“Morning, Jorge,” Serena said, blushing a bit. “What’s on the agenda today?”
He handed her the jug of iced tea she indicated before going into detail about the Houston Green account and the relative carbon-neutrality of the shoots they had planned. Fortunately, Serena's hives had settled down by the time they left the break room, but she hadn’t breathed easy for long.
For the rest of the week she wasn't able to get near Dillon without the tightness in her throat, the flush across her face and chest, and, once, another full blown case of the hives. It was mortifying, and it was making work both difficult and irritating. She was on the verge of admitting to herself that she was slightly addicted to her interactions with Dillon. Every time she had to back away because being near him triggered a physical reaction, she resented her body for betraying her by noticing him so very much.
Exasperated, she began deliberately testing herself. First, some straight forward, friendly but professional email. That was fine, no big deal, same as her communication with Eddie or Anica or anyone. Then some more personal messages from her office to his—the new nephew was an easy mark for her experiments, bless his little ten-pound, two-ounce soul. And okay, she had to admit that his reply made her smile a little more goofily than she might have at an affectionate joke from, say, Jorge. But it didn’t put her anywhere near the vicinity of hives.
Her next test—she wasn’t quite ready for it but he took it out of her hands—was when he buzzed her desk to finalize his script for the MediCost spot. So she set her mind to business, and gauged her reactions to his warm voice, to the smile in his tone, to the laugh she deliberately provoked in him. And sure, her stomach fluttered a bit at that point. She was being purely scientific here, and there was no denying it. But she whipped out her compact mirror as soon as they’d hung up, and her complexion was just fine. If she noticed, while examining her chest for hives, that her nipples were a little peaked with anticipation, Serena determinedly ignored it. After all, that was a fairly normal reaction to an attractive man’s husky, intimate chuckle in her ear, not these damned abnormal hives.
The fact that she and Dillon had known each other, had even laughed together, for weeks now without her noticing her clearly wanton and wayward nipples’ involvement was neither here nor there.
Now Anica had called much of the team, including Serena and Dillon, into Conference Room B for a status report on Houston Green. Just to be safe, instead of sitting next to him as usual, she’d grabbed an empty chair between Anica and Janice. After they’d wrapped up, as people were mingling, Serena caught herself contemplating Dillon.
She pictured herself approaching him, gazing up into his cobalt eyes, running her hands under that omnipresent blazer of his, trailing her fingertips up past his narrow waist to his broad back. Imagined that his long hands cupped her face, pulling her in for a deep, slow kiss before brushing back her auburn hair to kiss her neck, her throat, her collarbone. His tongue gently flicking at her flesh as he nuzzled lower. Her arms pulling his taut body closer, hip to thigh, pelvis seeking pelvis. His chest, pressing against her eager nipples while her abdomen met the answering pulse of his erection....
He caught her looking, held her gaze, quirked an eyebrow from across the conference room.
Serena felt the blush swarming her face, her pounding heart, her breath caught shallow in her chest, but, no, thank goodness, she was okay. She checked her hands—pale as usual, unswollen—then surreptitiously felt her throat. Cool and smooth. She was light-headed, sure, but able to take a steadying breath, to turn away from him and slow her pulse.
“Mental note,” Serena thought, “no matter what the libido seems to want, the mind and the body are in total agreement about this not dating thing.” She swiped up the rest of her pens and determined to relegate Dillon firmly back into the “work pal only” zone. If that. Hives, honestly!
Dillon raised an eyebrow at Serena. She’d been giving him some funny signals since the previous week at Frijoles. He’d kind of given her a couple of signals then himself, if he was honest about it, but, well, margaritas and work success and proximity to her gently sweet scent. And of course the fact that she was so damned sexy—a fact he usually tried to forget, in the not pissing upriver of your own camp sort of vein. Maybe that was why she seemed to be bouncing between flirt and friend with him now. He supposed he couldn’t fault her for it, but damned if he hadn’t gotten good and confused in the meantime.
