“Testing is half the design process.” He hefts the board as the elevator comes to a stop but looks back at me and smiles. “I'll be ready for our meeting by nine.”
Ding.
“You’re going to clean up and be ready to meet me in fifteen minutes?”
The doors open. “Watch me.”
Jack takes off, striding through an oatmeal-carpeted open office area bathed in recessed light. Leaping out of the elevator, I trip along in his wake. Some workers at their desks turn and stare, but I hold my head high as if I belong right where I am. At the end of the hall we sweep into a spacious office with pear green walls, but he doesn’t even slow down.
“Peg,” he says, nodding at the woman with stainless-steel gray hair sitting at the desk. “This is Lisa.”
She smiles at me, but before I can say anything, I pull up on a dime as Jack stops at a big black door set into the far wall. The portal to his sacred lair.
Totally acting like I’m not even here, Jack turns back toward Peg. “Why don’t you continue the appraisals on the loading docks?” He says it like it’s a suggestion, but then again, it’s clear it’s not.
Peg stands up. “No,” she says. “I can’t.”
“Ah.” Jack leans his surfboard against the wall and turns to face her. “Haven’t found your iPad yet?” Even I can tell that his voice is too casual to be anything but smug.
“Jack,” Peg says soothingly. “Soul Caliber isn’t for everyone.”
Jack folds his arms and shrugs. “Well, without the iPad, I guess you’ll just have to start the appraisals over from scratch.”
Peg stands at attention, her nostrils flaring. “Fine,” she says. “A rematch.”
Jack tilts his head and gives a ghost of a smile. “Filing cabinet under ‘I’.”
She retrieves the iPad, then leaves.
Still ignoring me, Jack turns back to his office door and puts his eye next to a panel that whirs, lights up, then disengages the lock. A retinal scan? Adventure gear must be some high stakes game. How cool am I? Jack is through the door and I stumble in behind him.
He surges through the office, yanking his wetsuit top over his head. “I’m going to take a quick—”
He stops talking. And walking. He just stands there in the middle of the room in black wetsuit shorts down to mid-thigh and a wetsuit top, half on, half off. This pose exposes an incredible set of abs, his lower back and an amazing pair of hipbones beneath taut skin—I have this total weakness for a guy’s hips. But I can’t see his head, which is buried somewhere inside the wetsuit shirt. I think he’s stuck.
Jack tugs. He yanks. Yup. He’s stuck. The thin, rubbery fabric of the wetsuit looks welded to the skin halfway up his back. He’s in the dark, and it must smell yucky in there, like the sea at low tide.
He flexes his muscles, trying to break free. “Damn!” This from inside the shirt. “What good’s a wetsuit if you can’t get it off when you need to?”
He’s asking me?
He tries to yank the shirt over his head by pulling at the back of the collar, but gets nowhere. His head stays covered, with his arms kind of stuck stretching forward.
“Hmmm…” I say, making it clear that I’m trying not to laugh, “Is this what Superman’s like behind closed doors? Getting all tangled up in his tights?”
“Laugh it up, Lois,” he says. “This is a new neoprene blend I’ve been working on for making the best pockets. Now, I’ve discovered a flaw. So this is all good.”
“Right.”
Giving up the fight, he turns toward me. “Help me out here, will you? Just grab the back of the shirt and pull it over my head.”
“What? You want me to, uh, help you?” I throw the word help in there at that last second, just so he doesn’t know how freaked out I am that he wants me to touch him. To touch him. On the bare skin.
His voice gets quiet but serious. “Lisa, our plan is never going to work if we can’t help each other out.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. Hard. “What do you want me to do?”
He bends forward. “Just grab the back edge and pull it over my head,” he coaches patiently.
I reach out, getting a grip of the dark, thin fabric. I try to ignore the scrape of my fingernails across his skin as if this is no big deal. Really. Touching Jack Hawkins and deliberately taking his clothes off is hardly the scariest thing I’ve ever done. Really. I mean it.
Holding my breath, I tug, starting to undress him.
And I get chills.
