Again.
Well, okay. Maybe that part wasn’t so bad….
3
THE FOLLOWING MORNING Marie paced the waiting room outside Ian’s office, hearing an odd sort of ticking in her head. Either somewhere in the high-tech offices of McCreary, Lopez and Daniels, Attorneys, there was a loud timepiece, or her own internal clock was counting off the seconds. And, no, it wasn’t her biological clock. She didn’t believe in such things. She had no real craving for children. At least not yet, anyway. Besides, at twenty-six, her biological time clock, if she did have one, hadn’t even kicked on yet.
Had it?
Marie stopped in front of the receptionist’s desk. “Is there a clock around here somewhere?”
The young blonde wearing slim black headphones blinked at her. “It’s just after ten.”
Marie stared at her.
“More precisely, two minutes after ten,” the receptionist said, glancing at her watch.
Marie rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I meant.” She waved her hand and resumed pacing. “Oh, never mind.”
Okay, so last night the last person she expected to run into at her parents’ was Ian Kilborn. That alone would be enough to knock someone a little off-kilter. But she’d also run into him earlier that day and felt some peculiar yearnings she had thought she had locked up tight. As a result, her hormones had shifted into overdrive, reminding her that it had been a good long while since she’d played footsy with anyone between the sheets.
Then to find out that her father had Ian and his firm on retainer…
Tick tock, tick tock.
Marie squeezed her eyes shut, trying to halt the internal countdown, afraid of what would happen when the hand counted down to one.
Her mother…well, her mother had basically played her mother throughout dinner, telling Ian that the antipasto wasn’t dinner when he reached for a second helping, sharing stories about Frankie Jr.’s exploits, and generally urging the conversation in every direction except in the one Marie wanted it to go.
Oh, sure, she’d casually tried to bring the conversation back around to Ian, his presence and his being her father’s attorney. At least every two minutes. And every time she did she got three deadpan expressions and absolutely no words. At least until her mother came up with some other strange little tidbit to derail Marie’s intentions.
Of course, it didn’t help matters that she and Ian were essentially professional rivals and that her father’s choosing to turn to him over her rankled something terrible. She felt something well beyond disappointment that her father couldn’t see her as anything more than his daughter.
Marie made a low sound of frustration, earning her the receptionist’s attention…again.
Marie stared back at her. “How long did you say Mr. Kilborn would be?”
The young woman looked down at her console then pushed a button, speaking so quietly Marie couldn’t make out her words.
Great. She was probably calling security.
“Marie.”
Ian said her name like she was a long-lost friend just dropping in for a visit. A good friend. A friend he might be interested in being a little more…friendly with.
Marie turned to where he stood behind her, then squinted at him as if he’d lost his marbles when she knew perfectly well it was her own marbles that were in question.
Ian cleared his throat, thanked the suspicious receptionist, then motioned toward the doorway behind him. “What’s say we go to my office.”
“Mmm.” Marie brushed past him, trying to ignore how good he looked, how in command, and how utterly sexy. She had no idea where his office was, but anyplace where she could speak to him in private was a good place in her book.
Well, okay, anyplace large enough so that she wouldn’t have to smell the enticing scent of his skin and the subtle aroma of his cologne that reminded her of Albuquerque during the summer.
“Here,” he said.
She entered the first office to the left that Ian indicated, then stopped in front of a wide glass-topped desk with thick iron legs. Ian rounded the table, smoothing his tie down, and looking altogether too yummy when all Marie wanted to do was scream.
“What a surprise,” Ian said.
Surprise? There was absolutely nothing surprising about her being here. “Come on, Ian, admit it. You expected this visit.” Marie pointed a finger at him. “In fact, you’re probably wondering why I’m so late.”
Ian’s black eyes held amusement and warned of the coming grin. Marie braced herself. Ian toying with her she could handle. Ian and a genuine grin made her wish she hadn’t put on panties this morning.
“I didn’t know last night was going to go down the way it did,” he said, motioning for her to sit.
She remained standing.
He sat.
As she suspected, she could see everything through the clear glass. The long bulk of his thighs. The way the fabric of his pants bunched at the crotch, hinting at what she already knew hid underneath.
Her throat grew tight.
“So why are you so late?”
Marie lifted her gaze to his grinning face, then made a face of her own that had nothing to do with a grin and everything to do with the grimace Jena accused her of wearing all the time.
But if ever there was a time to grimace…
“I had an evidentiary hearing at eight. I couldn’t get here any earlier,” she said automatically, then wondered why she’d offered the information at all.
Ian leaned back in the modern black leather and chrome chair and laced his hands together over his impossibly flat abdomen. “I figured it would take that or an act of God to keep you from showing up here first thing.”
“Yes, well, if you hadn’t run out of my parents’ house in the middle of dessert last night I might have gotten some answers then.” Or if his home address had been listed in the phone book, but she wasn’t about to tell him she had gone so far as to call 411 in hopes of finding out where he lived. What she would have done with his address was better left a mystery unsolved. More than likely she would have headed over there, not only revealing she didn’t have a life beyond work and her family, but risking running into him with someone else.
She narrowed her eyes. Was he seeing someone? The prospect made the hair on her arms stand on end. Though why, she didn’t even want to begin to guess.
Ian slowly shook his dark head. “Come on, Marie. It doesn’t matter if I had spent the night at your parents’ house. I wouldn’t have broken attorney–client privilege. And I think you know that.”
She leaned forward and rested her palms against the cool glass. “Attorney–client privilege my rear end, Ian. He’s my father. Family doesn’t count when it comes to something like this.”
He casually shrugged. “Then ask your father.”
She had. A dozen times. With no results.
It was bad enough her family chose to view her law degree as so much artwork on the wall, believing one day she would come to her senses and see that a woman’s place was with a husband and kids. And forget that it was downright humiliating to find out that her father had hired Ian—Ian Kilborn, for God’s sake—as his attorney. When she’d finally gotten her father alone, as he was walking her to the door last night, he had nearly patted her hair and told her not