Thad started talking again, about the cat and mouse chase at the Bishikoffs’.
“Of course,” he said, “we all had to pretend we hadn’t noticed...”
Oh, of course not, Emily thought, with growing irritation. Jake wouldn’t pretend, if something like that were taking place right under his nose. He’d laugh out loud, if it were funny. Or he’d have gone to the rescue of the hapless mouse, which somebody should have done, if she was getting parts of the story right.
“That poor mouse,” she blurted.
Thad’s eyebrows lifted. “Mice are just mice,” he said gently. “Besides, what could anyone possibly do? It was the most undignified situation imaginable.”
As if dignity mattered, at such a moment. Jake wouldn’t think so. He wouldn’t be trapped by convention...
And he would not eat what was being placed in front of her right now. Creamy tendrils of pasta, laced with a strange, midnight-black liquid. Emily shrank back in her seat.
“That’s not mine,” she said quickly. “I ordered—”
“Pasta alla Gondola,” Thad said, leaning over her plate and inhaling. “Wonderful!” He looked up at the waiter. “I can never remember, Paolo. Is that ink from squid or octopus?”
Emily looked at her plate. “It must be octopus,” she said faintly, staring at the tiny, eight-tentacled creatures she’d just noticed delicately peeking out from under the pasta, “unless those are made of rubber...”
Her stomach lurched. The fork dropped from her fingers and fell to the floor. “I can’t—I just can’t...”
Thad put a sympathetic hand on her knee. “Can’t what, EmilyDarling?”
“Can’t eat seafood,” a familiar male voice said. “She’s allergic to it. Isn’t that right, Emily?”
Thad snatched his hand from Emily’s leg. She jerked her head around...and saw Jake.
“Surprised to see me?”
Stunned, she thought. Stunned and delighted. God, he was so handsome. So big and gorgeous. And so smart! He’d saved her from her fate with one quick sentence.
“A little,” she said carefully, and wondered if he could see the race of her pulse in her throat.
Jake sat down beside her in the booth. Thad shifted closer to the wall.
“It’s a good thing I came along,” Jake said, looking over Emily’s head at Thad. “She’s got this rare allergy to cephalopod mollusks”
Cephalopod what? Emily thought. “Oh, I certainly do!”
The booth was small; Jake was big and solid. Wonderfully solid, like an anchor in a storm, she thought as his thigh pressed against hers.
“Strange she didn’t mention it, when I ordered dinner,” Thad said coldly.
“Well, she was only recently diagnosed. Right, Em?”
“Oh, yes.” The lie sailed from her lips with ease.
“It’s terribly rare. Not many things contain cephalopod mollusks.” Jake reached under the table and took her hand. Her fingers lifted, wove tightly into his. “Well,” he said briskly, as he pushed her plate aside, “let’s order you something you can eat. ‘Pasta Amatriciana,’” he told the waiter, who’d come hurrying to the table. “For the lady, and for me.” He smiled at Emily. “No allergy problems with that, I promise.’
Emily smiled back. Her heart was still bumping against her ribs. It was so wonderful to see Jake, to have him with her. Only because he’d dug her out of a hole, of course. Why else would she be this happy to see him?
“McBride?”
Thad’s voice was icy. Jake smiled politely and looked at him. “Yes?”
“What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here, Jennett?”
“Having dinner, but—”
“What a coincidence.” Jake laid his hand, still joined with Emily’s, on her thigh. “So am I. At least, I was about to when I noticed you guys. You don’t mind if I join you, do you?”
“No,” Emily said. She blushed. “I mean, if it’s all right with you, Thad...”
Thad offered a taut smile. “Of course.”
“Great,” Jake said, and waved the waiter over again to order some wine.
The wine was delicious. So was the pasta. Emily dug into it with pleasure. Jake squeezed her hand and leaned closer.
“Good?”
“Yes.” She smiled at him. “Thank you.”
“No need to thank me,” he said quietly. “I like my ink to stay in ballpoint pens, and things with too many arms belong in nightmares.”
