And for one brief moment, Kelly forgot that she was the infamous Gloucester orphan, the two-day-old infant abandoned on the firehouse steps.
“Yeah, and I’ve got another rule.” Marta pulled a stick out of the box. “No more one-night stands for you, Kelly. And no more mistakes for me either.”
chapter seven
Lee Zhao leaned against the opening to Kelly’s cubicle, rubbing his eyes as he talked about last weekend’s Comic-Con convention. “It was awesome,” he said. “I think the only time I slept was on the plane.”
Kelly scooted to the edge of her seat, noticing his rumpled shirt and the creases in his khaki pants. “Did you just get back from San Diego?”
“This morning. My suitcase is stashed under my desk.”
“Don’t worry, the boss-man is waist-deep in router issues.” Min Jee, Kelly’s cubicle mate, chewed her gum noisily as she hiked her thigh-high boots onto the desk. “Did you and Jack wear the costumes?”
“Oh, yeah. During the Star Trek presentation. The whole convention floor was rigged up to look like the inside of the Starship Enterprise.”
Kelly suppressed a sigh. She’d always wanted to attend the convention, but student loan payments still sucked up a good part of her disposable income. So she got what thrills she could following bootleg cell-phone videos, Twitter feeds, and Lee’s stories.
Lee cocked his head at her. “You know that I met Moto Hagio?”
She sucked in a breath. “The Japanese manga artist who created shojo?”
“The very one.”
“Yeah, but did Jack get to meet that babe from the vampire show?” Min Jee tugged on the blue ends of her choppy hair. “He told me he was going to hunt her down and offer himself up as a sacrifice.”
“He wants to tell that story himself.” Lee shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked in place. “If you’re interested, Jack and I are going out for coffee in a few minutes to try to power-caffeinate ourselves through the rest of the day. Want to join us?”
“Oh, man, I’m so going.” Min Jee dropped her feet off the desk and started shutting windows on her computer. “I’m so sick of beta-testing this network software that I’m going to scream if I have to firewall another fake workstation. Can we make it lunch? As long as it’s not that burrito place.”
“Lunch would be okay. What about you, Kelly?” Lee did another toe-to-heel rock. “We’ve got a whole bag of swag to share.”
She hesitated, plucking at the edges of her lightweight cotton sweater. She’d really love to have lunch with Lee and Jack. But over the past few weeks, it was becoming increasingly apparent that Lee was interested in sharing more than just TV obsessions with her. Even Min Jee sensed it, for her gum chewing had slowed to a contemplative pace.
Then a bouquet of pink roses appeared, handed to her from over the edge of her cubicle. Startled, she grabbed them and looked beyond to the man thrusting them at her.
“Hey, darling. Surprise.”
Kelly blinked. Trey stood before her, his hair haloed by fluorescent lights, and it was such an unexpected sight that for a moment she wondered if Lee Zhao had somehow stolen from Comic-Con a life-size cardboard cutout of the actor Robert Pattinson, who Trey somewhat resembled. But this handsome hunk draped his arms over the edge of the partition, smiling as if his arrival in her office was an everyday event, rather than a first-time-ever.
Then Kelly noticed that Min Jee had stopped chewing her gum entirely, and Lee Zhao was frozen in place.
“Hey, Trey.” She pressed her face into the flowers, smelling nothing in her confusion. “These are just lovely.”
“I knew you’d like them.”
She placed them on her lap and then checked the pencil-roll of her hair, tucking in some wayward strands. “Um…this is such a surprise. What are you doing here?”
“Rescuing you from this maze.” He rolled his eyes at the room and its seemingly endless rows of boxy cubicles. “I’ve blown out of the office for the day. It’s sunny, it’s warm, and it’s too nice to work. Come have lunch with me.”
Sharp little prickles danced all over her skin. She became exquisitely aware of her naked thighs under her breezy, cotton sundress. She hadn’t been alone with Trey in two full weeks. Trey had bunked in Parker’s spare bedroom since coming back from London six months ago, with the intent of taking over Parker’s lease after Wendy’s wedding. The chance of running into Wendy prevented Kelly from going to that sweet sixteenth-floor apartment. Now Cole’s presence on her couch prevented Trey from coming to her.
