Tempting Talk (Tempt Me Book 3)

by Sara Whitney

  Dave rubbed his hands together, competitive glee lighting his thin face. “Excellent. We’ll crush it.”

  “This isn’t a competition, darling. Nobody’s winning anything today.” Ana’s voice held the saintly patience she’d perfected with their two toddlers.

  “Okay,” Mabel said, “but you’ll also tell us how supersmart we are if we can answer them all, right?”

  Ana rolled her eyes. “You’ll have the gratitude of Beaucoeur’s largest social service agency for helping us make trivia night a success.”

  “All right then.” Dave grabbed the pages Ana held out, his eyes moving across the words. “Pssht. Child’s play.”

  He grabbed a pen from the desk and got to work jotting down answers while Ana leaned toward Mabel and said in an undertone, “So. The guys from Lowell Consolidated.”

  Well, that brought things back down to reality.

  “Oh, um,” Mabel began, “the guys have only been here for what, a week and a half? And Brandon promised no big changes—”

  Dave looked up from the paper with a scoff. “Sure. They bought us, and now they’ll let us do business as usual. Seems likely.”

  Her optimistic, everything-rolls-off-my-back-like-I’m-a-Slip-’N-Slide partner sounded so gloomy, and it killed her. “Hey, it’ll be fine,” Mabel told him. “Maybe Lowell’ll pump a bunch of money into our show, pay for some billboards or something.”

  “Guys, no.” Ana interrupted them. “Dave, quit listening for a sec. I want to talk to Mabel about their hotness. I bumped into them on the way in today, and they are just… so, so hot. No offense, dear.”

  She patted Dave’s shoulder, and he shrugged and turned back to the questions. “Doesn’t bother me if you objectify my new bosses.”

  “Excellent,” she said, sighing dreamily. “Because Brandon’s at, like, peak hotness.”

  “I don’t think we should obj— Wait, Brandon?” Mabel twisted her face in confusion. “Jake’s clearly the hotter one.”

  Ana screwed up her face right back. “I guess, if you prefer your men dark and handsome and terrifyingly square-jawed.”

  “Um, I thought everybody preferred their men dark and handsome and terrifyingly square-jawed.” Mabel did anyway. She definitely did.

  Ana just sniffed. “Some of us prefer more refined features.”

  “Oh, you poor thing. You enjoy refined male beauty, yet you ended up with this troll.” She jerked a thumb toward Dave. “Do you make him wear a lucha libre mask around the house?”

  Dave reached for Ana’s hand and lifted it to his mouth for a kiss. “That lucha libre mask is a very important part of our lovemaking, what with my wife’s Mexican heritage.”

  Ana yanked his hand away. “Oh my God, do not drag my heritage into your weird mask fetish.”

  “Are you calling my mask kink weird?”

  “Eww, David! I was kidding!” Mabel hollered, slapping her hands over her ears. “Can one of you hit me over the head really hard so I forget the past sixty seconds?”

  The Chiltons’ evil laughter didn’t stop until she wrestled the sample trivia questions away from Dave and grimly set to work answering the ones he’d left blank, but even with their combined efforts, a few questions remained stubbornly unanswered.

  “I give up,” she announced.

  “I don’t.” Dave slid her a glance, then shouted toward the hallway. “Hey! Can I get a consult from our in-house accountant?”

  “What are you doing?” she hissed, but her grinning partner just ignored her to address the man who materialized in the doorway.

  “We’re working on some trivia questions and could use help from an expert.”

  “Uh, sure.” Jake Carey stepped warily into the deejay’s natural habitat, eyes drifting over the yellowed station promo posters and pinned-up leis from a long-ago party tacked to the far wall before landing on her and then Dave. “As long as it’s about banking reform, I should be helpful.”

  Mabel let loose with an embarrassingly loud guffaw, then clapped her hands over her mouth, leaving Dave to say smoothly, “Actually, it is about banking reform.”

  Jake glanced at his watch and then shot them a confident smile. “Okay. Hit me.”

  Still giggling a little at the absurd coincidence, Mabel read off the sheet, “Which 2002 law created the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to cut down on fraud?”