I’m the one touching him, and I get chills. Good lord, this is too bizarre. He’s totally hot, yes, but in a lust-after-him-from-afar-like-you-lust-after-George-Clooney kind of way. Not in an actual feel-a-rush-of-close-up-tingles kind of way. How dumb can I get? I’m starting to work for the guy today, as his own private idiot.
The dynamics are so wrong.
I flex my fingers, and Jack shivers.
OH. MY. GOD.
“Damn, I’m cold,” he says. Then in a singsong voice, “I know, I know—that’s what I get for running around barefoot in a rain storm.”
I stupidly look at his feet. No socks or shoes.
I try to shake myself out of my steamy trance. I’m hot, he’s cold. I really AM an idiot.
I give the shirt a sharp yank, and Jack pulls back. The rubbery fabric stretches up across his back, loosening its grip on him. With a wrenching jerk of his shoulders, he breaks free from the suit and stumbles back.
And there we stand. Me, looking like a million bucks, and Jack making me feel seriously overdressed.
I hold his icky shirt by two fingers, keeping it well away from my Gucci threads. I cock one eyebrow. “Voila.” I hope I sound oh so cool and blasé. That’s my intention. Because the truth is, I’m scared down to the tips of my split ends.
Jack is totally lean and defined and squeezed into nothing but a pair of maritime hotpants. I try to remember to breathe. I’m really scared of good-looking people. Isn’t everyone? I mean, everyone except the people who are actually gorgeous?
Jack takes his wetsuit top from me. “Thanks.”
He heads over to a closet built into oak paneling, pulls out some clothes, and then disappears into a bathroom set in the far corner of the gargantuan office. He shuts the door behind him and in a second I hear the shower start.
I need to sit down.
I push some books, newspapers, and two and a half pairs of socks aside to sit down on a roomy brown plaid couch pushed against the far wall. I slump back, take a few deep breaths, and try to relax.
Jack’s lair is part sporting goods store, part rec room, part county clerk’s office, part garage workbench. His desk is littered with a computer, a phone, papers, gear-looking things, a bike tire, strips of cloth, and what looks like a chicken alarm clock. And this is the guy who's going to make me stronger than a locomotive?
The bathroom door opens. Jack steps out, wearing an untucked white button down shirt with the cuffs undone and a faded pair of Levi’s. His hair is wet and his feet are still bare.
I swallow. He’s wearing more clothes than I’ve seen him in so far today, but seeing him fresh from the shower and in the process of getting dressed is so...intimate.
“What were you testing this morning?” I try my hardest to sound truly interested in the work. Not the man. Definitely not the man.
Jack breaks his stride and looks up. “I need seriously choppy waves to test the accessibility of pockets in the suit,” he says with a complete command I envy. “We’re supposed to get rain on and off from now through Halloween, but I have to take advantage of days with no lightning.”
I feel like I black out while staying conscious, if that’s possible. Did he say choppy waves? And… no lightning?
Sudden sweat beads my spine. I will myself not to shiver as I picture the reality of what he does on a daily basis. Of what he did this morning while I was blow-drying my hair. I try to breathe, feeling all gummy-like in my limbs and ready to slide off the couch. He was in the t
urbulent ocean where he could have been drowned by a riptide or electrocuted by an unexpected flash of lightning or eaten by a shark or sucked to the bottom by the tentacles of a giant squid—good God! What have I gotten myself into?
Jack flicks the switch of a coffee maker sitting on the windowsill. “Lisa? You okay?”
“Um, how do you know a certain rainy day won’t have lightning?” I make my voice sound all interested and chirpy.
“Generally, if I don’t see any.”
Maybe I really am an idiot. And I'm making it really obvious. He's going to fire me if I don't shape up.
“Hang on.” He goes to the outer office and gets the surfboard, so I race to be helpful and pull the door open wider for him. As Jack and the board brush past me, I feel something move through my hair. A jellyfish!
“Aaaah!” I scream. “ Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!”
I hop up and down and shake and shake and shake my hands.
