“Sorry I didn’t hear you drive up. I just finished pulling up an old clothesline pole out back.” He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder behind him. “So I was in the shower.”
In the shower. That explained the wet hair and bare feet. How could she consider a man’s feet sexy? But she did. His were long and clean and . . . “I didn’t drive. I walked.”
“Really? Hey. Let me get you a glass of . . . lemonade? How about a beer? Water?” He looked so eager. Good manners. She’d done him a favor. He needed to express gratitude. “Come on, Edie. It’s bloody hot outside.”
She was being ridiculous. Worse, she was being weird. Why shouldn’t she accept a glass of lemonade? “Yes. Thank you. Lemonade would be nice.”
“Great.” His grin turned even more dazzling. “I’ll be right back. Have a seat.” He glanced at the toys piled on all the furniture. “Just dump some of that stuff on the floor.”
“I thought Chloe was an only child.”
Jim gave her a confused look, probably impressed with her powers of deduction, although her deduction hadn’t taken any unusual astuteness. Obviously this kind of clutter could only be generated by a crowd of children. “I divined the fact from the presence of this superfluity of toys,” she explained.
He actually blushed. “Chloe is an only child.”
“With all these toys?” she asked, surprised.
“She’s a little spoiled,” Jim said.
“Oh,” Chloe said, then frowned. “Of course, you are in a better position to make such an evaluation, but in my short acquaintance with your daughter she has not seemed spoiled, but simply imbued with a child’s natural narcissism.”
“Ah, thanks, I think.”
“It wasn’t a compliment. It was an evaluation.”
“You sure seem to know a great deal about children for someone not involved with them either professionally or personally.”
Heat rose up her throat and into her cheeks. “I always assumed I would have children, so I started studying the subject when I was an undergraduate. I . . .” She hesitated, unwilling to divulge too much but torn by an unusual desire to share something of herself with him. He was smiling at her, looking amused. “I like children.”
“That’s obvious,” he said, moving past her and sweeping some of the toys on the sofa onto the floor. “It might not look it, but the place is clean, just crammed full of Chloe-spore.”
“It looks very nice,” she murmured, but he’d already disappeared into the back hallway. She looked around and decided the sofa had the least clutter on it. She stacked the toys on top of the coffee table and took a seat.
“Sorry about how hot it is in here,” Jim called from somewhere in the back. “The AC is on the fritz.”
“On the fritz?” she replied.
“Temporarily not operational.”
He appeared in the hallway carrying two glasses—one lemonade and one that looked like water. Or gin. Or vodka. What did she know about Jim Curran’s private habits? He had also put on a T-shirt. Good . . . Damn. He came over and handed her a glass, setting his on the coffee table before nonchalantly sweeping the rest of the toys piled on the sofa onto the floor. He sat down next to her, angling toward her.
“Thanks for bringing that doll over. I expect Chloe doesn’t even realize it was gone or I would have gotten a phone call by now.”
“Phone call?”
“Yeah. Chloe’s spending the night over at her aunt Melissa’s.”
Chloe was not there. Edie’s disappointment was followed by a shiver of realization; she and Jim were alone. She cleared her throat to cover her sudden bout of nerves. “Melissa is your sister. The one who doesn’t like me.”
He didn’t deny it, but it didn’t seem to bother him, either. “Yeah. One of three,” he said.
“I know. Chloe told me,” she said. “Melissa is the oldest one, the woman with the romantic and indefensible notion that cats must be allowed to roam freely in order to experience true feline fulfillment.” She spoke drily but without any expectation that he would hear that. Not many people picked up on her attempts at irony.
But Jim laughed. “Ouch!” he said.
She blushed. “I didn’t mean—”
“Sure you did,” he interrupted casually. “Don’t worry about it. You’re probably right, anyway.”
“I am right,” she said.
He looked up at her, his blue eyes sparkling. “It must be an awful burden, knowing all the answers while the world blunders on in ignorance.”
She knew he was baiting her, but she answered anyway. “It is.”
“Ever wrong?”
