When I got back to the office, I was surprised to see Dan standing at my desk. His expression was still pissed, but now he was pissed and mobile. Jesus Christ, what was up with him?
I was honestly confused, because Dan was usually a pretty good boss. I’d moved to his department three years ago, and we’d always worked well together. We weren’t friends, and we didn’t talk much outside of the normal office pleasantries, but as bosses go, he was fair and appreciative, and never expected me to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. Which made his sudden bad temper all the more…vexing.
“May I help you?” My voice dripped with fake decorum. His sour face brought out the worst in me.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
“At lunch. Am I not allowed to eat anymore? Did I miss a memo?” Which really wasn’t fair. He usually encouraged me to get out of the office for a few minutes in the afternoons, but more often than not I just went down to McAllister’s and got a salad to eat at my desk.
“Just let me know when you go next time. Why was Jack Brogan up here looking for you?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“I…I don’t know. What did he say?” My heart was thwomping in my chest, and I developed a sudden, intense interest in the corner of my desk.
“He said, ‘Is Lexi around?’” He spoke as if I were a particularly slow preschooler. “Why is he looking for you?”
“I have no idea, but I’m not sure—”
“This is really inappropriate, Lexi.”
My eyes darted to him quickly. There was no way…even the gossip web at T&G didn’t move that fast…did it?
“What exactly are you talking about?”
“If they want you up in corporate, they need to go through me. Guys like Brogan think they can come steal every halfway competent person we get here in research, without a thought to how long I spend training them. What we do might not be flashy, but it’s vital. And I can’t do it without help, dammit.”
It was the most I’d heard him talk in three years. His eyes were burning with anger, so brown they were almost black.
“Dan, Jack doesn’t want to move me to corporate. And even if he did, I’d never go. I can’t think of a job I’d hate more.” It was true. The wining and dining, the high-profile mergers, dealing with the press… I was a woman destined to work behind a desk, and I was perfectly happy about it.
“Then why else would he come sniffing around here? God forbid I compliment anyone—the next day someone’s trying to steal them out from under me.”
“You complimented me?”
“I might have complimented your work,” he said grudgingly. Clearly he didn’t want me to get a big head about it.
“Look, if Jack came by to see me, I’m pretty sure it was for something, umm…personal.”
His brow furrowed briefly, and then his eyes went wide with understanding. “Oh.”
I felt the color rise on my cheeks and hurried behind my desk. I don’t know why I cared what he thought, but I did. However, it didn’t look like Dan was ready to sit down over a cup of Earl Grey and share his advice about office romance. In fact, he walked silently back to his desk, sat for two or three minutes while I booted up my computer, and then he got up to leave.
“Where are you going?” I asked as he shrugged into his jacket.
“To lunch.”
“Why?” I blurted. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Dan leave the building for lunch. Truthfully, I didn’t think I’d ever seen him leave the building.
“Aren’t I allowed to eat? Did I miss a memo?” he sneered, and stormed out before I could even apologize.
That night, Jack came to my house late, because we both worked insane hours, and because he probably didn’t want to be seen. When I opened the door, he said hi, told me I looked pretty. Then his eyes headed south, and I knew he wasn’t interested in sitting on the couch and engaging in the chitchat of a new relationship—Do you have any brothers or sisters? If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?—and, truth be told, in all the years I’d fantasized about Jack, very rarely had I dreamt of leisurely talks about politics or the role that spirituality played in our lives. I wanted his heat, his strength, his body consuming mine again. We went straight to the bedroom.
Once we were in bed, things went from zero to flaming in about three seconds. It felt like he was made for me, as if I’d called up and ordered him from “Lexi’s Custom Male”. His smell was the exact smell that drove me wild, his hands the ideal shape to cup my breasts, his skin the perfect texture to bring me alive.
