Then Emma bent over, which put her face in close proximity to that erection, and she shoved her pants past her luscious hips. He was not going to think about what could be happening in this same position under different circumstances. Kyle went to shove his hands into his pockets to prevent himself from touching her, only to remember he had no pockets.
Emma made a small sound of distress as she lost her balance trying to withdraw her foot from her jeans, and Kyle reached out and grabbed her so she didn’t fall in a heap of denim and bouncing breasts. Though he would have enjoyed the view. But he wasn’t sick enough to want her injured so he could have middle school fantasies.
“Thanks,” she breathed, glancing up at him, her amber-colored eyes hooded. He couldn’t read her expression.
Emma stood and clutched her jeans to her chest, covering her breasts. The pants, shirt, bra and plastic bag covered the majority of her bare skin. The majority of the good parts, anyway. Kyle was simultaneously relieved and disappointed.
“Here, stand in front of me until you get sprayed. I’ll block you from view,” he told her, because it was clear she wasn’t comfortable with her nudity. Her cheeks were pink and she had inched closer to him, farther from the room at large.
If she was going to go through with this, he wanted to help her. He wanted her to trust him. And now that he thought about it, he didn’t particularly want just any guy in the room to have the same view he’d had of her breasts.
Her eyes narrowed. “What’s the catch?”
He held his hands up. “None, I promise. I’m just trying to be a nice guy. So sue me.” He was being a friggin’ Boy Scout here, with his eyes trained on her face, and she was sure he had an angle? He was insulted.
“I’m just making sure I’m not about to become a punch line.”
“What kind of a-hole do you take me for?” Kyle moved around behind her and glowered at a guy he suspected of checking out Emma’s butt in her—dear God—bikini panties. It wasn’t a G-string. It covered her cheeks, but not much else. And those were some perfectly curved, smooth ass cheeks. No wonder the guy was staring. Kyle swallowed hard and crossed his green arms over each other, knowing his shoulders and hips were broad enough to block a good portion of Emma. He’d played hockey in high school and he’d kept up with his weight training. There were no skinny jeans in his future and he wasn’t afraid to play the muscle if need be.
The guy immediately stopped his ogling. Kyle thought so, the sick bastard. Of course he wasn’t sure he was much better, as was confirmed by Emma.
“I don’t think you’re an a-hole. But I do think you’re the office flirt and quite the prankster,” Emma said, her voice dry. He couldn’t see her since he was behind her and facing away, but he could hear the plastic bag rattling as she stuffed her clothes into it.
Sometimes Emma sounded like she had fallen out of the forties. “Prankster?” Kyle snorted. “Flirt? Why, because I like to enjoy myself at work?”
“Oh, you definitely enjoy yourself when you’re sidling up to Gina in accounting and her cleavage. Usually when you’re an hour late on your deadline.”
Kyle was actually shocked. He now understood exactly why it seemed that Emma didn’t like him. It was because she didn’t like him.
Which was fine. Not great, but fine. She was entitled to not like him, even if he was harboring a serious case of lust for her. But she had no right to insult his professional integrity. “I’ve never been late on a deadline. And for your information, I have never noticed Gina’s cleavage. Her husband is a good friend of mine, so Gina and I are friends. That’s all there is to it.”
“Never late? Are you kidding me? And are you seriously trying to claim you don’t flirt with every woman in the office?”
“Never late. Not once,” he insisted. He and Claire had worked out a deal where he started at eight-thirty instead of eight Monday through Thursday and then on Fridays he came in an hour early and left an hour later. Maybe that had created a perception of tardiness, but he wasn’t sure why he had to explain that to her.
He added, “I’m friendly. I like people. Since when is that a crime?” It was actually the main reason he loved his job. He got to interact with both people in the office and out in the field. It was an industry of meetings, social gatherings, sporting events and fund-raisers. He covered them all, and enjoyed all of it. He may have lost his spot covering sports over a little press-pass snafu, but in the end he had given a longtime buddy who had cancer a once-in-a-lifetime shot at meeting the Cleveland Browns football players, and so he couldn’t regret his demotion.
If anything, writing his arts and entertainment column had opened up a whole new part of the city to him. And he was doing a damn good job, thank you very much. None of that seemed to matter to Emma, though.
It bugged the crap out of him that she made it sound like he was on the verge of violating sexual harassment laws. “And I don’t flirt with you,” he pointed out.
Her gasp of outrage indicated that wasn’t perhaps the best argument he could have used. The woman standing in front of him, who had originally been in line behind Emma, gave him a look confirming this. She shook her head slightly in what was clearly a friendly warning.
“Because I respect you,” he added. Usually that response could get a guy out of a veritable ton of trouble. It was akin to whitewashing graffiti in his experience.
“You’re a douche bag,” Emma said succinctly. “Respect that.”
So Emma definitely wasn’t like other women. While most ladies he knew thought he was charming, Emma read it as bullshit. That was something he wasn’t sure how to fix. Nor was he sure why he cared, but for some reason he did. For months it had been bothering him that Emma hadn’t warmed to him, and now it felt like a twofold mission—to force her to appreciate his good qualities and to determine why she thought work and fun had to be mutually exclusive.
“Maybe I don’t flirt with you because you’re mean to me,” he told her mildly, figuring arguing back was a tactic that wouldn’t work with Emma. It would just give her an excuse to stomp away from him indignantly. If he were calm, maybe it would calm her down.
She snorted. “I am not mean to you.” Weighted plastic hit him in the back. “Hold my bag,” she demanded.
Kyle figured that was an invitation to turn around.
So he did.
And was so glad he did.
Emma was fairly quivering with outrage from their conversation, goose bumps all over her skin, her eyes wide and snappish. The bag she was shoving at him no longer covered her breasts. They jiggled from her movements, free from their bra. Yes, he was looking. Yes, he felt zero guilt for looking. He just took the bag and waited with great interest as she stood, arms out, to receive her coating of green paint.
“You look ridiculous,” she told him, jumping with a shriek as the first spray of cool paint hit her.
“You don’t look so elegant yourself,” he told her. Only she didn’t look ridiculous. She looked delicious. Bouncy and juicy and flushed. Even her annoyance was hot. He liked to think that passion would translate to the bedroom, that when she let her cool mask of professionalism slip, she would tear a man up. She would be bossy and demanding, pushing him down while she drew his cock into her mouth...
“Why are you wearing your hat?” she asked him.
“Huh?” Kyle wished more than anything he could adjust his underwear. Things were really starting to become painful down there. All this up and down. It wasn’t good for a guy. “Because my