by Bella Andre
“I’m so sorry,” she said, even though her apology couldn’t fix a thing. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
But she knew perfectly well what she’d been thinking. She’d been trying to convince herself that not being tempted by Jack was a good thing. Yet she had as little restraint when it came to thinking about him as she did to kissing him.
The harder she tried to push him from her mind, the deeper he stuck.
Dropping the ruined photo into the trash, Gerry turned to face her. “I take it Jack hasn’t called?”
The room was dark, but not dark enough that her friend couldn’t see the truth in her eyes. “He’s just doing what I asked him to do.”
“I’ve known you for more than a decade, and I’ve never seen you like this.” Gerry cocked his head and pinned her with his deep photographer’s gaze. “That’s why you agreed to take on this campaign, isn’t it, and why you’re working so hard on it? You’ve fallen for the brilliant—and gorgeous—engineer.”
Allen had commented before one of her interviews that she was going to be very glad she’d given up her fee in favor of a portion of the profits. Of course, she didn’t tell the chairman that it was all for Jack, that on their first night together in the diner she’d fallen head over heels for him before realizing he wanted more from her than pie and conversation. Gerry, on the other hand, had seen right through her.
“I’ve tried so hard to keep my head on my shoulders around Jack, but…”
She found it extremely difficult to put into words what she was feeling. If it were simply attraction, it would be easy. But the emotion rolling through her was something much deeper than that.
She knew better than to want this much or feel so strongly when every time she’d given her heart to someone, they’d tossed it aside without a care. And yet, she hadn’t been able to stop herself where Jack was concerned.
“I’ve never known anyone so driven by a dream, or so passionate about making it become reality.”
“I have,” Gerry said. “You.”
Mary couldn’t contain her surprise. “Me?”
“I’ll never forget that first day you walked into my studio. You were as green and inexperienced as they came, but Randy had promised me there was something special about you, something that went beyond your outward beauty. You stepped in front of my camera and even though you weren’t polished, or had any clue whatsoever about what you were doing, I saw exactly what Randy had been talking about. Your passion for life, and all those dreams you wanted to make real, were right there in your eyes.” He put his hand on her arm. “I know the business hasn’t always been easy on you and that you’ve been through tough times with your family and with men who didn’t deserve you, but can’t you see it’s only made you stronger?”
From the line above his head he pulled a few prints that had dried and slipped them into an envelope. “Jack and his partners need to see these tonight so that they can pull their favorites to present to the board. I’ve got to leave right now for another meeting. Their address is on the front of the envelope.”
* * *
Jack followed the Realtor through the large building on Page Mill Road with Howie and Larry. Now that Mary was working to support the Pocket Planner, retailers were starting to come on board in big numbers. Allen wanted to make sure they had their offices ready and new employees in place immediately after the Christmas boom so they could begin R & D on new products. The past few days had gone at warp speed and Jack shouldn’t have had a spare moment for anything but the production demands and planning the future of his company.
But as Jack worked to focus on what the Realtor was saying about manufacturing floors and office space, all he could think about was how Mary had felt in his arms. How soft her skin was beneath his fingertips. The sweet taste of her lips. The surprise in her eyes when he’d talked about waking up next to her in two years. And how he’d barely been able to stop himself from calling her or, worse, showing up on her doorstep.
“How does that sound to you, Jack?”
Howie’s question knocked Jack back into the present. “Sorry, what was the question?”
“We’re supposed to meet Gerry back at the garage in a few minutes to look over the pictures he and Mary have taken over the past few days. You’ve got the best eye for the ads anyway, so we were thinking we’d finish up here and let you take that meeting.”
Knowing he wasn’t being any help here anyway, Jack quickly agreed. During the drive back to their soon-to-be-closed office in his garage, he thought up another dozen excuses for calling Mary and meeting with her. But, damn it, no matter how badly he wanted to see her, he knew better.
Jack and his brothers had been raised to honor and respect everyone, especially women. And yet, the few times he and Mary had been together, he’d had a hell of a time trying to respect her wishes by not letting their kisses spiral off into more.
He was just pulling up the driveway when he realized he’d have to figure out how to get a grip on himself, and fast. Because Gerry wasn’t there waiting for him with the photos for the campaign.
Instead, the most beautiful woman in the world was standing right there.
* * *
Mary had expected to see Howie and Larry with Jack but, obviously, something had held up the other two men. She couldn’t ever remember being this nervous around a man, not even when she’d been a young teenager with her first school crush.
Jack’s eyes were darker, even more intense, than she remembered them being as he walked toward her. She worked to keep her legs from trembling, or from running straight into his arms.
It didn’t help one bit when Jack said, “I’ve missed you, Mary.”
Her breath caught in her throat at how much she wanted him at that moment. Oh God, why had she agreed to let Gerry maneuver her into coming here? She knew he thought he was doing what was best for her, probably thinking she’d been playing it safe for too long, but surely that didn’t mean she should dive headfirst into the most dangerous waters she’d ever known. Did it?
