it to haul his bikes around. Normally he only hauled his own, but today his hitch held two.
She seemed to genuinely love riding alongside him. He’d never brought a date on a trail ride before, but with Michelle it had been more than a whim. It’d been natural. As much as he loved riding every chance he got, it was even better with her next to him.
Michelle was under the impression he’d rented the bike and helmet for her instead of buying it, as was the reality. He guessed she’d never have accepted a two-thousand-dollar Specialized from him. Once he’d looked into renting a bike and seen the poor quality options, he’d gone ahead with the purchase and hoped there’d be a lot more of these rides. Besides, what was the point of being a billionaire if he couldn’t buy his girl a bike worthy of her ass…her spectacular ass. Shit. Back to leaf-counting.
Thank God he’d chosen a tame flat path for their ride. He could do it nearly blindfolded, which was his next step if he wasn’t going to ride the last mile with an erection. Unfortunately, the thought of a blindfold led to more dirty images.
“Are you okay, Sark?” she asked and looked sideways at him.
“I’m fine. Just trying to remember if I’ve packed everything for my trip tomorrow.” Lies. He normally packed ten minutes before he had to leave for the airport. Inevitably, he had to make a pit stop for socks or a toothbrush in whatever city he was. His admin was threatening to come over and pack for him.
She smiled at him and he grinned back, increasing his pedal speed. He shot ahead of her, hoping if he couldn’t see her body, he’d block it from his mind. He’d seen enough of her riding skills to know she wasn’t going to fly head over heels. Only problem was, she took it as a challenge and easily caught up.
He sped up again. She caught up. Game on.
“Beat you to the car,” Michelle said.
“What do I get if I win?”