Sex with Jack was better than anything I’d dared to imagine. We came together tirelessly, until I lost track of time, lost hold of anything that existed outside of the mattress underneath us. Finally, when we were both so spent we were actually wheezing instead of breathing, we slumped in a heap at the foot of the bed.
As my body calmed, I waited for his words, his praise. A reiteration of my beauty from the night before. Even a “holy crap, that was hot” would have sufficed. But his breathing grew slow, then slower, then really loud. He wasn’t searching for the perfect phrase to describe his ardor. He’d fallen asleep.
At three in the morning, I pulled my numb, tingling arm from under Jack’s shoulders and stumbled in the dark to the bathroom. When I returned, I was surprised to see he was awake, propped up on two pillows, looking at me. I grabbed a T-shirt off the top of my dresser and slid it on quickly.
“Why the false modesty?” he asked.
“I’m pretty sure it’s not false.”
“You could’ve fooled me. I can think of a hundred words to describe you, Lexi, but modest isn’t one of them.”
I wasn’t sure how to take that, so I stored it in my brain to examine later.
“Sorry I woke you.” I mumbled, doing my best to slide gracefully back in between the twisted sheets.
“Sorry I fell asleep. Being with you…I don’t know, it kind of takes it out of me, I guess.” He sounded a little embarrassed, which made me smile. He slid over, put his arm around me, and touched his lips to my hair. We lay in silence for a long moment. Despite my reluctance earlier in the evening, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we should, you know…talk. About something. Sex was great, Jesus, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t want to be Jack’s fuck buddy. I wanted more.
So when I felt his hand slide down my side to massage my ass, my body tensed. I mean, I was pretty sure I’d permanently damage something if we did it again. But more importantly, I didn’t want sex, I wanted answers—answers to questions I dared not ask: Are you divorced yet? Did you think about her while we were doing it? Now that you’re not drunk…did you like it? Did you mean it when you said I was beautiful?
What I got was talk about work. Jack was so used to being the crown prince of T&G, it was as if the real world didn’t exist. I discovered over the next few nights that if we weren’t covering sex or the office, Jack’s conversational skills were sketchy at best. I knew that he was in the final stages of his divorce, that he and Julia were working out a joint custody arrangement with Brooklyn (another question I was dying to ask—who names their kid Brooklyn?). I knew he was putting his house on the market soon. I knew he liked a girl who swallowed. But other than that, my knowledge of Jack Brogan was about the same as before.
“I think he’s still in love with his wife,” I pronounced the next night over cookie dough ice cream and the “Real Housewives” of some metropolis. It was Saturday—Jack had Brooklyn for the weekend, and I had April.
“No way—if he’s still in love with Julia, why would he be carrying on with you?”
“April, he’s a guy—I mean, the sex…well, shit, the sex is phenomenal, but…” I trailed off. I waited for April to tell me that he would come around, that he was probably just shy, or wary of a new relationship coming off his marriage. After I got tired of waiting, I spoke for her. “I mean, maybe he just needs time before he feels like he can make an emotional connect
ion with someone else.”
“You’re probably right,” April slurred over a mouthful of gooey ice cream. “Omigod, look, Charlene is getting more lipo!”
But I couldn’t embrace the carousel of crazy on my TV screen—I had my own problems, and they weren’t the kind that Botox and Pilates could solve.
Chapter Three
Strangely enough, work became the place I went to relax, where my emotions could take a breather and my mind could focus on something other than Jack and what was—and wasn’t—happening between us.
Then one day in late January, I entered the office and found myself inexplicably alone. I was struck dumb, as Dan’s presence was as steady and predictable as that of the copy machine in the corner. I checked email and voicemail for messages, then walked to his desk, searching for clues to his whereabouts. Folders and spreadsheets were strewn everywhere, growing like tumors, leaving almost no room for his telephone, his computer monitor and keyboard, his tape dispenser. Had he jotted something down on his desk calendar? I glanced quickly, saw a few reminders, saw “Sterling Ridge Asst. Lvg.” scrawled across Sunday, with a phone number. But there was nothing else for the week—no doctor’s appointment, no working breakfast with scary Edward Monahan, the VP of Research. Wherever he was, he’d left no trail of crumbs in his wake. I supposed he’d probably—
“What are you doing?”
