by Cara Colter
“I seem to be having trouble with the international phone plan I ordered,” Jessica said. “It might be better if you didn’t text me for a bit. I think I have to pay per text, and I’m not getting them anyway.”
She hated lying to her parents, but she hated the thought of them worrying even more. She told them, breezily, she had been dropped into an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Without mentioning she was in a private apartment, she described the room she was in to her home decorating channel obsessed mother.
“Send me a picture,” her mother said. “Or put some on Facebook.”
“Um, I will when I get my phone plan sorted out. I don’t want to use any data just yet.”
“Doesn’t the hotel have internet?” her mother insisted.
“Oh, it’s late here. I’ll try to do some Facebook updates tomorrow.” From the computer at the public library. That was on her list of must-sees. The New York Public Library. “I haven’t eaten yet.”
“Don’t go out by yourself!” her mother warned.
“Don’t worry, I’m ordering pizza.”
After listening to a long list of instructions from her mother about opening her hotel door to the deliveryman, she tried to hang up. But her mother had to give her quite a lengthy description of her father fiddling with a lock system for the house and her store that could be operated from a cell phone. Jessica was finally able to disengage. She wondered about her impatience. Was it because Jamie would be waiting for her with pizza? She couldn’t help but also wonder what he would make of an adult woman getting those kind of instructions from her mother.
Maybe Daisy and Aubrey were right when they weighed in that perhaps her life was too small.
Suffocating.
The word, popping into her head, stunned Jessica, and made her feel guilty. She quickly turned her thoughts in a different direction.
She had his cell phone. She had his security code. She could sign in and send a quick private message to her friends. Or she could have a quick look through his photos. It would tell her all kinds of delicious information about her host.
She was not that kind of person! Snoopy and deceitful.
One little look...
No! Before she could change her mind she took his phone back out to him. He pocketed it with a quick nod, as if it had never even occurred to him that she might have a peek at the information on it.
Did that make her trustworthy? Or just plain boring?
She retreated back to her room and to the bathroom. She stripped off her travel-rumpled clothes, and the water from the shower pounding down did literally wash away all her cares. Jessica was not sure a shower had ever felt quite as wonderful as this one. The hot water alternated, blissfully, between pounding, spraying and misting. She accidentally touched a button and was bathed in soothing light. And then, more purposefully, she touched another button. Music flooded the shower stall.
Coincidentally, it was Daisy’s first number one hit single, “Nothing is Impossible.”
As the water massaged her skin, and the music spoke to her as if Daisy was right here coaxing her to dream big, Jessica was aware of feeling not frightened and not put out, but finally, relaxed and safe.
But it was more than that. And it was more than the contortions of the water coming from that showerhead that were making her skin tingle.
She became aware she felt fully and completely alive.
The sensation increased as she stepped out of the shower and toweled off with deeply luxurious pure white Egyptian cotton towels, and then padded out to the bedroom and chose one of Jamie’s T-shirts to slip over her head.
Despite the crispness of it, it smelled of him: clean and spicy, fragrant in an exquisitely masculine way that made all her senses vibrate, as if the air itself had taken on a quality that stroked her.
Feeling life so intensely begged the question: How did she feel most of the time? Asleep? Operating on some kind of autopilot?
Was it a reaction to overcoming a crisis that was bringing her this sense of being exquisitely and intensely aware of everything? Absolutely every single thing that could have gone wrong had, and yet, here she stood, more than a survivor, life handing her completely unexpected gifts.
Or was it from being in Jamie Gilbert-Cooper’s space, surrounded by his things and his scents, his powerful energy permeating the very air she was breathing that left her feeling so aware? Perhaps when you had his kind of energy, you didn’t have to decorate a space to reflect who you were?
She had a thought even more troubling. Was this sensation of being so alive, so open to what happened next, so ready for the strange adventure she found herself in, a message from her life?
Aubrey and Daisy had been hinting almost from the beginning that Jessica was in a rut, was playing it too safe, was not open to the truly sensational experience that was life.
It was true. Since her fiancé, Devon, had died what she had wanted, more than any other single thing, was for life to feel safe again. But in this moment, she was aware she didn’t want that at all.
Jessica felt suddenly powerful, as if, just as Daisy’s music had suggested, nothing was impossible. As if she could change her whole life and her whole outlook right now, right this very second.
For the first time it occurred to her that maybe she was going to accept this job offer.
And then, she eyed the bathrobe he had brought in. It was a man’s, huge and plaid, and way too bulky for a summer night.
She shoved all her dirty laundry into the bag Jamie had provided. Let someone else do her laundry! The new Jessica Winton—bold, embracing the adventure of life—threw open her bedroom door and walked out into that luxe apartment in nothing more than her future boss’s oversize T-shirt.
Well, she might have been hiding behind the laundry bag, just a touch.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHILE JESSICA WAS in the shower, Jamie waited for pizza—the-wilder-the-better-be-careful-what-you-ask-for-sweetheart-pizza—to be delivered.