Anica interrupted his reverie with a pointed look. Damn. He recognized that look. It was the “stick around after they’re gone so I can tear you down in private” look, and it was not his favorite look to be getting from his boss. He much preferred the “public high-five for solid excellence” look he’d gotten not infrequently in his earliest days at Lanigan. It seemed his learning curve was at an end. And yes, he knew the Houston Green copy wasn’t (yet) up to snuff, but it didn’t make him any more eager to face the music.
Dillon allowed himself a covert glance at Serena’s excellently rounded backside as she and the others cleared out, loosened his suddenly-tight tie, and turned to Anica, glad the day was, at least, nearly over.
Serena dealt with having vivid sex fantasies at work the way she dealt with other importunate distractions: via virtual house-hunting. Sure, she had her precious bungalow almost completely and perfectly planned out on paper. And on her computer. And on lists on her phone. If only the bid from the seller’s exterminator wasn’t taking so long to come in so they could get back to negotiation on the inspection items.
But working on her lists, while excellent at dealing with low-level jitters, couldn’t take her to the full-on peaceful high she required after picturing Dillon nude and spread-eagled over the table in Conference Room B. To calm that particular flush, Serena went straight to the really good stuff: scrolling through the newest real estate listings. And none of the empty lots or new construction, either. She needed wood frames, and converted attics, and ideally, screened-in sleeping balconies.
Natalie had sent out her weekly newsletter that afternoon, so she could be a good friend and generate some click-through traffic while she drooled over hipped rooflines and renovated kitchens that still honored the feel of the original construction. Nat’s featured buy was a fairly generic townhouse, one of a line with identical plantation shutters and porches barely deep enough to hold a rocking chair. But below that was another, kind of amazing house. Its porch was authentically deep, and it featured a bow window in the dining room and a claw-foot tub in the master bath. A master bath! Because somewhere along the line—probably the update prior to the most kitchen renovation, if Serena’s eye for detail didn’t fail her, and it rarely did—someone had converted the smaller bedroom’s closet into a tiny but adequate second bathroom, meaning doors could be rearranged to give the original small bathroom room to expand into a proper master bath.
She read the flyer through a couple of times, and clicked through the photos one by one before letting them shrink back into a grid on her screen.
It was too expensive, for one thing. Out of her range, at least at her current salary and keeping her savings and retirement plans intact.
Also she already had a dream house. One without an established magnolia tree blooming profusely in the front yard, like this new place did, but hers already. Almost totally and completely hers. And her house was almost totally and completely good enough.
She just had to get rid of the raccoons and plant a magnolia and, oh yeah, actually close on the mortgage first, and then, for all intents and purposes, it would be perfect.
Sure was nice to let the slideshow of the Magic Bungalow of Perfection scroll past her eyes and help bring her to calm stillness, though.
Aggrieved, Dillon kicked his townhouse’s front door closed and scooped up the calico kitten making a beeline for the exit. “No, you don’t,” he warned it, before slinging it over his shoulder and heading into the kitchen for a cold beer. “I’m having more than enough trouble with females
today; I don’t need you adding to the mix.” Setting Maisy down on the sofa and taking a long pull, he finally sighed. “Okay, okay, so it’s not your fault. And I can hardly blame Anica, she’s right about the tear sheets.” Maisy reached a paw up to bat at his fingers, unfazed by his suddenly morose tone. “But what the hell is going on with Serena?”
It just didn’t make sense. Serena was one of the most straightforward people he knew. Even before he’d started at Lanigan, she’d shown herself to be honest about everything—from work issues to the interpersonal. But lately he couldn’t get a read on her at all. She was her usual vibrant self half the time, backing away from him the other half. It just didn’t add up.