  “The Sarbanes-Oxley Act,” Jake said immediately.

  This time Ana was the one to burst into shocked laughter. “He’s right!”

  “Seriously? Who remembers Sarbanes-Oxley?” Mabel demanded.

  “Accountants,” Jake said drily. “Accountants remember Sarbanes-Oxley.”

  “Shoot.” Ana stood and snagged her blazer. “I need to run. But I’ll let the trivia committee know that we’re on the right track for difficulty and range of topics. Thanks, all.”

  “I’ll walk you out.” Dave grabbed his wife’s hand, and they strolled out of the room, leaving Mabel alone with Jake, who made no move to leave.

  “What else you got?” he asked, leaning forward to look at the list.

  Was that a little competitive streak coming out? Okay then. She looked down at the last of the unanswered questions on the sheet. “I don’t suppose you know what pop artist recorded a song featuring the line ‘She’s like so whatever’?”

  One corner of his mouth lifted into a smile as he reached for the paper. “Don’t you guys do music for a living?”

  Her eyes drifted down his arms, which were covered to the wrists by his shirt and suit coat. Pity. After he’d rolled up his sleeves to jump the van, she’d practically had an out-of-body experience ogling his exposed forearms. Accountant Jake Carey had goooood forearms.

  “We do music, but Dave doesn’t listen to pop and I’m drawing a blank.” She garbled the words in her haste to get her mind onto a safer topic, one that didn’t involve this man’s muscles.

  Jake pressed his thumb against his lips in thought, and her eyes followed the motion. Nice lips. Lucky, lucky thumb. “I do believe that’s Avril Lavigne’s ‘Girlfriend.’”

  As soon as he said it, her vapor-locked brain unstuck, and she yanked her eyes away from his mouth to hum the song quietly to herself. Yep, that lyric was in there.

  “You’re right,” she said in wonder. “I was just schooled in music by an accountant.”

  He shrugged. “I have a younger sister. Also, ‘Sk8er Boi’s’ a bop.”

  She burst into a startled laugh, and his chocolate-brown eyes met hers, lit with a spark she hadn’t seen in him before. But when Dave walked back into the room, that warmth vanished, and she watched him turn back into corporate-accountant guy, the man with the gorgeous face and the holy-shit body covered in an expensive suit.

  “I’d better get back to work. Glad I could help.”

  “Thanks,” Mabel called after his retreating back, and only someone who knew her well would pick up on her unusually husky tone. Unfortunately, Dave knew her better than anybody.

  “Aren’t you two adorable,” he crooned. “Just don’t get us fired this time, huh?”

  His words hit her like a bucket of cold water, and her chin snapped back. “Jesus, Dave.”

  He winced. “Sorry. Too far?”

  “Too fucking far.” A dart of pain bloomed in her heart, and she crossed the room to stand in front of the bulletin board plastered with take-out menus and old concert fliers.

  Dave followed her. “Hey, come on. It was a joke. You know I don’t blame you.”

  “Why not? I blame me.” She used her pinkie nail to straighten an ancient Pearl Jam poster on the wall, but when Dave stepped closer to her, his shoulder nudged it off-kilter again.

  “You went out with a guy you were interested in. You didn’t know he’d trash you to the station manager when you ended things.”

  She laughed bitterly. “The station manager who happened to be his father and who threatened a humiliatingly public firing if we didn’t go quietly.”

  �
�So we went quietly, and now here we are.” Dave gestured toward the greenroom.

  “Yes, here we are,” she agreed, taking in the broken-down couch, threadbare carpet, and sagging blow-up palm tree decorated with a string of snowflake lights. “Exiled from paradise—”

  “Gainesville, Florida, wasn’t exactly paradise.”

  “Well, it was definitely a larger market and closer to the beach.”

  “I still say we should’ve sued,” he said darkly.

  “Probably.” The helpless anger swept over her again even though it had been almost five years since she’d dumped the wrong guy and opted not to pursue a no doubt soul-killing legal battle against him and his father.

  “Are you really not happy here, Mae?” Dave straightened his glasses where they perched on his long nose, then studied her with concern. “Because I think Beaucoeur’s been pretty good to us.”

