by Ann Evans
Mark settled one of the sleeves up over her shoulder. “Didn’t mean to what, Jenna? Let me kiss you?”
“Yes. No! What I mean to say is, I liked it. Too much.”
“So did I. So stay here. Let’s find out what else we have in common.”
Dammit! Why wouldn’t her jacket cooperate? She fished around in it awkwardly, finally finding the second sleeve and shrugging into it. She turned to face Mark. “I can’t. I’m not a one-night-stand kind of girl.”
His brow furrowed as he stiffened a little. “Do you think that’s the way I would treat you?”
“No. Well, yes, probably.” She took a deep breath. “I just think that where that kiss was heading is someplace that’s a lot easier for you than it is for me. My life is very structured. Very simple. Very sane. Some people even find me boring. Ask Lauren, she’ll tell you.”
She finished yanking her jacket into place, then realized she was still barefoot. She pulled one shoe on, but the other refused to slip into place. She took a couple of ungraceful hops. “Damn! I hate these shoes.”
“I don’t care what Lauren thinks. Or anyone else. I don’t find you boring at all. I think you’re one of the most intriguing women I’ve met in a long time.”
Her attention swung away from her shoe and back to his face. “For a man who claims not to believe in romance, you’re very good at it.”
She was losing her balance. Mark reached out to steady her, his hands on both her shoulders. “Will you stand still? Let’s talk about this.”
She wobbled on one foot for a moment, then steadied. She should have known he wouldn’t make this easy for her. Her mind was a jumble of guilt and confusion and embarrassment, and Mark wasn’t willing to play fair. Forget nice and friendly. His hands were quiet on her shoulders, but his thumbs were massaging the base of her throat, and that touch was so warm. Supple. Alive.
She shook her head. “Stop that. It’s not going to work.”
Now his hands did move. Up her neck in a gentle, whispery caress. Cupping the base of her skull so that her head was drawn upward and back, and his fingers stroked pulse points that had been sleeping for years.
Unfair! Jenna wanted to cry. Stop! But the words simply wouldn’t come.
He gave her a long, speculative appraisal from beneath his lashes. His tender smile had a melting effect on her insides. “You realize, of course, if you go now, you’ll never find out.”
“Find out what?” she asked. Her voice sounded detached and foreign.
His mouth widened into a grin. “Whether it’s boxers or briefs.”
She stared at him in mute misery. The dark, heavy truth descended on her in full force and without mercy. She might as well acknowledge the terrible inevitability of this moment, that something was breaking, breaking like a cord, in her mind….
Jenna nodded slowly. “You’re right, damn you. I have to know.”
She tossed the remaining shoe over one shoulder. By the time it hit the floor, she’d put her arms around Mark’s neck and pulled him to her. She kissed him, thoroughly. And he responded.
If this was a mistake, she’d find a way to make it right somehow. And if there were regrets, she’d never lay claim to them. A premonition of danger flared at the edges of her mind, but her body was already on a wild journey now, and the feeling didn’t last long enough to become a nuisance.
CHAPTER FIVE
THINGS HAD HAPPENED pretty much as Jenna expected when she and Lauren returned to Atlanta. They called Vic in California, giving her the bad news that the interview with Mark Bishop was a bust. Their friend had been so thoroughly immersed in talking sense into her little sister that she hadn’t been able to give it much attention.
But now, a week later, Vic was back. Disappointed and annoyed. Ready to hear the full story. Eager to find out if there was anything that could be salvaged. Lauren and Jenna, seated in Vic’s plush office chairs, had just given her all the details.
Well, not all the details, Jenna admitted. Some things just weren’t meant to be shared with anyone. Even your best friends and business partners.
Victoria Estabrook’s disheartened sigh cut into Jenna’s musings. In the merciless sunlight pouring through the glass windows of the office, Vic’s expression was crestfallen. “So you just dropped the interview and left?” she repeated as though she couldn’t have heard correctly. “Without even trying to find out what was in that prenup to make Shelby Elaine go nuts?”
