‘Enlighten me.’
‘Maybe all our fighting was just sexual tension in disguise.’
The room was way too small for her bark of a laugh. It fairly ricocheted off the walls. ‘You must be joking.’
‘Not at all.’ He grinned and it was the most predatory she’d ever seen from him. And smug.
‘Because you’re so irresistible?’
‘Because we have chemistry. I thought it was just me but Wednesday put a big question mark over that.’
No, they didn’t. Not chemistry and not Harry Mitchell. Hot or not. ‘Maybe you’re just projecting your own hormones.’
‘You don’t feel it?’
Challenge, not question. As if he already knew the answer. As if she did, too. But they bred them tough in Manchester. She tossed her short hair back. ‘Not particularly.’
Liar, liar …
‘February twenty-first this year,’ he challenged. ‘We shared the same lift and the end-of-day rush pushed us together at the back. We didn’t speak a word to each other and the only uncovered parts of us touching were our ungloved hands.’ He stepped a tiny bit closer. ‘But we both walked out of the building rubbing the tingles away.’
‘No, we—’
‘April third.’ He lifted his chin. ‘I knocked back one of your ideas and you spent a good portion of the day glaring at me through the walls—all flushed and infuriated and eyes spitting—and I spent a good portion of the day with half a hard-on, as a result.’
No way her gasp should have caught quite that tightly in her chest. She should have been outraged, not breathless.
Not excited.
Her glares across her crowded open-plan office to his lofty glassed-in one had simmered, and not always with anger. She’d felt it but had no idea he’d been able to see it.
God …
‘You’re making these up.’
‘Check your diary,’ he dismissed, plunging his hands even deeper in his pockets. ‘June eleventh, just before lunch. You stood in my office giving me hell about the new ratios and I just let you run because I was curious.’
She swallowed back a lump of dread. She remembered June eleventh. The room had been practically soaked with awareness and she’d come away fairly throbbing from the argument. And then she’d beaten herself up all day about the inappropriateness of it all. He was her boss. He was the bad guy.
Words formed themselves despite her best intentions.
‘Curious about what?’ she croaked.
His lips twisted. ‘Have you never heard the saying that a person fights like they f—?’
‘Stop!’ Air sucked hard into her lungs and then froze there, trapped, making it harder to squeeze out, ‘I thought that was dancing.’
‘I found June eleventh extremely illuminating on that front. But nowhere near as illuminating as Wednesday. Wednesday was a real eye-opener.’
Her only hope of salvation here was in channelling a bit of Tori’s hearty sexual confidence. She tossed her hair back and met his eyes directly.
‘You never let on.’
‘Of course not. It wasn’t appropriate.’
Hysteria bubbled dangerously close. ‘And this is?’
‘You’re not exactly moving away from me.’
She glanced at the junk all around them. ‘That’s more a statement about my hoarding than your hotness.’
Crap. Not what she’d meant to say. At all.
His left eyebrow lifted. ‘I’m hot?’
‘You’re insufferable.’ That smug grin sure was.
‘You think I’m attractive.’
‘I think you’re dangerously close to a lawsuit.’
His laugh echoed her earlier bark. ‘For what?’
‘Employee sexual harassment.’
He waggled her ID tag. ‘You quit, remember?’
‘Then, sexual harassment just generally.’
He shuffled closer. ‘You still haven’t asked me to leave. That’s all it will take.’
No. Why was that …?
‘Maybe I’m hoping chivalry isn’t dead.’ Maybe, deep down inside, she wanted to give him one more chance to be a decent man.
‘Grand chivalric gestures were the only outlet for all the unrequited sexual frustration in the twelfth century.’ He shot her his best Cheshire grin. ‘Like our fighting.’
‘Well, then, perhaps your grand gesture could involve sweeping heroically out the door and nicking off.’
His smile this time was half laugh. And it was annoyingly appealing. ‘Or we could find a more traditional outlet for all the tension.’
‘No.’ It would be laughable if the very thought hadn’t divested her of the oxygen she’d need to do it.
‘Are you already in a relationship?’ he challenged. ‘I’m not.’
Izzy grasped desperately at the edges of the conversation. Harry’s eyes said he was dead serious, but how could he be? This sort of thing never happened to her. Despite her best efforts.
She sucked in some much-needed air. ‘Except with your career.’
His eyes dimmed oh-so-briefly. ‘My career and I have an understanding.’
‘When it gets you laid?’
‘Is that what you think this is about?’ He looked genuinely wounded. ‘Sex?’
Doubt crept in at the corners. ‘Unless you’re proposing a rollicking game of chess?’
‘Something tells me you’d be quite good at chess,’ he murmured. ‘I’m talking about exploration. A bit of good old-fashioned groping. Tangling tongues and heavy breathing. When was the last time you had that?’
Ah … no. Not a question she was going to answer. ‘You’re assuming rather a lot, don’t you think?’
‘You still haven’t asked me to leave.’
The simple truth of that stripped Izzy bare. He was flirting and she was, too, in her own clunky way. They were standing in a darkened, tiny bedroom close enough to get right into that groping without even needing to reach. They no longer had any kind of professional relationship to protect or reputation to preserve. She knew him well enough to know he wasn’t some kind of weirdo or monster. And there was a strange kind of hormonal haze going on thanks to the intriguing fingertip preview of the hard body under his McQueen business shirt.
He was offering her a few hours of healthy distraction and making it clear that it didn’t have to end in sex and, most importantly, he was exactly the right kind of guy for a one-night-only appearance.
And she wasn’t throwing him out.
‘A good time but not a long time? Is that it?’ she murmured.
‘A great time, Izzy,’ he clarified, ‘but no … not a long time.’
Yes, yes, yes, her three champagnes ganged up to whisper violently in her ear. But everyone knew champagne was a tart. ‘Because you have your career?’
‘Because I’m not looking for a relationship.’
‘But you’re open to a fun night.’