“No,” she replied, then amended, “At least, rarely. I may revise my views upon the introduction of new data, but generally speaking I eschew forming an opinion until after a lengthy examination of the facts.”
“I see.” He took a drink from his glass, and she found her eyes fixed on the way his throat worked as he swallowed. He hadn’t shaved since this morning and a nascent blue-black shadow was forming over the hard, lean angles of his jaw. He glanced at her. “And what’s your opinion of me?”
“You?” she squeaked. Squeaked! She would die of mortification—no, no, no. That wasn’t like her. She wasn’t the sort who thought ridiculous things such as “die of mortification”! Not only was it scientifically impossible, but such overt drama was alien to her character.
Jim was grinning at her again. “Yeah. Me.”
She picked up her glass of lemonade and took a swallow, giving herself a chance to think. It went down the wrong side of her throat and she choked.
He was beside her in a second, arm around her shoulder, leaning her forward and rapping her on the back. “You okay?” he asked.
She nodded, still coughing.
“Right,” he said drily. “Here. Drink this.”
She couldn’t stop sputtering. He grabbed his glass with one hand, gently easing her upright with the other. She regarded him through swimming eyes, feeling like an idiot.
He kept his arm around her and nudged his glass against her lips. “Drink. Just a sip.”
She obeyed, taking a small sip and swallowing. It was water—just water. But as ridiculous as she knew it to be, the fact that her lips were touching the same area Jim’s had, sent girlish frissons racing over her skin. She was so pathetic—so absurd.
“Another.” He tipped the glass against her mouth again, and she complied. He leaned forward, setting the glass on the coffee table, and then straightened, his hand coming to tilt her chin up. “Better?”
She couldn’t think what to say. She couldn’t think, period. His scent—that gorgeous, masculine, warm, vital scent—surrounded her. His arm felt sure and strong around her shoulders. His thigh pressed against her was warm and hard. She managed a nod.
He smiled, his blue eyes looking straight into hers, warm and inquiring. He held her chin gently between thumb and forefinger as slowly, incrementally, his mouth descended toward her, giving her every chance to pull away. She didn’t. Her heart thundered in her chest, her hands in her lap clutched convulsively into a hard little ball—waiting.
And then his lips touched hers.
She melted. There was no other word for it. Her hands unclenched and flowed up to his broad shoulders, clinging tightly as her body went lax in his arms and her lips softened beneath his. His arm dropped from around her and he lifted his hands, cupping her face between his big palms. He covered her mouth with his in a long, lingering kiss, gently brushing the seam of her lips with his tongue, warm and urgent.
Her head fell back into the lee of his neck and shoulder, and her fingers stabbed up through his thick damp curls. His scalp was warm beneath her fingertips. Her mouth opened, and her tongue flickered shyly into his. He tasted of wintergreen.
His hands fell from her face, flowing down her neck to her shoulders to her arms and then looping around her back. His mouth still locked to hers, he pulled her around, easing her down onto the cushions and beneath him. He braced h
imself above her on shuddering forearms, finally releasing her mouth and scattering kisses along her jaw, her throat, and collarbone. She arched into them, wanting more, her head swimming with the sumptuous sensory overload, her hips shifting restlessly.
His hand stole low on her waist and slipped beneath the hem of her T-shirt, gliding up the shallow channel marking her spine in a long, sweet stroke. The sensation had her trembling with desire, needing to explore his body as he was hers. She tugged at his T-shirt, and he lifted himself off her just enough so she could bunch the material high on his chest, the movement dragging her own T-shirt up over her bra. Hungrily, she wrapped her arms around his wide chest and pulled him back down over her, gasping at the erotic sensation of heated flesh against her skin. He looped an arm around her, crushing her to him, his naked chest branding her breasts and belly, hot and heavy with muscle.
She wanted more. The evidence that he wanted more, too, was the heavy, thick pulse of his erection pressed to her outer thigh, and that was the most potent of aphrodisiacs. A sound of yearning rose in her throat. At the sound he broke off their kiss and lifted his head, staring down at her, breathing heavily.
