“Could you please tell me what’s wrong with me? I swear if anyone else looks at me and snickers, I might go postal.”
Samantha Parker looked up from her computer monitor to see Adrian Cole standing in her cube. Or rather towering over it. At six foot five, the man reminded her of a giraffe when he moved around the office.
Not that she minded. Personally, she adored his height, just as she adored those gorgeous eyes of his. Deep and a dark chocolate-brown, they made her melt every time he looked at her.
And the sleek, loose-limbed way he walked . . .
Oooh, just thinking about it was enough to make her burn.
She’d never been particularly fond of blond men, but those dark eyes with his thick mane of tawny curls and lush golden skin just made her ache for a taste. A nervous jitter went over her like it always did when he stood this close to her, and she could smell the clean, spicy scent of him. The man was simply mouth-wateringly scrumptious, and incredibly brilliant.
“Well?” he prompted.
Sam bit her lip as she raked her gaze over his long, lean frame. “Other than the fact you look like your seeing-eye dog dressed you this morning, nothing,” she teased. “What did you do to make Heather mad this time?”
He cursed under his breath. It was common knowledge that Adrian had a rare type of color blindness that rendered him completely incapable of seeing any color whatsoever. As a result, he paid his baby sister to do his laundry, and every time Heather got upset at big brother, she took it out on his wardrobe.
“What did she do to me now?” he asked warily.
“Well, you’ll be happy to know your red plaid shirt is still red, but the splotchy pink Henley really has to go.”
Adrian held his leg out and pulled his jeans up to show her his socks. “What about them?”
“Unlike your shirt, they actually match your Henley.”
Growling low in his throat, he buttoned his plaid shirt all the way to his neck. “One day, I’m going to kill her.”
Sam laughed at the threat he uttered at least twice a week. She’d met Heather a couple of times during lunch, and though Sam liked her, Heather was a bit self-absorbed.
“So, what did you do?” she asked.
“I refused to let her borrow my Vette. The last time she took it out, she hit a pole and cost me three thousand dollars in damage.”
“Yikes.” Sam cringed for him. Adrian loved his vintage 1969 Stingray. “Was she hurt?”
“Thankfully, no, but my car is still sulking over it.”
Sam laughed again, but then, she always did that around him. Adrian had a dry, sharp wit that never missed a beat. “Well, I’m glad you stopped by. My Perforce is acting up again. I can’t get it to integrate my changes.” Which meant that the stupid server had her locked out and every time she tried to update a page on their Web site, it refused to let her.
She hated Perforce, and it hated her. But they were required to use it so that upper management could keep track of who made what changes to the Web site, and out of the entire network services department, Adrian was the only one who really understood the program.
“What’s it doing?” he asked as he came to stand beside her.
Sam couldn’t breathe as he leaned down to read her screen. His face was so close to hers that all she had to do was move a mere two inches and she would be able to place her lips against that strong, sculpted jaw.
She heard Adrian’s words, but they didn’t register. She was too busy watching the way his incredibly broad shoulders hunched as he leaned with one hand against her desk.
He glanced down at her.
Sam blinked and looked back at the screen. “I’m scrolling,” she said as she reached for her mouse.
“There’s your problem,” he said as he read the gobbledygook. “You haven’t enabled your baseline merges.”
“And in English that would mean?”
Adrian laughed that rich, deep laugh that made her burn even more. He covered her hand with his on the mouse and showed her how to choose the right options.
He surrounded her with his masculine warmth. Sam swallowed at the disturbing sensation of his hand on hers as fire coursed through her. He had beautiful, strong hands. His long, lean fingers were tapered and perfect. Worse, every time she looked at them, she couldn’t help wondering what they would feel like on her body, touching her, caressing her.
Seducing her.
His cell phone rang. Adrian straightened and pulled the phone from its cradle on his belt. He checked the caller ID, then flipped it open like Captain Kirk. “Yeah, Scott, what’s wrong?”
“Radius is down,” Scott, their network security specialist, said over the speaker phone, “and I can’t get it up and running.”
“Did you reboot?”
“Duh.”
