by Dawn Atkins
“Okay, so…I’m your colleague calling with the stats you needed. Seventy-five percent, three point two, two to one ratio…blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera.”
With Matt staring at her it was tough to fake a business tone, but Candy did her best. “Thanks much. I’ll grab that e-mail ASAP. Great.” She clicked off and slid the phone into her pocket. “Some numbers I need. Can I download e-mail inside your place? Maybe show you my ideas while I’m at it?”
“I guess. Sure.” He looked baffled by the suggestion, but he headed toward the porch, where Ellie beamed down at them. You look so cute together.
“We’re going to work now,” Candy said, telling Ellie with her eyes it was time to scoot.
“Sure. I’ll just check Matt’s supplies and then you can get to it.”
“My sister, the mother hen,” Matt said, sounding affectionately exasperated. He winked at Candy and it went right through her like sexy lightning. Oh, she was weak.
“I have food,” he called to Ellie, following her inside, where she flung open cupboards and yanked open the fridge, clucking like the hen Matt had compared her to.
“HoHos, Cheetos, Dr. Pepper and beer? You call that food?”
“Sounds good to me,” Candy said with a shrug. More than once she and Matt had vied for the last sack of Cheetos or package of HoHos in the SyncUp snack machines. They shared junk food preferences if nothing else.
“Did you remember sunscreen?” Ellie asked, hands on hips. When Matt shrugged, she sighed. “I’ll pick up some. Along with some healthy food.”
“I can feed myself, Ellie.” He paused. “There’s no point arguing, is there?”
“Not really, no.”
“Do what you must then.” He sighed, but he was smiling. Obviously, Matt had plenty of experience with his sister’s nurturing ways. Candy liked the rapport between them.
Setting her ancient laptop beside Matt’s razor-thin model already open to e-mail, Candy noticed the neat spread of folders beside it, proving that Matt was a master at working vacations. He was already at it and they’d all barely arrived.
“But what about entertaining yourself?” Ellie said. “You’re not going to sit here all week at the computer. You work too hard. Both of you. Especially you, Candy.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire. But Candy loved Ellie for overacting on her behalf.
Ellie snatched a flyer from behind a magnet on the refrigerator and carried it to where Candy and Matt stood at the table. “Look at all these Sin on the Beach festival events.” She handed Matt the flyer and lowered her voice. “No moping now. There are other fish in the sea.” She was obviously referring to the breakup with Ice Princess Jane.
“I’ll be fine, Ellie,” Matt said. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Then I guess my work here is done.” Ellie gave a pointed look at Candy, then hip-swayed to the door. Because Matt had moved to the kitchen, Candy was able to shoot her a quick thumbs-up as she left.
“Can I get you something to drink?” he called from the open refrigerator. “A beer?”
“Water is fine, since I’m working and all.” Was that overkill? Maybe. She sighed.
She couldn’t help thinking how great it would be to just kick back in this cozy bungalow with a beer and Matt and those blue-sky eyes of his. But that was the old Candy. The new one had a vital task to achieve.
She shifted her laptop and it knocked one of Matt’s files to the floor, fanning paper across the white tiles.
The first doc she retrieved was a PQ2 report with Matt’s name on a label at the top. Also attached to it was a pink Post-It note in the bold script of their CEO, Scott Bayer. See me re: changes!
Matt arrived with her glass of water and his beer.
She handed him the report form. “You took the PQ2?”
“Scott required all the managers to take it.”
“What changes is he talking about? In the test?”
Matt gave a humorless laugh. “No. In the managers. He wants us to address the weaknesses the test revealed.”
“What weaknesses could you possibly have?” she teased.
“Exactly.” He grinned his great half smile. “According to the PQ2, I’m low on sociability.” He sat next to her. “Do I strike you as antisocial, Candy?” He looked at her so directly her heart tightened in her chest. “Be honest.”
“You don’t chit-chat. You’re pretty direct. I’d say you’re more nonsocial than actually antisocial.”