Jack shoves the surfboard aside and steps toward me.
“Stand still.”
But it’s crawling down my collar! “Eew eew eew eew eew!” I hop back and rip off my jacket. “Get it off get it off get it off!”
Jack rips my jacket out of my hands and throws it across the room, saving me from the slime.
“Jesus!” he rasps in a gruff whisper.
“What was it? Is it in my hair?”
“Seaweed,” he says, sifting a hand through my hair. “You’re clear.”
I breathe and blow like I’m having a baby. Thank God. I’m safe.
It’s then that I realize I’m standing there in my bra. And not a chic, sexy black one that matches my skirt, either. Not even a nice silky one with flowers or wide satin straps. I’d like to be wearing a bra like any of those, but I haven’t done laundry in a while, what with securing my apartment, going to Connecticut, and becoming an undercover idiot. Plus I hate chores.
So, today, I’m down to wearing The Beige One from the very back of my underwear drawer. You know—that way un-sexy tannish-nude color that you only ever see as a functional underwear color. Bras that your great aunt can buy in a box come in this color and so do girdles.
I look up at Jack to see if he’s noticed, but he’s not even looking at me. He’s looking right past me.
“Excuse me,” someone says behind me.
I whip around toward the door. But with Jack standing so close, the turn is more like a sweetheart move that tucks us closer together. Jack is half dressed—no belt, no shoes, shirt all disheveled. And I’m in my nude-colored bra, with my jacket flung across the couch.
In the doorway, a young man wearing a pencil-thin tie looks like he’s smirking.
“I was scared of the seaweed!” I blurt.
He just looks at me and blinks.
“Alan, what is it?” Jack’s voice pulses with complete control, and he doesn’t move. Like there’s nothing irregular at all about this fix. Of course, he’s not the one caught wearing mom-colored underwear.
“The team from Sawyer called again,” Alan explains with dispatch. “They're insisting on a meeting.”
I cannot believe it. They’re conducting business right over my head, as if I’m not even here. Like the woman in the ugly bra doesn’t matter. Then again, their ignoring me in my un-sexy undies is probably a good thing.
“I'll deal with them later.”
“Right.” Alan scoots away, leaving us alone.
As Jack pulls back to button his cuffs, he gives me a once over.
“What?” I demand.
“Interesting,” Jack muses. “Your first reaction to intense fear is to strip.” He nods thoughtfully. “Good to know.”
“That's it?” I ask. “That's your reaction, to make a joke? Your whole staff is going to think I'm your booty call. Don't you care?”
He slides me a look, then grabs a duffle off a shelf. “No one is going to think that.”
“Why?” I challenge. “Am I so out of your league? Would the idea be just too absurd to anyone who knows you?”
He stops and looks at me. “Lisa, I don’t have sex in the office. It’s not a rule, exactly, but I just never do. And I don’t encourage it among my staff.” He starts to fill the duffle with gear from his drawers and shelves. “But if it will make you feel better, I’ll tell Peg how crazy hot I think you are.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“That’s because you’re whacko.” He doesn’t even pause what he’s doing when he says this.
“So,” I say, trying to step back into a more professional mode, “what's up with Sawyer? The Sawyer, right? The big sport shoe company?”
Jack zips the duffle shut. “I already told them once to go fuck themselves because I’m not interested in joining up with some nightmare conglomerate of cheap labor and mass marketing. Let’s go.” He brushes past me on his way to the door.
“Jack,” I say. “This deal is never going to work if you get mad at me every time I ask a question or make a suggestion.”
“I’m not mad.”
“Then why are you so edgy?”
He turns to me, his hand on the doorknob. “Because I hope to God I’m doing the right thing.”
“Why?” I ask. “What are you doing?”
“I’m taking you on your first adventure.”
CHAPTER 7
“Yes, Lisa. Naked.”
“Naked, naked?” I swallow, then take a deep breath. He can’t be serious. “You want my naked skin touching this thing?” I look at the long, black wetsuit in my hands. We drove all the way back to his house up in the hills of Glendale just to get this stupid suit that’s not going to fit me, no matter how naked I get.