Adrian indicated her chair with his head.
Sam got up and watched as he set the phone aside, took a seat in her chair, and opened a DOS window on her computer. He tapped swiftly on her keyboard, then picked his phone back up. “It’s not cycling.”
“I know, and I can’t fix it.”
“All right,” Adrian said with saintly patience. “I’ll be up there in a few minutes.”
He clicked off his phone, but before he could move, his phone rang at the same time his pager went off and the overhead paging system called his name. Adrian answered his cell phone again and checked his pager.
“Did you get the hacker alert?” Scott asked.
“Hang on,” Adrian said, then he reached for her desk phone to answer his page.
“Hi, Randy,” he said as he tucked the phone between his shoulder and cheek and started typing on her keyboard. “I’m in the process of switching the main databases over to my SQL. We should be ready to fly by five.” He paused as he listened and switched her computer from the Windows over to Linux.
Sam watched in awe as he flawlessly entered line after line of stuff she couldn’t even begin to follow or understand.
“No,” Adrian said to Randy, “our customers won’t notice at all, except the searches will take less time.” He entered more lines as he listened to their senior director, Randy Jacobs, on the phone.
Another page went off for him.
Adrian nodded as he listened to Randy. “Yeah, I’ll get to it. Would you mind holding for just a second?”
He picked up his cell phone. “Scott, it’s not a hacker. It’s an invalid SID. Someone is using a bookmark with an old Session ID attached to it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. I’m looking at it right now.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Adrian gave her a sheepish smile as he clicked off his cell phone and picked up the other line on her desk phone.
Biting her lips to keep from smiling at the chaos, Sam felt for him. At twenty-six, Adrian was known to everyone in the company as the boy genius. He had taken a billion-dollar corporation from the 1980s mainframe mentality into the twenty-first century Web-based e-commerce. He had single-handedly built the entire programming side of their million-dollar business retail site, and put together a Web design team that was second to none.
Unfortunately, though, everyone in the company turned to him every time something went wrong with the site. Which meant he was always on call and always rushing from one department to the next, putting out fires and trying his best to explain extremely complicated things to people who had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.
Adrian came into the office every morning by five-thirty, and seldom went home before eight at night.
The stress on him had to be excruciating, and yet he was the most easygoing boss she’d ever known. She couldn’t count the number of times a day someone was complaining, if not shouting, about something, or begging him to help them, and yet he never let the strain of it show.
“Scott,” Adrian said at his cell phone, “go get a cup of coffee. I’m headed upstairs as soon as I finish with Randy.” He returned to her phone. “I’m back, Randy.” He listened for a few minutes more, then nodded. “All right,” he said, pulling the Palm Pilot off his belt. “I’ll put it on my schedule.”
Sam watched as he added yet another meeting to his already booked calendar.
“Okay,” he said to Randy. “I’m on it. See you later.”
Adrian left the chair, then hesitated at the opening of Sam’s cube as she resumed her seat. In a rare show of uneasiness, he picked up the wooden medieval knight her brother had given her. “This is new.”
She nodded. “Teddy got it Thanksgiving when he went to Germany.”
“It’s neat,” he said, putting it back on the shelf with the rest of the knights. She had been collecting them for years. She figured they were as close as she’d ever come to having a real knight in shining armor.
He glanced around her cube at the large Santa and snowmen cutouts she had pinned up, the small Christmas tree she had next to her monitor, and the stack of holiday catalogues by her keyboard. “You really love Christmas, don’t you?”
Sam glanced down at her Santa and reindeer sweater and smiled. “My favorite time of year. Don’t you like it?”
He shrugged. “It’s a day off, I guess.”
Still Adrian hesitated, fiddling with her nameplate.
How odd. It was so unlike him to be fidgety. This was a man who made million-dollar decisions and held meetings with the stars of the Fortune 500 without even a minor qualm.
What on earth could he be nervous about?
“Would you mind if I asked a giant favor?”
Her heart pounded. Oh, baby, ask me anything!
“What’cha need?”
