She halted midpace and took a second sip from the small paper cup of espresso.
“Wow!” Her brown eyes widened and her brows nearly shot up to her hairline. “This is going to keep me awake for days instead of hours.”
“We’ll worry about that after we get your application submitted,” he said. “Ready?”
Her teeth sank into her bottom lip. “I don’t mean to keep making excuses, but the truth is I haven’t come up with a concept for the video yet. I barely had time to breathe today, let alone think.”
“Don’t worry,” Adam soothed. “After your second text, I drove down to the spot you intend to lease and shot some footage we can incorporate.”
“You did that for me?” Her eyes brightened in surprise. “Thank you.”
He shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”
Too bad he couldn’t shrug off the rush of pleasure he felt at knowing he’d pleased her. What was it about this woman? She had him acting like a dog standing on its hind legs for a pat on the head.
Adam cleared his throat. “How about we go into your office and get started?”
He took some preliminary footage of her workspace making sure to zero in on several of the completed handbags. He hoped the camera’s zoom feature caught the workmanship and attention to detail she put into the finished product.
“You ready?” he asked.
Brandi, who was sitting behind her desk, nodded at the camera. However, her face looked like the color had been drained out of it.
“Um, hi, I’m, uh…” she stammered.
He paused the video. “How about we start over?” he asked. “Ready?”
Again, she nodded.
“Hi, I’m Bandi Crollins. I’m mean, Crandi Bollins.”
Adam stared at her over the camera’s LCD screen trying not to laugh. “Crandi, huh?”
“If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m really nervous,” Brandi said before collapsing into a fit of giggles.
He put the camera down on her cutting table and crossed the room. Reaching across the desk, he took her hands in his.
“They’re ice cold,” he said.
“It’s just nerves.”
He rubbed her hands between his to warm them up. “Close your eyes.”
She flashed him a skeptical look.
“Come on, close them. Now take a deep breath and relax.” He waited until she complied. “Forget about the camera. All I want you to do is tell me about Arm Candy Handbags, just like you did the other night. Can you do that for me?”
Brandi nodded, her eyes still closed.
“All right then, open your eyes and let’s try it again.” He reluctantly released her warmed hands, fighting the impulse to bring them to his lips and kiss her fingertips.
He retrieved the camera for another take. His subject looked into the lens and smiled.
“Hi, I’m Brandi Collins, owner of Arm Candy Handbags.”
He spent the next half hour following her around her home office with the camera as she explained the ins and outs of her business. Her earlier jitters were replaced with an easy confidence and passion for what she did, which increased as she spoke. It was evident to him tonight, just as it had been the first time she’d showed him her headquarters, Arm Candy was a thriving business long overdue for expansion.
“I believe we have enough.” He popped the flash memory card out of the camera.
“So how did I do?”
“You did a great job. I don’t think Lina Todd will find a better candidate to personally mentor,” he said truthfully. “Now all we have to do is upload the footage and edit it.”
Brandi smiled. “I’m lucky you’re so tech savvy,” she said, “because I don’t know a thing about editing video.”
Adam froze. “Then we really do have a problem this time, because neither do I.” He glanced at his watch. “We only have an hour and a half to figure it out.”
Brandi swiped a hand over her face. “I don’t know what we’re…” She snapped her fingers. “Lynn.”
“Who?”
“She’s a friend. She teaches computer science at my high school. She also designed Arm Candy’s website.” Brandi lifted the receiver off her office phone. “Cross your fingers she’s still awake.”
Adam looked on as Brandi briefly explained their dilemma to her friend over the phone. As they talked, he could literally see the tension in her shoulders dissipate. She held her hand over the receiver’s mouthpiece and looked up at him.
“She’ll do it, but is insisting on a chocolate bribe from your kitchen. Please tell me you have something.”
“Will chocolate soufflé cake do?”
“Abso-freaking-lutely!” Adam heard Lynn’s enthusiastic whoop through the phone’s tinny speakers.
After a brief stop by his place to pick up the cake, they headed to the building’s parking garage. “I’ll drive,” Adam volunteered.
“Are you sure? It might be faster if we take my car since I know where we’re going.”
Adam pressed the button on his key fob, walked over to the passenger side of his black Porsche Cayenne and opened the door. She stared at the luxury SUV and back at him.
“The clock is ticking,” he reminded her.
After she was seated, he placed the cake box in the backseat and pulled out of the garage.
“Make a right here, get on I-65 and head south,” she directed.
They rode in silence a few moments, before Brandi spoke again. “I’ve never been in a Porsche before,” she said. “So what exactly did you do at that household-goods company?”
“I was a vice president,” Adam said, still not ready to divulge his family ties.
“That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Why those close to you are so upset,” she said. “They’re probably thinking you’re crazy to turn your back on the kind of salary you must have been pulling down.”
“And what do you think?” He braced himself for her answer as he steered the SUV down the expressway. Not that it mattered what she thought, he told himself.
