She wondered how firm James really was about the completion date. No matter, she’d get it done, she thought. Her spirit of competition wouldn’t let her do otherwise.
The room James brought them to was just down the hall, past the dormant bank of elevators. She saw no one as they made their way there, even though he had assured them there were people on staff within the hotel. The dim lighting and lack of people contributed to the lonely, desolate feeling that permeated the building.
She felt as if she were stranded in the wilderness somewhere instead of on the outskirts of a thriving city.
James opened the door to a room that was approximately twelve by fifteen and practically filled to overflowing. Two desks butted up against each other in the center of the room with a chair at either side. They were surrounded by boxes of every size and shape imaginable.
Because there wasn’t sufficient light coming into the room from the single window, James flipped on the overhead fixture. There was only marginal improvement. “This doubled as a storeroom.”
That wasn’t hard to guess. “Whose office is this going to be?” Gina hoped that it was Chase’s and that hers looked better.
“Yours. And yours.” James swirled his finger back and forth to indicate both of them.
Chase frowned. “There’s not enough room here for the two of us.” There wasn’t even enough room for the one of them, he added silently.
“I’ll get Benjamin to clear out some of the boxes,” James promised. “But in the meanwhile, this is the only office with computers and a telephone. ‘Sides—” James looked around “—it’s kind of cozy, don’t you think?”
Cozy wasn’t the word she would have thought of immediately. Unacceptable was. But he was the client. She smiled tightly when he looked at her. “In a manner of speaking.”
He nodded, his mind already on something else. There was that chain of movie theaters he was looking into.
“Well then, I guess the two of you have your work cut out for you.” James pointed to a bookcase, partially obscured from view by a minitower of white boxes. “Benjamin says the accounting books are all along there.”
Chase cocked his head to see. An army of black-bound books lined the shelves. Ledgers. Terrific. The accounts weren’t even on computer yet.
James was edging his way out of the room carefully, afraid of knocking something down.
“If you want coffee or somethin’, the phone number of the kitchen is six. Someone there’ll pick up eventually, though it’d probably be a whole lot faster for the time being just to go off and get the stuff yourself.” James pulled down the brim of his Stetson. “Dinner’s at seven. See y’all then.”
Gina felt as if she had just been blown about by a tornado. It was all so specific and yet haphazard at the same time that she couldn’t quite get herself to believe it was really happening.
The only thing that did seem real about this was Chase, and that was a bit of reality that she could readily and easily have done without.
Gratefully done without.
She turned around slowly and saw that Chase was looking at her. Looking at her as if she were a five-foot glass of water and he had just completed a forced march through the desert with an empty canteen.
Well, she’d certainly dressed for it, she thought. She had meant to make him suffer a little, to make him regret what he had so loftily, so cruelly, turned his back on.
When she had planned this, she hadn’t thought that she’d feel a shiver of elation, not at his so-called suffering, but at the way he was peeling away her clothes with his eyes.
She still wanted him.
She let out a sigh and dragged her hand through her hair. Gesturing around the room, she hoped to change the subject on both their minds. “Does this make you think of anything?”
Chase shuffled sideways to get closer to her and stubbed his toe on a box. He swallowed a curse. “Hell comes to mind.”
He didn’t have a clue. Or did he?
“No, our apartment.”
It had been a one-room apartment and all they could afford at the time. Moving in, they had each brought enough possessions to separately fill a two-bedroom condo. It had been really tight for a while until they had weeded things out.
“Remember how crowded it always was?” Her mouth curved at the memory that time had softened. “We were always bumping into each other.”
He tried not to think about the way her body always fit so perfectly against his. Trying not to made him think about it all the more. “Yeah, as I recall, some of that bumping was a lot of fun, too.”
The light in his eyes made her nervous. Decidedly nervous. “We called a truce, remember?”
Casually, he brushed a strand of hair from her shoulder and sent tiny waves radiating along her skin. “We said we wouldn’t fight. Having a peaceful conversation is not fighting.”
She felt trapped, glued into place, and it wasn’t just that the boxes surrounded her on two sides. “We never have peaceful conversations.”
It took everything he had not to bracket her shoulders between his arms and pull her toward him. But he managed. “We’re having one now.”
If she continued looking into his eyes, she was going to dissolve. She looked away.
“Well, we’d better start doing instead of talking.” She motioned toward the desks. “Which side do you want?”
He shrugged. It didn’t matter to him. There were identical computers on each. He assumed they worked. And the archaic telephone rested in between. “You always took the right side.”
For some reason, that touched her. She called herself stupid, but it did.
“You remembered.”
“How could I forget?” He laughed shortly. “I have a permanent dent in my side from where your elbow kept jabbing me.” Warmth spread through him. Warmth he had successfully managed to shut out all these years. “You used to like to hog the bed a lot.”
“I wasn’t hogging,” she pointed out with a touch of indignation. Her voice lowered slightly. “I was trying to curl up beside you.” Even in his sleep, he found a way to shut her out.