“Nonsocial. Yeah. I like that. I guess I don’t get the function of small talk. Make your point and move on. Why waste time?”
“But informal talk eases tension, makes people feel comfortable—safe to take risks. A little back-and-forth about the weekend, the Suns game or the nephew’s bar mitzvah greases the wheel of ideas, gets people psyched to tackle tough issues.”
He paused, pondering her words, she could tell. She’d never dug up a rationale for what seemed so obvious to her.
“I suppose that makes sense,” Matt mused. “The proximate issue is that Scott expects me to score some clients at the convention. It’s next month, so I’ve got to get better at backslapping and schmoozing right away.”
“Sounds like fun.”
He smiled. “To you, sure.” He gave her that look that made her wiring crackle. “But I’m not you.”
No, wait. The crackling was coming from her borrowed laptop, which was grinding to life with agonizing slowness and enough noise that Candy expected some of Ellie’s espresso to drip out.
“For what it’s worth, the PQ2 got me wrong, too,” Candy said.
“How so?”
“It made me seem like I don’t take work seriously.”
“You? No! How could that be?” His eyes twinkled at her. “Maybe because of the time you brought in all those cans of Silly String and made a mess in the lab?”
“Everyone was getting cranky. We needed a break. And it cleaned up easy.”
“Or how about when you spiked the Halloween punch?”
“Come on. It was a party. I warned Valerie first.”
“She was pregnant, right?” He nodded. “Your costume was…interesting.”
She’d dressed as a zombie hooker, which would have been fine, except she’d only convinced a few people to dress up, so she sort of stood out.
“Happy workers are productive workers, Matt. There are studies that show the benefits of morale building and—”
“As I recall, three people went home too drunk to work, someone tossed their pumpkin cookies into a trash can and everyone else but Val slept away the afternoon over their keyboards.”
He was smiling, but light glanced off his lenses and she couldn’t tell if he was amused or making fun of her. The Halloween party had been early in Matt’s time at SyncUp. If she’d known that six months later he’d be her boss, she might have been more careful about how she behaved around him.
“As I recall, you laughed a lot. Plus, you won the one-on-one wastepaper basketball tournament the next month.”
“Your idea, too, correct?”
“We’d put in two sixty-hour weeks on the Payroll Plus revision. We needed a break.” She’d come up with the idea of a modified basketball game using office chairs with trash cans on file cabinets for baskets and wadded printouts as the balls.
“That was fun,” he mused.
“And afterward, we were refreshed for more work. Work hard, play hard, that’s my philosophy.” She hoped he’d buy that. It sounded like a bluff. That’s how her family would see it, considering her history. She’d been erratic in college, uncertain in the work world and switched jobs a lot. Her parents, on the other hand, had built a business from scratch and her brothers had bee-lined from law school to successful law practices without an eye-blink of doubt. The four of them thought her a flake and the idea seared her with hot shame.
“I see.” Matt seemed to be fighting a grin.
“The point is the PQ2 got me wrong.” She spoke too fiercely. “It mischaracterized you,
too, remember?”
He didn’t respond and she was afraid she’d sounded too defensive.
“Anyway, I want to show you what I’m thinking on Ledger Lite.” She put her finger on the touch pad, except at that instant the machine ominously ceased grinding. The screen was white—half built.
“Damn!” She banged the side of the laptop. “The tech guys said this unit was a workhorse.”
“Let me take a look.” Matt turned the computer toward him, swamping her with the scent of lime and warm man. He clicked keys, then rebooted with three nimble-looking, knowing-seeming fingers.
She couldn’t help imagining what they might do to her private touch pad. She shifted away from him, bumping the computer cord. There was a crackle and the screen went dead black.
“Ah. May be a short in the transformer,” Matt said. He unplugged the cord assembly and carried it to the kitchen.
Now what? She hadn’t printed out anything since the spreadsheets were huge and the artwork mock-up looked better on screen. If her computer was dead, so was her plan.