“Don’t be rude, Kelly, introduce us to your friend.” Min Jee leaped up and thrust out her hand, black fingernail polish and all. “I’m Min Jee, Kelly’s lunchtime mah-Jongg partner and fellow C++ programming geek.”
“Whoa, Mingee, nice eyebrow stud.” Trey grinned as he shook her hand. “I’m Trey Wainwright. Kelly’s boyfriend.”
Trey slid his gaze toward her with lazy confidence, and a smile that said I’m not telling them anything that ain’t so. Min Jee’s eyes nearly popped out of their black-lined sockets. With his usual good manners, Trey turned to introduce himself to Lee Zhao, who looked like he’d eaten a bad burrito. Lee shook Trey’s hand, mumbled some excuse, and shuffled off the field of battle.
Kelly said, “I’d better find a vase for these.” She swept the flowers off her lap, crinkling the cellophane. “Trey, why don’t you follow me? I’ll show you the lunch room.”
Kelly exited her cubicle and brushed by him. The friction churned up a whole shower of sparks. His broadening smile told her he’d felt them too, as he fell into pace beside her.
Trey leaned close. “Mad at me?”
“Furious.” She meant to sound angry, but the word came out husky instead. Her palms had begun to sweat on the cellophane, but her body was buzzing with excitement. “You didn’t call me first.”
“We don’t have to hide from anybody here.”
Kelly wasn’t so sure of that. She’d left her desk only to avoid Min Jee eavesdropping on their conversation, but as she paraded through her workplace carrying a dozen roses with a handsome guy trailing behind, she began to realize the full impact of her decision. As she passed each cubicle, she heard the squeal of chairs against carpet protectors, the clack of a dropped mouse, and the deep-breathed rise of her coworkers from their seats. It was like she were some sort of self-propelling, super conducting magnet, strong enough to pull geeks free from their computers and alert them to a shocking new social paradigm.
“Without my approval,” Kelly said, heaving a shaky breath, “you’ve just made a public quantum leap with our relationship.”
“Yes,” he murmured, all sexy vibrato. “Yes, I have.”
It was impossible to be mad at him, not while the fragrance of a dozen roses billowed around her. The last time she’d received flowers, they were daisies from her prom date, who’d picked them from her own front yard. She’d been wearing a borrowed dress made of cheap rayon. She’d pinned one of the daisies on her bodice to hide a stain.
She swept into the lunchroom, a sprawling room littered with game tables, Foosball, a Nerf basketball net, and a small putting green. Trey paused a few steps into it.
“Whoa.”
Kelly waltzed to the sink. A foursome in the middle of a mah-Jongg game—the office’s latest obsession—stopped clicking tiles long enough to stare. Kelly waved and then shielded her face with the door of the upper cabinets, where she searched for a vase.
Trey leaned a hip against the counter. “Is this place for real?”
“It’s under construction. We’ve been lobbying for some old-fashioned arcade games, but can’t budge the higher-ups.”
“No, I mean, seriously. We get memos if we’re caught playing computer solitaire. You’ve got a Ping-Pong table.”
“Tournament starts next week. Min Jee’s the reigning champion.”
“How many piercings does she have?”
“It depends if you count all of them,” Kelly said, “or just the ones
you can see.”
But Trey wasn’t paying attention. Two guys from system administration were leaving the lunchroom; one had a blue Mohawk, the other, a leather fetish that revealed itself in vests and chaps. Trey gave them a friendly head bob, and as soon as they left the room, he spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “This place is like that cantina from the Star Wars movie.”
“The Mos Eisley Cantina on Tatooine.” On their last date, she’d made Trey sit through the original three of the series. “Ten geek points to you, big boy.”
“How do you get anything done? I’d be playing Foosball all day.”
“Discipline.” She pulled a dusty acrylic vase from the back of a middle shelf. “Programmers work long hours. We catch inspiration where we can. And, for starters, we don’t blow off work to take long lunches.”
“I’m not looking for a long lunch.” He slid a little closer. “I’m here to coerce you into an afternoon of sweaty sex.”
