Big mistake, her mind taunted.
She shrugged as carelessly as she could, dismissing the incident, and then smiled at him prettily as she held up her thumb and forefinger barely three inches apart. “It was just a small robber.”
“Bullets are the same size no matter how tall or short the shooter,” he pointed out.
Damn, she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. “Yes,” she said patiently, “I suppose they are. But no one was hurt,” she was quick to add. “The guy who robbed us looked more scared than anything.”
“You saw his face?”
“His eyes,” Gloria corrected. “And he was terrified.” She just knew he’d had to have been driven to do what he had by awful circumstances. “If my customer hadn’t started hyperventilating just then, I think I might have had a shot at talking the robber out of what he was doing.”
Just what kind of a nutcase was his father backing? The woman was certifiably insane. “Or a chance at getting shot—”
She finished off her piece and picked up a fresh napkin, wiping her fingers. “You know, Jack, you really have to do something about that upbeat outlook of yours.”
There was nothing funny about the situation she was telling him. “I’m a realist.”
Collecting a handful of used napkins from the desk, she dumped them into the garbage can, then cocked her head, studying him. “Maybe that’s your problem.”
He resented what she was implying. “I don’t have a problem.” Other than dealing with you and these weird feelings.
Gloria looked him in the eye, sensing that he was a soul in turmoil. More or less just the way she was right now.
“Are you happy?” she suddenly challenged.
Where the hell had that come from? “Ecstatic,” he told her through clenched teeth.
Gloria laughed, the sound rippling through him like rings in a lake marking a disturbance. Which was exactly what the sound of her laughter created inside of him. One hell of a disturbance.
“All right, then maybe you don’t have a problem,” she allowed glibly.
“Thank you,” he replied icily before getting back to the topic they were both pretending to discuss with interest. “What are you paying for insurance?”
One corner of her mouth rose in a teasing, provocative smile. “That’s a little personal, don’t you think?”
“A kiss is personal.” Now why the hell had he said that? He’d promised himself not to think about or make reference to what had transpired earlier. The less time spent on that, the better. It was almost as if he was doomed to repeat it.
Jack quickly tried to distract her from his error. “This is business.”
She gazed at him, all wide-eyed innocence. “Then you didn’t mean business before?”
His eyes narrowed. “When?”
“When you kissed me?”
He stood by his original reason, no matter how flimsy and paper-thin it seemed. “I was just trying to get it out of the way.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right,” she murmured, the words emerging one at a time in slow motion. “Okay, then.”
She quoted him the price she was paying. He looked at her in surprise.
“And that covers it?”
“Two million dollars’ worth of coverage. I don’t expect to have more than that on hand at any one time. Less, most likely. I provide a service,” she explained. “Creating something to match the customer’s personality rather than selling them something out of my inventory because I over-ordered sapphires last month.”
It was an interesting philosophy, but he doubted its validity. “How can jewelry reflect a person’s personality?” he scoffed.
She studied him for a long moment, then said, “Yours would be reflected in a gold ring. With a panther carved out of black onyx embossed on it. And maybe one small eye that seemed to watch you no matter where you moved. An emerald.”
“Is that how you see me?” He wanted to know. “Flashy gold with embossed onyx?”
He was trying to throw her off. “Nothing flashy about gold,” she informed him. “All the kings wanted it. And the ring would be in the image of a panther,” she said pointedly. “That’s how I see you. A panther. Sleek, deadly. Showing your opponents no mercy.” That was the way she saw him, she insisted silently. Cold, removed.
Nothing cold about the way he kisses.
She banked down the stray thought. It had no place here.
Gloria forced a smile to her lips. “I’ve done a little homework on you, too.” He looked surprised. And not pleased. “In the age of the Internet, no one’s safe.”
He dropped the last slice he’d been nursing back into the box. It was there alone. Between them they’d polished off almost an entire large pizza. “Apparently.”
For some reason the space around her felt as if it was getting smaller, she realized. She could feel her claustrophobia kicking in. But for once, she almost embraced it. It allowed her to block out the other sensations that were swirling through her, the ones that worried her a great deal more than an attack of claustrophobia did. She knew how to deal with that: get out in the open again as fast as possible. Dealing with this attraction to Jack Fortune was another matter. And she wasn’t going to be free of it until he went back to New York.
Rising, she brushed off her hands. “I’m going to go finish up,” she announced.
Jack nodded, then looked back at the slice he’d just dropped. He picked it up again, using it as an excuse. He needed to regroup. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
She gave him a meaningful look. “Don’t hurry.”
Jack sat back in the straight-backed chair she’d rustled up, watching her walk out of the small office. Watching the way her hips moved from side to side like a lyrical song.
More like a prophecy of doom, he told himself. And he would do well to heed it.
Gloria knew she needed help.
If she hadn’t been aware of it before, that kiss she’d allowed to happen—that kiss she’d more than welcomed—had shown her just how vulnerable she was.
The man exuded sexuality with every breath he took. As they finished painting the showroom, she caught herself staring at Jack’s coveralls a half a dozen times, wanting to take them off him using just her teeth.
Instead of getting better, this attraction was getting worse.
If she wasn’t careful, she was going to wind up exactly where she had that time she’d come off a three-day bender after she’d had that awful falling out with Christina. When the fog had left from her brain, leaving behind one killer of a hangover, she’d discovered herself in bed with a man she hadn’t recognized no matter how hard she’d tried to activate her brain.
She’d made a promise to herself then, a promise never to wind up beside a man she had no intention of being with again.
Gloria had an uneasy feeling that promise was going to ring hollow if she didn’t do something to reinforce it, and fast.
She needed backup. She needed to touch base with someone sensible, someone who was grounded, who’d keep her grounded.
Until Jack had kissed her, she would have said that person was her. But after feeling lightning flashing wildly through her veins, she knew that she had just been kidding herself.
Just like alcoholics never really fully recover but remain one for the rest of their lives,