Trying to break through the heated moment, she said, “I can’t wait to finally see where the magic happens.”
“I’m afraid there’s far more dust and a mess of wires than magic,” he said as he reached down to unlock the garage door.
The muscles in his arms and back flexed beneath his cotton shirt as he pulled the heavy door open, and though she knew it was rude to stare, she couldn’t have stopped herself for the world. Especially when she knew firsthand just how good those hard muscles felt pressed against her.
She caught her breath for a different reason when he motioned for her to come inside. He was right about the dust and wires, but what really made an impact on her was the wonder of creation in every spare inch of the room.
“It’s amazing, Jack.” She had no idea how any of it worked, but she wanted to. She pointed to a screen with a bunch of knobs all around it. “What’s this for?”
“It’s an oscilloscope, which is a type of electronic test instrument for looking at wave signals.”
She walked over to a group of similar, smaller boxes. “And what about this?”
“This is a voltage generator. It’s what we use to power up the prototype motherboards.”
She put her hand on his arm. “It really is magic, isn’t it?”
A muscle jumped in his jaw as he stared down at her. “I think you’d better show me the pictures you brought.”
Suddenly realizing how close she was standing to him, she took a step back. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be wasting your time—”
“You don’t have a damn thing to be sorry for,” he said, cutting her off before she could finish her apology. “But I will be sorry in a moment if I don’t figure out how to gain some self-control around you.”
She’d always thought she was a fair person, and a strong one, too. But how could either of those things be true when she was desperate for Jack to lose control and kiss her again so that she could get lost in
his arms and not have to make any tough decisions at all?
He deserved her honesty at the very least, if she couldn’t give him fairness or strength. “I missed you these past few days, too. There’s no point in trying to pretend I didn’t.”
But even that wasn’t nearly honest enough. She needed to finally tell him why she was trying so hard to keep things professional between them during the campaign.
“Remember how I told you about the mistake I made a few years ago? His name was Romain. He owns a big Swiss watch company, and I was the model they chose for a crucial campaign. He was very charming, very persuasive and attentive, and we began dating soon after I started working for his company. We were seen everywhere together. He made sure of it so that his profits would soar even higher. Until he decided profits would be even higher without me.” She sighed, thinking how young, how foolish she’d been. “He was about to inform me of my future replacement on the day I decided to surprise him at his penthouse.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “All three of us were surprised.”
“Three?”
“Me, Romain, and the model in his bed. She was quite a bit younger than me, one of the up-and-coming girls who was as naive as I used to be when I first started in the business. Clearly, she’d been just as easily charmed by him as I’d been. I broke things off with him, of course, but I had signed a contract, and I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I broke my promise to his board and the investors. Those last few photo shoots were horribly painful.”
“You would have been perfectly within your rights to break a business promise, since he had done far worse by breaking his personal promise with you.”
“No. I couldn’t let him know how badly he’d hurt me, or admit to the world what a fool I’d been. I was just as foolish as my mother accused me of being all those years ago.” She took a breath to try to shake it all off and come back to Jack and his garage full of magic. “Since then, I’ve always been careful not to blend my work life with my personal life.”
“I would tell you I’m not like him, but you already know that, don’t you?”
“I do, but—”
How could she explain that it wasn’t Jack she didn’t trust, but herself? The biggest mistakes she’d made in her life had been about giving and losing love.
“Every day I had to work with him shattered another little piece of me. It’s taken a long time to heal those cracks.”
He reached for her hands and threaded their fingers together. “I promised to try to be patient, and I couldn’t live with myself if I broke my promise to you.”
She’d never met anyone like Jack. He had such respect for the meaning of a promise…not to mention such respect for her as the model that so many people had discounted over the years as nothing more than just a pretty face.
“You know what you want and what you need to do to get it,” she said softly, “but you never compromise your values—or your word—to get there. How do you do it?”
“I could ask you the same question. You’re so beautiful that you could have anything you want, but you earn everything through hard work.”
“You make me sound better than I am. Especially when I know it’s not fair to want so badly to kiss you after I’ve just laid down the rules again…but I can’t figure out a way to stop myself from asking.”
“Nobody’s perfect,” he said with a smile that didn’t do a thing to mask his desire.
It was just the right thing to say after the pressures she’d faced while building a career based on perfection. “In that case, I hope that means you’ll forgive me for what I’m about to ask.” She moved closer again, putting her hands on his chest and slowly sliding them up to wind around his neck.
“Ask me anything, Angel.”
Her insides turned to liquid heat at his endearment. “Kiss me, Jack.”
She was still saying his name when his mouth covered hers in a kiss that stole her breath away entirely. Both of them fed greedily from each other’s lips, their days apart having fueled their hunger for each other and bringing it to new heights.