“Is it me?” he asked the kitten, who blinked and looked away. “I just...I kinda thought things were....” He took another pull on the beer, then had to laugh. He couldn’t even articulate his feelings to his sister’s cat. No wonder Serena was acting strangely. He was probably feeding her all kinds of assbackwards signals himself, and she didn’t know how to react.
How did he feel, though? He shed his jacket, which Maisy promptly started kneading and purring upon, and headed back to the kitchen to throw together some sort of dinner. “Pasta night,” he called to the kitten, which ignored him. “Did I talk to myself before you showed up?” he asked it. “I can’t seem to keep my mouth shut at home anymore. But as long as you’re listening, check it out, ‘kay? Here I’ve known Serena for weeks. And don’t get me wrong, I noticed her right off, you know? Second I walked into the interview, as a matter of fact. But I always thought you’ve got to keep that stuff out of the office.” He bit into a carrot and glanced back at Maisy, who was now asleep. “Fine. Ignore me.”
He had kept it out of the office, and over time had stopped—okay, practically stopped—looking for Serena as soon as he got to work. Stopped cataloguing the many enticing ways she wore her hair, stopped half-memorizing her schedule, stopped asking her out. Almost stopped, anyway. And they worked closely together; he couldn’t go more than a few hours without having to at least shoot an email to Serena, if not engage in some more substantial contact.
Substantial contact. Face it, that was what he wanted.
He liked working with Serena, and valued their friendship, but he just wasn’t satisfied with it. He wanted to be able to touch her. He needed to be able to touch her. To draw his fingers through the length of her hair then trail them down the slope of her breasts. To smooth his palm down her spine then spread it over her ass. To draw her body close to his as he tasted the creamy skin of her throat. To press his thigh between her yielding legs. His cock. To have her touch his throbbing cock. To have her grasp the base of his cock while his mouth closed over the tight peak of her nipple. To....
“Ow, fuck!” he cried as the fucking pasta boiled over. Maisy jumped up onto the table and mewled at him. “Not funny, cat. Just. Not. Funny.” Trying to adjust himself back into some sort of composure, he drained the penne, stirred in a Bolognese he’d nuked, and scooped some into Maisy’s bowl before throwing himself against the back of the sofa. Cuing up an old-school Star Trek episode off his DVR, he deliberately banished every thought of Serena, and her breasts, from his mind.
Chapter Eight
This time when Natalie asked if she was sitting down, Serena sat. There was something about her friend’s voice that varied dramatically from the suppressed excitement of the call that said she’d gotten the house.
“What? What’s wrong? Are the gals okay? Chris?” Chris, a pilot with one of the smaller airlines, was Natalie’s boyfriend. It wasn’t the most dangerous profession out there, but things happened, and Natalie didn’t always know where he was from one day to the next.
“No, he’s fine. Everyone’s fine, Rachel and the baby are fine.”
“Okay. Good. Good. So...I’m sitting, then.” Serena straightened her spine, then reached out to rearrange the folders stacked on her desk, thickest files on the bottom and spread into a fan that allowed her to read the job names printed in the center of each tab.
“Well, I just got off the phone with Carter.” The way Natalie spat out the name of her biggest professional rival did not bode well for Serena.
“Oh no.” Her mind raced, considering then rejecting the potential problems. The sellers had agreed to the extermination. The bid to level the foundation was low enough that she could swing it, if she had to, though she’d asked them to cover that, too. And all she needed for the electrical was for them to bring it up to code, which they had to do regardless.
“They’re not selling.”
“They’re...what?”
“Not selling, hon. I’m so sorry. It’s to do with her job, the owner’s. She was offered a good promotion to stay with her company, so now she’s not transferring to the East Coast, so now they’re not selling.”
Serena let her head sink onto the forearm she’d braced on the desk, trying to focus on the sharp edge of the folders poking at her elbow. Anything was better than absorbing this news.
“Not selling?” Dimly aware she was parroting Natalie, Serena cleared her throat and tried again. “But they signed the contract, right?”