Her mouth went dry. She met his gaze—light brown eyes, dark on the outer ring, lighter in the middle, like liquid amber.
“There’s a hotel just around the corner.” He dropped his voice. “Room service from a four-star restaurant. An awesome view from the upper floors.”
There it was again, that sexy vibration in his whisper. It worked on her like a tuning fork. Her body adjusted instantly to its rhythm. It had been two weeks since she’d bitten his hand to suppress her tendency to moan during sex. Two full weeks since he’d shoved one of her naked legs over his shoulder, grinding into her while she fisted the mattress.
And if she didn’t break eye contact with him right now, she’d be hopping onto the cabinet, spreading her knees, and making an even bigger scene in front of all her curious and suddenly hungry coworkers. Besides, she knew him well enough to know that this spontaneous tryst was a distraction, in part. A ploy to get her to ignore all that other stuff that she could read in his eyes.
She slipped the vase in the sink and shoved the faucet on so that it would fill with water fast. “Bad day, huh?”
She noticed that, physically, he pulled back only a fraction—but mentally, she sensed that he reared back about two hundred miles. Oh, yeah. She hadn’t forgotten how much he despised his desk job on Wall Street. She hadn’t forgotten how he’d confessed his yearning to do something else—anything else. So she kept her gaze on him long after the water overflowed the vase.
“Two weeks, Kelly.” Trey crossed his arms, blithely changing the subject. “When is this friend of yours going to leave your apartment?”
“I don’t know.” She hardly saw Cole these days. He stayed out late and slept even later, completely oblivious to the fact that he was a serious kink in her previously awesome sex life. “It’s complicated.” And it was time to change the subject so Trey wouldn’t figure out more than he needed to know. “It would help if we could go to your place now and again.”
“It’s Parker’s place until September. And these days Parker’s there all the time.” Trey pushed away from the counter as she unwrapped the cellophane and pulled the rubber bands from the stems. “Wendy cut him off cold turkey.”
Kelly tried to mute her surprise. Wendy hadn’t said anything about that at the tapas place last week. In fact, Wendy had been unusually quiet.
“Yeah, some asinine idea about wanting to make the wedding night special. The guy is climbing the walls.”
Kelly slipped the roses into the vase. She didn’t like talking about Wendy to Trey. It felt like talking out of school, and the longer she kept this secret, the more it felt like a betrayal. Then Trey came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, enfolding her in nearly six feet of warm, strong Wainwright, and she forgot about Wendy, about flowers, about breathing.
“They’ve got cable, pay-per-view.” He spoke into her hair, carefully nudging the pencil shoved in it. “I’ll even promise to sit through Doctor Who.” He tightened his grip. “Once we’re done.”
She had a voice of her own. Somewhere. “I’ve…I’ve got a weekly progress meeting at three.”
“Reschedule.”
“I’m one of the team. Presenting the new networking protocols.”
“I love it when you talk like that.”
He pulled at her sundress, making the hem climb up past her knee. Against her shoulder blade, she felt the throb of his runner’s steady heartbeat. His lips closed over the tip of her ear.
“I can manage,” she said, her muscles clenching, “maybe an hour.”
Only then did he release her.
On unsteady feet, Kelly took the vase and tried not to stumble back down the maze. As she neared her cubicle, she spied Min Jee on her toes, deep in whispered conversation with Matt, a twenty-something with bleach-tipped hair who worked in the adjoining cubicle. Kelly rounded the partition and slipped the vase across her desk. Min Jee started, and Matt dropped out of view.
“I’m heading out for lunch.” Kelly avoided Min Jee’s eyes by searching for her cell phone amid the Post-it notes on her desk. “If Karen asks where I am, give my cell a buzz, would you?”
“Sure thing, girlfriend.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Kelly caught Trey shaking his head at Min Jee, wordlessly gesturing that Min Jee shouldn’t call at all. Kelly straightened in mild annoyance, ready to bust up the conspiracy when she caught sight of the second shocker of the day.