He dropped his gaze down to her nameplate as he slid it back and forth in its holder. “Since Heather has totally screwed up my clothes again, I was wondering if you’d mind going shopping with me after work? I’d take Randir, but even I can tell his clothes don’t match.”
“I heard that!” Randir said laughingly from the next cube.
Sam smiled. The guys in her department teased each other mercilessly, and it was what she loved most about her job. Everyone got along well and no one minded the incessant quips and taunts that were hurled about as often as Adrian got paged.
“Anyway,” Adrian said, ignoring Randir’s interruption. “Would you mind? I’ll buy you dinner.”
Yes! Her heart skipped a beat as she did her best to appear calm, while inside, what she really wanted to do was turn cartwheels. “I don’t mind.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
“Great,” he said with a slight smile. “Then I guess I better go to Scott before he hyperventilates.”
“Okay, see you later.”
Adrian took one last look at Sam as she returned her attention to her monitor. He clenched his teeth as he watched her fingers stroking the keys on her keyboard.
That woman had the lightest touch he’d ever seen, and he ached to feel those hands on his body. Ached to take them into his mouth and nibble every inch of them.
Worse, what he really wanted to do was pick her up from that chair, take her into his office, and toss everything on top of his desk onto the floor before laying her down on top of it.
Oh, yeah, he could already taste her lips as he peeled the thick sweater and jeans off her body. Feel her hot and wet for him as he coaxed and teased her body into blind ecstasy.
His groin tightened in pain at the thought.
Stop it! he snapped at himself. He was her team leader, and she was one of his best employees. Company policy stringently forbade dating between management and staff, and violation of that policy meant immediate dismissal.
Yeah, but the woman made him seriously hot.
Dangerously hot.
She always wore her long, dark hair pulled back from her face where it fell in thick waves down to her waist. He’d spent hours at night fantasizing about that hair draped on his chest, or spread out across his pillow.
And she had the palest eyes he’d ever seen. She’d told him once they were green, and it pained him that he had absolutely no idea what that color meant.
But from what he could see, green had to be beautiful.
Her eyes were a bit large for her pixie face, and they were always bright and teasing when she looked at him.
He could stare into those eyes for an eternity.
Adrian ran his gaze over her lush curves, and he hardened even more as raw, demanding desire tore through him. Sam had once complained about her weight, but he couldn’t find any fault with it. After growing up with a skinny, frail mother and sister, he couldn’t stand to see a woman with no meat on her bones.
Her full, voluptuous body made him absolutely crazy with unspent lust. And for the last year, he’d been forced to learn to live with a raging erection every time he got near her, or heard the sound of her smooth Southern drawl.
Sam paused and looked up at him. “Did you need something else?”
Yeah, I need you to smile at me.
Touch me.
Better still, I need you to climb me like a ladder . . .
“No,” he said as another page sounded for him.
Adrian turned away from her and answered the page with his cell phone as he headed upstairs to tend Scott’s antsy twitters.
Sam clenched her hands as her computer clock showed ten after five. An anxious tremor went through her as she feared Adrian might have changed his mind about going out with her.
Taking a deep breath for courage, she shut down her computer, then walked the short distance to Adrian’s office.
He had his back to her as he typed like lightning on his keyboard while talking on the phone. “It’s switched,” he said. “Everything is clear . . . No, I ran the logs, and as of yesterday, we’ve cleared seven hundred thousand dollars in orders since the end of October . . . Yeah,” he said with a light laugh. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”
He hung up the phone, and she saw him rub his hand over his eyes as if he had a headache. His cell phone rang. Without breaking stride, he answered it.
“Hi, Tiffany,” he said to their marketing director. “Yeah, I’ll be here for a few more minutes. I was planning on implementing your changeover after Christmas since there’s a good chance it could slow down site access.” He listened as he worked and Sam shook her head.
The man was simply amazing. She didn’t know how he managed to stay on top of everything, but he did.
He pushed his chair back from his computer desk and swung it around to the desk in front of her. As his gaze fell on her, he smiled that wolfish grin that made her blood race. She felt a vicious stab of desire straight through her middle.
Reaching for a stack of reports, he flipped to one of the middle pages. “Okay,” he said to Tiffany. “I’ll take care of it first thing in the morning.”