IT WASN’T AS THOUGH HE could actually fix the damn cord, but Matt needed to escape Candy Calder. She smelled as sweet as her name and inhaling near her made it impossible to hold a thought that didn’t have sex in it.
He pawed through the drawers looking for a Phillips screwdriver, but had to settle for a paring knife, which he twisted into the tiny bolts on the transformer box.
This predicament had Ellie’s fingerprints all over it. She must have figured that Candy would cheer him up after Jane.
The odd thing was that the breakup hadn’t been as hard on him as he’d expected. Maybe he was numb or still in shock, but he’d felt mostly relief, which didn’t seem like the proper response to the end of a nine-month relationship.
Either way, he had no business hanging with Candy Calder and her mischievous eyes the same violet as the SyncUp logo. Or those puffy lips of hers. He’d watched her wrap them around a margarita glass that night after his first week at SyncUp and wanted—no, craved—a taste. Then he’d fumbled the kiss and knocked her on her ass.
The woman threw him, made him act herky-jerky and stupid. And now she’d dragged an old computer here to show him her work? What was her angle? It couldn’t be the same as Ellie’s. No way would Candy allow Ellie to plot a hookup. After that goofed kiss, Candy thought him an oaf. Probably had had a good laugh with her SyncUp friends. And everyone at SyncUp loved Candy. The whole place rang with her laughter.
The husky honey of her voice warmed him straight through, made it hard to think about anything but her.
The PQ2 had nailed her and her playfulness, all right. It had nailed him, too, for that matter. He was nonsocial, as she’d said. He valued alone time, hated mindless chatter and worked hard. Maybe too hard, but he loved what he did, dammit, and what was wrong with spending time with what he loved?
Something was. Even Jane had gotten on his case. Supposedly that’s why she’d broken up with him. What had she called him? A workaholic with no capacity for relaxation. Then she’d gotten nasty. You wouldn’t know fun if it threw you a surprise party.
That was a case of the pot calling the kettle black, if he’d ever heard one. A commitment to their careers was something they shared. Hell, Jane routinely put in sixty-hour weeks at her law firm. He had no problem with that. They’d fit their relationship around their schedules just fine.
Fun had its place, but hard work and dedication were what had earned him the VP spot at a hot software firm. And now, to keep it, he’d have to learn to…chitchat. God.
He was an engineer first, a marketer second and nowhere in there an ass-kissing backslapper.
Ironic that he’d been discussing his problem with Candy, who was the most social person he knew.
The last screw emerged from the transformer box, so he tried separating the two halves. No use. There seemed to be an adhesive. He was prying it open with the knife blade when Candy approached.
“You getting it off?” she asked softly, inches away.
Her closeness and her words made him stab himself in the thumb. “Damn.” Blood oozed, so he pressed his index finger against the spot.
“You cut yourself?” Candy yanked his wrist up into the air.
“What are you doing?” he asked as calmly as he could with her breasts right…there, sticking out at him. So alert.
“Elevating the injury above your heart, of course.” She was so short she had to tilt her head up to talk to him. Her big eyes invited him to dive in and drown.
“It’s fine,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
She lowered his arm and leaned in to study the little nick, her perfumed hair tickling his chin, her fingers warm on his skin.
“Not even bleeding, see,” he said, backing away from the same heat he’d felt on Oaf Night. “Your computer’s dead, Candy.”
“How can I show you my work then?” She seemed truly upset. What was her game? “I know! Can I borrow your computer? Pick up what I’ve got on e-mail and get someone at the office to grab my desktop files?” She was moving closer to him again, digging in, making him dizzy. He wished to God it was loss of blood making it so hard to think, not the Candy Effect.
“Except then how can you work?” she said, frowning. “If I take your laptop?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said, fighting for balance. “This is supposed to be my vacation. I should probably get out more, be more social…or whatever.” What the hell was he saying?
