by Lucy Monroe
Simon looked at her with an expression she couldn’t begin to decipher, but which left her feeling ridiculously vulnerable and short of breath. “It wouldn’t matter.”
Did he mean it wouldn’t matter if he had Jillian pressed up against him?
Thankfully, the show came back on and she was saved from having to pursue the conversation further.
They had to sit through another scene without Jillian and a second commercial break, during which Jacob grilled her about Jillian’s start in show business.
Then Jillian’s subsequent scene came on.
It was in the bedroom and all Amanda could think was how it would feel to be in a similar situation with Simon. Which was highly unprofessional as well as dangerous to her personal well being. She’d never before had a physical reaction to watching a love scene on Jillian’s show and goodness knew she’d seen enough of them. But this time, her body was reacting as if she was the one in the bed.
She could feel arrows of sensation shooting down her thighs from their apex and her nipples were pressing against her bra like when she was freezing cold. Only she wasn’t cold. She was hot. So hot, she wished she could take off her blazer, but she couldn’t. Not with the nipple problem.
She’d die if Simon saw the evidence of her desire, not to mention Jacob. He’d probably say something nasty about it and Jillian’s show. As if the show had anything to do with it.
Her wretched imagination was to blame. And the man beside her. Eccentric geniuses had no business being sexy and ultramasculine. He should wear wire-rimmed glasses and dress in polyester pants with checked, cotton button-up shirts, not form fitting shirts and jeans that accentuated his incredible body.
Simon’s nostrils flared in primal recognition of the subtle scent coming off Amanda.
Her friend might not be affected by doing the love scene on-screen, but Amanda was affected by watching it. Her breath was coming in shallow little pants and he’d bet his newest computer that if she took off her jacket, her blouse would be inadequate for the task of hiding twin mounds topped by turgid peaks. Imagining the way they would feel against his palm was driving him crazy.
Were they pink or brown? Did she have big aureoles? Were her nipples big or little? Damn. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to see her. Neither was a wise or even possible course of action, so he sat there stewing in his desire.
And getting hard, which could be a problem if Amanda noticed, not to mention uncomfortable.
Stretching his legs out in front of him to relax the constriction around his crotch, he laid his arm along the back of the sofa. He didn’t touch her, but she went as stiff as his sex was getting.
He turned his head slightly to see her face better and wanted to explode at the way she was biting her lip.
The sound of the phone ringing came as welcome relief. He jumped up before Jacob could. “I’ll get it.”
Jacob eyed him speculatively while Amanda kept her gaze set on the television.
“Amanda, go ahead and finish watching the program.”
Her head came up then, her features schooled into a blank mask. “All right. Thanks. Jill said she had one last scene in the second half-hour, but it wasn’t as big. I’d like to see it.”
He nodded, already headed toward the nearest telephone.
Amanda went back to the great room after Jillian’s soap opera ended, expecting to find Simon waiting for her because he’d never come back to Jacob’s quarters.
The room was empty.
Should she go looking for him?
Maybe he was still on the phone. She didn’t want to interrupt and surely he knew the show was over by now.
Her gaze moved to the huge wall of windows. The water of the sound was different than the ocean in Southern California. Even in the bright sunlight of late June it looked like smoked glass rather than the shimmering blue she was used to. Simon had a dock that extended over fifty feet out into the water and a sailing yacht moored at the end.
It didn’t look like a modern vessel, which surprised her. She was familiar with the sleek lines of the latest boating designs since her condo was located on the bay above an exclusive marina. Simon’s yacht looked like something from a 1940s movie. Even from the distance, its dark wood exterior shone with the gloss of a meticulous finish.
As her gaze skimmed the glass wall, she noticed deck furniture to her right. A pitcher of what looked like ice tea and two glasses sat on the cedar table. Presumably, they were going to continue their meeting out on the deck that extended the length of the house. She picked her briefcase up from where she’d left it earlier and looked for a way outside.
Just like everything about Simon Brant, the exit was cleverly concealed. It took her several minutes before she found the small lever that, once pressed, sent a door-size piece of glass sliding to the right. She carried her briefcase to the table and set it on one of the empty chairs. Since Simon was not yet there, she didn’t sit down but went to lean against the rail, breathing in the warm, salty air.
A small breeze blew across her face, and she closed her eyes, reveling in both the warmth of the sun on her skin and the smell of air free of Southern California smog. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d allowed herself the luxury of stopping and just being.
Her conscience reminded her that she could be at the table setting up her facts and figures to present to Simon, but for once, she ignored the inner prompting.
This felt too good.
The quiet was broken only by the distant chatter of seagulls.
A strange inertia settled over her body as if the overwhelming pace she’d been keeping for the past two years had caught up with her all at once. She’d lived for her job since walking out on Lance. Why that sparked a sense of discontent at this particular moment, she could not understand.
Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes and forced herself to turn back toward the table. She flicked a look at her watch and was shocked to see she’d stood at the deck rail for half an hour.
Where was Simon?
She scanned the great room, but it was empty.
No doubt Jacob knew where to find his boss. She’d have to locate the cranky housekeeper and ask him what was going on.
Luckily she found him in the kitchen. She hadn’t really wanted to wander around the huge house trying to find one of the two men who lived there.
“Jacob, do you know where Simon is? I’ve been waiting on the deck for him since Jillian’s show ended.”
Jacob turned from where he was doing something at the sink. “The boss went back to his lab.”
“But there’s a pitcher of ice tea with two glasses on the deck.” They were supposed to talk about the merger.
Jacob nodded. “Told me to put it there.”
“But he didn’t come out.”
“Never does. Not once he gets that look in his eyes and goes off to his lab. Be lucky to see him again today. Probably won’t.”
“Do you mean he won’t be coming out of the lab again this afternoon?” It was the experience at Eric’s office all over again. He’d just walked away.
She had an urge to pound on the door to his lab and insist on him coming out and listening to her, but if she got militant, how receptive would he be to what she had to say?
“Not likely.”
“You don’t think he’ll come out again today?” she asked, just to clarify.
“That’s what I said, ain’t it?”
“Couldn’t you knock and remind him I’m here?”
“Wouldn’t do no good. He don’t hear when he’s thinking.”
She had some ideas on how to get Simon’s attention, but since it had never been her goal in life to get arrested, she put them in the back of her mind.
“When do you expect him to come out of his lab? Surely he has to eat sometime.”
“Has a kitchen up there, but he comes out to exercise.”
Remembering Simon’s well-developed muscle tone, she had no problem believing that even if he d
idn’t put his work aside to eat regular meals, he did in order to work out. No one got muscles like those by default. “When does he exercise?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On when he wants to.”
“I see.” What she saw was that Jacob wasn’t going to cooperate with her and her patience was a second away from disappearing altogether. “Will you please give your employer a message from me?”
“That’s my job.”
“Oh, really? Somehow I thought your job was to drive Simon’s visitors crazy enough so that they wouldn’t come back. Then he can live as a total recluse.” The sarcastic words just tripped off her tongue and she wasn’t even slightly apologetic.
Jacob had the gall to look offended. “My company manners may not be what they once were, but I don’t try to chase off Simon’s friends.”
“Merely irritating business associates he has no desire to talk to in the first place. Does he pay you a bonus for your efforts, or do you consider it one of the perks of the job?”
“The boss didn’t tell me to try to run you off.”
She wasn’t buying it. And she wasn’t sticking around for more of Jacob’s annoying half-answers. Eric Brant wanted this merger too. He could convince his cousin to meet her. She spun on her heel and marched out of the kitchen.
After retrieving her briefcase from the deck, she had her hand on the front door handle when Jacob came into the entry hall. “There’s no need for you to leave all in a huff, Ms. Zachary.”
“I’m not in a huff. I’m cutting my losses.”
“You wanted to leave the boss a message.”
“There really isn’t any point, is there? He’ll just ignore it as effectively as he’s managed to ignore me.”
Only he hadn’t ignored her over lunch, or during Jillian’s show. He’d focused his considerable concentration on her and their discussion, which made his subsequent snub feel personal. She was used to male rejection. It wasn’t something she would probably ever take in stride, but she had learned not to set herself up for more of the same.
She turned the doorknob. “Good-bye, Jacob.”
“Wait.”
The command shocked her into stopping. Not only in the fact that the irascible man was actually encouraging her to stay, but also by the authoritative tone of his voice. “What?”
“He doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s a genius.”
“So I’d heard.” She found it very difficult to believe Jacob was defending Simon’s actions to her, as if her opinion mattered.
“He’s not ignoring you so much as he’s so focused on the complexities going through his mind, he’s not even peripherally aware of what is happening around him.”
“What happened to your bad grammar?”
Jacob’s skin took on an interesting burnt hue. “I talk the way I want to.”
She let that go. Jacob, she was discovering, was an entity unto himself. “You don’t think it was on purpose?” she asked, referring to Simon’s second abandonment.
“No, Ms. Zachary. The boss doesn’t mean to do it. It’s just the way he is.”
“No wonder he doesn’t have a lot of friends.” She was making an assumption based on Simon’s lifestyle, but Jacob sighed.
“He’s spent his whole life out of step with his peer group one way or another. The boy is more comfortable experimenting in his lab than making friends. I think he finds his computers easier companions than people.”
The boss had become the boy and she realized the relationship between Simon and Jacob was more multifaceted than it appeared on the surface.
“If I leave him a message to call, do you think he will?” The prospect of talking to Simon on the phone and seeing him again, even after his habit of disappearing without a word, was much too appealing.
“Yes.”
She gave Jacob her cell phone number as well as the name of her hotel and room number. He wrote them down and she left.