She regretted the admission the moment she gave voice to it.
“Diversionary tactics to get me off my guard so I’d be unprepared when you kicked me out of bed.”
He made it sound as if it had been an ongoing thing. “I kicked you out of bed only once.” Chase raised his brow. “When I was asleep,” she was forced to add.
He held up two fingers. “Twice when you were awake.” She had been livid then. He never did find out why the second time. Hell, when it came down to it, he was unclear as to why for the first.
“That was different.” Gina stopped abruptly. This was going to lead, as she had predicted, to another argument. They weren’t going to get anywhere this way. “We’d better stop here before we ruin our truce.” Looking for a pad, she opened the top drawer of her desk and got lucky the first time out.
“Right.” He eyed the ledgers and decided he needed some reinforcement before he started. “Coffee?”
She scribbled one note to herself before looking up. “I’m going to need it.” Running the back of her wrist across her damp forehead, she added. “Iced.”
Gina realized that it sounded as if she was making a request. She certainly didn’t want to have him wait on her. If he did, she’d only wind up paying for that somehow later.
Tossing down the pen, she angled her way past a small pile of boxes. “I’ll get it.”
But Chase was already abandoning his post with relish. “No, I will.”
They found themselves at the door at the same time, attempting to disprove a law of physics and failing. Two bodies could not occupy the same place at the same time. All they succeeded in doing by not moving out of each other’s way was to arouse each other even more than they already were.
Panic flashed through Gina’s mind. “I’d better get out of your way,” she muttered, her body tingling. She managed to get more in his way instead.
“Yeah, you’re—oh hell,” Chase swore and surrendered, as much a prisoner of this “thing”—whatever it was—that was humming to life on its own, as she was.
His hands slipped from her arms to her face, framing it. In the next heartbeat, he brought his mouth down to hers.
There were a great many ways to avoid a kiss if she wanted to employ them. She could have stepped back. She could simply have moved her head aside. She could have screamed and someone would have come running eventually from somewhere. There was only one way not to avoid it. To remain exactly where she was, exactly how she was.
Gina chose the latter.
Or perhaps it chose her.
Calling herself every form of an idiot, Gina remained immobile, frozen. The next moment, as Chase’s lips touched hers, her brain went into temporary meltdown. The way it always did whenever Chase kissed her.
Even when she was furious at him for thoughtlessly hurting her, even when she swore never to be near him again, all he had to do was kiss her and everything else dissolved as if it had never existed.
Cursing her weakness, Gina rose on her toes and dug her fingers into his hair. The aching familiarity of the simple action made her want to cry.
The kiss deepened and sent her reeling, sending her to places she hadn’t been for four years. Dusky, wanton places that warmed her and welcomed her.
Places she had missed with a passion. Places that aroused her passion.
As did Chase.
Always.
Chapter Five
She still did it to him. Gina could still make him feel as if he were going over a huge waterfall without benefit of canoe, bungee cord or fins. One taste of her mouth set an explosion of desires free within him as if he had been hoarding them like a miser for the past four years.
Though Chase would have denied it vehemently if asked, no one could ever get to him the way Gina could.
Damn but it felt good kissing her again. He’d forgotten just how much he enjoyed it. How much he enjoyed just touching her and holding her to him, feeling the heat from her body as it passed into his.
Chase tightened his arms around her, wanting more, unable to wash away four years of dust with just this one cup of water.
He wanted to make love with her so badly, he thought he would burst.
This was crazy, absolutely crazy. She’d made all these plans in her head, all these promises, to stay out of the fire, and here she was, playing with matches. She was doing exactly what she’d sworn never to do.
She was letting Chase get to her.
Big time.
Gina pressed her hands against Chase’s chest and pushed, hard. She had to stop now before all of her willpower was completely drained from her.
Her eyes were large and dazed, smoky, the way they always were whenever they kissed. Whenever they made love. He found the longing that pulsed within him almost irresistible.
His hands remained on her shoulders as he looked at her. “I’ve been wanting to get that out of the way ever since I saw you again.”
Her eyes narrowed as reality blew away the mists surrounding her mind.
“Out of the way?” she echoed. “Like cleaning out the garage? Like getting a flu shot out of the way?”
How was it possible to mess up so fast? Half a second ago, they were locked in an embrace. Now they were locked in what appeared to have the makings of mortal combat. He tried to backtrack.
“Maybe I phrased that wrong—” He’d meant that he had been dying to do that since he’d first seen her, but his tongue had gotten tangled. He didn’t get a chance to untangle it.
This time she did jerk away, out of his grasp. “No, you phrased it exactly the way it occurred to you.” How could she have been so stupid as to react purely on an emotional level? There had been no debate, no thought involved. She had just given in and kissed him. How could she leave herself open to giving him another chance to trample her heart again? “What else do you want to get out of the way?”