She studied him, her head tilted, figuring something out. He could practically hear the gears whirring. “I can help you, you know,” she said slowly, her honeyed voice melting his insides. “We can help each other.”
“We can?” How did her lips stay so red without lipstick? He remembered her muscular legs waving in the air that night. And she’d worn striped panties that disappeared completely between the cheeks of her—
“You loan me your computer and let me show you my ideas and I’ll teach you how to schmooze. How’s that?”
“I loan you my…? You show me…? I don’t see how…really…that’s possible.” He had no business spending time with a woman who could say the word schmooze and make him forget his own name.
“Come on. It’ll be fun, Matt.”
Matt. Yeah, that was his name. Now he remembered. He shook his head, attempting to clear it.
Woof!
Through the screen door, Matt saw the golden retriever they’d wrestled for Candy’s cell phone.
“Radar votes yes,” Candy said.
“Then how can I say no?” He was taking his cues from a dog now? Looking into Candy’s violet eyes, he had the feeling this wasn’t the last crazy thing he would do this week.
Not even close.
2
THIS COULD WORK, Candy thought, except for the fact that it meant spending more time with Matt than she’d intended. She’d have to keep her libido under control—say padlocked in a deep freeze at the bottom of the ocean?
Her sexual response to him got stronger with each moment they spent together. It was like standing in a candy store when you were on a diet—just plain torture.
She’d never been that big on sexual denial, either, and it would be tough enough to test her work-hard-play-hard philosophy as it was.
She was only human.
On the other hand, this plan was a chance to prove her worth to SyncUp and to correct Matt’s bad impression of her at the same time. He clearly had one, judging from his attitude about her Halloween party stunts. No doubt he’d heard about Jared, too.
After the Thong Incident, she’d concluded she had a thing for analytical types and gone out with a SyncUp engineer. Jared was cute and smart and funny, but there’d been no sparks. She’d kissed him good-night to be nice and the grateful bozo turned it into The Story of O around the company.
Rumor had it they’d done it on the roof. Yes, they’d been up there, but only to look at the altimeter Jare
d had built as part of a science education package he was coding.
With a reputation at SyncUp as a sex fiend, Candy had to nix any hints of that around Matt.
Radar whined for her to come play. He was as annoying as her sex drive around Matt. She could not be tempted by either one. Business first, pleasure second. And only if there was time.
She moved to Matt’s computer, ready to log in and gather what she could by e-mail. She would contact Freeda, the department’s secretary, about retrieving her desktop files.
Matt joined her at the table, standing over her. “So, uh, how do you see the other part working?”
She looked up from the keyboard. “What other part?”
“The social stuff? What do you propose?”
“You want to start there?” She could see he was concerned. “All right. Let’s make a plan.”
“A plan?”
“To turn you into Mr. Networking. Backslap Boy. Fun Guy. Whatever you want to call the new, more social you.” She grabbed her notepad and headed for the sofa, pausing to pick up the magenta festival flyer. “Let’s look at what’s here we can work with, huh?” She motioned him into the living room and dropped onto the blue canvas sofa.
He sat close enough to swamp her with lime and spice.
“So what interests you?” she asked, making a bullet point on the paper.
When he didn’t answer right away, she looked at him and found him staring at her mouth. “Uh…what? What interests me?” He cleared his throat, then shifted on the sofa.
“Yes. What do you do for fun?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know. I read. E-mail loops. Blogs. Internet stuff. Some programming I’m working on for fun. I shoot some hoops.”
He’d thrown in the basketball to sound like a regular guy, she’d bet, instead of a work-obsessed nerd. He wasn’t a nerd. He was too handsome, too aware of other people. He was just serious, quiet and private. Locked in his own head. She found that strangely soothing. Maybe as a contrast with her own restless energy. It might be nice to share solitude with someone. Until she got bored. It would be like meditation. She’d tried it, but could only bear a few seconds of letting her thoughts float away before she had to go after them with a butterfly net and a notepad.