Page 2 of The Law of Attraction
People had a tendency to look right through her, or right past her, or right over the top of her five foot three inches. It was why she always wore thick, black eyeliner and the darkest, most dramatic lipstick she could get away with in the office. To try and make herself seem tougher—or at least less invisible.
Her reluctance to ask for favors wasn’t the only thing keeping her from going over to talk to Adam. There was also the small matter of her long-standing crush on him.
Adam Cortinas was the most attractive man in the office by a considerable margin.
Admittedly, there wasn’t a lot of competition for the title. Most of the IT guys she worked with were a lot older than Adam, who couldn’t be much over thirty, and most of them looked exactly how you’d expect middle-aged IT guys to look. A few of the energy traders upstairs were okay-looking, she supposed, if douchebags were your preferred type—but they most definitely were not Olivia’s.
Adam looked more like an Instagram model than systems analyst. He would have been the hottest guy in any office.
For starters, he had beautiful bronze skin, piercing dark eyes, thick black hair that fell across his forehead in luscious waves, and a jawline that could cut diamonds. Then there was the matter of his body, which was practically a work of art. The guy definitely spent time in the gym. The same vendor-branded polos that hung shapelessly on everyone else around the office pulled tight across his broad chest and clung to his muscled arms like they’d been custom tailored just for him.
Adam Cortinas was the whole luscious package, and Olivia had been fantasizing about him from afar since he’d joined the company two years ago. Which was why, if this whole reference thing went well, she was thinking of asking him out for a drink.
It was the perfect opening. She could couch it as a thank-you for writing her the reference. That way she wasn’t extending herself too far. It was simply a friendly drink among coworkers. A professional courtesy.
She just had to go over there and talk to him first.
Yet somehow she wasn’t doing it. Her feet were two chunks of lead, and her ass was permanently welded to the seat of her swivel chair. She was never moving. She’d be excavated by archeologists eons from now, still sitting here, chin in palm, staring dreamily in the direction of Adam’s cubicle.
Olivia was twenty-eight years old, but she felt like she’d been teleported back to the pubescent hell of fifteen, when she’d been too scared to ask Josh Fratangelo to the Sadie Hawkins dance. Olivia’s arch-nemesis Ashley Beeman had asked him instead, and Olivia had spent the night at home alone with a tube of raw cookie dough and her Veronica Mars DVDs for consolation.
Get up. Go over there. Talk to him.
Just as she was about to screw up her courage, Adam got to his feet.
Olivia lowered her eyes in a panic, terrified he might have noticed her staring. What if he had spidey senses that tingled to warn him when someone was watching him and having lustful thoughts?
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Adam carry his coffee mug into the break room without even a glance in her direction.
This was her chance. She could go get more coffee and just happen to bump into him.
Oh hey, how’s your day going? she could say. Listen, since we’re here, would you mind writing me a rec for FLDC? And once he’d agreed, she could offer to buy him a drink sometime after work.
Why not, right? Nothing ventured or some shit.
Olivia breathed deep for a count of three. Smoothed her hand over her white-blonde hair. Gathered her strength and grabbed her coffee mug off her desk before she strode into the break room.
And stuttered to a stop just inside the doorway.
Adam was leaning into the fridge, bent over, with his ass pointing directly at her.
Jesus roller-blading fuck. That was one USDA Prime cut of meat staring at her. Why did he have to have such a nice ass? And why did it have to be pointing right at her? Totally unfair.
He turned his head in her direction lazily, as if he almost couldn’t be bothered to see who’d walked in. His eyes flicked over her, his expression dull and disinterested.
Olivia swallowed down her nervousness and propelled herself toward the sink. “Hey,” she managed to force out, despite the fact that her throat felt like it was coated with gravel. Also, her heart was pounding in her ears and her legs felt like jellyfish tentacles.
Adam acknowledged her with a nod before turning back to the fridge.
The way he was bending over should be an occupational safety hazard. It was definitely hazardous to her occupational safety. She ought to report him to OSHA for bringing an ass like that to the office.
And of course she was still totally staring at his ass when he closed the fridge and turned around, holding a carton of almond milk.
His eyes narrowed slightly, which meant he probably knew she’d been staring at his ass, so that was completely mortifying. Not that it was entirely her fault. He was the one who was bending over, presenting his ass for all the world to see. She’d just come in here to have a simple conversation with him, and his ass happened to be front and center. What else was she supposed to look at?
Now that he was facing her, she realized that looking at his face posed a whole new set of challenges. She definitely couldn’t look directly into his eyes. Oh no. It was impossible to concentrate when she was looking into those bottomless ebon orbs.
Which left her staring at his mouth. His lush, soft lips with an almost sulky curl to them—
