This was exactly why she didn’t date. This out-of-control feeling, constantly wondering just what the other person was thinking. Wondering what they’d say about you to their friends. She shuddered. It wasn’t worth the mental energy.
“Why have you worked in every store?” Logan asked, seeming cramped and uncomfortable in her car.
“I go where my skill set is needed. I was in the Galleria for the remodel, Tanasbourne to cover a medical leave, and Westside for training back in the day.”
“When was that?”
“Management training? Five years ago.”
“Really?”
She felt the weight of his stare on her face and knew what he was thinking. She barely looked out of her teens. And she knew her youthful appearance wasn’t likely to disappear anytime soon. Her mother barely passed for thirty.
He cleared his throat and she smiled. He must be dying to know how old she was, but didn’t ask the way most people did. It made her want to tell him, to show her pride in making it so far so fast. She delighted in knowing that fleeing the high school drama of her hometown had been her saving grace, even if her parents still thought it had been a mistake.
“So, how is it you were the only person at the store today who knew about the Kicks promotion?”
“Everyone is very excited about it. They’ve just been focusing their energies elsewhere. Now that you have demanded a higher standard, I know we’ll rise to the occasion.”
She was relieved to be able to talk business. She knew the floor plans by heart. It was easy to sound confident and in control talking about work, a reprieve since she felt anything but.
She explained the pluses and minuses of the different store layouts. But every time she snuck a glance, she caught him staring at her hands, legs, body—everywhere but at the road.
When she finished explaining, Logan leaned back in his seat. “Where have you been the last three months? I’ve been banging my head against a wall trying to figure all this out, and you explain it in ten minutes.”
Breeze allowed a closed-mouth smile to escape her. She was good at her job and she knew it. And if she talked about work enough she could almost ignore the jumping jacks her stomach was doing.
Almost.
The woman never stopped. Not even for lunch as she toured him through not three, but four different stores. Every person they encountered treated her with respect and a little reverence. She was a shining example of non-stop high performance.
He’d never met a woman so smart and loaded with energy. She walked at top speed, and even with their height difference he struggled to keep up with her pace.
His stomach grumbled in protest and his feet throbbed from all the walking, every break and scar a sharp stab of pain, but he kept pace with her as they made it back to her car.
“That’s amazing.” To the west, reds and oranges painted the sky in a perfect exhibition of raw beauty. It took Logan’s breath away.
“Yes, Galleria is a well-oiled machine.” She deactivated her alarm and retracted the convertible top without missing a step. “I think Hannah may be on to something. The managers in this district may not be as excited about the program because Nitrous is so prevalent in our market due to having the world headquarters here. Nitrous is an Oregon brand, so all we need is to have it in stock to have great sales. I’m sure stores in other states are more eager to put the plan in motion so they can reap the sales boost.”
“Breeze, stop for a second.” He put both hands on her shoulders in the quiet parking lot and turned her towards the sunset. “Look at that sky.”
He left his hands on her shoulders, the tension radiating through his palms. Her anxiety was palpable. But why? They’d spent the entire day together. And while she seemed to have an allergy to talking about anything but work, they’d gotten along well.
There was an undeniable chemistry between them. He knew better than to explore it when they had work to do, but work was over for the day.
She shrugged out from under his grasp and stepped away, quickly putting the car between them. “Would you like me to drop you off back at the store?”
He leaned his hands on the door and watched her climb in. “How do you measure your days, Breeze Cohen?”
“Excuse me?” Her big blue eyes widened in surprise. Tired curls had slipped from her clip and softly framed her round face.
“Is a day just a number on a calendar or a chance to see a breathtaking sunset?”
“Are you making fun of me?” Her eyes narrowed and she sat up as tall as she could manage.
“No, I wouldn’t do that.” He climbed into the car before she had a chance to take off without him.
How to get out of this one. “I’ll warn you next time I make a joke so you can fall over with laughter.” He smiled at her hopefully.
“Do you always go for the punch line?” She grinned and started the car.
“Every time.”
“Your girlfriend must love that to pieces.”
“She will.” Breeze turned to look at him, but the second their eyes made contact, hers were back on the road. As if he hadn’t noticed the spark of interest there. “What about you? Boyfriend?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Good. Then I can take you to dinner to thank you for your help today.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why? Don’t you eat? You’re robotic, aren’t you? That’s why you never fed me lunch.” He rolled and stretched his feet, alleviating some of the cramping and ache.
“I’m sorry.” She bit her lip, keeping her gaze on the road. “I never stop for lunch when I’m working, so I didn’t think.”
“Make it up to me by joining me for dinner.”
“I don’t think that would be appropriate.”
“Why?”
“Because you have a very important decision to make about the partnership between Mendelssohn’s and Nitrous, and dinner shouldn’t be part of your decision-making process.” Her hands gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white.
“I agree. You’ve shown me store readiness and tomorrow I’ll meet with the VP of stores about training and then go over the findings with our marketing, retail and distribution teams. Your role is over. So we’re free to do as we please without that looming over us.”