“We couldn’t ask,” Jenna said. “It wasn’t appropriate to intrude. And certainly it was none of our business.”
“Of course it’s none of our business,” Vic agreed with an incredulous snort. “But it’s newsworthy. Readers have a right to know.”
Jenna frowned. “Our readers want to know where to buy wedding gowns that are designer knockoffs and what kind of mother-in-law gift costs ten bucks but looks like a hundred. I seriously doubt they care about Mark Bishop’s prenup agreement.”
Lauren, who had been polishing one of her camera lenses, stopped long enough to grab Vic’s attention. “Maybe you could find out more from Debra Lee.”
Vic nodded thoughtfully and rifled through her Rolodex. “She might be willing to talk.”
“I think we should consider it a dead issue,” Jenna got out with some desperation. After everything that had happened, she was eager to see the incident—including her part in it—put well behind them.
“Maybe by now they’ve patched things up,” Lauren suggested.
“That’s not going to happen,” Jenna said. When Lauren gave her a mildly surprised look, she realized she’d sounded too vehement. More reasonably she added, “I mean, Shelby looked very distraught and determined to put an end to the engagement.”
“She could rethink it,” Lauren said.
Seated behind her desk, Vic rested her chin on her hands. “Well, right now we still seem to be short one article. Any suggestions?”
Lauren lobbed a few ideas, but nothing that seemed to solve the dilemma. Jenna mostly sat back in her chair and listened. She’d brought the latest company expense reports to this meeting to go over, and she fingered the edge of the file lovingly. Numbers were so wonderfully cut-and-dried. So finite. As a partner in FTW, why couldn’t she have stayed firmly behind the scenes, instead of getting pulled into these kinds of discussions? They always seemed to underscore how completely unimaginative she was when it came to brainstorming.
Although…
She remembered the conversation she’d had with Mark that night on the sidewalk. He’d promised to help the magazine get an interview with one of the other eligible bachelors. Considering how their night together had ended and subsequent events, it seemed very unlikely now that he would help her. But he might be willing to talk to Vic.
She cleared her throat, and both her friends glanced her way. “Supposedly number eight on the list is about to pop the question to some Hollywood actress,” she said. “We could contact him. See if he’d give us the story.”
“How do you know this?” Vic asked, and already Jenna could see the wheels turning in her head.
“Mark Bishop told me,” Jenna said without thinking.
Lauren frowned at her. “When did he tell you that?”
Jenna realized her mistake instantly. “I’m sure I heard him mention it,” Jenna said with a shrug. “Or maybe it was Debra Lee.” Think, Jenna. Don’t just sit there! “What time is your flight to New Zealand, Lauren? I’d be so excited about this assignment. Aren’t you?”
She ducked her head, certain that the furious blush creeping up her neck would give her away. Lauren was too sharp not to wonder just when that information had passed between the two of them without her hearing it.
Luckily, just then Vic’s secretary interrupted to say Lauren had a phone call from one of the magazines she regularly contributed to. Lauren wanted to take it in her office, which was only a couple of doors down, leaving Jenna and Vic alone.
Jenna was about to leave the office when it occur
red to her that, since Vic’s return, she hadn’t mentioned the problem with her sister, Cara, at all. She turned back to her friend. “Is everything all right? How did it go with Cara?”
Vic surfaced from the distraction of a desktop filled with phone messages she had to return. Her small smile was hopeful. “Cara agreed to slow things down a little. She’s promised me she won’t run off to Europe with him.”
“Then why don’t you sound happier?”
“You know the really horrible part, Jen? Once I got to know this guy and see what Cara saw in him, I couldn’t honestly disagree with her. There was a time when I would have run off with him, too. Isn’t it awful how stodgy we’ve become?”
“We’re not stodgy. We’ve just learned that spur-of-the-moment decisions and impromptu actions usually have a price. One we’re not so eager to pay anymore.”