Pizza. She was in New York City. She could have had anything. He had a list of favorite high-end five-star restaurants that were happy to deliver. But no, she wanted pizza, and insisted that she would pay her half when she had some funds.
Who walked into an apartment like this one—at one of New York’s toniest addresses, the three-block stretch that formed Central Park South—and demanded to pay for half the pizza?
The same woman who had seen something here—or a lack of something—that no one else had ever seen. Seen something about him that people did not see.
The same woman who looked at his quarter-million-dollar kitchen remodel and did not see arrival but wondered about Christmas dinner. He had a feeling that she would not approve of the fact there had never even been a Christmas dinner here. There had never even been a Christmas tree.
She wouldn’t approve, either, that the last female guest to his apartment had not had turkey on her mind. In fact, she’d had quite an interesting idea of what the kitchen island could be used for.
He had sent her home without testing her idea. He realized, now, something he had not realized at the time. It was probably the influence of his guest that made him articulate, within his own mind, what he had felt when his last disappointed guest had left the apartment.
Jamie was sick of the kind of women he had deliberately populated his life with. Fast and sophisticated, they liked all the trappings of success that this apartment represented. They didn’t complicate his life.
Not a single one of them had ever suggested, of his space, it doesn’t really suit you.
Why did he care about Jessica Winton’s approval? I do not he told himself, but he was aware it was not quite the truth.
That very same woman who was worried a hotel desk clerk thought she was sporting a come-hither look was the kind of woman who could complicate a man’s life before
he knew what had hit him.
Jamie decided to entertain himself by looking up the phrase come-hither. It turned out the saying dated back to the 1800s. It indicated a look of sexual invitation, flirtation and seduction.
Even though he could not think of one person less likely than her to have such a look, he put down his phone as if it had burned him.
Who used a phrase like that?
A bookstore owner, apparently. One who also was familiar with quotes from Hippocrates and the works of the Brontë sisters.
Down the hall, he could hear the shower running in the spare bedroom en suite bathroom. She—Jessica Winton, of come-hither fame—was in his space.
But there would be no come-hithering of any sort. He was a professional. She was a professional. They had been dealt an unexpected hand. They would deal with it professionally. He heard the shower turn off. He imagined her dressed in nothing but a cloud of steam.
She had borrowed his phone to call her parents, he reminded himself. Not one single woman who moved in his circles called her parents to check in. Not under any circumstances.
She wouldn’t be calling her parents if she had a boyfriend, or significant other. She’d be calling him. She wouldn’t have come to New York to investigate a job opportunity, either.
Why was his brain insisting on acting like it had uncovered a very important truth about her? That she was single?
All he needed to know about Jessica Winton was that she was wholesome and innocent and in need of protection. And professionalism. Until he got rid of her. He was probably going to be struck dead with a bolt of lightning for even thinking of her dressed in only a cloud of steam.
When the doorman rang to let him know the pizza was here, Jamie nearly jumped out of his skin. He hated it that his unexpected charge had him wound up tight in some way he was not accustomed to. He elected to go down to the lobby and get the pizza, rather than have it brought up. He took the stairs.
When he came back into the living room, puffing slightly, Jessica was standing at the floor-to-ceiling window, in one of his T-shirts.
The value of the take-his-mind-off-Jessica run down the stairs was instantly dissolved. He might as well have saved his energy.
The T-shirt was falling off one of her shoulders, leaving it completely bare. The shoulder seams came down to her elbows, and the hem of the shirt ended past her knees. She didn’t have on a speck of makeup or a piece of jewelry.
She hadn’t put on the bathrobe he had provided, and though that was completely understandable—it would have been way too large for her and it was summertime, not winter—he resented it.
Because there was something about her standing there, in only a T-shirt, her legs long and bare and slender, her body faintly and femininely curved against the thin fabric, that made his mouth go dry.
Jamie chided himself that he saw much more provocative outfits in the office daily. Really, she should have looked like a child playing dress-up.
Jessica turned and looked at him. Her hair was wet and curling, her face flushed pink from the shower. Her eyes looked huge, as seductive as the chocolate that they matched. She did not look like any kind of child at all. She did not look like she was innocent or in need of protection, either.
Her expression was about the furthest thing from come-hither that he could ever imagine. And yet he was unbelievably aware of her.
“The view is amazing.”
He thought it was, too, and he didn’t mean the park.
“Thanks,” he said, congratulating himself on his professional tone, “I like it.”
“I had no idea that Central Park was so huge,” she said turning back to the window.
“It’s eight hundred and forty acres. Forty-two million people a year visit it.” He congratulated himself on the utter safety of a tour-guide-to-client conversation.
Forty million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand and ninety-nine of whom, had they seen his apartment, would have just taken it at face value. They would have seen arrival and success. Not a vague emptiness.