She laughed. Jake did, too.
“Did I miss something?” Thad asked stiffly.
“No,” Emily said, with a guilty smile. It was too bad.
Thad was a nice man. He just wasn’t—he wasn’t—
“So,” Jake said, “did you hear what happened at the Bishikoffs’ the other night?”
He told the story but it wasn’t the same. He’d actually been there; he made the incident seem funny, even for the mouse.
“...grabbed the first thing I could find, which just happened to be the salad bowl, trapped the little guy in it, and took him away. The cat wasn’t very happy. Neither was the lady seated to my right because the salad ended up in her lap, but...”
She was laughing by the time he finished. Thad wasn’t. He sat beside her stiffly, his eyes fixed on his plate. Gradually, her laughter died. This was terrible. She’d agreed to dinner with one man but she was really spending the evening with another. Thad might be a pompous ass, but he deserved better than this.
“Thad?” she said softly. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry.”
Thad put down his fork. “I doubt it.”
“But I am. I didn’t expect Jake to—”
Thad swung towards her, eyes glittering. “I don’t like playing stand-in for another man, Emily.”
“Jake isn’t anything to me!” “I don’t believe you.”
“What would you like me to do? Sign an affidavit? Jake’s just my employer. He isn’t—”
“Sweetheart?”
Sweetheart? Emily looked at Jake. “What did you call me?”
“Ah.” Jake gave her a crooked grin and lifted their entwined hands to the top of the table. “Sorry. I know how you are about keeping things private.”
“Private?” Dammit, what was she doing, repeating his insane comments this way? She twisted her hand, tugged it free of his. “Really, Jake...”
“Really, Em.” Jake’s tone was soft, his smile pleasant but his eyes were dark, and narrowly focused on her face. “I think it’s time I took you home.”
“Are you crazy? You’re not—”
“Now,” Jake said coldly. “Right now.” He looked past her, at Thad. “Unless you have a problem with that, Jennett?”
Thad didn’t answer. His skin had taken on a pallor that showed through his out-of-season tan. Even the waiter, who’d been approaching with dessert menus, seemed frozen in place.
Emily flushed, dropped her napkin alongside her plate and rose to her feet. “It’s been a lovely evening but Mr. McBride is right. I have to get home.”
Jake rose, too, his actions as slow and deliberate as those of a panther. “The party’s on me,” he said. He pulled out his wallet and tossed a handful of bills on the table. Then he looped his hand under Emily’s hair, around the nape of her neck. There was nothing casual in it; it was the touch of a possessive male, and a look at Thad, staring up at them, assured Emily that she wasn’t the only one reading it that way.
“Em?” Jake said.
She thought of all the responses she could make, everything from calling Jake McBride a fool to slugging him, but making a scene would only make matters worse than they already were.
“Jake,” she said calmly, and she let him drape her coat over her shoulders, put his hand in the small of her back and guide her away from the table, through the restaurant and out the door.
“Taxi,” Jake snapped at the doorman.
“Not for me,” Emily said. She wrenched free of his hand and
swung towards him. “Just who do you think you are?” she demanded, her voice quivering with rage.
“Did you expect me to sit there and let Jennett paw you?”
“He was not ‘pawing’ me!”
“Come off it, Emily. Or maybe you didn’t think I could see what was happening right under my nose.”
“Nothing was happening, except maybe poor Thad was trying to figure out what you were doing, elbowing in on our date.”
“Oh, give me a break! You were damned glad to see me.” “Only because you were better looking than that stuff on my plate!”
Jake glared at her. “You were glad to see me because I’m me, and you know it.”
“My God, you’re impossible! Six feet of outlandish ego.”
“Six feet plus,” Jake growled, and pulled her into his arms.
His mouth took hers with heat and hunger; his arms closed tightly around her. Emily made a little sound of indignation... and then she groaned, rose on her toes, flung her arms around Jake’s neck and kissed him back.
“Sir? Uh, sir, your cab...”
