She didn’t bother to respond, because as far as she was concerned, there wasn’t anything to catch up on.
Whatever might have started between her and her soon-to-be boss under the mistletoe was over when he flew off to Vail with Melanie Hedley the next day. And that was for the best. Not only because she didn’t want to make a fool of herself—again—where Nathan Garrett was concerned, but because any fantasy she might have had about getting naked with the VP of Finance was inappropriate enough, but the same fantasy with the company CFO could be fatal to her employment.
And that was a risk she wasn’t willing to take.
* * *
“How was your first day back?” Allison asked when she picked her son up from his after-school program.
Dylan made a face as he buckled up in the backseat.
“Do you have any homework?”
“Yeah. I’ve gotta write a stupid journal entry about my holiday.”
“Why do you think it’s stupid?”
“Because it’s the same thing Miss Cabrera made us do last year. And because I didn’t do anything really exciting. Not like Marcus, who went to Disney World. Or Cassie, who got a puppy.”
His tone was matter-of-fact, but she was as disappointed for him as he obviously was. Unfortunately, peak-season trips weren’t anywhere in her budget, and pets—especially dogs—weren’t allowed by the condominium corporation. “But we had a nice holiday, anyway, didn’t we?” she prompted.
“I guess.”
“What was your favorite part?” she asked, hoping to help him focus on the highlights.
“Not being at school.”
She held back a sigh. Her son’s extreme shyness made it difficult for him to make friends, but she didn’t understand how he could prefer to be alone playing video games rather than interacting with other kids his own age. At the first parent-teacher meeting of the year, Miss Aberdeen had suggested that he was bored because the work was too easy for him, but when she offered to give him more advanced assignments, Dylan had been appalled by the prospect of being singled out. So he continued to do the same work as his classmates and continued to be bored at school. “What was your favorite part aside from not being at school?” she prompted.
“I had fun at the cartooning class at the art gallery,” he finally said.
“So why don’t you draw a comic strip about your holiday?”
His brow furrowed as he considered this suggestion. “Do you think that would be okay?”
“I think Miss Aberdeen would love it.”
So once they got home, Dylan sat at the table, carefully drawing the boxes for his comic strip while she made spaghetti with meat sauce for dinner. As she stirred the sauce, she kept an eye on her son, pleased by the intense concentration on his face as he worked.
If she’d told him he had to write a paragraph, he would have scribbled the first thing that came to mind and been done with it. But he was obviously having fun with the cartooning, and she was pleased that he didn’t just want to draw a comic strip but wanted to draw a good one.
When the outlining was done, he opened his package of colored pencils, and she felt a wave of nostalgia as she remembered when he used to sit at that same table with a box of fat crayons and scribble all over the pictures in a book. He’d been a fan of single-color pictures and would cover the page with blue or green or red or brown, but rarely would he use a variety of colors.
She’d always loved him with her whole heart, but she couldn’t deny that there were times when she missed her little boy. The one who would crawl into her lap for a story at bedtime, who looked to her as the authority of all things and whose boo-boos could be made better with a hug and a kiss. He was so independent now—in his thoughts and his actions. Her little boy was growing up, and he didn’t need her in all the ways that he used to.
She was proud of the person he was becoming, and more than a little uncertain about her own future. Being a mother had been such a huge part of her identity for so long, she’d almost forgotten that there were other parts. Being with Nathan Garrett made her remember those parts. He made her think and feel and want like a woman, and she wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
Allison was avoiding him.
It was a fact that baffled Nate more than anything, but he couldn’t deny it was true.
Over the next few days, their paths continued to cross in the office. But every time he walked past her desk on the way to see his uncle, she seemed to be on the phone. And every time he walked out again, she scurried away from her desk to retrieve something from the printer or the photocopier or to water the plants on the window ledge.
At first he was amused by her obvious efforts to avoid any continuation of the conversation that had been aborted on their first day back after the holiday, but his amusement soon gave way to exasperation. As a Garrett and VP of Finance in the company, he was accustomed to being treated with respect, even deference.
He was not accustomed to being ignored. Especially not by a woman who had been sighing with pleasure in his arms only a few weeks earlier.
She was acting as if the kiss they’d shared had never happened, and maybe she wished it hadn’t. But he could still remember the taste of her lips, somehow tangy and sweet and incredibly responsive; he could still remember the heady joy of her slender curves pressed against him; and he could still remember wishing that he didn’t have to be on a plane at six fifteen the next morning, because he could think of all kinds of wicked and wonderful things they might do if they spent the night—and maybe several more—together.
For just a minute, maybe two, he’d considered forgetting about the trip with his buddies. Because the warm softness of Allison’s body was a hell of a lot more tempting than the promise of fresh powder on the black diamond trails.
But then she’d pulled away. When she looked at him, he saw in her melted chocolate–colored eyes a reflection of the same desire that was churning through his veins, but there was something else there, too. Surprise, which he could definitely relate to, not having expected a minor spark of chemistry to ignite such a blaze of passion, and maybe even a hint of confusion, as if she wasn’t quite sure how to respond to what was suddenly between them—yet another emotion he could relate to.
Even after more than three weeks, he couldn’t forget about that kiss and he couldn’t stop wanting her. And he wasn’t prepared to pretend that nothing had happened. Had he taken advantage of the situation? Undoubtedly. But he hadn’t taken advantage of her. In fact, she’d met him more than halfway.
And when he got out of his Friday afternoon meeting with his uncle, Nate was going to hang around her desk until Allison had no choice but to acknowledge him. Except that it was after six o’clock when he finally left the CFO’s office, and she was already gone.
He caught up with his older brother instead.
“Don’t you have a wife and a daughter waiting for you at home?” Nate asked, surprised to find him fiddling with design plans on a tablet.
Andrew shook his head. “They’ve decided that the first Friday of every month is girls’ night out. Tonight the plan was for pedicures, dinner and a movie. And they dragged Mom along, too.”
“I doubt much dragging was required,” Nate commented, well aware of how much Jane Garrett doted on all of her family—and especially her grandchildren.
“Probably not,” his brother allowed. “But since no one’s at home, I decided to take the time to polish up the details on the new occasional tables that should hit the market