She stabbed a piece of grilled chicken and waved it at him. “Do you really think I’m that easy to manipulate?”
“Oh, no—don’t assume that I’ve underestimated you. I think you’ll be a real chore to manipulate.” His eyes danced.
She gaped at him again. How did he think he could get away with saying such things? Part of her was offended. Yet part of her admired his honesty—even though it bordered on the obnoxious.
“Listen, Sayers.” Though she couldn’t help but respond to the twinkle in his eyes, she kept her tone firm. “You cannot charm me into a positive evaluation. I’m a professional, not an eighteen-year-old coed. And I’m not looking at how you interact with me. I’m observing your behavior in the workplace.”
He nodded. “Understood. So I’m only exercising my charm around you to stay in practice.” Sayers dug back into his chili while she stared at him, fighting the desire to bang her forehead on the table.
He leaned the underside of his spoon against his lower lip again, gently tapping, and she saw her face reflected in it upside down, contorting like taffy and looking utterly ridiculous.
The fingers grasping the spoon dwarfed it, but Sayers’s hand wasn’t really like a paw at all. It possessed an unexpected elegance, a teasing masculinity that crept somehow under her skin and set her nerves aflame.
Damn it, damn it, damn it, thought Jane. I refuse to envy a spoon. I refuse!
But those fingers of Dom’s, the zing fingers, wrapped all the way around the stainless steel, caressing it. Leaving faint whorls printed on the metal.
She wondered what his fingertips would feel like on her skin, and an unbidden image of them stroking down her spine produced a delicious shiver.
Which of course he noticed. Dom quirked an eyebrow at her. “Cold?” he asked, lips still against the bowl of the spoon.
She shook her head, instructing herself to look away from his mouth. How curious that she’d never really examined the human mouth…the web of tiny lines and miraculous tissues and curious curves that created a lip. Two lips. What had inspired God to create the human lip?
Eat. Your. Salad. Logic and professionalism said it to her. You. Brainless. Bimbo. Lips, for God’s sake! If she didn’t snap out of this, she might as well pull her own upper lip all the way over her head and go home.
Jane forked up a slice of cucumber and waved it through the air at Dom. Say something, idiot! But she landed it back in her bowl like a little UFO on a practice run.
“Let me guess,” prompted Dom. “That piece of cucumber has more than five seeds, which renders it unacceptable.”
“Huh?”
He was openly laughing at her now. “Or is it a little too green? At least eat your chicken, Jane. You need protein to sustain this level of neurosis.”
She tossed her napkin on the table and glared at him. “Sayers, you’re presuming a familiarity between us which does not exist and will not exist. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you’re attempting to tease me and not outright insult me, but we need to get that clear. I am not neurotic. I just happen to like fresh vegetables, okay?”
“I stand corrected and chastened, Jane.” He looked anything but. “And I would never dare to get familiar with you. Unless of course you wanted me to.” He grinned.
His words sent a flash of heat through her and she shifted in her seat uncomfortably. She didn’t dare acknowledge it, but the heat grew as she pictured Dominic getting familiar with her…right under the restaurant table…with a bare foot, his fingers or, even more shocking, his tongue?
She almost gasped out loud at the image and she knew she needed to recover now, immediately, or he would read her thoughts; sense her state of arousal.
“Is this how you behave around Arianna DuBose?”
Dominic’s eyes flashed. His nostrils flared. His lips flattened into a thin line. His jaw tightened. “No.”
He picked up the check and fished his wallet out of a back pocket, then slapped the bill down with a credit card.
“You’re not paying for my lunch,” Jane said evenly.
“I am.”
She pulled her purse onto her lap and dug out her wallet, catching the corner of her glasses with the flap. They clattered onto the tabletop and she felt herself flush dark red.
Ignoring them and avoiding his sardonic gaze, she pulled a twenty out of her wallet and placed it on top of his credit card.
“We’ll go Dutch. I don’t want any questions raised about the objectivity of my evaluation.”
He stood up. “Did I understand correctly? That must mean you haven’t already made up your mind.” His voice dripped sarcasm.
Pig. Jane stood up, too. Then she jammed her glasses onto her nose and marched out of the restaurant ahead of him.
5
JANE SAT WITH HER ARMS FOLDED and stared straight ahead during the ride back to Zantyne Pharmaceuticals.
“You must be seeing things much more clearly now.” Dominic’s sarcasm had not abated.
“Yes, I am. How funny that I’d forgotten my glasses were right in my purse the entire time.”
She wasn’t fooling him and they both knew it. He smirked with the knowledge that she’d wanted to be attractive for him and not look schoolmarmish.
She wanted to mug him of that realization and smack the smirk into next year. Pig.
Silently she recanted the insult, remembering that she was supposed to be a professional, and professionals remained objective in situations like this. I neither like nor dislike Dominic wanking Sayers. Ahem.
Try again, Jane. I neither like nor dislike Dominic Sayers. I neither li—
“Front-door service with a smile,” he interrupted her affirmations. “It’s wet, nasty weather, so I’ll let you out here and go park the car on my own.”
Jane blinked. “Thank you,” she said, getting out of his car. She had to admit that pigs weren’t generally gentlemen. I neither like nor dislike Dominic Sayers….
DOMINIC WATCHED JANE O’TOOLE as she walked crisply in her London Fog to the doors of Zantyne and pulled one open with a little more force than necessary. Every hair on her head seemed to quiver with indignation, and her glasses glinted with it, too.
Well, doesn’t the truth hurt, sweetheart. You had made up your mind about me and you don’t like being called on it.
Dom snorted. “Objectivity, my ass.” He pulled the Jaguar into a parking slot and sat there for a moment, reflecting about his situation. He wasn’t sure why one moment he liked Jane O’Toole and the next he despised her. He also wasn’t sure why he was charming to her one moment and then insulting the next. And if there was one thing he hated, it was not being sure. Dominic had built a career on his confidence. And it was genuine—because he knew he was good. He wasn’t simply a cocky poseur; he was the real thing.
Right now it didn’t matter if he was good or confident, however. He was being knocked off balance by a woman who didn’t play according to any rule book or ethical standard familiar to him. Arianna made up her own version of morality, and Jane was her puppet.
Dom drummed his fingertips on the taupe leather seat. If he didn’t figure out how to beat these women at their own game, that leather seat wouldn’t belong to him for long. He’d be fired and lucky to be behind the wheel of a hot-dog cart.
He got out of the Jag and stood in the rain, pondering the situation from every angle. The image of Jane’s mortified face as she’d