Jake stepped back, kept one hand on Emily and dug in his pocket for a bill with the other. Then he marched Emily to the curb but she’d recovered her equilibrium by then.
“I’m not getting into a cab with you!”
Jake muttered something, opened the door and none too gently pushed her inside, got in after her and gave the driver her address. The taxi shot off down the street.
“Damn you, Jake!”
“You ought to thank me,” Jake said coldly, “instead of cursing me.”
“Thank you?” Her voice rose shrilly. “For what, huh? For letting Thad think that you and I—that I...”
“You don’t give a damn what he thinks. Not unless you’ve lost all your common sense.”
“Don’t you get it? You made it look as if you—you had the right to—to—”
“I do have the right.” Jake shot her a quick look. “We agreed on that, remember? I’m going to find men for you to date, vet them, see if they’re a good match for you.”
“We didn’t agree. And even if we had, I don’t want you involved in my private life. Not anymore.”
“Forget the octopus on your plate,” Jake growled. “If I hadn’t turned up, you’d be dealing with a human octopus in another half hour.”
“You are beyond belief, do you know that?” Emily folded her arms and glared at him. “If Thad wanted to give me a bad time, he’d have done it last night.”
“I saw the way he was looking at you, as if his brand were stamped on your forehead.”
“And how do you think you were looking at me? When you announced I was leaving with you, when you—when you touched me that way. When you—when you kissed me just now...” Emily looked away from him and stared out the window. “This whole thing has gone wrong. You’re my boss, not my keeper.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you need a keeper.”
“You had no right to turn up at that restaurant.”
“Coincidence,” he said airily.
“Coincidence, my foot! I was on a date. A date, Jake! Do you understand the meaning of the word?”
Jake’s mouth thinned. She was right. She’d been on a date and, no, he hadn’t turned up by coincidence but what else could he have done? Emily had made him angry as hell earlier today, but that didn’t change the facts. One, Jennett had a reputation. Two, Emily was naive. And three—the biggest piece of the equation—three, it was his fault she was out with the guy.
He’d offered to introduce her to men but not men like Jennett. There were other guys out there, guys he’d be glad to introduce her to, and if he couldn’t think of one of them, well, that was only because he hadn’t had time to work on the problem.
Plus, Emily needed some pointers. She needed to know how to dress, how to look, how to handle herself in fast company, which was the kind she’d been with tonight. And he’d need time to teach her all that, every last bit of it...
The taxi jolted to a stop. Jake looked up. They were outside Emily’s brownstone, and she was half out the door.
“Wait for me,” he said to the cabby, and scrambled out after her.
“I do not wish you to see me in,” she said coldly, as she marched up the steps.
“I don’t care what you wish. I always see my...”
Jake frowned. Emily looked at him. “I’m not your anything, Jake, except your assistant.”
His assistant. Yeah, she was. And that was fine; it was all he wanted her to be. Still, he’d made a deal and if there was one thing Jake McBride always did, it was keep his end of a bargain.
“You’re right,” he said.
Emily’s brows lifted. “Well, well, well. Two apologies, in one day? Will miracles never cease?”
“I probably shouldn’t have shown up at La Gondola.”
“Probably? Try ‘definitely.’”
Jake ran his hand through his hair. “It’s just that I felt responsible.”
“I don’t need anybody feeling responsible for me. I’m a grown woman.”
“Yeah. But I said I’d introduce you to guys, and—”
“Are we back to that?” Emily swung away, took her keys from her purse and jabbed one into the lock. “You are hereby absolved from all responsibility for introducing me to men. Okay?”
“Not okay.” Jake caught her shoulders and turned her to face him. “It was a lousy idea,” he said roughly. “Me saying I’d introduce you to guys. You’re not ready for it. You were completely out of your league tonight.”
“Thank you for that generous assessment.”
“If Jennett sat any closer to you, you’d have been in his lap.”
“Only because you crowded your way in.”
“It’s a good thing I did. He had a hand on your leg, when I got there.”