He clicked off his phone. “Sorry about that,” he said to Sam. “I didn’t know you were standing there. Just give me a sec, I’ll get this finished, and we can leave.”
Sam let out a relieved breath. Thank goodness, he hadn’t changed his mind. She moved into his office and took a seat against the window as she waited for him. “Have we really done seven hundred thousand dollars off the site since Halloween?”
He nodded. “We should easily hit a million by Christmas.” He flashed her another smile. “Should make for nice bonuses.”
Money, she didn’t care about. So long as she made enough to cover her car and rent, she was completely happy. But she was glad for Adrian’s sake. Their business-to-business e-commerce Web site was his pride and joy, and he took a lot of flak from the higher-ups when the site didn’t perform the way they thought it should.
Sam looked up as Tiffany stalked into Adrian’s office. “Adrian,” Tiffany whined as she glanced at Sam without acknowledging her. Thin, tall, and gorgeous, Tiffany should have been a model. All the leggy blonde had to do was bat her eyelashes, and every guy in the building would drop what he was doing and rush to her side.
And every time Sam got near her, she felt like a warted troll in comparison.
“Adrian,” Tiffany said again. “I got an e-mail from a customer wanting to know why he has to enter in his password every time he wants to order something. He wants us to fix it so that he can just do a one-click order option. What should I tell him?”
Adrian didn’t pause in his typing as he answered. “That it’s a safeguard to save his butt should one of his disgruntled employees get ticked off, and decide to order several thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise and charge it to his account.”
Tiffany rolled her eyes at Adrian’s sarcasm. “Well, he says—”
“I don’t give a damn what he says,” Adrian said calmly.
Sam bit her lip as Tiffany’s face flushed bright red. That was Adrian’s only flaw. The man didn’t pull punches, and he always spoke his mind, consequences be damned.
“Those safeguards are there for his protection,” he continued, “and I’m not about to change it since he’ll be the first one to whine when he gets burned.”
Tiffany stomped her foot. “Would you look at me when you’re talking to me?”
Sam arched her brow as Adrian turned around with a look on his face that should have sent Tiffany running. To his credit, all he said was a simple, “Yes?”
“I need a more tactful answer for him than that.” She narrowed those blue eyes at him. “Look, I know you think you own this Web site, but the last time I checked, you were just another flunky here like the rest of us.”
He took a deep breath as both his pager and phone went off. “I tell you what,” he said in a self-controlled tone, “since I’m a flunky here like everyone else, why don’t you come in at midnight tonight to post a press release because the man who signs our checks wants it to go live exactly at that time?” He picked his phone off his belt.
He checked the caller ID, flipped it open, and said, “Scott, it’s not a hacker. I’m validating the PHP.”
Adrian hung up the phone. “Now, Miss Klein, if you want a more tactful response, then please forward the e-mail to me and I will respond to it myself.”
Tossing her hair over her shoulder, Tiffany glared at him. “I want a copy of your response.”
“Yes, Mom.”
Tiffany’s nostrils flared. Turning on her red high heels, she stalked out of his office. But as she left, Sam heard her muttering under her breath, “What a friggin’ geek.”
She couldn’t tell if Adrian heard it. He merely checked his pager, then grabbed one of the reports and swung his chair back around to his computer.
“You must get tired of all this,” she said quietly.
“I’m used to it,” he said simply as he started typing again.
Sam shook her head. Poor Adrian. He wasn’t even allowed to get sick. She remembered last summer when he had pneumonia. He’d been forced to drag himself in to work to fix some problem no one else could solve.
The man needed a break.
And how she wished she dared get up from her chair, go over to him and massage those broad, tense shoulders for him. She could just imagine the feel of his lean muscles under her hand, the sight of his handsome features relaxed.
He would be breathtaking.
Sam, you have got to quit fantasizing. Boy-genius doesn’t even know you’re alive.
Even though it was true, she wished things were different between them. Adrian was the first guy she’d ever met whom she really could see herself having kids with. She’d love to have a houseful of tall brainiacs who were fast on a comeback.