“I suppose.” Vic leaned back in her chair. “But if you could have seen how happy Cara is. This guy makes her feel like she’s flying…”
“Which is just fine until you try to land. Once you crash and burn a couple of times, you’re not so willing to—”
“Jenna!” Vic sat forward in her chair. “You can’t become this jaded over the idea of falling in love. I forbid it. Jack was an unfortunate choice, but he’s out of the picture now. Someday a new guy will come along, and you’ll have to make yourself take a chance again. You must.”
Oh, if only you knew the chance I took recently, Jenna thought. But she couldn’t share with anyone what had happened that one night in New York. It was still too painful even to think about. And Vic would try to fix things, even though some things were unfixable.
She gave her friend a bright smile of agreement. “You’re right, of course. But I really don’t have to worry. If a new guy comes along, you and Lauren will be pushing me at him no matter how hard I dig in my heels.”
“We certainly will.”
Jenna turned toward the door. “Until that day comes, I have expense reports to go through. Carve out some time this afternoon to go over yours.”
“If I must,” Vic said with a grimace. She hated accounting tasks.
“You must.”
Jenna was almost out the door when Vic stopped her. “Jen, thanks for filling in for me with this interview thing. I know if you could have made it happen, you would have.”
“I did try,” Jenna said. “I’m disappointed for us. And I feel as though I let the magazine down even though it wasn’t my fault.”
“If we can snag agreement from one of the other bachelors, number eight maybe, you could make it up by agreeing to interview him.”
“Okay.”
Vic’s playful grin turned into a look of surprise. “What? I expected an argument.”
Jenna shook her head. “I did most of the interview before Shelby Elaine came in with her big announcement and spoiled everything. It wasn’t nearly as terrifying as I expected. You see? I’m not completely unwilling to take chances. Mind you, I still prefer a calculator and spreadsheets.” With a smile she tapped the expense-report file in her hand. “Call me when you’re ready to discuss how we can justify full-body massages to the IRS.”
She returned to her office, feeling oddly deflated and edgy. Refusing to give in to it, she dug into the latest accounts-payable report. FTW was paying too much to outsource its mass mailings. There had to be a way to get the costs down, and finding it would keep her brain fully focused on practical matters. Too bad it wasn’t tax season, when dealing with the mountain of government forms left absolutely no time for daydreaming.
But ten minutes later she found her mind wandering back, as it had so often these past few days, to the same question. How could that one night in Manhattan with Mark Bishop have happened?
Had she been so desperate to prove she was willing to take chances, mobilized by family and friends who saw her as someone she no longer wanted to be? Had a little alcohol, a few hours of satisfying conversation and being around the most sexually potent man she’d ever met given everything such a rosy glow that she hadn’t been able to resist him?
And truthfully, not a bone in her body had regretted where all that had led. They had moved to the bedroom with identical haste and few words. The longing she felt to touch Mark, just touch him, was something she couldn’t explain and only dimly comprehended. Was it just foolish, romantic gibberish to say that making love with Mark Bishop had taken her to places she’d never imagined? Well, it had.
But the soft, dreamy hour before dawn had brought sanity. Feeling headachy and heavy, she had remained tucked in Mark’s arms and tried to envision what could come next for them. Half-a-dozen complications and possibilities teased her mind, but in the end, she dismissed them all. No point in hoping for more. She was nothing but what she’d told Mark she did not want to be. The epitome of dating clichés—a one-night stand.
That realization had caused her to slip quietly out of his sleeping embrace. She’d left him a note—keeping it short and breezy had seemed the way to go—and then she’d made her escape.
“Got a minute?” A voice from the office doorway made her jump.
She looked up to find Lauren standing there. As always, one of her expensive cameras was clutched in her hands. “Sure. What’s up?”
Lauren entered, shutting the door behind her with a soft click and then leaning against it. “All right,” she said quietly. “Confess.”