Dan didn’t speak loudly, but I jumped back a full foot and let out a cry that sounded kind of like “Maah!” I clutched my hand to my chest, my mouth open in surprise, like a pin-curled heroine in a silent movie.
“I…I was…where were you?” I demanded suddenly. Wasn’t I the wronged party here? He’d scared the crap out of me.
“None of your business. What do you need?” His hands were on his hips, his expression one of supreme annoyance. But he looked different for some reason, and it took me a minute to put my finger on it.
“Did you get your hair cut?”
“What? Yes. Would you get to work?”
I skulked to my desk, bumping some papers from the credenza behind his large leather chair along the way. I was feeling rebellious, so I didn’t stop to pick them up. In a few minutes, after I’d reined in my temper and my weird panic over not knowing where he was, I turned to ask him a question about some price and volume forecast that was giving me fits. I stopped when I realized he was staring blankly at the coffeepot across the room, his brown eyes glassy and lifeless, his shoulders slumped.
“Dan…”
“Huh?” I’d startled him.
“Is everything okay?”
He sighed, to show me how patient he was. “Yes, Lexi. Please get going—they want that stuff on the divestiture by lunch. Do you need me to help you?” His tone couldn’t have been more scornful if he’d offered to help cut my meat at the dinner table.
And suddenly, inexplicably, I was on the verge of tears. My throat closed up, my nostrils flared, my bottom lip quivered. What the hell was my problem? I swiveled my chair quickly, busied myself refilling the bottom tray of my laser printer. I heard Dan take a deep breath.
“I was moving my mother into a nursing home. Although now they’re called assisted living facilities.” I closed the printer drawer and turned to him. He looked grimly at the floor. “She has Alzheimer’s, and it’s gotten to be too much for the woman who checks up on her.” He kicked an invisible spot on the carpet with his toe. “I can’t…I mean, I’m an only child. I’m here twelve hours a day. Last week she dropped a hot iron on her bare foot. The day after Christmas her neighbor found her burning trash in the backyard, wearing nothing but a housecoat. I just…”
He stopped. I wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to justify his decision to me, but I didn’t know how. Speaking to Dan about anything other than financial models made me nervous.
“When I left, she started crying. She wanted to go home. She wanted my dad.” I tried to see his face, but he was still looking down, his chin buried in his neck, arms crossed tightly over his chest.
“Where’s your dad?” I whispered.
“He died when I was in high school. She keeps forgetting.”
We sat in silence for a long moment. My tearfulness had subsided, thank God, but my heart felt heavy, unbearably low in my chest. I thought about my own mother, in Cincinnati with my dad, healthy and happy, training for a triathlon, of all things. Even when I was a child, her energy had exhausted me. I thought of Brooklyn, tried to imagine her as an adult, hovering over a doddering Jack, trying to make the same decision that Dan faced today. I wondered if she’d pick the worst facility she could find, as revenge for the stupid name she’d been saddled with.
I wished I could find the perfect words to ease Dan’s guilt.
“When you’re done with the report, call a courier and have it sent to Kevin over at HCA. I’m up to my eyeballs in this Kellogg crap, so I don’t have time to look it over. Make sure there are no errors.”
“Dan…” I searched for something comforting and adult to say but came up with nothing.
“What?” he spat, as if his moment of personal weakness had left a bad taste in his mouth.
“Are you going to keep acting like this, or are you going to get nicer?”
His lips twitched a bit. “I’m going to get nicer.”
“When?”
“Next week, possibly the week after. I can’t be sure.”
“Well, I look forward to it.”
“Shut up and get to work.”