  She hugged her arms to her chest. “Oh sure. Cool job, nice coworkers, devoted listeners. Your kids were born here, and I finally figured out all the light switches in my house. What more could we want?”

  All true, but she still felt unsettled. Why was it so hard to admit to Dave that despite all the good in her life, she had a hole in the middle of her chest?

  Fear. That was her problem. She could interact with fans all day long and rattle away on the air while thousands of people listened, but she was too scared to go looking for a relationship after the fallout from her last one close to half a decade ago. So she’d just learned to tune out the loneliness that always throbbed in her heart.

  And then goddamn Superman had strolled into her station, hauled her up off a couch, and dialed up the volume on all that loneliness. But Jake was involved with the new owners, so he was an extra level of not-for-her. Of course, no way in hell was she going to tell Dave any of that. Since he was still looking at her in concern, she shot him a carefree grin. “It’s all good. And at least we’re not playing Celine Dion for a living.”

  As she expected, he gave an exaggerated shudder. “Light rock. Perish the thought.” Then he turned serious again. “But you made heart-eye emojis at the accountant, which isn’t something I see every day. Just… keep your mind open, okay? Who can say where you’ll be when you meet the right person?”

  Mabel nodded, not wanting to continue this discussion by pointing out that accountant Jake was the last person she should risk jumping back into the relationship pool with. No, she had every intention of tamping down the loneliness and throwing herself into work like she always did. No more heart-eye emojis, no matter how handsome the accountant in question might be.

  Four

  The clattering buzz of Jake’s phone yanked him out of his numbers hypnosis, and he blinked at the time on the screen when he slid his thumb across it to answer. How was it after seven already?

  “Hey, man. What’s up?”

  Everybody had a friend who preferred to call instead of text. For Jake, that was Milo Markowitz, college-buddy-turned-corporate-legal-counsel for a Chicago imports company.

  “My dude! You up for dinner?”

  Jake shook his head. “Seriously? I’m in Beaucoeur. I’ve been down here for almost a month.” And he hadn’t even made a dent in the station’s fucked-up files or all of Brandon’s special projects, which was why he was still hunkered down in his temporary office instead of enjoying the marginal comforts of his hotel.

  “Huh. I could’ve sworn you said you’d be done by now.”

  Jake laughed grimly. “Not even close. I’m here until the media company’s done with me. They’ve got me going through all kinds of shit I’ve never analyzed before. Audience shares, ratings numbers for their stations across the country, putting together how it all relates to ad revenue. It’ll be a few more months at least.”

  Not that he was counting or anything. Beaucoeur was fine for a downstate city, but he’d run back to Chicago that same day if he got the call to come home. He’d just prefer to do it with a partner plaque on his office door.

  Milo grumbled. “Well, now I have to find some willing woman to be my Friday-night dining partner.”

  “Riiiiight,” Jake said. Milo, with his wildly curly hair and pretty-boy face, never had trouble finding a date. “I’m pretty sure you won’t be eating the Purple Pig’s chorizo alone tonight.”

  “No doubt,” Milo said. “And if you’re going to be gone from the mahogany halls of Black, Phelps, and Suarez for much longer, maybe I’ll have to visit you. Bring a little culture to the sticks.”

  Jake wasn’t sure what culture Milo claimed to possess other than an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball stats and a deep, abiding love of Greek food and beautiful women. Still, he’d welcome a visit from his buddy. “Sounds great. Pick your weekend.”

  Milo rang off with a vague promise of “soon,” no doubt already thumbing through his mental Rolodex for an evening chorizo companion. Jake, meanwhile, had at least two more hours of work to do before he was comfortable knocking off for the night, and a tiny bit more coffee might help him cross the finish line. At this time of night, he was the only one in the station other than the Goth-y overnight deejay who drifted silently around the darkened hallways during her shift like the ghost girl from The Ring. She’d scared the shit out of him the first time he bumped into her after hours, and he peered cautiously down the hall to make sure he wasn’t in danger of her sneaking up on him again tonight.