“Have you made any decisions?”
“If I tell you, will you have dinner with me?”
“Why do you want me to?”
“Because a beautiful woman fell into my arms this morning and I haven’t been able to get her out of my mind ever since.” He felt her weighing his words in her hurried glances from the road, but it didn’t matter. He told the truth. “Look, Breeze—”
Breeze’s phone chimed to life from where she’d plugged it into the dash. She jumped at the sound and then became increasingly grateful for the distraction. Until she hit the button and realized who it was.
“So, what’s the deal with this guy?” Nancy’s voice blasted into the car. Breeze wanted to grab the phone and switch it from speaker, but the car was so small it was likely he’d hear everything anyway.
“What do you mean?” She downshifted for traffic. Great, just what she needed. No escape for him to hear her conversation with her boss.
“Why is he busting our balls over this deal?” Breeze felt her skin prickle with the heat of a blush. Nancy was so eloquent.
“I think we came off well.” Breeze kept her eyes on the red taillights in front of her. “We’ll have to make product training a focus, but that was our plan all along.” She tried to smooth things over, the peacemaker like the middle child she was.
“Good, good. You’ll have a report ready by morning?” Was that a question or a command?
“Of course,” Breeze replied, thankful the conversation was nearly over.
“Great. Hey, at least you got to follow him around all day. Did you check out the ass on that guy? Yummy.”
“Nancy, you are so naughty,” Br
eeze chided, wishing the last two minutes had never happened. Of course, Nancy would go there. Breeze shook her head, noting Logan’s gaping jaw from the corner of her eye.
“Please, the guy is eye candy and you know it.”
She wanted to die but had to settle for choking the steering wheel. “If he needs help with anything else, I’ll take him from here.”
Breeze ended the call before further damage could be done.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want you to think—”
“Is that how women talk?”
“No,” she lied, thankful traffic moved again. “Nancy is just, well, very direct.” His silence was agonizing as she drove them down the freeway.
“Why didn’t you tell her I was here?”
Because you shouldn’t be. “She didn’t give me much of a chance.” And if Nancy knew he wanted to go to dinner, she’d have snatched him up for herself.
“What’s with your name?” He turned as far as he could towards her in his seat.
“Excuse me?” As if being teased unmercifully as a kid wasn’t enough.
“Breeze isn’t exactly Jane or Mary. There must be a story there.”
“You really want to know?” No doubt the truth would get her out of a dinner she shouldn’t be having. Watching him nod, she decided to go for broke. “My mother named us after her pregnancies.”
His eyebrow rose quizzically.
“You’d have to know my parents.”
“Tell me about them.”
“My parents?” She shifted in her seat. “My mom is a midwife and my father is an obstetrician. They’re really into childbirth. Anyway, my mom thought her pregnancy with me was a breeze.”
“Do you have brothers or sisters?”
She couldn’t tell if he was genuinely interested or just being perfunctory. Either way, tales of her freaky family would end it. It wasn’t as if people hadn’t asked about her name before.
“Two brothers. Sky is older. Mom was on bed rest with him, so she was always looking up at the sky. The complications with Sky were probably what made me a breeze. Then came my younger brother, River. So named because sometimes things went fast, sometimes slow, but always moving ahead.” Traffic came to a stop and she turned to look at him, challenging him to mock her.
“Wow.”
“That’s my folks for you.” She could almost hear Anthony whispering in her ear to be nice.
“I knew I’d heard the name somewhere. Your parents, they wrote a book, right?”
“Yes.” Her eyes widened as she tried to look at him and the road at the same time. How the hell did he know about a natural childbirth manual? Her parents’ laboring suggestions had been another source of ridicule in school.
“Have you read it?” If he had, it probably meant he had three kids at home.
“Actually, yes. Is that weird?”
“I haven’t read it.” It all came together now. He didn’t have a girlfriend because he was married with children, and he asked her out to dinner because he could cover and say it was business. She knew he was too good to be true. “Do you have kids?”
“Me?” He pulled his head back. “Oh, because I’ve read the book. No, no kids. My sister was on bed rest at the same time I had surgery on my feet. We spent two months on our backs at her house, reading and watching daytime television. I made her read Shakespeare and she forced me into discussing baby manuals. It was shockingly enjoyable. Not the childbirth talk, but spending so much time together again.”
“My brothers would never do that.” She turned back to the road as traffic inched forward. Someone buy this guy a medal. Hanging out with his pregnant sister. Still, there must be something wrong with him. She wanted to ask what kind of operation, but asking would mean she wanted to know him personally, and she didn’t. Couldn’t.
“I’m thinking Thai.”
“Tie?”
“For dinner. Or maybe a steakhouse. I’m so hungry I can’t decide.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” Her heart raced as she tried to will traffic to move. She couldn’t go to dinner with him alone. It would be too much like a date.
“Why? Are you a vegetarian?”