We were on our way home from dinner, and Jack was in no small hurry to get there, if his hand resting lightly on my lap was any indication. I grinned in the dark and pretended to be disinterested, looking out the window and chatting about the upcoming weekend. He squirmed a bit in his seat and took the last turn towards his apartment a little faster than he should have, his tires squealing in protest.
His index finger had inched below the hem of my skirt and began creeping up the inside of my thigh when we both heard the siren and looked in the rear-view mirror to see the flashing lights behind us.
“Crap,” Jack said under his breath as he began to slow down and pull over to the side of the road. “Crap, crap, crap…”
“Were you speeding?” I looked over my shoulder at the squad car behind us.
“Probably…I don’t know, I was distracted.” He leaned over my lap to grab his insurance card and registration form from the glove compartment. He rolled down his window and waited as the trooper walked slowly towards the car. I pulled my sweater tight against my chest.
“Good evening… May I see your license and registration, sir?” I heard, although I was blinded for a second by the policeman’s flashlight. Oh, it was a policewoman—she looked to be in her early forties, with sandy blonde hair tucked neatly into her hat. Jack handed over his papers and license silently. She took them and wrote a few things down on her pad.
“Is there a reason you were driving so fast, Mr. Brogan?”
“I’m sorry, I must have been distracted…” He paused for a long second, then sighed deeply. “I guess I’ve just been a little…spacey lately, you know. This is embarrassing, but…I’m in the middle of a divorce, and…” He looked up shyly, blinked a few times, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, you don’t want to hear all this, I apologize…”
What the…? Oh my God!
I cleared my throat softly and looked at him sharply out of the corner of my eye, my lips drawn in a thin line. Jack ignored me, focusing completely on his story and the policewoman in front of him. I wondered who the policewoman thought I was, but Jack was doing such a good job of charming her, I was halfway convinced the woman hadn’t even noticed me in the passenger’s seat.
She stopped writing in her pad. Unbelievably, she and Jack began to talk about breakups and agreed that the first few weeks after the end of a relationship were always the hardest. I turned my head and bit my lower lip when the officer brought up her own divorce, while Jack nodded sympathetically at her story.
“We
ll, Mr…umm…Brogan,” she said finally, glancing down at his license to confirm his name, “I’m going to issue you a warning this time, but try to pay more attention in the future, okay?” She returned his documents, and Jack thanked her and gave her a charming smile. It took everything I had not to groan in disbelief.
As soon as he rolled up the window, I slapped his arm. He shrugged away from me and held up his hand in self-defense.
“You did not just do that!” I huffed.
“Do what?” he asked, the picture of innocence, except for the hint of a grin on his face as he pulled back on the road and carefully merged with traffic.
“Oh, please…flirting your way out of a ticket? Batting those eyelashes around?”
“Hey, everything I said was true,” he said defensively.
“Still, you knew what you were doing,” I argued, crossing my arms over my chest tightly.
“Like you’ve never talked your way out of a ticket?” I didn’t answer. “Women do it all the time, but guys hardly ever get the chance. We can’t cry. We usually can’t flirt, since most cops are guys. I just saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.” He grinned smugly as he pulled into the driveway of his house. “Sooo…” he drawled, “you wanna…you know…take me upstairs and punish me?” He wiggled his eyebrows and grinned lasciviously. “Tie me up, handcuff me, you know…whatever it takes,” he continued as he got out of the car and walked around to open my door.
When we reached the house, he grabbed my wrist and dragged me quickly to the couch, pulling me on his lap as he sat down with a thud. His lips captured mine, and I felt the urgency in his kiss immediately, his lips and tongue and hot breath hitting me like a steamroller, knocking the breath right out of my chest.
“Jack,” I gasped, when I could finally speak.
“This…this is what I’ve been waiting for all night,” he panted against my neck feverishly. “I couldn’t let a stupid speeding ticket get in my way.”
An Unexpected Love Page 2