It happened in ultraslow motion. Cole rounded the corner of the far cubicle, his head bobbing. His lanky silhouette loped up the narrow aisle as he searched the nameplates. She saw him lift his curly head. She saw him catch sight of her. His expression bloomed into an open, friendly smile.
And all her systems froze.
She struggled to reboot, her mind working as sluggishly as a dinosaur-grade operating system on a grandfather-generation Pentium processor, trying to pick out the last time Cole and Trey were in the same room together, wondering if they’d even recognize each other, wondering if there were any possible way to change the trajectory of these imminently colliding particles to avoid the inevitable nuclear explosion.
“Hey, Kelly.” Cole approached, his freshly shaven face unusually bright. “I was in the neighborhood so I thought I’d stop by.”
Trey pushed away from where he leaned against the partition, his focus shifting with curiosity.
“Hey,” she stuttered, searching frantically for something to say. “Hey. I…um…that was nice.”
Cole gave a quick chin nod to Trey and Min Jee before turning his attention back to her. “Listen, I just landed a client. A nice fat one. Let’s celebrate. I’ll take you out for lunch.”
Min Jee’s mouth dropped open. Kelly caught the glimmer of light winking on Min Jee’s tongue stud.
“Sorry, buddy, but she’s got plans.” Trey thrust out his hand, a good bit of solid shoulder following close behind. “Trey Wainwright here. And you are…?”
Cole instinctively moved to shake his hand, but at the sound of Trey’s name, he stiffened like the Tin Man.
Kelly wished she could just curl into a tight little ball and not imagine the stuttering flow of Cole’s thoughts as Trey’s name rang in his head, as Cole searched Trey’s face and no doubt recognized the strong resemblance to Wendy. Kelly rifled through her lackadaisically Catholic childhood in search of prayers that would prevent Cole from remembering the whole ugly affair, but all she could come up with were fishermen’s prayers, and not all of them were saintly. Besides, there was no way in hell Cole had forgotten what had happened that terrible weekend. Cole had threatened to make a road trip to Princeton just to pummel the guy—the very man standing before him—for Trey’s intimate and public bragging about his redheaded conquest.
Then her body moved on its own. She stepped between them, placed a hand on Cole’s chest, and tried to catch his attention. “Cole, I know this is a shock to you, but let’s talk about this later.”
He took two stumbling steps backward.
“We’ll have lunch tomorrow, okay?” She silentl
y pleaded for calm, for understanding. “We’ll talk then.”
Weaving, Cole spread his feet a little father apart. His gaze shifted to where Trey was standing behind her and then focused with a piercing intensity back on her face. “What the fuck, Kelly?”
Oh, God.
“All those phone calls.” Cole scraped his fingers through his crisply curling hair, his mind working through the past two weeks. “Now I get it. You closing your door, locking yourself in your bedroom, whispering secrets. Those calls were from him, weren’t they? You’ve been seeing him.”
“Whoa. Whoa.” All six foot something of Trey loomed beside her. “What’s this about your bedroom? Who the hell is this?”
“Cole is my friend,” Kelly said, turning slightly toward Trey, speaking slowly, as if to calm a child. “He’s the one I told you about. The one staying at my apartment.”
“You told me you had a girlfriend staying at your apartment.”
“No, no I did not.” She met Trey’s wary gaze. “I told you I had a friend staying—I never said it was a guy, because I knew you’d act like this.” She took a deep breath, struggling for calm. “Trey, this is Cole.” She held out her palm. “He’s Dhara’s ex-boyfriend.”
“Oh my God, Kelly.” Min Jee slapped a hand over her face. “You’re living with your best friend’s ex?”
“No. No!” Kelly glared at her office mate as heads popped up all across the room, like prairie dogs from burrows. “Cole is my friend,” she explained. “He’s staying on my couch.”
“This is wrong. So very wrong.” Cole backed away, his palms up. “I am totally out of here.”
“Damn right,” Trey said. “You walk your ass right out of here.”
Cole paused, his gaze a challenge. Kelly swung out an arm to hold Trey back.
“Stop it, both of you. Don’t go all Neanderthal on me.”
Kelly heard someone muttering for security just as Cole made a surly half salute and turned on his heel.
One Good Friend Deserves Another Page 9