“Edie.” His voice held a low question. His eyes glittered like sapphires under a jeweler’s light.
“Yes.” She nodded eagerly. “Oh, yes. Yes and yes and—”
“Daddy! Where’s DivaZ Chloe?” Chloe’s loud, fretful voice carried up from the front yard. “Daddy!”
Jim groaned.
Edie pushed him away, her panicked gaze pleading with him. With a rough sound, he jerked back, pulling her upright into a sitting position next to him and pulling down her shirt. He surged to his feet, yanking his own shirt back down just as Chloe burst through the screen door. Heat rushed in a scalding wave up Edie’s throat and into her cheeks.
“Daddy! I forgot DivaZ Chloe—hey!” She skittered to a stop. “Edie!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?” She bounced over to where Edie sat and plopped down next to her.
“What, indeed,” came a woman’s overly silken voice as Chloe’s aunt Melissa came through the door. Her gaze flitted between Jim and her, finally coming to rest on Edie’s red cheeks. “Hi, Dr. Handelman. Hot in here, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Jim said before Edie could answer. “It is.” He turned to Chloe. “You left your doll at the shelter, and Edie brought it over because she didn’t want you to miss it.” He gestured to the doll, lying on its side on the coffee table.
“Wow. That was thoughtful,” Melissa said, her brows rising.
“Yeah,” Jim repeated, leveling his sister with a hard glare. “It was very nice. Don’t you have something to say to Edie, Chloe?”
“Thanks, Edie,” Chloe said.
“You’re welcome.”
Melissa sauntered into the room and casually took a seat on the arm of one of the overstuffed chairs. She crossed her legs, nonchalantly swinging the top one. “Get that pole of yours pulled, Jim?” she asked sweetly.
Jim’s face went a dusky red hue. “Don’t, Melissa.”
“Don’t what?” she asked. Whatever his sister was doing—and Edie wasn’t exactly sure what it was—was making him angry. “I was just wondering if you managed to get that old clothesline pole yanked out of the ground. What did you think I meant?”
Jim ignored her, but his expression was tight and angry. “Here’s your doll, Chloe.” Jim swept the doll up off the table and handed it to his daughter. “You and Melissa had better skedaddle before you miss whatever your cousins have planned.”
“Oh, we’re in no hurry,” Melissa said. “We’re just going to build a fire in the backyard and make s’mores.”
She was going to light a fire? With Chloe present? Fires were dangerous. “Do you have a permit?” Edie asked. “You know, you need a permit to . . .” At the look with which Melissa stabbed her, her voice trailed off. “Ah . . . I have to go.” She stood up.
At once, Jim was beside her. “You haven’t finished your lemonade.”
“I’ve had enough.” It was a lie. She was thirsty but not for lemonade. But she was growing more uncomfortable by the second under Melissa’s knowing gaze and Chloe’s growing look of confusion. “Thank you.”
She brushed by Jim, too aware of the thrill of electricity that raced through her with just that slight contact, and fled.
Chapter 7
Jim arrived at work the next day as nervous as he’d been the first time he’d asked a girl to the prom. Last night, Melissa had wisely hightailed out of the house as soon as Edie left, Chloe at her side. He’d spent the evening trying to decide if he should call Edie or not. He distrusted the phone. He had learned to read the delicate nuances of her expression. He needed to see her to know what to say.
So he waited—and recalled the feel of her mouth opening beneath his, her arms clutching him tightly, her body arching into his.
He hadn’t slept much.
He didn’t bother going to his office but headed straight for the research floor, moving briskly down the hall, through the double set of doors into the lab area and toward her office. What if she wasn’t in? What if she just shut him down? Shut him out?
“You’ll have to resubmit the data.”
It was Edie’s voice. He rounded the bank of cubicles and spotted her figure behind the open slats of the miniblinds covering her office window. She was standing by her desk, leaning over a computer monitor. She was in her ubiquitous lab coat, the pocket protector with its array of pens sprouting above the name tag she never forgot to put on, as if she thought people might forget her name.