It was a full ten minutes before Adrian finally logged off his computer. He got up to shrug on his faded blue ski jacket.
“C’mon,” he said to her. “Let’s make a mad run for the door before someone catches me.”
She laughed, knowing it wasn’t a joke.
He locked his office, then they headed outside to the dimly lit parking lot.
“Why don’t you ride with me?” he asked as she started for her silver Honda. “You’re the only person in the department who hasn’t ridden in the Vette.”
Oh, don’t tempt me, you cruel man. She hadn’t ridden in his Corvette because she couldn’t stand the thought of being so close to him and not being able to touch that wonderful body. “Yeah, but you’ll have to bring me all the way back here.”
Sam bit her lip as her pulse raced. Don’t do it! Don’t torture yourself.
But one look at his chiseled features in the streetlight and she was hooked. “Okay,” she said with a nonchalance she didn’t feel.
He opened the passenger side door for her, then closed it after she got in. Sam drew a ragged breath at his consideration. She’d never had a man do that for her before.
Adrian got in the other side, and she had to bite back a laugh at the sight of him cramming his long body into the car.
“Don’t say anything,” he said as he put the key in the ignition. “Heather already told me I look like a grasshopper in a peanut shell.”
She couldn’t help laughing at that. “Sorry,” she said, clearing her throat as she caught his sideways glare. “I wouldn’t have laughed if you hadn’t said that.”
Sam leaned back in the black leather seat as she inhaled the warm, spicy scent of him. Good heavens, but that masculine smell made her giddy and hot. She would love nothing more than to lean over, cup the back of his neck with her hand, and kiss the daylights out of those full, sensuous lips.
Adrian started the car and did his best to ignore just how good Sam looked sitting beside him. He ached to reach his hand over to where she had her legs slightly parted and caress her inner thigh.
Oh, yeah, he could already feel the denim and her flesh in his palm. And then, he imagined where he’d like to take his hand next.
Up her thigh to cup her between her legs.
Grinding his teeth, he could see them locked in a kiss, feel her hands sliding over him as he undressed her.
It had been a long time since he’d made out in a car, but for the first time since high school, he found the idea appealing.
A surge of lust ripped through him as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
She’d taken that stupid clip out of her hair and brushed her bangs with her hand so that now her hair fell around her face, framing it to perfection. And it was torturing him.
Pulling out of the lot, he headed toward Hickory Hollow Mall. He hadn’t even gone a mile when he noticed Sam tensing in her seat. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
She flinched as he changed lanes. “You know, Adrian, this isn’t a video game, and cars don’t evaporate if you hit them. Jeez, you drive like you have a death wish.”
He laughed and backed off his speed. “Come on, half the fun of this car is pushing its limits.”
She crossed herself. “I hope you have a good life insurance policy.”
He did, but there wasn’t anyone to reap the benefits of it. And it was one of his biggest regrets. He’d never been the kind of guy to date much. Taking care of his mother, sister, and work left him very little time to socialize.
Not that it mattered. As soon as he opened his mouth and said something, most women got a blank, dazed look on their faces and stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language.
But not Sam. She understood even his most obscure references.
“Adrian!” she snapped as a semi cut them off. “That’s a truck!”
He hit the brakes. “Don’t worry, I don’t dare die before I put the Christmas press release up. And even if I did, I’m sure Randy would be at the funeral home with a laptop asking me to take care of some last-minute thing.”
“You’re not funny,” she said, even though she was smiling. “Do you really have to go in later and do that?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” Adrian pulled onto Bell Road. “Want to eat first?”
“Sure.”
“What are you in the mood for?”
“Anything.”
“How about Olive Garden?” he asked, knowing it was one of her favorites.
“Sounds great.”
Adrian pulled into the lot, then went to open the door for her. But by the time he got to her side, she was already getting out. She looked up and smiled. “And they say chivalry is dead.”
“You have a hard time letting anyone do anything for you, don’t you?” he asked.
“What can I say? My brothers broke me in well.”
Adrian shook his head. “I can’t believe your mother didn’t nag them into doing more for you.”
