She took a bite of her bacon, smiled and nodded.
“Single. Never been married. You?”
“Same,” she said. Although, she’d been close once. Dangerously so. Two and a half years ago she’d been twenty-four hours away from walking down the aisle at the perfect society wedding when she’d discovered her fiancé hadn’t stopped dating. The jerk.
“And you’re in Boston because…?”
“Work,” he said, cutting into his pancakes.
“Work? What kind of work?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
She couldn’t help herself. She laughed.
He smiled. “Don’t start,” he said, his tone laced with humor. “There probably isn’t a lawyer joke I haven’t heard.”
“It’s not that,” she said, then burst out laughing again. So much for her wanting to be just Joey tonight. Well, she thought, at least he’d understand the demands of her job. Not that it really made any difference. Beyond tonight, anyway.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’m a lawyer,” she admitted. “A litigator, actually.”
His smile slowly faded. “Yeah?”
Uh-oh. So much for all those intriguing possibilities. She wondered how long it’d take him to get to the door.
“What firm?”
Her own smile waned and she frowned. Wait a minute. Didn’t he say he was from Miami? Wasn’t the new head of…
Oh no. It couldn’t be the same…it just couldn’t be him.
This was more than a coincidence, it was insane. And unfair! The first time in months she’d actually been attracted to a man and he was off-limits? So totally not fair!
“Samuel, Cyrus and Kane,” she said.
He pushed his plate aside as if he’d just lost his appetite. She could relate. Hers had already evaporated.
Over the table, he thrust his hand toward her, which she automatically took. “Sebastian Stanhope,” he said, and gave her hand a brisk, impersonal shake. “Samuel, Cyrus and Kane’s new—”
“Head of litigation,” she finished, and dropped his hand. “And my new boss.”
3
“DID YOU SAY BOSS?”
Joey reached for her leather jacket and jammed her hand into the pocket for the small wad of bills. “That I did.” She peeled off a twenty and dropped it on the table. “It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Stanhope. See you Monday.”
She scooted from the booth, her movements jerky as she shrugged into her jacket. A mixture of disappointment and deep frustration, which she couldn’t entirely discount as sexual in nature, collided inside her.
“Joey, wait.”
“Some other time,” she said, knowing it was a lie. Then she hightailed it out the front door.
A blast of cold January air bit at her exposed skin and whipped her hair into her face. A bone-deep chill instantly settled over her. Shivering, she shoved her hair from her face before tugging up the collar of her jacket, looking for warmth. With her hands tucked inside her pockets, she hunkered down and hurried to her car, which was sitting across the street at Rosalie’s.
The lot was deserted with the exception of her sporty red BMW parked under the hazy glow of a security light. A silver SUV with a Florida license plate sat a few yards away. Stanhope’s.
Still shivering, she pulled out her keys and pressed the button for the keyless entry to unlock her car. Just her rotten luck. Finally, she meets a guy who doesn’t have jerkwad written all over him, one who would actually understand the concept of billable hours and the demands of being a career-hungry associate attorney in a large firm, and he was as off-limits as they came. No way could she allow anything interesting to happen now—not with the revelation of Sebastian Stanhope being her new boss.
“Shit,” she muttered and yanked open the door. She climbed into the driver’s seat and fired the engine before tugging the door closed with a hard slam. And things had been going so well, too, she thought. Well enough that she’d been seriously considering that a brief affair might not be such a bad idea after all.
She cranked up the heater and sat trembling in the cold, cursing and giving the engine time to warm. Sometimes, life just wasn’t fair. Maybe she should’ve gone to Chassy tonight and hung out with her half sister, after all. But no, tonight she’d wanted to be just Joey and what had it gotten her? A whole lot of nothing except an ache between her legs she so wanted Sebastian to ease.
His shadow, cast from the light above, appeared seconds before she heard his gentle rap against the driver’s side window. For the space of a heartbeat she considered telling him to get lost. Instead she hefted a weighty sigh and motioned for him to join her inside the slowly growing warmth of her car.
He opened the door and slid that long, gorgeous body into the passenger seat beside her. The luscious scent of him did crazy things to her senses…like obliterate every last one of them.
“Was it something I said?”
“Yeah,” she answered and looked over at him. Her stomach took a tumble at the crooked smile curving that very kissable mouth. There should be a law in the books somewhere declaring it illegal for a man to be so incredibly sexy when he was seriously off-limits. “Samuel, Cyrus and Kane.”
“Look, I didn’t know.” Regret tinged his deep, velvety voice. “I am sorry.”
So was she. More than he realized. And a hell of a lot more than she’d expected, for that matter. “It’s just one of those weird coincidences,” she said with a shrug. “No need to apologize.”
Most of the time, she was a realist. And the reality of the situation was that she was wildly attracted to Sebastian Stanhope, even though he practically came with a “do not touch” brand burned into what she’d been fantasizing were hard, lean abs.
She muttered another curse.
“Would it help if I said I wish things had turned out differently?” he asked.
The sincerity in his eyes irritated her. God, why couldn’t he have been a jerk? Then she wouldn’t give a rat’s ass that her sexual fantasies had come to a screeching halt. Of course, that was her problem, wasn’t it? Because she couldn’t stop imagining him hot and hard and naked.
“Not really,” she countered dryly.
A full smile curved his lips now. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
She narrowed her gaze. “Don’t tease me, Stanhope. I’m a frustrated woman. That makes me dangerous and highly irrational.”
He had the audacity to chuckle. “I like you, Joey.”
Yeah, well, the feeling was definitely mutual. “Guess that’ll make for a good working relationship, now, won’t it?”
She slumped down in her seat. What was she saying? Working with him would be nothing short of torture. Long hours. Late nights. That incredible scent of his lingering in her office long after he’d gone, driving her to distraction. Those intoxicating eyes.
Oh, God. She was toast. A walking hormonal disaster. A ticking sexual time bomb. It wouldn’t take much for him to light her fuse, either. And he was just arrogant enough to realize it, too.
She looked over at him. “Too bad Rosalie’s is closed. I could use a drink.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
At least he agreed with her.