Cruise Control

by Sarah Mayberry

  She was going to an exhibition opening with Leah and Jules, two friends from law school, and she’d added to her post-surgery wardrobe for the outing, purchasing a deep crimson sheath that hugged her curves and ended at midcalf. The front dipped dangerously low, showcasing the swell of her breasts but not prohibiting the wearing of a bra. Somehow, this small saving grace gave the old Anna some comfort. Baby steps, she reminded herself. Lots of baby steps.

  She showered quickly, then did her makeup and hair in record time and was wriggling into her dress with a whole ten minutes to spare before her friends were due.

  She whirled in front of the mirror, inspecting herself from every angle. She looked nice, definitely presentable. Maybe even a bit sexy, dare she say it? She stared at the large expanse of cleavage on display. Perhaps the dress was too sexy? It was the old Anna talking, she knew, but it made her move to her wardrobe and stare at the clothes hanging there. Was it too late to change?

  The doorbell sounded. Her mouth twisted wryly—decision made, obviously. She opened the door, and her apartment was quickly filled with the sound of feminine laughter and chatter as they greeted each other.

  “My God, Anna, that dress is incredible!” Leah said. “And your hair! You look so different!”

  “Hell, yes. But it really suits you. You’ve got such great cheekbones,” Jules chimed in.

  Leah was still shaking her head, obviously incredulous. Anna spared a sympathetic thought for the woman she used to be—she of the uptight wardrobe and conservative blond bob.

  “Thanks, guys. I thought maybe the dress might have been a bit too much…?”

  “Are you kidding? You look like a movie star,” Jules said.

  “You should have done this years ago,” Leah added enthusiastically. Then she blushed deeply, and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Anna—I’m so sorry!” she said contritely. “I didn’t mean…”

  Anna laughed, keen to dispel any awkwardness. That was the thing with cancer—other people were always more uncomfortable about it than she was.

  “It’s okay, relax,” she said. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  Leah looked relieved, and Jules lifted envious eyes from the intent study she’d been making of Anna’s dress.

  “Such a gorgeous red, Anna. I’d rip it off your back if I thought I could squeeze more than one thigh into it.” Jules pulled a face, indicating her fuller figure ruefully.

  Her confidence well and truly bolstered, Anna collected her evening bag and house keys. “Well, if I’m not ready for a night out after that, it’s never going to happen,” she joked.

  They laughed and talked in the taxi as they traveled across the city to the inner-west suburb of Glebe. Jules filled them in on her friend Maxine, the artist behind tonight’s exhibition. She was a childhood friend, and Jules explained her style was abstract, but “not in a horrible elite wanky kind of way.” Since Anna knew just enough about art to fill the back of a postage stamp, she wasn’t particularly fussed. Tonight was about fun—doing something different, and catching up with her friends.

  The exhibition was being held in a Victorian-era mansion set well back from the road in a busy café district. Their taxi dropped them at the curb, and they click-clacked their way up the garden-bordered path and into the foyer of the old house. All three of them gasped with admiration as they stepped through the stained-glass entrance door. Floorboards gleamed around them, a huge chandelier sparkled high above and a staircase swept grandly up to the second floor.

  They grinned at each other, a bit embarrassed by their gauche responses. Leah pulled her jacket off with a flick of her wrist.

  “Darrrrrrlings, I think we’ve arrived,” she said in a really bad imitation of an upper-class English accent.

  Anna muffled a laugh. Making contact with her old friends and coming here tonight was the best thing she could have done. Already things were assuming a more normal, rational perspective. Like Marc Lewis, for example. She could barely remember the smell of his aftershave anymore. A huge step in the right direction. A few more weeks of determined socializing, and he’d be nothing but a short, hot flash of memory.

  Realizing that Leah and Jules had moved off ahead of her, she followed them into the main exhibition space. There was a good crowd, a very respectable showing for a young artist. But it only took a second for Anna’s eyes to hone in on one tall, broad-shouldered figure standing at the far end of the gallery. Even as her stomach dipped with nerves, he turned his head toward her—almost as though he’d known she was there. Perhaps he had, in the same way that she’d sensed his presence the moment she walked in.