The ferry ride back to the mainland passed quickly as she tried to strategize a foolproof plan for presenting the proposal to Simon. Unfortunately, by the time she reached her hotel over an hour later, she was no closer to a solution.
Both Jacob and Eric had made a point of telling her how wrapped up in a new project Simon could become. He was evidently in full new-project-mode now and she couldn’t help thinking that any hope of presenting the merger to him in its entirety was doomed from the outset.
When she got back to her hotel room, there was a message from her manager requesting she call him. She wasn’t surprised. She’d had to tell him about the glitch with Simon Brant when her last meeting with Brant Computer’s president did not end in a concrete step toward the merger.
“How did Simon Brant respond to the proposal?”
“He didn’t.”
“What do you mean, he didn’t? Is he a deep player, keeping his thoughts close to his chest?”
“He’s deep all right, but he didn’t express any reaction because I didn’t get a chance to present the benefits of the merger to him.”
“I thought you were meeting with him this afternoon.”
“So did I. He didn’t want to discuss business over lunch and afterward he disappeared into his lab.”
“Don’t tell me you couldn’t steer the direction around to the merger over lunch. It was a business meeting.”
“Simon doesn’t see business in the same light most people do. He wanted to get to know me over lunch. He’s not comfortable doing business with someone he doesn’t know.”
Her boss snorted. “And you went along with that? This is no time to decide to let your ice queen persona melt and start pursuing a personal agenda on company time.”
“I am pursuing Extant Corporation’s agenda to the best of my ability.” The ice queen crack hurt, particularly because it wasn’t true. She wasn’t an ice sculpture, just a flawed one. “I’m not sure trying to convince Simon to support the merger is a practical direction to take right now.”
“I talked to Eric Brant and according to him, we need his cousin’s cooperation, or the deal is dead in the water. Or at least close enough to justify calling in the coroner.” The fact that her boss and Eric had been talking took her aback. She’d been under the impression she was on her own during the preliminary negotiations. Her stomach knotted at the idea that she might be judged and found wanting as a negotiator.
She explained about Simon’s preoccupation with his current project. “Even his housekeeper warned me that trying to pin Simon down in one place long enough to hear the presentation is going to be difficult.”
“I don’t care if you have to camp out on his doorstep until you get him to listen to you. We need that man’s cooperation for this deal to go through. If you don’t think you can get it, maybe I’ll have to come up there and take over the negotiations.”
The knots in her stomach drew tighter until she felt in desperate need for an antacid tablet. “I can handle it, Daniel.”
“Prove it.”
The words echoed through her mind that night, making it hard to go to sleep.
In one way or another, she’d been trying to prove herself her entire life and somehow she’d always ended up falling short of the mark.
She was determined that this time would be different.
Chapter 4
She bolted upright in bed, her heart beating erratically. She’d had the dream again, the one where she got fired and where, driving home to her condo, she started shrinking until she wasn’t even tall enough to touch the gas pedal. She usually didn’t wake up until the car started veering wildly toward the edge of the coastal highway, coming awake just as the car started going over the cliff.
Ring.
She turned toward the sound, still disoriented by her dream and the brutal return to reality.
Ring.
It was the phone.
It had woken her, stopping the nightmare right after she started getting smaller.
She fumbled for t
he receiver in the darkness of her room.
“Hello?”
“Good morning, Amanda.”
“Simon?” Was it morning? She blearily tried to focus on the clock beside her bed. Twelve minutes after five A.M. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“It’s still dark, so not yet six.”
“I was asleep.”
“I’m sorry I woke you.” He paused. “Would you like me to call back later?”
Remembering how easily he lost track of his surroundings and her, she jumped in with a very hasty, “No.”
“Jacob said you wanted me to call.”
“That’s right. You didn’t listen to my presentation. You said you would,” she reminded him. “I believe it was something you promised your sister-in-law?”
“I promised Eric because Elaine was getting teary eyed. Pregnant women are emotional.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Lance hadn’t wanted children right away and neither had she. She didn’t regret that, not since it would have meant putting any child they’d had through the upheaval of divorce. Still, sometimes when she saw mothers with little babies, she felt like she was missing something pretty important in her life.
“Jacob also said I upset you when I disappeared into my lab.” He sounded almost apologetic.
“You forgot about me.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m used to it.” Why had she said that? She was still too rummy from sleep to control her tongue.
The tendency that first her family, and then her ex-husband, had had to dismiss her as of little importance, was not something she wanted to share with Simon.
“You’re used to being forgotten?”
“Never mind.” She scooted into a sitting position, dragging the covers with her to maintain their cocoon of warmth. “I’m not quite awake. I don’t know what I’m saying. Are you calling to reschedule our meeting?”
Another pause, longer this time. “Yes.”
“Can we meet today?” The sooner she got this situation handled, the faster she could put Simon Brant and her strange reaction to him out of her mind and life.
