by Joanne Rock
Dempsey wanted her.
And maybe, for now, that ought to be enough. She couldn’t expect him to fall head over heels for her when he’d hardly seen her as a woman up until earlier in the week. Was she a fool to run away from the firestorm she’d created?
Part of her wanted to march back into her office and strip off all his clothes. Request that detailed list of relationship benefits after all.
Except, of course, she had little experience with men. And baiting a Reynaud was a dangerous business when she wasn’t a man-eating Valentina type who could deal with the fallout. She was just Adelaide Thibodeaux and she had a feeling she might never recover from a night in Dempsey’s bed. Knowing her overinflated sense of loyalty, she’d probably be lovesick for life, stuck in a job as his assistant in the hope he’d one day crook his finger in her direction so she could repeat the mind-blowing experience.
No, thank you.
Dempsey might have started this game on his terms, but she planned to finish it. On hers.
Six
Dempsey made no claim to being an intuitive man.
But even he could sense that he’d made some headway with Adelaide earlier in the day. Sure, he understood her reluctance to jeopardize their friendship. And he meant what he’d said about respecting her. Caring about her.
Yet the flame that burned between them now wouldn’t go away just because they ignored it. She might not be ready to address it, but he sure as hell would. So now he found himself driving around downtown New Orleans in search of the fabric supplier she was using as a pretext for not meeting him for dinner.
He’d rearranged his day and moved his nonnegotiable meetings earlier in the afternoon. His practice had gone well. His game plan for Sunday was solid. Nothing was going to stand in the way of spending time with her tonight. He would make a case for exploring this attraction in a way he hadn’t been prepared to do last night after that unsettling talk with Leon.
He needed to get to know her better—a damn sorry thing to admit when he ought to know her as well as anyone. But he’d been too caught up in his own career the past few years to pay attention to Addy. If he wanted to persuade her to let her guard down and give him a chance, he needed to understand what made her happy. What pleased her.
Spotting the storefront of the warehouse, Dempsey steered his BMW sedan into a spot on the street. Evan had driven Adelaide to this location, so Dempsey had it on good authority she was still inside.
The least he could do was show an interest in the business she wanted to start. He’d looked over her business plan briefly before driving out here and he’d been both impressed and worried. Her goals were sound, but fulfilling them would mean a lot of hands-on involvement to get it up and running. Maybe if he discussed the clothing company with her in detail, he’d see a way for her to hand off some of the less important tasks. There had to be a way to free her up enough to keep working with him.
He needed Adelaide.
In the ten steps it took to hit the front door he was already sweating, the heat still wet as a dishcloth even though it was six o’clock. The man seated at the desk out front pointed Dempsey in the right direction, and he went into the warehouse to look for Adelaide.
He found her in front of a display of laces, draping an intricate gray pattern over her calf as if to see what the material looked like up against bare skin. Making him wonder what kinds of garments she had in mind for her next design project.
A vision of her high, full breasts covered in nothing but lace and his hands blasted to the forefront of his brain, making him hotter than the late-afternoon sun had. She wore different clothes from the ones she’d had on at the training facility, trading dark pants and a Hurricanes T-shirt for the yellow-and-blue floral sundress she now wore. Wide-set straps and a square neckline framed her feminine curves. Her hair was rolled into some kind of updo that exposed her neck and made him want to lick it. So much for keeping his thoughts friendly.
“Dempsey?” She straightened, a smile lighting up her face for a moment before a wary look chased after it. “What a surprise to see you here.” She gestured to the soaring shelves of fabric samples on miniature hangers, sorted by color and material. “Are you here to redesign the Hurricanes jerseys?”
He scanned a section of striped and polka-dotted cotton.
“I think the guys will stick with what we have.” He peered around the warehouse to gauge their level of privacy. He’d seen one other shopper on his way in, but other than that, the space appeared empty. “I’m here for you.”
The lace dropped from her fingers. “Is there a problem with our opening day? I checked my phone—”
He caught her hand before she could dig in her purse for the device.
“No problems. Things are running just as they should for the regular-season opener.”
He couldn’t even touch her anymore without images of that tentative kiss of hers heating him from the inside out. He didn’t know how he’d found the willpower to let her retreat to her own room last night when the need for a better taste of her rode his back like a tackle he couldn’t break.
“Then, what did you need?” She slid her hand away from his, making him wonder what she felt when they touched.
“What do I need? To see you.” He huffed out a breath and braced an elbow on one of the nearby shelves. “I came here to insist on that dinner I offered since it seemed as though you’re being elusive today, and it’s bugging me that I don’t know why.”
She busied herself with returning the lace to its small hanger and finding the proper place to reshelve it. When she didn’t respond, he continued, “But now that I’m here, it occurs to me that the bigger reason I needed to see you is that I can’t seem to think about anything else.”