“To what?” Jenna asked. She knew where this conversation was headed, but she wasn’t going to cave in without a fight. She grinned and snapped her fingers. “Okay, I admit it. I lied this morning. I did eat the last jelly-filled doughnut.”
Lauren moved closer to Jenna’s desk. “Don’t play dumb with me. You saw Mark Bishop after that interview, didn’t you?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because I was with you the entire time we were in his suite, and he never mentioned another guy on the list getting engaged.”
“I said I could be wrong about where I heard it.”
Lauren’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you.”
“That doesn’t make it any less true.”
“Right now your neck is as red as a beet.”
Damn! Why did she have to have such fair skin? Was the best defense a good offense? She was about to find out. “That’s because I’m not used to being called a liar by someone I consider one of my best friends. My feelings are very hurt.”
Lauren didn’t look a bit apologetic. She ignored the possibility of Jenna’s hurt feelings completely. “When you staggered into our hotel room at five in the morning, you said you’d walked all over the city. But I knew that couldn’t be true.”
“Why not?”
“In those heels you were wearing? Not a chance. They were killing you even before we got to New York. Besides, being that adventuresome isn’t like you.”
“Wow,” Jenna said with an annoyed look. “You ought to work for Scotland Yard.”
“And when I asked, you told me you’d met a very nice man who bought you dinner and showed you some of the sights.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Was Mark Bishop that ‘very nice man’?”
She didn’t have to think twice about that answer. “No, as it turns out, he’s not a ‘very nice man’ at all.”
Lauren came up to the desk, laid her camera aside and planted her hands on the cherry surface. Lowering her head and her voice, she said, “Stop playing word games. Tell me the truth or I’ll sic Vic on you. You know she’ll be much more ruthless than I am.”
That was certainly true. Jenna sighed heavily. What was the point in denying it any longer? It wasn’t as if she was likely to ever see Mark Bishop again. “All right,” she said with a grimace. “Yes. I ran into Mark Bishop. We had dinner together.”
“Where?”
“In his suite.”
“Just the two of you?”
“That’s generally what together means.”
“And that took until fi
ve in the morning?”
“Time…got away from us.”
“Oh, my God,” Lauren said, standing upright suddenly and staring at Jenna. “You slept with him!”
Jenna was ready with a denial, then changed her mind. “Oh, hell, yes. I slept with him. Are you satisfied?”
“You slept with him!” Lauren repeated, as though she couldn’t believe it.
“I don’t think technically what we did could be considered sleeping,” Jenna said dryly.
Lauren shook her head. “I can’t believe it.”
“Neither can I. But it happened.”
“Are you going to see him again?”
Jenna’s heart lurched. She bit her lip and scowled. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Why?” Lauren asked, then gave her a knowing glance. “He’s lousy in bed, isn’t he? I knew it. The best-looking ones always are.”
Jenna suddenly felt as if her lungs were encased in a small, tight box. She struggled to draw a breath. “I’m not going to discuss it, Lauren. And neither are you. It was a mistake. One I won’t repeat. I’m asking you, as one of my closest friends, to drop this conversation and never talk about it again. Not with me, not with Vic, not with anyone.”
Unlike Vic, Lauren never pushed further than she thought she could reasonably go. In spite of all her teasing accusations, something kind and nonjudgmental came into her eyes. “He really got to you, didn’t he?” she said, then shook her head. “Oh, kiddo, I’m so sorry.”
Jenna gave her friend a small smile. “Me, too. But just promise me—not a word.”
Lauren held up her camera. “I swear on my best camera. Not a peep. Not even to Vic.”
Lauren left her alone after that. Jenna sat at her desk for a long time, thinking. Nothing had turned out the way she’d hoped.
When she’d returned to Atlanta, she’d found two messages on her answering machine. One from the office. Mark Bishop had been calling for her and had finally been given her home phone number. Since she’d just done the interview with him, they didn’t think she would mind. The second message had been from Mark. Asking her to call him.