But she hadn’t used the word empty. So where had that come from, that indictment of his life?
He glanced at his dining room table. Would he sit next to her? Across from her? Which would be less dangerous?
“It’s a nice night,” he said. “Do you want to eat pizza alfresco?” Side by side, on his deck, an end table in between them, less chance of those naked little toes touching him, or shoulders brushing, or eyes meeting. They could look at the view, instead of each other.
She laughed and he raised an eyebrow at her.
“In Italian,” she explained, “that phrase means ‘in the cool.’ Usually, when an Italian says it, it refers to spending time in jail.”
“You speak Italian?” he asked, incredulous. He had a sudden, totally unwanted vision, of her leaning in to him whispering, Voglio fare l’amore con te.
As if Jessica Winton would ever say something like that! It was wrong to even think it. It was right up there with come-hithering. Thankfully, she did not speak Italian.
“I just seem to collect information,” she told him.
“Dibs on you for my Trivial Pursuit team.” The weird thing was, he could picture playing Trivial Pursuit with her. At the Christmas celebration he had never hosted. Jamie gave his head a shake in an effort to clear any vision of Jessica Winton inhabiting any part of his future.
Not Christmas dinner. Not sexy Italian phrases. Not playing a game at the annual office party. Not come-hithering.
He slid the patio door open and the sounds of the city, along with warm summer air, rushed in. He held the door back, balancing the pizza in his hand, letting her go out first.
As she brushed by him, the lavender smell—the one that invoked visions of her, and possibly him, in a purple field together—was, thankfully, completely gone.
It was, unfortunately, replaced with something even more tantalizing.
Soap. Skin. Squeaky-clean hair. Something so purely feminine, it took his breath away.
He held the pizza box closer to his nose, hoping to banish all else. He pulled out a chair for her with his toe, and then set the pizza box on the table and took a chair on the opposite side of it. The park was growing quiet—it was probably close to midnight.
“Look! There’s still a horse and carriage.”
“I think they book the last rides at eleven thirty.”
She got up from the table, and went to the railing. “It’s a young couple,” she reported. “Oh, my gosh, I think he’s asking her to marry him. Come see.”
Though it was against his better judgment, he joined her at the railing. Sure enough, eleven stories below them, a young man was presenting what looked to be a ring box to a young woman. Her squeal of delight rose over every other sound in the night.
“It’s like something out of a fairy tale,” Jessica said, with a happy sigh. As she turned back to the table, her shoulder—the naked one—brushed his arm.
Cue the music, he thought, to banish any red-hot thoughts that accidental brush, the one he had been hoping to avoid by choosing to dine alfresco, might cause. Someday, my prince will come. That was it exactly. Jessica Winton had the starstuck look on her face of a woman in search of a prince.
Scary.
Even scarier was his curiosity about why she hadn’t found one.
He opened the pizza box, and offered her a slice. She took one, took a delicate bite and closed her eyes.
“Wild enough for you?” he asked.
She opened her eyes and glanced at him. He kept his expression deliberately bland. Professional, he congratulated himself.
“Definitely wild. And delicious. I come from a pepperoni-only family and I always seem to cave to the majority. This is a treat. Some kind of Mediterranean, right? Olives? Onions? Feta cheese?”
“Plus anchovies and ho
t pickles. Here. I’ll show you how to eat it like a New Yorker.”
“New Yorkers eat pizza a certain way?”
“Of course.” As she watched, he took the crust and rolled it neatly toward the triangular tip of the pizza.
“But now it’s a sausage roll, not pizza!” she protested, watching him.
He took a bite, aware of her eyes on his lips, before they skittered away. “Try it before you knock it.”
And so she did. She closed her eyes with pleasure as she bit into it. Now his eyes were on her lips!
“And so practical, too,” she decided.
Considering how aware they both seemed to be now of each other’s lips, he wasn’t so sure about that.
“So,” he said, after they had both staved off the worst of the hunger and were working on their second slices, “tell me why you think you might like to work for JHA. Because you don’t really seem like the type who ends up in marketing.”
Terrible timing for a job interview.
And yet he could not think of a better way to get his mind off the lusciousness of her lips closing over that roll of pizza. When he dragged his eyes from her lips, he noticed her naked leg sticking out from under his T-shirt. Her toenails were painted the palest shade of pink.
“The type?” she said. “What type do I seem like?”
The type who was targeted by thieves looking for an innocent. The type who phoned her parents. The type who harbored a belief—however secret—in fairy tales.
“I guess you don’t seem like the type who would leave everything you know behind to find a new life,” he said carefully.
“Really?” she said, the deliberately light tone of someone who was hiding something, “This pizza alone is enough to make me toss my old life.”
“Pizza preferences aside, you seem like a picket fences kind of woman. And a solid guy who adores you and whose world revolves around you. Babies. A golden retriever. A summer cottage on the lake. A big Christmas tree, only real will do.”