He watched as her busy movements slowed. Stopped. Color washed her cheeks, confirming his suspicion that she suffered from the same madness as he did. And yes, it gave him tremendous amounts of male satisfaction to think he wasn’t the only one feeling it.
She clutched a handful of indigo-colored silk and squeezed.
“You made it clear that I’ve become a distraction,” she reminded him, a hint of bitterness creeping into the words.
“Is that why you’re avoiding me? Because I didn’t make a more romantic gesture?” His hands were on her before he’d thought through the wisdom of touching her again.
Spinning her away from the fabric display, he turned her to face him, his palms settling into the indent of her waist. Hidden from view, he wrestled with the urge to feel more of her, to mold her to him and put an end to the damnable simmering distraction.
If she’d been anyone else, the next move would have already been made. But this was Addy.
“No. Thinking about romance will not help get us through the next few weeks,” she told him evenly. “I’m not one of your girlfriends with a legal agreement you can keep renegotiating, okay? You laid out the terms when you put me on the spot with this engagement. I’m not sure why you think you can keep rewriting those terms to give you more benefits.”
The bitterness in her voice had vanished. Taking its place was a trace of hurt.
An emotional one-two punch that he’d never intended.
His hands tightened on her waist. His throat dried up.
“You’re right.” Closing his eyes, he dragged in a deep breath and only succeeded in inhaling a hint of night-blooming roses. “I haven’t thought about how this is affecting you. That day you told me you were quitting, I was completely focused on making sure that didn’t happen. I came up with the only short-term solution I could.”
Dempsey became aware of the sound of a woman’s high heels clicking on the concrete floor behind him. She was heading their way.
“Ms. Thibodeaux, do you have any questions—” A tall blonde woman in a dark suit rounded the corner and came in
to view. “Oh. Hello there.” She blushed at the sight of them together, making Dempsey realize how close he’d gotten to Adelaide during this discussion.
How much closer he still wanted to be.
“I put the last sample back,” Adelaide told her, edging around Dempsey and straightening. “I’ll give you a call once I have a better idea of what I might need.”
The woman was already backing away. “Of course! No problem. And congratulations on your engagement.”
As soon as the sales clerk disappeared from view, Adelaide swung around to face him.
“So now that you’ve acknowledged this engagement was a mistake, are you ready to call it off and maybe life can go back to normal?” Her hazel eyes seemed greener in this light. Or maybe it was the combination of anger and challenge firing through them.
“Not until I have a better short-term solution.” He understood they needed to have this discussion since this attraction was proving far too distracting at a time when he needed absolute focus. “But you can help me brainstorm alternatives. Over dinner.”
* * *
Two hours later, Adelaide sat cross-legged on a wooden Adirondack chair behind Dempsey’s house overlooking Lake Pontchartrain. A blaze burned in the round fire pit in front of them as they finished a meal of Cajun specialties obtained by Evan from a local restaurant. Adelaide hadn’t wanted to risk a public outing, unwilling to smile and lie politely about her engagement to Dempsey when the man was hell-bent on taking their relationship into intimate terrain.
And that’s a problem...why? some snide voice in her head kept asking.
Sure, she wanted him. Desperately. But since a corner of her heart had always belonged to him, she feared this new development could have devastating consequences when the time came to return to their regular lives. And the time would come. She’d witnessed Dempsey’s parting gifts to his exes enough times to know that relationships came with an expiration date for him. Still, she simmered with thwarted desire. While she finished her meal, she tormented herself with fantasies about touching him. Agreeing to his offer of sensual benefits. Bringing this heat to the boiling point. Even now she wanted to cross over to his chair and take a seat on his lap just to see what would happen.
From her vantage point, his thighs appeared plenty strong enough to bear her weight. Those workouts of his seemed to keep him in optimal shape.
Was she really ready for him to relegate her to friendship for life when she had this opportunity of living with him for the next few weeks? When he’d admitted he couldn’t stop thinking about her? She’d nearly melted in her shoes when he’d confessed it at the fabric warehouse.
“Remember when you stole a crawfish for me and I was too afraid to eat it?” she asked, deliberately putting off the more serious conversation he’d promised over dinner.
She wasn’t ready to help him brainstorm solutions to their dilemma. And right now she wanted a happy memory to remind her why she put up with him and all that driven, relentless ambition, which kept him from getting too close to anyone. She blamed that and his need to prove himself to his family for his unwillingness to take a risk with the relationship.
Although maybe she just needed to tell herself that to protect her heart from the more obvious explanation—that he saw any attraction as a fleeting response doomed not to last.
“I didn’t steal it.” He sounded as incensed about it now as he’d been when he was twelve years old. “If a crawfish happened to walk over to me, it was exercising its free will.”
Laughing, she set aside the jambalaya that had made her think of that day. They’d walked to a nearby crawfish festival. When one of the restaurants selling food at the event refilled its tank of crawfish, a few escapees had headed toward Dempsey and Adelaide, who’d been drooling over the food from a spot on the pavement nearby.