“She might have had she ever been home, but since she had to work all the time after my dad left, it was pretty much just us.”
Adrian tucked his hands into his back pockets to keep himself from subconsciously reaching out to touch her.
God, how he wanted her. She barely reached his shoulders and every time he stood this close to her, he had the worst desire to pick her up in his arms and bury his face in her neck where he could inhale the sweet scent of her skin.
Clenching his teeth, he tried to banish the thought of laying her down on his bed, and spending the rest of the night exploring her body. Slowly. Meticulously.
He opened the door to the restaurant and let her enter first. As she passed him, his gaze trailed down the back of her body and focused on her round hips. His groin instantly hardened. Thank God, he wore baggy jeans.
The hostess led them to a booth in the back. Adrian hesitated as Sam sat down. His first impulse was to sit beside her, but he knew it wouldn’t be appropriate. The only time he got to do that was when all of them went out to lunch, then he always made a point of being the one to sit closest to her.
His gut tightening as another wave of desire hit him, he forced himself into the opposite booth.
“It’s weird to be here without the guys,” she said as she glanced over the menu.
Adrian stared at her as she read the menu. He didn’t know why she bothered since she always ordered the Manicotti Formaggio, and he loved the way she said it. It rolled off her tongue like smooth whisky.
Sam tightened her hands on the menu as she felt Adrian’s gaze on her. Unnerved by its intensity, she tried to cross her legs, but ended up kicking him under the table. “I’m sorry,” she gasped as he grimaced.
“It’s okay,” he said, reaching beneath the table to rub his leg. “I tend to take up a lot of space.”
“Don’t knock it, I’d kill to be tall.”
“I don’t know why. I think you’re a perfect size.”
She glanced up at his unexpected compliment. He cleared his throat and dropped his gaze to his menu.
After they ordered, they sat in awkward silence.
Sam sipped her drink as she tried to think of something to say to him. Normally, they never had a bit of trouble finding things to talk about and laugh over. But tonight, she was just a little too aware of him. A little too nervous about being alone with him, knowing there was no one here to see her if she were to reach over and touch his hand.
No one to see if she . . .
“Did you decide to call that guy about the programming position?” she asked, remembering the résumé he’d given her to review that morning.
“I did, even though my first impulse was to toss it.”
“Why?”
“Dear Ms. Cole,” he said, curling his lip. “I hate it when someone gets my gender wrong. It’s the reason I called you so fast when you submitted your résumé. You’re the only one who hasn’t made that mistake. I knew you had to be brilliant.”
She smiled. “Yeah, well, I have to say I was stumped, which is why I wrote ‘Dear Adrian.’ I figured you had to be a guy, since there are so few women programmers, but just in case you weren’t I didn’t want to tick you off.”
“Thanks, Mom,” he muttered bitterly. “It wasn’t bad enough she passed along the oh-so-wonderful color-blind genes, but she had to curse me with a godawful name to boot.”
“If you hate it so much, why don’t you use your middle name?”
“Because it’s Lesley.”
Sam felt her jaw go slack. “Your mother named you Adrian Lesley Cole?”
He nodded. “She really wanted a daughter. When the nurse told her she had a son, she told the nurse to check again. ‘That just can’t be right,’ ” he said in a falsetto, mocking a thick Southern accent.
Was he serious?
“You know,” she said. “I really like the name Adrian. I think it suits you.”
He snorted. “Gee, thanks for the affront to my manhood.”
“No,” she said with a laugh. There was absolutely nothing feminine about him, or his features. “You just have a classical, romantic look to you, like the hero from some period movie.”
He looked a bit sheepish at her compliment. Sam dropped her gaze down to his hands again and watched the way he trailed the empty straw wrapper through his long fingers.
Oh, she loved those hands of his.
How she wished for the courage to reach over and cover them with hers. But she was terrified of what he might do. Terrified of him rejecting her, because in her heart, she knew she’d already fallen for him.
She needed to be able to see him every day. Needed to feel his presence even if it was at a distance.
No, she would never chance running him off. He was her boss, and she would have to satisfy herself with just being his friend.
