In spite of them, she was still beautiful, even with that schoolmarm’s pout on her pretty lips. He ran an appreciative gaze over her curves, lingering again on her breasts. Damn that jacket. The things ought to be outlawed for women….
Miss Bic squinted, peered and then selected carefully from the salad offerings. No iceberg lettuce. Only red leaf. And only the freshest-looking pieces. Anything with even a suspicion of brown went right back into the large steel lettuce bin. Miss Bic seemed highly irritated by the clear plastic barrier over the salad bar. She peered through it, eyes again squinted, and steamed it up with her breath.
“Forget your glasses?” Dom asked.
“No. How do you know I wear glasses?”
“Oh, just a guess.” Because you’ve just about flattened your nose against the Plexiglas, there, sweetheart. And if only I’d met you in a different context, I’d love for you to get that close to me.
She straightened but squinted even more as she wielded the salad tongs over a container of cherry tomatoes and snatched one.
“That one’s squishy,” Dom told her. A characteristic to be avoided in tomatoes but sought after in breasts.
She dropped it and glared at him. “Thank you.” She scrunched her eyes and hunched over the clear plastic again, nearsightedly fishing for perfection.
“Would you like me to help you?” Dom asked.
“No, I’m fine.”
“That one on the far right, in the corner, is Without Flaw. No green edges, no wrinkles, no dark spots, no puckering.”
She deliberately took a different one, and Dom shook his head. Exactly four others joined their buddy on her plate.
Miss Bic bypassed the next container completely—no fatty pepperoni for her—but picked precisely five quarters of marinated artichoke from the next bin. And then five slices of cucumber, followed by five slices of red pepper, which, he supposed, color-coordinated with the five cherry tomatoes. For protein she chose small slices of grilled chicken: five.
What was with the magic number? Dom was almost disappointed when Jane used only one ladleful of fat-free Italian dressing.
He took his own tray and followed her back to their table, unloading his heaping bowl of chili and massive iceberg lettuce salad under her gaze.
Her eyes widened as he added a few shakes of hot sauce to the chili, and he grinned. “Don’t worry—I used exactly five shakes.”
Spots of pink appeared in Jane’s cheeks and spread to her ears, which he could see now since she’d stuffed her hair behind them. They were very cute ears. He’d really like to lick one—just taste it.
“So what’s with the number five?” Dom asked.
Jane shrugged. “I don’t know. I just like it.”
“It’s a nice, clean number,” Dom mused. “Half of ten.”
Jane started to look annoyed.
“No extra digits to mess it up. No ambiguity about it. It’s reasonable. Not too high, not too low. Right in the middle.”
“I thought I was supposed to be analyzing your behavior,” Jane said.
“Turnabout’s fair play.” He spooned chili into his mouth and tried not to stare at the blue lines still visible to the right of her nose.
She touched the area self-consciously. “I don’t know what it says about me, but the number five has always been my favorite. We have five fingers on each hand. Five toes on each foot. We have two arms, two legs and a head. If you connect those five points in a continuum, you make a circle.”
“Da Vinci,” he said.
“Exactly.”
He waited.
She fidgeted. “And…oh, I don’t know. Five times five is twenty-five, which is point two five of a hundred, one clean quarter…” She gave a self-conscious laugh. “You probably think I’m a crazy woman.”
“No.” Dom held his spoon wrong side up, the curve of it against his bottom lip. “I think you’re a very precise, analytical woman. You draw logical conclusions. You’re no fuss, no muss and you make decisions based on orderly sets of facts.”
Jane stared at him. “And how else are you supposed to make decisions? Isn’t that the right way?”
“Aha,” Dom said. “So according to you, there’s a right way and a wrong way to make a decision, then.”
Jane stabbed a piece of red pepper and stuck it in her mouth. Simultaneously she took a deep, deliberately calm breath. Both multitasking and playing for time, Dom thought. Efficient. Intelligent. Rigid.
And dangerous to him. He’d already given her too much ammunition to draw conclusions about him—especially if she was a rigid personality. He hoped this morning’s meeting had shown her that he wasn’t as much of a jerk as he’d appeared to be in her office.
But maybe she’d decided that it was all a dog and pony show for her benefit. Or worse, that he was some kind of split personality. Oh, great…he could just see himself explaining to her. “Oh, that guy you met at first? That was Dirk, my mean side. But he only pops out every once in a while. Dominic, the nice guy? He’s around the majority of the time. He’s the one you want to evaluate, not Dirk.” And then there’s Drew, the horny goat-man who’d like to back you up against a wall and…
Uh-huh. Was it better to have Miss Bic think he was a pig or just a garden-variety psycho? Dom spooned some more chili into his mouth and wondered how he’d arrived at this point in his life. He also wondered how he was going to convince Miss Bic that Arianna was the split-personality psycho, not him.
JANE CRUNCHED DOWN ON HER vegetables and pondered the corner into which Dominic Sayers was trying to back her.
If she admitted that yes, she did feel that there was a right way versus a wrong way to make a decision, then his next step would be to show her that she had drawn erroneous conclusions about him, based upon skewed logic. And really, any logic could be turned upon its ear if you messed around with it long enough…because logic was based on assumptions. Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!
Jane decided right then that she strongly disliked Dominic Sayers. Because of him, she had drawn blue marks around her nose. Because of him, she had not put on her glasses, and still refused to put them on, even though she needed them to see and they were in the side pocket of her purse. And because of him, she hadn’t slept much last night and was now questioning her ways of thinking.
Because of Dominic Sayers, she was being silly, vain and illogical. And she was none of these things on a normal day under normal circumstances. The abnormality was him, Dominic Sayers. There was nothing wrong with her. He was the one who needed help.
Jane, now firmly back on the comfortable cushion of her superiority, refrained from slapping herself in the forehead. Of course Sayers was trying to force her to question herself. He wanted to challenge all of her assumptions about him. He wanted to con her into thinking he was the very model of a modern management man.
Which he isn’t. He obviously had issues about answering to women, and she was, after all, a woman. To whom he had to answer. So he wants to get my panties in a wad. And he’s made a good start, darn it.
Jane took another bite of her salad and aimed a pleasant smile at Dom. “How’s your chili?”
“Full of beans.” He looked at her with a bland expression.
Jane narrowed her eyes, but he gazed back without a blink. Full of beans, huh? He’s referring to my profession, and not his food. But she let it pass.
“Dominic,” she asked, “why did you invite me to lunch?”
“It