  Across the room, dark, depthless eyes met hers as she froze in place, her breath stuck somewhere between her lungs and her throat.

  Marc Lewis. Wouldn’t you know it?

  5

  EMBARRASSMENT WASHED OVER HER. World-class embarrassment. Her body was so hot a troop of Boy Scouts could toast marshmallows on her. Astronauts could probably see her from the moon. The last time she’d seen this man, she’d torn his clothes off and done…things with him on the trunk of her car. She wasn’t supposed to run into him like this. In fact, in a perfect world, Marc would have ceased to exist the moment she dropped him off at his house just over a week ago. That way she would never have to face up to the reality of what had happened between them that night.

  But here he was, larger than life. In the flesh. Tall and handsome and vitally attractive.

  Of their own accord, her eyes took a lingering tour of his body. He was wearing a dark charcoal casual shirt with a stylized floral pattern printed on it in dark brown and black. His long legs were clothed in dark jeans, and his hair was more tousled, less tidy than his workday look. He was stunning. Dangerous. Sex on legs.

  She tore her eyes away from him. She had to go. That much was obvious. She couldn’t possibly live this down. She had no idea what the etiquette was for the first time you met your one-night stand after the event. Polite chitchat? Ignore each other? Or were they supposed to greet each other like old friends?

  Much easier to go. Absolutely.

  She turned back toward the foyer, ready to just hightail it out of there.

  “Anna, where are you going?” Leah asked from behind her.

  Anna blinked, astonished that for a few seconds there she had actually forgotten her friends.

  “Um…” she said, her mind a complete blank as far as handy excuses went.

  Jules waylaid a passing waiter and held out a champagne flute to her.

  “There you go,” Jules said.

  Anna stared wide-eyed at the drink, then her gaze flickered past her friends to where Marc stood talking to a younger man and woman at the other end of the exhibition space. He was still watching her. Her heart picked up its pace, banging against her ribs.

  “Um…” she said again, feeling like a bunny frozen in the car headlights.

  Jules and Leah didn’t seem to notice; Jules just slid the cool glass into her hand, then turned to Leah. “Good turnout. Maxine must be rapt,” she commented, sipping from her own champagne flute.

  “This all looks great. I’ve been meaning to buy some art. I don’t think my old Picasso prints cut it anymore,” Leah said.

  The two of them moved closer to the nearest painting in order to study it more closely, and somehow, Anna found herself following them.

  So, she wasn’t going. What was she doing, exactly? She wasn’t sure. She still felt shell-shocked from that first moment of eye contact with Marc. How could a glance across a room affect a person so much? Confused, overwhelmed, she took a hearty slug from her champagne glass.

  I can handle this, she told herself firmly as the alcohol burned its way down her throat and warmed her belly. As long as I don’t have to look him in the eye and talk to him, I’ll be fine.

  MARC TRIED TO CONCENTRATE on the conversation he was supposed to be having, but it was impossible now that he knew she was here.

  Anna Jackson.

  A week of pounding
the pool, punishing runs and working late had finally pushed her image from his mind. For the most part. There had been that one hot flashback to the parking lot as he was showering this evening. Perhaps it was the steam, or the hot water, or the slick slipperiness of the soap. Whatever, one minute he was enjoying the water massaging the tense muscles across his shoulders, the next he was thinking about Anna, how tight and hot she’d been, how she’d moaned in his ear as he plunged inside her, the way she’d held his head to her breasts as he sucked her nipple into his mouth.

  Now she was standing across the room, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was wearing a dark red dress that hugged her curves, and high, strappy sandals that made the most of her long legs. Even at this distance he could see the smooth, creamy skin of her cleavage. He knew what her breasts looked like now, knew that her nipples were a pale coral pink to match her fair complexion, and that they puckered readily to his touch. He knew that if he ran his hands down her hips he would find the perfect curve of her butt, and he knew just how soft and yielding she would be if he pressed all his hardness up against her.