“They did, yes. And they’ll have to give you back your earnest money, of course, but we can’t force them to sell. We can’t evict them. And Carter was—well, he was smug, the unrepentant bastard—but he wasn’t giving me any reason to think this wasn’t a hundred percent. The deal is off. The house—the house isn’t yours, Serena. I’m really sorry.”
The house wasn’t hers. “You’re not making this up because it’s Friday the Thirteenth?”
“I don’t think that’s how Friday the Thirteenth works. And it’s not April Fool’s Day, either.”
The house wasn’t hers. “Maybe I could talk to her? Get them to, I don’t know, use her promotion to buy a bigger house somewhere?”
Natalie sighed. “Sorry, hon, no. I asked Carter if they were considering that, and he was firm. They love the house, they love it more since fixing it up to sell, and they’re not moving.”
The house was not hers. Serena closed her eyes. Her grip on her phone slackened as she let out a warm gust of air.
“I wish it wasn’t happening. I’m sorry.”
Not hers. Since she was eight, when Mom had to sell the house once Dad moved out to live with Alice and her demon spawn five-year-old twins, Serena had been dreaming of owning her own home. A dozen different addresses since then, maybe more; a dozen periods of packing up the too-familiar boxes labeled “Serena’s bedroom” and learning where the light switches were for late-night trips to the bathroom. Each time she lined her book collection neatly along the back of her dresser and piled her sketchbooks back in her desk drawer, she dreamed of the day when no one would make her pack—or unpack—again. Of not storing a stack of flattened boxes under her bed. Of owning fragile items that would just break in a move. Of navigating dark rooms because she knew them so well she didn’t have to turn on the lights.
And she’d worked for her dream. She hadn’t just let it be an idle fantasy. She’d made a plan, with a timeline and stages and lists. How much she needed to save, what kinds of places she could afford depending on her income, how to keep her credit score high and her financial life mortgage-friendly. She’d turned her passion for illustration and design into a job with earning potential, and taught herself to pay attention to management and corporate structures in order to maximize that potential. And she’d given herself a deadline: she’d promised herself—sworn to herself as she turned down nights out with friends, the chance for a more dynamic but less secure job, vacations away from the cruelest of Houston’s summer heat—that she would own her house at thirty.
And here she was: thirty. And the house wasn’t hers.
“Serena?” Natalie was softer now, all sympathy after the sucker-punch. “We can go look this afternoon, if you want. Or tomorrow, I’ll rearrange some stuff.”
“I thought you and Chris had plans.” Valentine’s Day plans, plans Serena k
new that Natalie was hoping included a proposal.
“That’s later, and anyway, I get the feeling I’m going to be grumpy after the date’s over. He’s not exactly full of secretive smiles or whatever. Besides, girl power, right? I’m not going to abandon a friend in need in favor of some guy.”
That got a laugh out of Serena, at least. “Well, if you can, I’d love to look at houses tomorrow. Just let me know what time. Thanks.”
Before she could get too much more maudlin about her house—her ex-house—Serena hung up and turned her attention to an absorbing bitch of a layout problem with HouGreen. What the point was, when it was apparently nothing but, well, work, Serena didn’t know. She only knew how to work in pursuit of her plans, and with them falling apart, what did it matter that her folders weren’t tidy? Why should she be the one who had to gripe at Dillon because he’d ignored her word limit and made it impossible fit his copy into the space she’d designed for it?
Sighing, she hit the button to call his office.
“Hey, Serena, what’s up?”
Damn her nipples to hell and back, and damn Dillon’s husky voice and damn every thought she’d ever had about making her life the life she wanted. “I told you no more than three hundred words for page two, weren’t you paying attention?”
“Wasn’t I—hang on, you mean for HouGreen?”
“Of course I mean for HouGreen, what else have I told you three hundred words about?”
“Okay, sure. Nothing else, if you put it like that. So you don’t like the copy?”
Rocket Man Page 7