“I guess I’m in your grandmother’s camp,” she said. “I think you should do what makes you happy.”
Adam thought about her reply as he followed Brandi’s directions. The more he got to know her, the more he found to like about this woman.
He took the exit ramp off the expressway and eventually pulled into a free parking space in front of a corner-unit town house.
“You’ll like Lynn and her husband, James,” Brandi said, as they walked up the pathway leading to the door. “They’re good friends.”
Adam nodded; her reassurance made him feel better about crashing a stranger’s place at this time of night. He was further assured by the friendly smiles that greeted him at the door.
“Adam Ellison, meet Lynn and James Myers.”
A short woman with flashing amber eyes stepped past a burly man Adam assumed was her husband and grabbed the cake box.
“Nice to meet you, Adam. I’ll just take this off your hands.” She lifted the box to her nose and inhaled. “Oh, my God, this smells like heaven.”
Brandi confiscated the cake from her friend’s hands and passed it off to James. She handed Lynn the camera’s memory card.
“Video first, then cake.”
“Oh, okay,” Lynn grumbled. “Follow me to the computer room, and we’ll get started.”
She shot her husband a warning glance. “That cake is a bribe for me, not you. So there had better be some left when we’re done.”
“Well, I suggest you be very efficient at your job,” James said.
As the ladies disappeared into another room, James balanced the cake box with one hand and stuck out the other. “In case you missed it in the chocol
ate-loving whirlwind that’s my wife, I’m James.”
Adam shook his hand. “Adam. I’m Brandi’s next-door neighbor.”
James gestured for Adam to follow him as he cut a path through the living room, where the imprints of someone’s bottom indented the well-worn sofa and Titans football highlights blared from the flat-screen television, to a small kitchen.
“Oh, I know who you are.”
The words took Adam by surprise. His father had always been the public face of Ellison Industries. One would have to scour business-trade magazines to recognize him, Kyle or their uncle.
“You do?”
James grunted. “You’re the guy who’s got Lynn bugging me about serving her chocolate.”
Adam laughed as relief washed over him. “Didn’t mean to make you look bad in front of the wife, man.”
“Now I’m eager to see what the fuss is all about.” James sat the box on the kitchen table and opened it. “What kind of cake is this again?”
“A chocolate soufflé cake.”
James retrieved a knife. “Want a piece?”
Adam shook his head. “You go ahead. I’ve been up to my elbows in chocolate all day.”
James cut himself a hunk that could have easily served three people and took a huge bite. Adam waited for an unsolicited opinion as the big man slowly chewed.
He watched as his host rolled his eyes and groaned. “Holy moly!” he exclaimed. “This is the best cake I’ve ever tasted.”
“James Myers!” A high-pitched voice called from the other side of the town house’s first floor. “You aren’t hogging up all the cake, are you?”
“Aren’t you on a diet?” James bellowed. He grabbed a plate from the kitchen cabinet and plunked his slab of cake on it. He turned to Adam. “Can I get you a beer or something?”
“Just a soda if you have it.”
James tossed him a cola and inclined his head toward the living room. “You follow the Titans? I was just rewatching some highlights from last Sunday’s Wildcard game.”
He sat down on the sofa and Adam seated himself in the adjacent armchair; both seats offered a good view of the television.
“It was a good one, wasn’t it?” Adam launched into a recap of the team’s starting running back’s explosive run that resulted in the game-winning touchdown. “I still can’t believe they’re in the playoffs.”
“Man, I’m pinching myself,” James said around a huge bite of cake. He polished off the rest of it in two big bites as they watched the game highlights. “So how’d you learn to bake like this?”
“My grandfather owned a bakery,” Adam said. “I picked it up from him.”
“What do you do?”
“I used to be in business, but I recently got out of it to focus on baking with chocolate,” Adam said. “You?”
“Firefighter,” he answered. “And I don’t know what you put in that cake, but it has to be the best thing I’ve ever eaten. You should definitely be baking for a living.”
Before Adam could thank him, Brandi appeared in the living room.
“I think we’re done with the video,” she said, “but I’d like you to come take a look at it first.”
“Want me to pause the highlight package?” James asked, his eyes never leaving the big-screen television.
“No, you go ahead. I’ve seen them already.”
Adam rose from his seat and followed Brandi into the Myerses’ computer room. A long desk, bearing two desktop computers, extended the length of one of the room’s four walls. The rest of the room was crowded with boxes. Brandi had mentioned the couple were newlyweds, and their town house looked like they were still working toward merging their belongings.
Lynn Myers vacated her office chair when they walked in.
“Have a seat.” She offered him her chair. “We’re eager to hear what you think.”
Reaching past him, she clicked the mouse and started the video.
Brandi’s image filled the large monitor as she introduced herself and her business. Adam watched as the raw footage he’d shot earlier unfolded into a slick, polished piece worthy of a Madison Avenue advertising firm.
It ended with a zoom shot of Arm Candy’s logo before fading to black.
