Chapter 5
It took every bit of resolve she possessed not to follow him when he stormed off. Something had happened just now. Something more than that explosive kiss.
Seriously, explosive. TNT, dynamite. C-4.
Ka-boom.
She bent to pick up one of the plastic pearl buttons from the floor and rolled it between her fingers. What…was that all about? One minute he was slicing an apple, the next about to shred her clothes. Her shoulders shivered thinking about it. Not shivers of fear, either. Shivers of want.
Where Eli was concerned, there was an instinctual, almost animal attraction. Isa wasn’t comfortable with how easily he’d disconnected her good sense from her “do me, baby.”
Getting back to work was the only way to get through the afternoon, so that’s what she did. She found a tank top in the bottom of her tote and knotted her ruined shirt at her waist over it. Then she sat down, put her fingers on her keyboard, and checked her e-mail. There were thirty of them—the perfect distraction from the lip-lock that had left her hot and bothered to the nth degree.
She handled a few from Bobbie at the Crane office with ease. Yes, Eli would be attending the dinner at the Royale London, a fancy Chicagoan banquet hall where Reese had invited lots of corporate muckety-mucks to rub expensively suited elbows.
It was a few months out yet, so she didn’t bother to run it by Eli. He’d go because she’d make him, or he’d have fired her for real by then and wouldn’t go, and it wouldn’t be her problem.
A few e-mails from Chloe showed she hadn’t hung around Elsa’s to hit on Zach some more, instead returning to the office to respond from Isa’s main account. Thank God for her, Isa thought with a breath of relief. She answered a few of Chloe’s questions, knowing her worries were over the moment she hit SEND. Chloe could handle the bigger issues without her.
Isa pulled in a deep breath of accomplishment, considering why she loved being a personal assistant. Lifting the weight from her clients’ shoulders was simple for her but life-changing for them. Her parents may well have thought her destiny lay in becoming president at Sawyer Financial, but as Isa rolled that title around in her head, she felt her nose wrinkle.
She could be there now. Wearing a beige pantsuit and carrying a calculator. Sitting in her beige office with beige carpet and walls. Living a beige life. A wave of very real nausea swept over her whenever she imagined that plight.
She pulled her focus from the screen to look around Eli’s pad. Exercise equipment, black and silver. Blue mat. Red and rust-colored exposed brick, yellow warning stickers on the warehouse elevator from whatever business had predated him. The dining room table where she sat now was surrounded by mismatched chairs, each rustic wooden frame adorned with a different tapestry-styled cushion seat.
Instead of beige, her life was vibrant color. She ran a finger over a knot in the wood of the table. And damn if that color hadn’t exploded into a kaleidoscope of neon when Eli’s lips touched hers.
Aaaand she was thinking about the kiss again.
With a sigh, she pressed a button to print the e-mail she’d been reading, realizing belatedly that she was not in her office.
“Shit, shit, shit!” she hissed, hitting the CANCEL button repeatedly. From Eli’s cave, the printer hummed.
Too late.
Standing, she smoothed her hands down her pants and flipped her hair. She had planned to quietly finish her work and leave without seeing him again. No such luck. And no hiding that she was heading his way when her heels clicked along the concrete floor.
Well.
The kiss had happened. The button incident had happened. There was no taking it back. Regardless of how either of them felt about it, she was going to continue working here. So. She would deal with the here and now.
Since the sun was shining, Eli’s lair was welcome instead of foreboding. No fire cracked in the hearth today. Also unlike his usual, he wasn’t at his desk. He was at the printer.
“This yours?” He offered a sheet of paper.
“Yes.” She couldn’t keep from explaining. “Pressed the Print button by accident.”
“Mi printer es su printer.”
Isa accepted the document and Eli sank his hands into his jeans pockets, his forearms flexing with the movement.
“I wasn’t—”
“I shouldn’t—” they said at the same time.
He pursed his lips and she looked at her shoes.
“Go ahead.” She was going to say, I wasn’t offended when you kissed me, but now that she’d had a millisecond to think it through, maybe she should pretend the kiss hadn’t happened. Which was…impossible. Standing this close to him, it’s all she could think about.