Mary had been kissed at the top of the Eiffel Tower. She’d been kissed in a horse-drawn carriage in the middle of Prague. She’d been kissed on the Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro. But this kiss with Jack, in his garage surrounded by cables and machines and stale cups of coffee, was the most romantic, most thrilling kiss she’d ever shared…and one she knew she’d remember forever, regardless of how things turned out between them.
He backed her up into one of the tables, and the next thing she knew, he’d lifted her up onto it so that she could wrap her legs around his waist. Again, she felt like a naughty teenager making out with her off-limits boyfriend as she locked her ankles together behind his hips and pulled him even closer.
The fireworks sparking off inside her were on the opposite scale from fine, from content. On the contrary, she felt as if she wasn’t just on the edge of Jack’s worktable, but teetering on the edge of something deliciously dangerous. Shockingly wicked.
And absolutely wonderful.
For all of her protests that they needed to keep business strictly business, yet again it was Jack who retained enough sense to lift his mouth from hers. Not once had she been the one to stop their kisses. If he had been any other man, they would already be stripping off each other’s clothes, promises be damned.
But as desperate as she was physically to take things to the next level, Mary knew in her heart of hearts that though her body was ready, her heart wasn’t.
Forehead to forehead, they each worked to catch their breath. As a new rush of longing swept through her, Mary closed her eyes tight. Reminding herself that his partners could walk in at any moment, she took a deep breath, then lifted her lids to find Jack’s dark gaze on her.
His eyes were extraordinarily beautiful, a deep brown with flecks of green and blue throughout. He also had naturally thick eyelashes, the kind that women spent too much time and money trying to replicate with makeup. Up close like this, finally letting herself look her fill, she realized he had a small scar just at the top of his left cheekbone, and his nose looked as if it had been broken a long time ago.
As he’d said, no one was perfect, and his imperfections only made him more beautiful to her. He had the dangerously good looks of a heartbreaker, but the more time she spent with him, the less she believed that he could ever break anything, let alone someone’s heart.
Mary had told Jack the truth about Romain, but what she hadn’t admitted was that she’d been trying to put the pieces of her broken heart back together ever since the day her mother had disowned her.
When, she wanted to know, would she be ready to let the broken pieces go so that she could finally start over and be whole again?
As Jack gently helped her down from his worktable, he said, “There’s something I need to tell you.”
Not sure she could yet trust her voice, she simply nodded for him to continue.
“I like you.” He brushed a lock of hair away from her cheek, tucking it gently behind her ear. “More than I’ve ever liked anyone else. Much, much more.”
Many times over the years men had declared their love for her, but Jack’s simple statement that he liked her was a million times sweeter.
When they’d been kissing on his desk, she’d felt like a naughty teenager. Her parents had been protective enough that she’d been an untouched virgin when she’d left Italy. Being with Jack made her feel giddy, as if she were having her first truly important crush with a boy she couldn’t stop thinking about.
Smiling, she said, “I like you, too.” Needing to touch him again, she gently ran her fingertip over his left cheekbone. “Where did you get this scar?”
“My brother Max and I were playing hockey. He ended up switching to tennis after this.”
“Is he the one who broke your nose, too?”
On a laugh that easily could have warmed her on the coldest night, he shook his head. “That was all me. You have to pro
mise me you won’t laugh before I tell you how it happened.”
She made a cross over her heart. “I promise.”
“I walked into a wall.”
She had to bite her lip to stop the laughter from bubbling out. When she was fairly sure she could speak without giggling, she asked, “How?”
One eyebrow raised, humor in his eyes, he said, “I was in college and had my first breakthrough with understanding how the Shockley Diode worked. I’d been up all night, and when I went to brag to Howie about my amazing accomplishment, I somehow missed the doorway.”
It was either laugh or kiss him, and since she’d made a promise not to do the first, she happily gave in to the second. But before their kiss could turn to more, she made herself take a step back.
“Pictures.” The word came out of Mary’s mouth slightly high-pitched and breathless. “I should show you the photos. Especially since Howie and Jack will probably be here soon, and I—” Oh, how she hated the way the words would sound, even though she knew she had to say them “—I wouldn’t want them to catch us kissing the way Gerry did.”
When, she asked herself again, would all those broken pieces inside her finally begin to heal?
She also hated seeing the flash of hurt that moved across Jack’s face before he quickly erased it and said, “Right, we should look at the pictures. How do you feel about pepperoni and black olives on your pizza?”
Her stomach growled before she’d so much as opened her mouth to tell him she’d love that. Larry and Howie pulled up outside a few minutes later, and as the four of them ate pizza and drank beer straight from the bottles, they began making decisions about which pictures to use in the ad campaign. With Jack’s passionate kisses tingling on her lips all the while, Mary didn’t envy the three of them their easy camaraderie…because they made her feel she was one of them.
And she loved every second of being part of their team.
Chapter Nine