“It wasn’t on my leg. It was my knee, and it was only for a second. And it was a friendly gesture. He saw that I was upset when the waiter put that plate in front of me...”
“And why did that happen?”
“Because I couldn’t read the menu,” Emily said coldly, “and I was too proud to admit it. Any other questions?” “Did it ever occur to you that Jennett should have told you what that dish was when you ordered it?”
“He just assumed—”
“He assumed you were as innocent as Little Red Riding Hood, and that turned him on. Dammit, you don’t need to learn about menus, you need to learn about men.” Jake moved closer to her. “I looked at you tonight—hell, I looked at you last night—and I felt...” What? What had he felt watching her laugh at another man’s jokes? Smile into another man’s eyes? “I felt as if I’d tossed a sparrow into a room filled with hawks.” His voice roughened. “There are things you need to learn, Emily.”
Emily shuddered. The wind had shifted; it was blowing in over the East River, chill and forbidding. Surely, that was the reason she was shivering. It couldn’t have had anything to do with Jake, with his proximity, with the sudden crazy desire she had to fling herself into his arms again.
“Is that the reason you kissed me?” she said quietly.
“Yes. No. Dammit, Em—” Jake drew a ragged breath. “Look, I can help you. I can teach you about men. What they want from women. What they look for, what they expect. The male-female thing, the thing you don’t seem to understand at all.”
Emily stared at Jake. He was right. He could teach her. He already had.
“Is that what you want to do?” she said huskily. “Teach me about the male-female thing?”
It seemed a long time before Jake answered. When he did, his voice sounded low and far away, even to his own ears.
“Yes. Yes, I do. And I promise you, Em, I’ll teach you all you need to know.”
Everything came to a stop. The whispers of the city night, the moan of the wind, even the thump of Emily’s heart as she lifted her eyes to Jake’s face.
“Jake,” she whispered. “Jake, I don’t think—”
&nb
sp; No, he told himself wildly. No, she wasn’t thinking. Neither was he. He felt as if he were standing in a dark tunnel, trying to find his way out only by feel.
He took a step back, jammed his hands into his coat pockets, knotted them into fists. “It’s too late to think,” he said gruffly. “It’s been a long day for both of us. We’ll talk tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock.”
“Ten...” Emily cleared her throat. “Ten o’clock?”
“Right.”
He took another step, backed carefully down the stairs. Did she have to look at him like that? With her eyes so wide and dark, her lips parted? He could kiss her now. Hell, he could have her now. Take her in his arms, lead her upstairs, let it all happen, everything they’d both been fighting the past days or maybe the past year; he was beyond trying to figure it out.
But he wouldn’t do it. What he’d do would be to teach her the things she needed to know about men. How to talk to them. How to see a pass and head it off. Nothing else, because Emily wasn’t his kind of woman, or maybe he wasn’t her kind of man. She was innocent and sweet; she had no idea how the game was played. She’d open her heart to a man, offer him everything and expect everything in return. Not little blue boxes from Tiffany’s or long-stemmed hothouse roses but an intimacy that had nothing to do with what two people did together, in bed.
And that wasn’t his thing.
He wanted her, yeah, but if he had her, what then? It would be over for him but not for her, and it wasn’t his ego talking now, it was reality. Emily was a forever kind of woman but he wasn’t a forever kind of guy. She’d look at him with those big eyes, she’d probably cry, and he’d feel like the worst kind of SOB as he walked away.
It was better to walk away now.
Jake took a deep breath.
It wouldn’t kill him. Years from now, it might even make him feel pure and righteous to look back and remember that he’d done it. He’d walk away from temptation. Hell, he’d do more than that. He’d see to it Emily really did meet a man, not just one to date but one who cared about her. A guy she could be happy with.
It was the right thing to do.
“Ten o’clock,” Jake said gruffly.
Then he did the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. He turned his back on Emily, got into the waiting taxi, and rode off into the night.
The Bedroom Business Page 10