He stared at her in a peculiar fashion for a moment, then seemed to shake it off. “Nice to meet you.”
She smiled then looked back down at the paper. One inhaled breath brought the scent of cologne and, as if she’d stepping into a hot spring, every part of her body felt flush. It had to be his face. Something about the symmetrical features, masculine voice and pheromones that had her toying with the watch on her wrist instead of reading the words on the page.
She caught sight of him leaning in her direction. “Anything good in the news today?”
“Not unless robbery, apartment fires, another corporate bankruptcy and political scandals are counted as positive news items. Anything good in the sports world?”
“Nah, nothing happens until March Madness.”
Sasha’s brow slanted in a confused frown. “What’s that?” Courtesy of growing up with globe-trotting parents and her continued work outside of the borders of the country of her birth and far away from cable television, it always took her months to get catch up on the latest phrases and trends.
“College basketball championships.”
“Ahh.” She nodded with understanding.
“Not into basketball?”
“I played center in college, and I’ve been to a few NBA games.”
He gave her a quick onceover. “You’ve got the height. Something tells me you’ve got the skills.”
“Don’t put stock in that ‘something’ of yours. I sat on the bench eighty percent of the time. I liked the game. The game and the players just didn’t like me. Did you play?”
“All the time. Caleb wouldn’t let a weekend go by without pulling all of us into a game.
“All of us?”
“I have two brothers, a younger sister and a village of cousins.”
“Sounds like a fun way to grow up.”
“What about you?”
“Me?” Sasha replied while trying to discreetly scratch a spot on her stocking-covered leg.
“Any siblings?”
“No.” She shook her head and, fearing ripping a hole in the only pair of stocking she owned, she flattened her hand and rubbed.
“Panty hose itching, huh?”
“Like the ten minutes after a mosquito bite.”
“Yeah, it’s a pain to wear stockings, especially on a hot summer day.”
She looked at him suspiciously and her doubts about his masculinity crept to the forefront of her thoughts. “And how would you know?”
Trey leaned a little farther into her personal space. “You can’t just open up the book of my life and jump to the middle.”
“Autobiography of a Serial Dater wouldn’t be on my reading list anyway,” she quipped.
He chuckled and the sound seemed to magically dissipate the knot that had formed in her stomach the minute she’d gotten in the chauffeured car that afternoon.
“No, this would be The Trials and Tribulations of Being the Youngest Son.”
“You don’t look traumatized.”
“It’s the years of therapy.”
Sasha took a sip of water and returned her attention to Trey’s nice brown lips. Her eyebrow rose slightly as her lips curved into a smile. “Which kind? Shock or psychoanalysis?”
His legs spread out and their knees touched for a moment. Sasha almost spilled her drink as the brief contact sent a shiver throughout her body. It had been a long time since a man’s touch had triggered such an instantaneous reaction. “It’s more like mileage therapy.”
“How does that work?”
“You put a minimum of a hundred miles between you and your closest relative. Only go back home on occasional weekends and move often so that your family can’t find you when they want to drop in unannounced.”
Sasha leaned back in her chair and covered her mouth with her hands. It took a second but the sounds that came out of her throat at first mimicked a croaking frog, but little by little, she opened her mouth and laughed. And the infectiousness of her laughter seemed to spread as Trey joined in the humor and it spread back and fourth until tears sprang into her eyes. She wiped them away and then looked over at him with new, friendlier eyes. “I needed that.”
“Me, too. And I always get uncomfortable when I’m in the room with either a beautiful woman or a pet python.”
“Even if a snake made it into the building, given the average fifty degree temperatures, it would have gone dormant the second it slithered into the ductwork. So I’m going to assume you were referring to me.”
He lowered his gaze from her face and seemed to focus on her chest. Sasha fought the urge to fidget in her chair like a teenager on her first day at school.
“Before I clarify that statement, how did you know about a snake’s body temperature?”
“The same way that I know that wolves in the wild and captivity practice a form monogamous pair bonds between the alpha male and alpha female, yet their domestic canine cousins have moved to the opposite end of the spectrum because of human interference and the lack of a pack family structure.”
He gave her an incredulous look and just as he opened his mouth the executive assistant entered into the room. “Thank you for waiting, Ms. Clayton. Mr. Hawthorn will see you now.”
Sasha stood and began to leave.
“Wait.” Trey stood and blocked her path. His eyes ran up and down her body, letting Sasha know in no uncertain terms that Trey was interested in her in a physical way. “I’d like to finish this conversation.”
“I think this place bills by the second.” She smiled. “I need to go.”
“What about dinner tonight?”
“Are you asking me out on a date?” she calmly questioned, although the palms of her hands had grown damp with the heady rush of excitement brought about by the unfeigned attraction from such a handsome man.
“Dinner at a nice restaurant and if we don’t want the evening to end, coffee at my place.” The way his eyelids lowered and those luscious lips curved upwards in a sexy suggestive grin kindled thoughts of sheets and pillows on the left side of her brain while the right side doused the effect by giving Sasha an instant playback of the conversation Trey was having when he’d entered the room earlier.
She stepped around him, then turned her head slightly to give him a sideways glace. She mustered a convincing indifferent tone. “Don’t take it personally, but I don’t date commitment-phobic bachelors.” Then she walked away, moving from the waiting room as fast as low pumps would allow.
Five minutes later Trey was happy that he was sitting down, gleeful that he’d worn loose pants and downright grateful Sasha Clayton hadn’t turned around as she’d left the room. He couldn’t have turned his eyes away from the woman. Not even a myopic mole could have missed the hard outline of his groin. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and when that didn’t help, he put the newspaper over his lap.
Ten minutes. He had ten minutes to get the combination of Sasha’s challenging stare and luscious rear end out of his head. Wide brown catlike eyes, rich hazelnut skin on an oval face. Not a perfect face like some of the models he’d dated in the past, but that mix of features and figure that men looked at and dreamed they woke up next to in the morning. Her dark hair looked as thought it was thick like his little sister Regan’s. He wondered about the length. If the constrained tresses would curl at her shoulders or flow over her back. Trey ran a hand roughly across his close-shaven head.
He