Page 70 of When the Walls Come Down
He tossed the swabs into the trash and then leaned against the counter, finally taking me seriously. “What do you want to do?”
I could have easily tiptoed around it, but I was certain of what I wanted. “I think we should reinstate our friendship.”
His hands flew up and his towel almost fell off. “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.”
“Just at the office. I think we’ve proven that we can work together without any of the naked extracurricular activities getting in the way and without being total distractions to each other.”
“I like the naked extracurricular activities.”
“Me too, but I don’t want to confuse the team or make anyone think that I’m just there because I’m banging the owner’s brother-in-law. It’s just two more weeks. Then we’ll have a whole new issue to deal with.”
His jaw twitched and one of his eyebrows rose. “So we’ll take things day by day. At work, it’s all business, and at home on the weekends, it’s all naked, banging your boss’s brother-in-law, at least for the next two weeks.”
I held my hand out for him to shake. After all, it was a business deal.
He spit in his and held it out for me.
“Yeah. No. Just keep your spitty hands to yourself—especially at the office.”I wasn’t sure Shane had taken our little post-shower chat to heart, seeing as how he showed up to work on Monday with a full-on beard, gray slacks that did some seriously amazing things to his ass, and…the icing on the temptation cake? He was wearing my favorite cardigan again.
Just seeing him prancing around the office would have been bad enough. But no, that wasn’t Shane’s style.
Ridiculous was Shane’s style.
All day on Monday, I was subjected to his hands gliding through the air, fingers dragging down my glass wall as he passed, and file folders being all but scandalized as he held them. One compliment on his hands in the throes of passion with a detachable showerhead and the man had transformed into a model from The Price Is Right.
I’m not going to lie. It seriously worked. And as I rushed out of the office that afternoon, trying to escape without him, it was only because, if we ended up in that hallway alone again, I was going to be the one throwing him against the door this time.
That night, after a few showers, I decided that two could play his game. Shane had a few ridiculous weaknesses of his own.
The next morning, I woke early to FaceTime my nephew, and while we were chatting, I spent the extra time on my hair. I knew for a fact how much he liked my curls, so if I was going for full-on torture, I needed to look the part. I swapped out the jeans for a pencil skirt and toned down the smoky eye to make it a tad more professional daywear. However, everything else, from my heels to that off-the-shoulder sweater that drove him wild, was exactly the same as it had been on our first date.
I pretended he didn’t exist when I walked past him at the coffee caddy that morning. Shane could not do the same. His eyes flashed wide, and if I wasn’t mistaken, I heard quite a few mumbled cuss words.
Throughout the morning, I left the blinds to my office open. Victory heated in my chest—and okay, some other places heated too—when I caught him staring almost every time I looked up. Around noon, Shane sent out a memo to the entire office with a copy of the company dress code.
My response?
I spent twenty minutes at my desk rubbing lotion on my exposed shoulder.
He slammed his door and drew his blinds, but not five minutes later, while I was on a call with the new printing company, my cell pinged with a text.Shane: You are a terrible, awful, cruel woman.Shane: P.S. You look in-fucking-credible today.Shane: P.P.S. Bring that lotion home with you tonight. After the day I’ve had, I may need to borrow it.It was mission accomplished as far as I was concerned, except…
Teasing him wasn’t the same as sitting on his counter while he fumbled his way through cooking me dinner.
Nor was it spending the night in his arms.
And it absolutely wasn’t one of our late-night wall-side chats on the balcony.
And fuck me, all of that sucked so much, especially since he was just playing by my rules and keeping things professional during the week.
But what sucked the most?
The very next morning, Shane disappeared.
At first, I thought he was just late. I debated being a good friend and calling to make sure he hadn’t overslept versus the woman who was trying to take his job and letting him dig his own grave.
Shocker: I called.
When he didn’t answer, I decided to wait a little while and see if he showed up. For all I knew, he had a meeting with a vendor that he’d forgotten to add to his calendar. My curiosity was momentarily quelled when I realized that Casey wasn’t in his office, either. Maybe they’d decided to meet up for breakfast or something. They were family. I was sure that kind of thing happened on occasion.