As soon as they finished dinner, Adrian drove them up the street to the mall. Sam led him through the men’s section of Dillard’s, looking for things she thought would be hot on him.
She paused as she found a stack of button-fly jeans. “You know, these would look great on you.”
Adrian didn’t miss the gleam in her eyes. He hated button-fly, but if Sam liked them . . .
“I need a thirty-two waist and a thirty-six inseam.”
“Oh, my God, you’re tall.”
He laughed. “I know and it’s a bitch to find them. But if you can locate a pair in this mess, I’ll try them on.”
She did. Adrian tucked them under his arm as he followed her around and did his best not to be too obvious in his ogling of her.
“You’re not going to put me in anything weird, are you?” he asked suspiciously as she stopped to look at a rack of V-neck sweaters. “I might not be able to see colors, but I know guys don’t wear pink, or pastels. And please, nothing in bright yellow because I can’t stand light-post jokes.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you. I’m thinking blacks and dark blues. Maybe red. You look really good in red.”
He smiled. “Really? How good?”
“Very good.” She plucked at his shirtsleeve. “But I don’t like your plaid shirts. They make you look like a lumberjack.”
She’d noticed him! Adrian wanted to shout in happiness. He couldn’t believe she’d actually been looking at him.
“So, what do”—he had to bite back the word you—“women want on a guy?”
“Not those baggy jeans,” she said, looking at his rear and making him even hotter. Harder.
His breathing tense, it was all he could do not to pull her to him and find out exactly what those lips of hers tasted like.
“I don’t know who came up with the idea,” she continued, “but ew. Women like to see a man’s . . .”
“Never mind. I’m having a weird case of déjà vu.”
“Why?”
“I used to buy clothes for my brothers and we’d always get into similar discussions.” She ran her gaze over him. “No offense, but you could really use a makeover.”
Adrian hesitated. Maybe if he let her, she might be a little more receptive to his . . .
You’re her boss.
Yeah, but he liked her more than he had ever liked any other woman. She made him laugh; made him happy every time she looked up at him.
Better still, she made him burn.
“You feel up to it?” he asked before he could stop himself.
“You’d let me?” she asked in disbelief.
“Sure, just so long as you don’t paint my fingernails pale pink.”
She frowned at that. “What?”
“Heather did that to me in high school as a joke. One night while I was sleeping, she sneaked into my room and painted my fingernails. I didn’t notice until I got to school the next day and people started laughing.”
“Why is your sister so mean to you?”
He shrugged. “She doesn’t mean any real harm. She’s just impulsive, and never seems to think before she acts.”
Shaking her head, Sam searched through a rack of black button-down shirts as she thought about what he said. “She really painted your fingernails?”
“Yup.”
“My brothers would have killed me.”
“Yeah, well, she’s my kid sister. My mom always said my one job was to protect her, not pulverize her.”
Affected by his protectiveness, she reached out without thinking and touched his arm.
Her heart stopped.
Holy cow!
Up until now, she’d thought he was on the skinny side like his sister, but there was nothing thin about that arm. His biceps were harder than a brick even while relaxed.
“Okay,” she said, trying to distract herself from that delectable muscle. “Makeover with no nail polish.”
Sam picked out several shirts and more jeans, then sent Adrian to try them on. She was busy looking through another rack when she felt someone behind her.
Turning around, she froze. Adrian was standing at the mirror outside the dressing room with his sweater lifted while he tugged at the back of his jeans. “I don’t know about this,” he said.
She only vaguely registered his words. Because she was captivated by him. The faded denim cupped a rear so tight and well formed that it made her ache to touch it.
He was wearing a thin, black V-neck sweater that clung to his broad shoulders, biceps, and pecs. And worse, the hem of the sweater was lifted up to where she could see his hard, flat stomach and dark brown hairs curling becomingly around his navel.
Oh . . . My . . . God! The man had the body of a well-toned gymnast. Why he had kept that yummy body hidden was beyond her.
“Buddy, you got abs!” she said before she could stop herself.
Adrian met her gaze in the mirror. “What?”