  “…if that’s okay with you, Mr. Lewis?”

  Marc gave himself a mental slap as he registered that Jacob had been talking to him, suggesting they take some time now to get their business out of the way. He smiled, forced his gaze away from Anna.

  “Of course,” he said smoothly. A spurt of self-directed annoyance cleared a path through the fog of lust he’d sunk into. He was here to finalize the last stages of a deal that had taken more than a month to set up. He couldn’t afford to lose focus like this.

  “I’ll leave you to it, then,” Maxine, Jacob’s girlfriend, said. “An old friend has just arrived, anyway.”

  Despite his determination to ignore Anna, Marc couldn’t help noting that Maxine made a beeline for her and her friends. Did Anna know her? Was that why Anna was here?

  Not that it mattered. It didn’t mean anything at all. It was just that he hadn’t expected to see her. That was the only reason he was feeling so unsettled. After all, what had happened between them was hardly run-of-the-mill. There was bound to be some awkwardness attached to seeing each other again.

  But the tightness in his trousers belied all rational argument. He didn’t feel awkward about seeing Anna again. He was aroused. Turned on beyond all belief. And hungry for more of what he’d tasted a week ago.

  He swallowed the last mouthful of his champagne and handed his empty flute to a passing waiter. Pushing his fascination with Anna to one side, he focused very deliberately on the man standing in front of him. Business. Tonight was about business.

  “Have you thought any more about my offer?” he asked bluntly.

  Jacob laughed nervously. “As if I’ve done anything except think about it.”

  “And?”

  “I have a few questions. If that’s okay?”

  Marc smiled, knowing then and there that he would get what he wanted this evening.

  “Fire away,” he encouraged.

  Jacob launched into a series of questions, all of which ranged around the one concern—he wanted to sell his small hothouse software development business to Lewis Technologies, but he was worried about losing his innovative edge within the bigger corporate structure.

  “I understand your concerns,” Marc responded. “If you come onboard, you and your team will run as a separate arm of the research and development department. You’ll report directly to me, and you’ll have the ability to be as flexible, responsive and innovative as you are now—with the resources of a major player at your back. It’s a win-win, Jacob. You’ll get royalties on any software you author, and we have a generous superannuation and bonus scheme. I believe in rewarding effort.”

  Jacob’s cheeks were flushed, his eyes shining as he began to imagine his new role. Marc’s instincts told him he was almost home. Then he glanced up and his eye was caught by the red flare that was Anna’s dress.

  She was talking to a waiter, accepting another glass of champagne. Marc narrowed his eyes as he watched the other man glance down at Anna’s body, his thoughts more than obvious. The waiter said something, and Anna threw back her head and laughed. The sound was pure and honest, and Marc found himself arrested by the sheer abandonment of it.

  “…is the one who’s been the most resistant, but I’d hate to lose him. I think he’d be a real asset to your business,” Jacob said.

  Marc snapped his attention back to the here and now, realizing that once again he’d been distracted from the matter at hand. Fortunately, he was familiar enough with Jacob’s business setup to guess what—or, more correctly, who—he was talking about.

  “I agree that Benji is an asset,” he said crisply. He had to get Anna out of his mind. “What’s his sticking point?”

  Jacob looked uncomfortable. “This is going to sound pretty lame to someone like you…but Benji thinks that us shacking up with Lewis Technologies is selling out. He figures you’ll be expecting us to wear suits and do the whole nine-to-five thing. He doesn’t work like that.”

  “Tell Benji to relax. As long as the work gets done, I don’t care when or how. Bring him in for a tour of the R & D suite next week. I think he’ll see enough torn denim and bad personal hygiene to make him feel at home.”

  Jacob allowed the grin he’d been suppressing for the last few minutes to break free at last.

  “In that case, Mr. Lewis, you’ve got a deal!” he said enthusiastically.

  Jacob offered his hand, and this time his handshake was firm and certain.

  “Welcome onboard. And it’s Marc.”

