The low, musical
sounds of Debussy drifted through the speakers of Molly Monroe’s office,
blending into the tap-tap-tapping
noise of her fingers flying across the ergonomic keyboard as she typed. With a
breath, the scent of the mahogany teakwood desk candle her secretary gave her
filled the air, creating the perfect mood to lose herself in even though she
was working.
She’d taken her
strawberry-blonde hair down from the severe twist she always wore for work, untucked
her silky blue blouse from her a-line skirt, and had even kicked off her
Burberry pumps, settling in hours ago for a long, quiet night of undisturbed
time. Now, she’d found her rhythm, making a dent in her to-do list.
When something
dark flickered within her peripheral, she glanced up from her computer screen.
“Jack!” she
yelped, her hand going to her heart in a kneejerk reaction to pat at the
overactive thump going on there. “You startled me.”
“Sorry.” He leaned
his shoulder against the doorframe of her office—the long, lean lines of him in
his expensive black suit created the picture of masculinity and casual
confidence. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I thought
everyone left to get a head start on the long holiday weekend.”
“They did.” He
gazed at her with eyes the color of warm cognac. “So why are you still here?”
Molly blew a piece
of hair from her face before saying, “I could ask you the same thing.”
“The Aspin
conference cut into my time this week, and I wanted to go over the financials
for our board meeting next Tuesday.”
“Ah,” she mumbled.
“Do you think they’ll give you a hard time about the expansion proposal?”
“When it comes to
spending money, needed expansion or not, you know it’s better to have all our
ducks in a row.” Molly nodded. Being the co-director of the non-profit agency
for abused women, Horizons, she was always present at the board meetings, so
she understood the kind of scrutiny the project would be under. “How are things
going with the new case manager?” he asked. “Are you going to be able to give
her the case load you took on, and go back to the business of running the
department instead of giving Superwoman a run for her money?”
She sat back in
her chair. “Penny needs eight more hours of training and supervision, then she
can take over. So, yes.” Molly smiled. “I’ll be turning over everything to her
next week and hanging up my cape.”
Jack Jamison
straightened. “Sounds good,” he said. He glanced at his wristwatch. “You want
to take a break and grab a bite of dinner with me?”
“I have to get my
desk cleared.” Molly fluttered her hand over the stack of papers to her right.
“If not, I may need to hang a danger of avalanche sign.”
“Come on.” He
chuckled. “Work can wait. I’m feeling a bit ignored.”
“Ignored?”
“Yes.”
“But we had dinner
when you got back into town last night.”
Jack tilted his
head, causing a piece of copper-brown hair to brush across his brow. “We had
more than dinner. And, so there’s no misunderstanding here, I want to have
‘dinner’ every night with you,” he said in his tempting voice.
Molly blushed. “We
agreed to keep things under wraps and casual. Every night, isn’t exactly
casual.”
“I ordered your
favorite, and it’s already in my office, waiting for us,” he said, not
bothering to travel down their current discussion path.
“Chinese from
Ming’s?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
Molly clapped and
did a little bounce in her chair. “I can’t say no to Ming’s.”
“I know.”
She grinned. “Oh
you do, do you?”
He nodded. “Why do
you think I ordered take-out from them? I even got those dumplings you rave
about.” Jack beckoned with his fingers. “So hurry up, before everything gets
cold.”
With a quick save
to her work, she powered down her computer.
“Ready,” she said,
rolling her leather chair back.
When she stood and
walked around her desk with stocking-free feet, Jack did a double take before
the corners of his mouth started their ascent.
“You know….” His
gaze trailed up from her pink-tipped toes to her face. “You sure pull off the
bare-footed rumpled look well.”
Molly rolled her
green eyes at him. “We agreed. No flirting at the office. Remember?”
Jack stalked
toward her, mischief flickering in his eyes. “We are the only two here, Molls.”
Her thin, shaped
brows beetled down into a frown. “You know I don’t want to be called, Molls.”
He curled his arm
around her waist and pulled her body into his, then traced the seam of her lips
with the tip of his tongue before whispering, “I want to kiss you, Molly-mine.”
His stiff manhood
pushed into her lower belly. She shivered. “We shouldn’t—”
Her protest
stopped when he pressed his lips to hers and dipped his tongue inside her
mouth. He groaned, and soon, one of his hands secured the back of her neck,
fingers twining into her hair at the base of her skull as they kissed.
The dweedle-deet of her cell phone had Molly
pulling back.
“Forget about the
phone,” Jack said, nose skimming along her jaw. “God, you smell good. Maybe I
should eat my dinner right here.” He nibbled her earlobe, causing an
outcropping of goose bumps to dance across her skin. “What if I spread you out
on the desk, and suck duck sauce from your—”
Dweedle-deet.
Molly pressed her
palms flat on the vest of Jack’s three-piece suit. “It could be important.” Her
thoughts shot to her very pregnant, due-at-any-moment, older sister. “It might
be about Mary.”
With a defeated
sounding sigh, Jack let loose of her. “Fine,” he said. “Check.”
Molly turned,
snagged her cell from the desk, tapped the screen, and bit back a gasp when she
saw the avatar of Darth Vader.
Ryker.
He was the one man
who’d become an expert at breaking her heart, and over the years, she’d turned
into a woman skilled at letting him. Well, enough was enough. No more. Their
crazy rollercoaster of a relationship, if you could even call it that, derailed
one too many times. She was tired of waiting for him to get his shit together,
and decided she was done being yanked into his gravitational pull. No more
hopeful silliness. No more obsessing.
I
should delete the text without reading it, she thought,
biting at the inside of her cheek. She almost followed through. Her finger had
been ready to do the deed, then for some insane reason, she gave in, tapped the
message, and read.
What
are you doing?
