And the only conversation he was really interested in having with Adie consisted of whether or not she’d spend the night with him. Or a couple of nights. However, he phrased it, he just wanted a hell-yes, take-me-to-bed answer.
But he couldn’t push, wouldn’t.
“Can you look at your schedule and maybe carve out an hour for me sometime tomorrow afternoon?” Adie asked, breaking the silence between them. “I do need to get your input on a couple of issues.”
Hunt did a mental review of his day and nodded. “Meet me here at five and I’ll have you out of here by six, in plenty of time for the great cookie contest.”
Adie nodded, dropped her head and stared at the floor. Then she looked past him to his view of Central Park and he saw the indecision on her face. What was she wrestling with? Whether to sleep with him or not? But her words, when they came, had no connection to what he wanted.
“I know this is none of my business but you should go, you know. To the cookie contest. No matter how hard it is. Kate talks about her twin a lot, Hunter, and how she and her family miss him,” Adie continued, her smile sad. “As Kate told me, they not only lost Steve when he died, they also, sort of, lost you.”
Hunt pushed back the lapels of his jacket to shove his hands into the pockets of his pants. His instinct was to snap at her, to tell her to mind her own business, that he was her client. That the only “getting personal” he wanted involved them shedding their clothes. And he could do that; he was enough of a bastard to get his point across. But, instead of pushing back, Hunter considered another response.
“He was the closest thing I had to a brother. And while he was alive, they were my family.” He looked away, knowing his voice was close to cracking from the grief that was still, after so long, a living, breathing entity? Why was he telling her things he’d never been able to tell Kate or anyone else? Why was she able to pull his words to the surface?
“I think it’s obvious they still consider you part of the family.” Adie ran her hand down his arm, gripped his hand and squeezed. “Make cookies with them, Hunt. Even if you don’t want to renew that close connection, it’s a small thing that would give them a lot of pleasure. And it’s the season to do good.”
How could he resist those big brown expressive eyes? And, let’s be honest here, if Adie was going to spend the evening with the Williams clan, then Hunt wanted to be there too. Something about her, more than lust and attraction, drew him.
Hunt, uncomfortable with the emotion swirling between them, mock shuddered. “Ugh, Christmas.”
“Scrooge,” Adie teased him. “I’m going to go.” Pulling her hand from his, she walked toward the door and Hunt’s eyes dropped from her luscious ass to her shapely legs. He could easily imagine his hands underneath her butt, those legs around his hips as he pushed into her.
He wanted her. Worse than that, he needed her.
Dammit. There was that word again.
“Adie?”
Her hand on the handle to the door, she turned. “Yeah?”
“Give my proposition some thought, okay? We’d be good together.”
“Okay, I’ll think about it.”
Hunter squinted at her departing back, knowing that was as much as he was going to get from her.
For now.
She’d think about it?
Was she nuts?
Adie hailed a cab outside Hunt’s building and gave the driver Kate’s address. Then she asked herself why she hadn’t flatly refused Hunt’s straightforward offer. Oh, she knew why she wanted to say yes—he was volcano hot, she melted every time she got within thirty feet of him and she couldn’t stop thinking about how good they’d be in bed—but no was the only possible answer.
Okay, she’d propositioned him the other night and, while it was completely out of character for her, it was still different from his offer fifteen minutes ago. On the night of the market they’d been two strangers. She’d hadn’t known who he was. She’d thought it would be a “ships passing in the night” type of deal.
Uncharacteristic, sure but also uncomplicated. And instinctive...
She should’ve stuck to her guns, kept her no a no. Adie was mentally backtracking like mad. Sure, there were good and obvious reasons why she shouldn’t sleep with him: he was her client, she wanted to do business with him in the future, she wanted him to recommend her to his rich friends and associates and she did not want to give the impression to him, or anyone, that she sealed the deal with sex.
And he’d recently ended his relationship with his long-term girlfriend. Adie wasn’t interested in being the Band Aid to fix his dented ego.
Adie sighed and banged the back of her head against the seat of the taxi, reluctantly admitting that those were all valid excuses, even though they weren’t the main reason why she should categorically refuse his offer.
Her hesitation was with Christmas. The feelings that bubbled up to the surface this time of year were so much stronger than at other times. From the middle of November until the New Year, these few weeks magnified and exacerbated all her fears and insecurities. The season was a trigger for her to indulge in excessive self-reflection about her past and to compare herself to other people who seemed to have more and do more.
She’d taught herself to drop her bad habits of looking for attention and validation in all the wrong places. For ten and a half months of the year she celebrated her single status, her commitment to her career, her ability to dash around the world and not have to explain to anyone where she was going or how long she’d be away. For roughly three hundred and thirty days a year, she reveled in her freewheeling lifestyle, completely content to be a wealthy, single woman with no pets, husband or children. For most of the year, she didn’t give a thought to being partnerless or childless. She was content, happy even, to be on her own.