  Jacob pumped his hand even more enthusiastically. “Marc, then. Cool.”

  As soon as his concentration slipped, Marc’s eyes found their way back to Anna. She was standing with her hand on one hip, head cocked to one side as she contemplated one of Maxine’s floor-to-ceiling paintings. Maxine was standing beside her, gesticulating broadly as she talked. The line of Anna’s neck was elegant and alluring, the curve of her hip even more so. She looked stylish and sophisticated—but he knew just how hot she could be.

  “I can introduce you, if you like,” Jacob said beside him.

  “Sorry?”

  Jacob gestured toward Anna. “Maxine obviously knows her.”

  Marc smiled coolly, unhappy that his fascination was so obvious. “Thanks, but I’m fine,” he said.

  Jacob nodded, embarrassed now. “Sorry. It’s just, the way you were looking at her…”

  “I know her,” Marc explained. “An old acquaintance.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Across the room, Anna laughed again. He forced himself to stay focused on Jacob.

  Business. Tonight is about business, he reminded himself.

  If only his body would listen, he’d have half a chance of walking away from this evening with his pride and self-respect intact.

  ANNA FELT AS THOUGH her cheeks were going to crack in half if she smiled one more time. She just wanted to get the hell out of there. No matter what she did, where she looked, or who she was talking to, every sense, every fiber of her being was focused on the man standing at the other end of the room. And it was driving her crazy.

  Why hadn’t she gone home the second she saw him standing there? It was the only sane, self-preserving thing to have done. Yet here she was, allowing Jules’s artist friend, Maxine, to drag her farther up the gallery so she could show her another painting. She glanced toward Leah and Jules, wondering if she could convince them to bail early. They were chatting to one of the waiters, a tall blond guy with green eyes. She got the definite sense that suggesting they go elsewhere would not be welcomed.

  “This was the first sale of the evening,” Maxine chattered, her cheeks rosy from excitement and champagne. “My boyfriend’s new boss bought it,” she confided happily. “He said he’s going to put it in the foyer of his building. Can you believe that?”

  “That’s great. I hope it’s a nice big building, so lots of people will get to see it e
very day,” Anna said. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Marc flash a smile at the man Maxine had been talking to when she first arrived. She almost blinked and stared, the smile transformed his face so much. He went from brooding and sexy and dangerous to approachable and fun and dangerous.

  “It’s huge. Jacob’s going to be so much better off working for a big company instead of having to worry about making ends meet all the time,” Maxine said. “He’s so clever—he deserves to be recognized.”

  The softness in the other woman’s voice caught and held Anna’s attention—no small feat given her growing obsession with the man standing across the room.

  “Sounds like you guys get along pretty well,” she observed.

  “Jacob’s the best,” Maxine said, her eyes misting over. Then she glanced over Anna’s shoulder. “You want to meet him?”

  “Um…sure,” Anna said.

  The words were no sooner out of her mouth than Maxine had grabbed her by the hand and was towing her across the room. Way across the room. Toward Marc Lewis’s end, in fact. Or, more specifically, straight to Marc Lewis!

  Before Anna could dig her heels in or object or even think of escaping, she was being pulled forward and introduced to Maxine’s boyfriend. In his early twenties, Jacob was red-haired and freckled, with bright blue eyes that radiated intelligence and humor. Anna could barely comprehend a word that was coming out of his mouth, however, because Marc was standing a mere arm’s length away and all of the blood in her body was rushing south. God help her. She kept her eyes fixed on Jacob with a conscious act of will, smiling and shaking his hand and hoping she looked remotely sane.

  “And this is Marc Lewis,” Maxine said brightly. “Marc, this is Anna Jackson.”

  Reluctantly she dragged her eyes up to meet his. His gaze was smoky, unreadable.

  “Anna. How are you?” he asked.

  “Good. Thanks. Marc,” she managed to stutter.

  Jacob handed her a fresh glass of champagne, and she accepted it automatically. It wasn’t as though she needed alcohol. She already felt both sick and dizzy and her heart was beating a frantic tattoo against her rib cage.