She closed the distance between them and lifted the shirt hem a tad higher as she stared in awe at that body. “You got abs! A whole six-pack of them.” She looked up at him. “You didn’t get those on the computer.”
“Well, no. I do other things on occasion.”
No kidding!
And right then, there was a whole series of other things she wanted to do to him. Starting with those hard abs and working her way up and down that luscious, tanned body. “If I were you, I’d burn all those baggy jeans and oversized shirts as soon as I got home.”
“You like these jeans?”
Biting her lip, she nodded.
Suddenly, Adrian liked them, too. But what he liked most was the hunger he saw in her eyes, the feel of her hand against his stomach. It sent chills all over him.
It was all he could do not to kiss her.
Worse, an image of her lying naked beneath him tore through him. He shuttered his eyes as his breathing faltered. He wanted her so badly, he could already taste the moistness of her lips. Feel the softness of those full breasts in his hands.
It was a such a raw, aching need that it sliced through him.
Sam looked up and caught the heated look in his eyes. He had his lips slightly parted. And she became all too aware of the fact she was still holding his shirt in her hand, and was so close to his hard belly that she could feel his body heat.
Her breasts tightened as a wave of lust singed her.
Please kiss me!
But he didn’t. He swallowed and took a step back.
Sam sighed. What was she thinking? Smart, gorgeous guys like Adrian didn’t date short, fat co-workers. They were friends, plain and simple. There could never be anything between them.
By the time they finished, Adrian was almost a thousand dollars poorer, but he had an entire new wardrobe. And if it would keep Sam staring at him like she was doing, he decided it was worth every penny.
He changed into a new T-shirt, sweater, and jeans before they left.
Their next stop was MasterCuts. “What’s wrong with my hair?” he asked as he sat down in the chair.
“Nothing, Shaggy-Doo,” Sam said playfully as she brushed her hand through his hair. His entire body erupted into fire as he savored her light touch against his scalp. “I love the tawny color and curls. With the right cut, you would stop traffic.”
Sam watched from the side of his chair as the beautician trimmed his silken curls into a shorter cut that looked incredibly sexy and stylish.
Oh, yeah, now he was cooking. She stared in awe as the woman moussed his hair.
“Now that is a great look,” Sam told Adrian. “You get rid of that goatee and watch out.”
“Now you hate my goatee?” he asked, aghast.
“For the record,” Sam said as she met his gaze in the mirror, “all women hate goatees.”
The beautician concurred. “She’s right. They’re nasty.”
Adrian stroked his goatee with his thumb. “Really? You don’t think it’s manly?”
“Do you think a billy goat is manly?”
“Oh, thanks, Heather.”
Sam’s eyes twinkled.
Adrian paid for the cut and for the bottle of mousse Sam insisted he’d better use, but personally, he’d rather stick a pair of tweezers in an electrical outlet.
All too soon, the night was over and he had to drive her back to her car.
“Thanks,” he said as she got into her Honda. “I really appreciate your taking pity on my clothes tonight.”
“It was my pleasure.”
God, he wanted to kiss her. He stared at her lips, trying to imagine what they would taste like. He’d give anything to have a single night with her. To sink himself deep between her soft thighs as she held him close and moaned in his ear.
Then again, one night with her would never be enough.
“You be careful,” he said, his voice hoarse. “How far is Spring Hill from here?”
“A good fifty minutes.”
“Jeez, I shouldn’t have kept you out so long. Do me a favor and call my cell phone and let me know when you get home, okay?”
“Okay.”
Adrian forced himself to close her car door. He stepped away from her car as she started it. The light from the control panel lit her face as she buckled herself in.
In that moment, he ached for something he knew he could never have.
Her.
She looked up and waved. He returned the gesture, then watched as she drove off.
His heart heavy, and feeling twice as lonely as he had before, he got into his car.
Adrian froze as he reached for the ignition. He could still smell her floral scent in the air. Taking a deep breath, he relished it and dreamed of being able to bury his face in her neck where he could just breathe her in all night.
And in that moment, he made a decision.
Right or wrong, company policy be damned, he was going to find some way to make her his.