She looked up and caught sight of him. He raised his hand in greeting. She looked behind her, making sure he wasn’t waving at someone else and then, phone still between her ear and shoulder, slowly lifted her hand in a weak reply. Her door was open, so he rapped lightly on the door frame, realizing as he did so that he’d never seen her door closed.
Along with everyone else at Global Gen, he’d always assumed the reason her department had the highest job satisfaction scores in the company was because it was peopled entirely by geeks giddily immersed in high-level geekdom and that the department’s phenomenal retention rate could be traced to the same source. But suddenly he realized it was because of her. Her open door and calm disposition, her ability to cut through the bullshit, her respect for not only what her people did but who they were as individuals—all of those things must draw her people to her as surely as they drew him.
She finished her call and set the phone in its cradle, cocking an eyebrow inquiringly. “May I help you?” She was so formal.
“Yup,” he said. “I’ve come to ask you out on a date.”
“Oh.”
He waited for her refusal, eager to make the rebuttal points he’d been rehearsing since last night. She’d like such clearheaded objectivity.
“When?” she said.
Ah-ha! She was asking for a specific date so she could manufacture a prior commitment. He’d expected that. No go, Doctor. “Whenever you can go. Tonight. Tomorrow. This weekend. Next week. You name it.”
A small smile turned the corners of her mouth. One of her researchers ambled over, sucking on a Tootsie Roll Pop, and stopped short when he heard Jim. He didn’t move discreetly off, either, instead waving over a pair of his coworkers.
“The CVO is asking Edith out on a date,” he said loudly.
Jim looked at Edith, fully expecting her cheeks to be flushed with that fascinating shade of pink apricot. They weren’t. She didn’t look in the least nonplussed. He, on the other hand, was: ill at ease, awkward, and self-conscious. A light blinked on in his head. He got it. This was her turf. This floor and Cupid Cats were the only places she considered her turf. The rest of the world was his. But he wanted the world with her, to make it hers as much as this department.
“Well?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He blinked, uncertain he’d heard right. She was smiling at him, a bright, open, sunny smile that made him want to step
inside, snap down the blinds, and kiss her as he had last night.
“Ah, when?” Smooth, Curran.
“Tonight’s fine. I can see if Carol will close up the shelter and if not, we can just go somewhere after I finish up. Unless that will be too late for Chloe to be up?”
“Chloe’s not coming.”
“Oh.” Okay, this brought a hint of color to her creamy complexion as well as a flash of disappointment to her burned caramel eyes. Good Lord. With all the women who considered a small daughter added baggage, he’d fallen for the one who thought of him as the auxiliary tagalong.
“Well, then, tonight is fine.”
“Is she going?” someone called from the back banks of tables.
The guy with the Tootsie Roll Pop planted in his cheek hollered back, “Yeah!”
“Wow!”
“Why are you going?” asked a stout middle-aged woman who’d wandered over. “Sleeping your way to the top? You’re already at the top.”
The remark didn’t faze Edie in the least. “I’m going because I like him and he likes me,” she answered. “Now, is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Curran?”
“Jim.”
“Excuse me?”
“Please, call me Jim.”
Again she gave him that startled, pleased smile. “Jim, is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Tell me where I can pick you up.”
He picked her up outside a plain, small duplex a couple miles north of where he and Chloe lived. She was waiting for him on the sidewalk outside, and she looked ravishing. Of course, had he seen any other woman wearing a pair of unremarkable tan slacks and a white eyelet blouse with the tails untucked, he wouldn’t have given her a second glance. But on Edie it spoke volumes about her willingness to be casual and trusting with him. The implications ravished him anew.
He figured her for a Thai cuisine lover. There’d be something about the juxtaposition of sweet, salty, silky heat and cool crunch that would call to the closet sensualist in her, so he took them to Pho Bay Tau. He didn’t make reservations—the popular storefront restaurant in the upper east end of the loop didn’t take them—but on a Thursday they wouldn’t have to wait long for a table.
Cupid Cats Page 17