Chase opened his mouth, but she second-guessed him. This was the last compromising position he was going to get her into.
“Well, you won’t, so put that out of your mind. I agreed to work under these conditions because I want the commission and I want the referrals that Nicholas James can give me. To get that, I’ll even walk through the gates of hell.” She eyed him angrily. “Which it seems that I apparently have.”
How could something that tasted like an angel be such a shrew? Chase threw up his hands. “God, nothing’s changed with you, has it? You still blow up over the stupidest things.”
“Stupid?” He considered her feelings stupid? Well, what did she expect? He’d always been that way.
“Yes, stupid,” he shouted back, forgetting that the door was open and they could be heard.
She fisted her hands at her sides to refrain from pummeling his chest. He could be so damned infuriating without even trying.
“Why? Because I don’t relish being something you ‘want to get out of the way’ in order to satisfy your curiosity?” She mimicked his voice and succeeded in sounding comical instead. Except that he didn’t feel like laughing. “Does she still react to me the way she used to? Can I still reduce her to a puddle—?”
He took a step closer, crowding her. Cutting away the minimal air available to her in the first place. Her unexpected admission surprised him, pleased him. Excited him. A satisfied smile spread across his face.
Slowly, almost seductively, he asked, “Can I?”
She’d lie about that with her dying breath. “I’m pretty solid looking for a puddle, don’t you think?”
Chase saw the pulse in her throat jumping. He’d tasted the desire in her kiss. She was affected, all right. It seemed only fair, seeing as he was. A hell of a lot more than he was comfortable with after all this time.
“Actually, I think you’re pretty frail looking.”
She took a step back and found her way blocked by a wall of boxes. The first order of business was going to be putting all this paraphernalia somewhere else, like the basement.
“Well, look again. I am not a pushover. I’m not someone attracted to a revolving door—”
Chase’s eyes narrowed. “You’re going to have to work that one out for me.”
Chase never could understand anything that wasn’t straightforward. Maybe she had expected too much of him. It didn’t keep her from wanting it, though. From needing more than he could give her.
“You can’t just push me away and then expect me to come charging back to you when you make an appearance.”
She made him sound like a callous womanizer. He’d thought she knew him better than that. “I’m expecting nothing—”
She lifted her chin, her eyes slit with a triumphant gleam. “Good, because that’s exactly what you’re going to get. Nothing.”
What was the use? She outnumbered him. She had that mouth of hers on her side. “You’re wrong. I’ve already gotten something. A headache.”
That was a crack about how fast she talked. He had accused her of that all the time. Any congenial feelings that were lingering, urging her to give him a little leeway, disappeared entirely.
“Be happy I left your head where I found it.” With that pronouncement, she marched to the door. “And you can get your own coffee.”
She slammed the door behind her. Two separate towers of boxes came tumbling down around him on either side. He jumped out of the way, only to bump his shin against the side of the desk.
A few curses littered the air as he clutched his shin and rubbed.
No, he thought darkly, nothing had changed. This was exactly like old times with Gina. Tempests blowing out of tiny breezes. Thank God he wasn’t married to her any longer.
He ran his fingers along his lips absently as he crossed to the bookshelf bulging with ledgers. Thank God, he mused again with a sigh.
Feeling like a fool, Gina entered. She saw him looking at her quizzically and pressed her lips together. “I forgot my pad.”
He watched as she retrieved the pad. He must be crazy. He didn’t want her to go. “You forgot something else, too.”
Gina turned slowly and looked at him. What was he talking about?
“What?”
He thought he had a shot at peace if he could resolve what had just happened and get it into the right light. That kiss had stirred up his feelings and made him realize that he wanted to resolve it.
“Your manners.”
She could only stare at him. Had he lost his mind? She wasn’t the one who had made their kiss sound like something to be tossed into a rummage sale after it was over.
“My manners?”
He hated when she did that. “That’s what I said.” Why couldn’t she just let him say his piece and take it in the way it was offered? Why was everything always a negotiation? “Damn it, Gina—”
He was taking that high-handed tone with her again, the one that cut her off at the knees and had always made her feel like an idiot. Well, no more. Her self-esteem had risen a lot in four years. Running Decorate! had done that for her. She didn’t have to listen to this. “Don’t you swear at me.”
If God had ever created a more contrary woman, he sure didn’t want to meet her. “‘Damn’ is not swearing, it’s an exhalation—”
She wasn’t offended by something so minor. She was offended by his tone, by his attitude. “You rationalize everything—”
That’s because I have a brain and use it. You’re using yours as a coaster. “And you rationalize nothing.” Chase let out a long breath as he attempted to control his temper. When he spoke again, his voice had lowered. “So where does that put us?”
She felt a stab of sadness. There would be no changing what was.
“Exactly where we are.” She hugged the pad to her chest, as if that could comfort her somehow. It didn’t. “On opposite sides of the fence with a tidy divorce between us.”
Baby Times Two Page 7