“I think it’s awesome,” he said honestly and then caught a glimpse of the time on the computer screen. “I also think we had better get to Overnight Express. We’re already going to have to speed to make it in time.”
Lynn made a DVD copy of the video for them to mail, and then they began to say their good-nights.
The Myerses’ warmheartedness stuck with Adam as he steered his SUV away from their town house and in the direction of the Overnight Express office.
“You have nice friends,” he said into the vehicle’s dark cabin illuminated only by the glow of the dashboard’s lights.
He caught Brandi’s smile in his peripheral vision. “They’re pretty cool,” she agreed. “She and James got out of their bed to come get me late one night when my car stalled, and the auto club said there would be a two-hour wait.”
Adam wondered if Brandi knew just how fortunate she was to have people like the Myerses in her corner.
He’d spent the drive to the delivery service trying to remember the last time someone did him a favor without expecting something in return.
Chapter 9
Brandi’s backside burned as if someone had set it on fire.
Positioned on her hands and knees on the hardwood floor of Heather’s studio she eked out the last of fifty butt lifts.
“Done.” She collapsed with a whoosh at her trainer’s sneaker-shod feet.
“Good job, now give me fifty more.”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“Do I look like a comedian?”
Brandi’s gaze traveled from Heather’s pink Nikes upward to her crossed arms before landing on her unsmiling face. During their workout time, her sweet, funny friend transformed into the lean, mean military hard-ass who had once put fear in the hearts of the country’s enemies.
“But I didn’t even eat any chocolate yet,” Brandi grumbled, pulling herself back onto her hands and knees.
Heather pointed to the big sign hanging on the only wall of her workout studio not covered in floor-to-ceiling mirrors. “Tell me again, what’s the first rule of training?”
“No whining,” Brandi said, not bothering to look at the two words inscribed on the sign in bold, black lettering. “But it’s not fair.”
“Fair? Is it fair you live next door to a fine piece of chocolate-making man candy?” Heather snorted. “And the worst part of it is, you don’t even want him.”
Oh, she wanted him, all right. Brandi hoisted an achy leg in the air. However, she only allowed herself to have him in her dreams. Dreams that made her blush a little inside every time she saw him.
Brandi paused. “So let me get this straight. You’re making me suffer for chocolate and a man I haven’t had.”
“If you stop, I’m going to lose count and you’ll have to start all over again,” Heather said, and Brandi resumed the torturous exercise. “I’m making you suffer for the chocolate you’re going to have as well as making sure you fit into your maid-of-honor dress.”
“Deep down I realize I hired you to do this to me, but the rest of my body can only think about the hell you’re putting it through,” Brandi said. “What number am I on anyway? Forty-eight? Forty-nine?”
“Keep going, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one.” Heather plopped down on the floor and sat cross-legged, facing her. “Since you have no interest in the hunk next door, how about giving me an introduction?”
No!
The word didn’t get past her clenched teeth, but her strong visceral reaction to her trainer’s request caught Brandi off guard. Tw
o kisses didn’t make Adam her man. He was a free agent who would probably be thrilled an attractive woman like Heather was interested in him, and jump at the chance to get to know her.
Brandi liked Heather. She liked Adam, too.
Then why did the idea of two people she thought were great getting together bother her so much?
She met Heather’s gaze, the corner of her friend’s mouth quirked upward in a half smirk.
“Don’t bother answering the question,” Heather said. “The expression on your face tells me everything I need to know. Your hunk next door is off-limits.”
“He’s not my hunk. I barely know the man.”
Heather chuckled as she stood up. “That’s why you looked like you wanted to kick my ass.”
This time it was Brandi’s turn to snort. “I do, but for all of these dang butt lifts. I had to have hit fifty by now.”
“Actually, you’re up to seventy, but don’t go passing out on me yet.” Heather retrieved a pair of eight-pound dumbbells from the weight rack. “Let’s go to work on those biceps and triceps.”
Brandi blew out a breath. The dumbbells felt triple their weight to her push-up-ravaged arms.
“Come on,” the trainer coaxed. “You want Wesley to take one look at you and regret how dirty he did you, right?”
Brandi waited for the pangs of anger or bitterness to hit her as she hefted the weights into a set of hammer curls. Both emotions were still there, however, neither packed the powerful punch they had merely a week ago.
The observation wasn’t lost on Heather.
“Hmm, looks like I’ll have to find a new sore spot to poke. I’m not seeing the fury your ex’s name usually evokes.”
“It’s here.”
“Maybe, but it’s not the same.” Heather rubbed at her chin as she walked a full circle around her. “And it’s certainly nothing like the reaction I got when I asked you to hook me up with your neighbor.”
“Aren’t you being paid to train me?” Brandi snapped, more annoyed at how easily her friend could read her. She might as well have written her innermost thoughts on the wall in the same bold lettering as the “no whining” sign.
Heather’s eyes lit up and a smug smile tugged at her lips. “Again, your expression tells me everything I need to know.”
Taste for Temptation (Kimani Hotties) Page 9