“It’s the best way.”
“So there are other ways.”
Jack sets the duffle on his kitchen table. “Yes,” he says, unzipping the bag. “Some people wear a swimsuit underneath, or Under Armour.”
“Armor?” It’s for the sharks, I know it!
“Under Armour. It’s like a spandex body suit.”
“Let me do that, then. You must have one lying around here somewhere.” I look around Jack’s house. Nothing.
Just beyond the big wooden table in the kitchen, the room morphs into a family room. But the kitchen looks like a normal kitchen with a fridge and stove and all, and the family room just looks like regular family room. Couch, TV, coffee table. No spandex lying around anywhere.
I wander into the living room at the front of the house and hit pay dirt. At least, potential pay dirt. The spacious room, which I think is supposed to be part dining room—the demarcation is unclear because of the mountain bike and the saddle—is messy with gear, junk and working-type stuff just like his office at Into the Wild.
Jack follows me.
“Lisa, do you know the point of a wetsuit?”
I don’t answer. As far as I’m concerned, a wetsuit is for wearing if you’re on a show like The Man from Atlantis or if you work at Sea World.
He gets in front of me, right in my face. “It keeps frigid water away from your skin.”
“But you were in shorts this morning!”
“I had to test the suit, and I didn’t want to wait until July. Anyway, I’m a little more used to it than you are.”
“Then the body armor stuff will keep me a lot warmer than wearing a wetsuit with nothing on underneath.”
“Wrong.”
In that one word I hear the thumping finality of a guillotine.
“Anything you wear underneath,” he explains, facing me squarely, “even a bathing suit or a pair of underwear, allows air between the suit and your skin.”
“Letting your skin breathe is good. I saw that James Bond movie where—”
“Air in a wetsuit is bad,” he says, cutting me off as he heads back to the kitchen.
I have no choice but to follow him. Back to the kitchen. Back to the duffle of doom. He starts unloading the bag. A small yellow box, flippers.
“It increases the chances that ice cold wat
er can seep in,” he continues. “And guess what, Lisa?” He turns to meet my eyes. “It won’t seep back out again. You’ll just freeze your ass off until you become a medical risk. Then I’ll bring you back.”
The mean bastard turns his attention back to unloading the duffle. Is that a bulletproof vest? What the hell kind of adventure is this going to be? Beginners have to deal with bullets? He must be purposely trying to scare me to see if I’ll back down.
I look back at the wetsuit I’m holding. It looks so much slimmer than I feel.
“So I just get naked and squeeze in?”
Jack hands me the little yellow box. “This should help.”
I look down at it. “It’s cornstarch.”
He taps his nose. “Full marks for being able to read your native language.”
I look at him. I’m guessing he doesn’t want me to bake a cake with it. “Thanks?”
“Use it like talcum powder.”
I am so totally screwed. “Where do I suit up?”
* * * * *
He put me in a downstairs bathroom. It’s cheery with its yellow tile and colorful shower curtain sprigged with open umbrellas. Despite the décor, I’m still depressed. Why did he have to bring me back to his house, anyway? The place is clean and comfortable, making me want to leave for the ocean even less.
Okay, so I couldn’t exactly get suited up at the office where the staff could see me, but still. Donna Reed’s bathroom is hardly the best place to prepare for diving into shark-infested waters.
Anyway, wasn’t it enough of an adventure today when he made me get into that damn glass elevator again?
I look at the suit and suck in my stomach. I don’t like this.
* * * * *
I meet Jack back in the kitchen, where he’s suited up himself. When he sees me, he looks at me kind of funny but doesn’t say anything.
“What?” I ask, wondering if I put it on backwards.
He looks me over. “Nothing.”
I look down at myself. Jeez! I forgot to dust off the cornstarchy handprints all over me. Jack now has a veritable map of where I put my hands to press in my bumps and bulges as I stood in front of the mirror.
“I…uh…had a little trouble getting it on…making sure it fit right.”
Miss Adventure Page 6