  The coast was clear, so he made for the kitchen. Other than spooky Tracy, he enjoyed working at the station after dark, with nothing but the low hum of the broadcast from the wall speakers to disturb him. But once he reached the coffeepot, rows of phantom numbers obscured the water-stained surface of the machine, and he rubbed his eyes. In some ways, Beaucoeur was no different from Chicago. His office wasn’t as swank, and his mattress wasn’t as comfortable, but his days focusing on spreadsheets to the exclusion of the people around him were the same, as were his long hours, late-night caffeine intake, and rushed, solitary dinners before he fell into bed to do it all over again the next day.

  “Can you make it pour with your mind?”

  Mabel’s amused faux whisper snapped him out of his trance, and his stomach clenched. “Yes. It’s the first thing they teach us in business school.” God, since when did he tell dad jokes? He was hopeless.

  She brushed past him to reach for the carafe. “Well, at my college radio station, we only learned how to tap a keg, so let’s handle this the old-fashioned way. May I?”

  The fancy-garden scent of her hair mingled with the smell of coffee as she extended the pot toward him, and he held out his mug for her to top off. They’d fallen into this routine over the past several weeks. Exchanging pleasantries in the hall, which often stretched into short conversations that left him with a dry mouth and damp palms. Chatting over coffee as he floated up out of his body to watch with a mix of horror and amusement as he tripped over his own words.

  It was fair to say that the lovely Mabel had him totally flustered.

  “Are you telling me you can drink coffee this late and still function the next day?” she asked as she poured.

  “Cast iron.” Her eyes tracked his movements as he patted his stomach. This late in the day, the coffee tasted like lukewarm hate, but he swallowed a mouthful anyway, in part to have something to do with his hands, which suddenly felt awkward at the ends of his arms. “What brings you by the station so late?”

  A date? Had she been on a date?

  “Where else would I be on a Friday night?” She gestured around the kitchen with the pot before returning it to the machine. “Actually, I was almost all the way home from book club with a few girlfriends when I realized I’d forgotten something.”

  She spun in a swirl of blond hair and floaty skirts to rummage through the refrigerator as that fucking bell clanged in his head again. Single. She hadn’t been on a date, and other than the nightside deejay, it was just the two of them alone in the station right now. His heart tripped at the idea as she wheeled back around with
a yellow-and-white-striped box in her hand and reverence on her face.

  When she lifted the lid with a flourish, he asked, “Cupcakes?”

  “The best cupcakes,” she said. “One of the ad reps brought them back from the Cakery, and I meant to grab them on my way out today.”

  “The best, huh?” The desserts reminded him of home, and he slid his phone from his pocket and pulled up his camera app. “Do you mind?”

  “Not at all.” She posed like a game show host, flashing her pearly whites as she displayed the box and its contents.

  Once he’d captured the shot, she set the box on the break room table and downed half a chocolate cupcake before he’d finished sending his text.

  “Heaven!” she crooned around her mouthful. After she chewed and swallowed, she pointed. “Help yourself.”

  “You sure?” At her nod, he selected a plain vanilla cupcake from the assortment, leaving her the red velvet. She looked like the red-velvet type. “Thanks.”

  She leaned a hip against the table. “So you’re an amateur cupcake photographer too?”

  “Nope,” he said as he peeled away the wrapper. “A friend’s boyfriend just opened a bakery, and she’ll want to see the downstate competition.”

  “Ooh, the big-city accountant has a friend with a bakery? Tell me more.” She licked a smear of chocolate icing off her finger and looked at him expectantly.

  “Josie’s actually my sister’s best friend,” he said. “I sort of inherited her.”

  Another clang sounded in his brain. Josie. There’d been a time when he cared that Josie was single, just like he cared that Mabel was single.

  The hand holding the cupcake fell to his side in recognition. How had he been so slow to recognize it? The nervous jokes, the sweaty hands, the pressure in his chest that was equal parts anticipation and fear. And this wasn’t like with Josie after all. This was Asha Abebe all over again.

  “Well?” Mabel pointed. “Are you gonna smash it or eat it?”

  “S-sure. Sure.” Mechanically, Jake lifted his hand and took a bite, his heart hammering too hard for him to taste anything.