“Yes, but that’s not—”
“Thai it is. Take this exit.”
“This is not a date,” Breeze said for the third time in ten minutes.
Logan smiled at his date, having decided nine minutes ago not to argue the point. “Fine. But if we’re talking business, then you’re buying.”
He leaned back in his chair as the waitress arrived, setting the appetizer platter between them. He thanked her and then spun the tray so Breeze wouldn’t have to look at the satay or beef salad.
“The papaya salad is good.” He picked up a fork and motioned around the dish. “And the spring rolls are great too. All vegetables.”
She spied the tiny piles of food on the large plate with apprehension before spreading her napkin in her lap and picking at the peanut-topped cucumber salad with her fork.
Deciding that was good enough, Logan dug in, trying to quell the rumble in his belly and get sustenance to his brain so he could formulate some way to convince her that this was indeed a date, and would be ending as such—with a plan to see each other again and his lips on as many parts of her body as she’d allow. When he had cleared his half of the plate he looked up and noticed she’d polished off both the papaya and cucumber salads. He knew she had to be hungry.
He pulled a bottle of pain pills from his messenger bag and downed three. He rarely had to take anything anymore, but she’d kept him on his pinned-together feet all day. He would have taken something sooner, but he didn’t like to take meds on an empty stomach.
“Headache?” she asked, straightening the napkin on her lap.
“Feet ache. I don’t know how you managed all that walking in heels.” He smiled wide, hoping she wouldn’t ask about his feet. He didn’t want to have to talk about the accident, the end of his professional soccer career, or the mental anguish at having to rework his entire life. With as crushed as they’d been, his feet had recovered remarkably. He’d never run a marathon, but the limp was practically unnoticeable now.
“I’m in heels every day during store hours. Every inch helps when you’re vertically challenged.” She tilted her head, looking quizzically at the plate of food.
“You don’t like spring rolls?” He plucked one from the plate, dipped it in the sweet chili sauce and took a bite.
“What’s in there?”
“You’ve never had a spring roll?” he asked after swallowing. “They’re vegetables and rice noodles wrapped in rice paper.”
“Rice paper?” She wrinkled her nose. “Why would I want to eat paper?”
“It tastes like rice, just rolled out so it can hold all the stuff together. Taste it.”
Her smile was completely irresistible as she handled the roll like it might explode and took the daintiest bite.
“It’s better with the sauce,” he said, just to encourage her to let him watch her take another taste.
She did, and a satisfied grin lit up her face. “It’s like a salad you can hold in your hand.”
“I guess so.” He laughed. “Haven’t you been out for Thai food before?”
She shook her head. “I don’t eat out much.”
“I eat out constantly, so I can be your tour guide of the best restaurants Portland has to offer. Egyptian, Chinese, Greek, Italian. You name it.”
“Egyptian?”
She must have decided this was a date after all. “Egyptian it is. I’ll pick you up so you won’t have to drive again.”
“Pick me up?”
“Dinner, tomorrow night. You, me, Egyptian food.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Logan.” She set down her half-eaten spring roll, put her hands in her lap and sat up straight in her chair.
“Egyptian is not as risky as you think.” He was not about to let her squirm away. She worked too hard, had shown him as much today. H
e was just the person to make sure she had a good time. “But we could do something more traditional. Mexican?”
“I don’t date.”
“You don’t date?” Frustration tightened his jaw. “Why not?”
“There isn’t room for it in my life.”
“Well, make room.” A tension-filled silence sat heavy between them until the waitress returned to clear and then deliver plate after plate.
“You haven’t told me what you’ve decided about the project.” She blinked her big blue eyes as if she hadn’t put the skids on their conversation and thrown it in reverse.
What he wouldn’t give to be able to shake her aloof composure. “I’m just one opinion.” He surveyed the plates on the table and rearranged them so the green curry with tofu and vegetarian pad Thai were closest to her and pulled the chicken basil stir-fry closer.
“Which is?” She placed a single bite of the curry and noodles on opposite sides of her plate. She tasted each with cautious precision.
“Mendelssohn’s needs to focus on training to make sure their employees are ready for the Kicks roll out.”
“We’re keeping the exclusivity program?” She piled half the dish of noodles on her plate and smothered them with peanut sauce.
“Probably. But there will be some conditions, I’m sure.” He slid his foot under the table until it connected with hers. “Can we be done with work talk now?”
“No.” She shook her head, the dark ringlets that escaped her clip swaying. “This is a business dinner.”
“And after dinner?”
He’d sensed the mutual attraction all day, but she’d opposed his flirtatious advances with her arsenal of retail knowledge. He knew she was just trying to keep her own attraction at bay. And all day he’d let her, especially since they were in her stores.
But this was a restaurant. A quiet table in the back with low lighting. The only business going on was in her head.
“It would be unprofessional for anything to happen between us.” She spoke in her ever-efficient manner, which he already found disturbingly endearing.
“How so?”
“We work together.”
“No, we don’t.”
For Kicks Page 2