“I don’t know what made you think I would eat a raw mudbug.” She shivered. “Sometimes I still can’t believe I eat them when they’re cooked.”
“A hungry kid doesn’t turn his nose up at much,” he observed. “And I figured it was only polite to offer them to you before I helped myself.”
Adelaide had never gone hungry the way Dempsey sometimes had. His mother could be kind when she was drug-free, but even then the woman had never had any extra money thanks to her habit. When she’d been using more, she’d even forgotten about Dempsey for days on end.
“You were very good to me.” When Adelaide looked back on those days, she could almost forget about how much he’d shut her out of his personal life since then.
He stared into the flames dancing in the fire pit.
“I still try to be good to you, Addy.”
She bit back the sharp retort that came to mind, purposely focusing on the friendship they used to have so as not to bad-mouth the turn things had taken over the past five years.
“I take it you don’t agree?” he asked.
“We’ve had a strict work-only relationship for years.” She traced patterns in the condensation on her iced tea glass. “You convinced me to take this job that furthered your career while delaying mine. You’ve ignored our friendship for years at a time, going so far as referring to me as a ‘tool for greater productivity.’” She wanted to stop there. But now that the brakes were off, she found it difficult to put them back on. “Or maybe you think it’s kind of you to toy with the chemistry between us, pretending to feel the same heat that I do and using it to your own ends to convince me to stay?”
She knew she’d admitted too much, but sitting in the dark under the bayou stars seemed to coax the truth from her. Besides, if she didn’t put herself on the line with him now when he’d admitted to being “distracted” by her, she might never have another chance to find out where all that simmering attraction could lead.
“Damn, Addy.” He whistled low and sat up straighter in his chair, his elbows on his knees. Firelight cast stark shadows on his face. “You must think I’m some kind of arrogant, selfish ass. Do you really think that’s how I perceive things? That I created a position for you just to benefit me?”
“You’re putting words in my mouth.”
“Nothing you didn’t imply.” He rose to his feet, his agitation apparent as he paced a circle around his vacated chair. “And I can assure you that you were not the most obvious choice to work with me in this capacity. There aren’t many assistant coaches who bring an administrative aide with them when they take a new job, but I did it just the same because you needed a job at the time. And I’m the only coach in the league with a female personal assistant, so I’m breaking all kinds of ground there.”
“You can’t honestly suggest that you created the job for me to further my career. I wanted to be an artist.”
“Yes. An artist. And your work led you to a studio in an even worse part of town than where we grew up. A place I warned you not to take. I offered to rent another space for you. But then—”
“The break-in.” She didn’t want to think about that night when gang members, high on heaven knew what, had broken into the studio and threatened her.
They’d destroyed her paintings when they’d realized there was nothing of value in the place to steal. Then they’d casually discussed the merits of physically assaulting her before one of them got a text that they needed to be elsewhere. The three of them had disappeared into the night while she’d remained paralyzed with fear long afterward.
“Those bastards threatened you. And I suggested every plan under the sun to help you, Addy, but you were too stubborn and proud to let me do anything.”
Crickets chirped in the silence that followed. A log shifted in the fire pit, sending sparks flying.
“You wanted to build me a studio in the country.” She recalled a fax from an architect with the plans for such a building, including a state-of-the-art security system. “How on earth could I have ever repaid
you for such a thing? I was barely out of college.”
“Like I said. Too stubborn.” He spread his hands wide. “I was just a few years out of college myself and I was dealing with a lot of family expectations. The studio would have been easy for me to give you and I was happy to do it, but you wouldn’t hear of it.”
“I’d never take something for nothing. And don’t you blame me for that, because you wouldn’t either if our positions were reversed.” Maybe she hadn’t let herself remember that time in detail because it had taken a long time to recover from the emotional trauma of that night.
Seeing her canvases hacked to bits had been different than having her computer stolen or her phone smashed. Her art was an extension of her, a place where she poured her heart.
“So I gave you a job. That, you would accept.”
“And now, years after the fact, I’m still supposed to kiss your feet for the opportunity?” She shot out of her chair, a restless energy taking hold as she closed the distance between them.
“Absolutely not.”
His quick agreement didn’t come close to satisfying her.
“I worked hard in an industry I knew nothing about,” she pressed. “I left my home and everything I knew to go to Atlanta with you.” Her first task had been finding housing for them.
Relocating to a new city had been so simple with Dempsey’s seemingly limitless resources and connections.
Unlike starting over in New Orleans, which had seemed impossible after her sense of safety had been shredded and her body of work reduced to scraps.
“Yes. And you proved yourself invaluable almost right away. My work was easier with your help. You never needed direction and understood me even on days I was so terse and exhausted I could only snap out a few words of instructions for you.”
“I had a long history of interpreting you.” A wry grin tugged at her lips, but she wasn’t going to let nostalgia cloud her vision of him. Of them.