“Flounce?” I prop my hands on my hips with a huff. “I have never flounced a—”
“And hands off your hips,” he murmurs. “I can see everything you’re trying to hide, Eleanor.”
My lips part and my hands drop to my sides as a wave of completely inappropriate heat washes through me.
Damn it, why does his voice have to be so motorcycle-idling-by-the-ocean sexy? It makes everything he says sound vaguely suggestive, and apparently vaguely is all it takes to make my skin tingle and my body ache.
“Everything’s fine,” I whisper. “No one suspects a thing.”
His gaze drops to my mouth and lingers there long enough to make breathing difficult. “You now have two minutes,” he finally says, breezing past me with a disinterested expression.
I spin, intending to tell him I don’t appreciate the alpha-hole behavior, but several coworkers are still hovering near the exit. I swallow the retort and head for the bathroom, getting so close to the ladies’ room that my hand is reaching for the door handle before I remember what kind of parts I’m supposed to have and dart across the hall to the mercifully empty men’s room instead.
After locking myself in the only stall—thank God, sweet stall—I pull my compact and glue from my suit pocket and make the appropriate fixes to my stinktastic ’stache before tugging out my phone and shooting Spencer a text:Even the super stinky super glue is failing me, Spence. Got anything else I can try to keep me from losing my facial hair in my next cup of coffee?
Oh no,he texts back.If it stinks, it’s probably expired. I’ll pick up some fresh on my way out of the shop after the show tonight. How’s your debut going?! I’ve been on pins and needles all day!
Stifling a groan, I reply,Not awful, but not great. I’m about to get a dressing down from the boss man.
Don’t let him grind you down, honey,Spence texts.I respect your commitment to your craft. Stay the course, and the boss man will, too.
I type out a quick thanks, but Spencer’s sweet words aren’t as encouraging as they would usually be.
What if I don’t have what it takes to pull this off? What if my acting skills and my journalistic skills are both subpar and this entire endeavor is destined to fail?
And almost as worrisome—what if this weird awareness of Jack as a delicious creature worthy of hours of devoted licking gets worse?
I’ve always been anxious around Jack and aware of him in a way I’m not with most men, but I’ve never wanted to straddle him in his desk chair and explore his stupidly sexy mouth with my tongue before. I mean, maybe I did…a little, but I could always ignore the forbidden voice of temptation.
“And you’llkeepignoring it,” I whisper to my reflection in the compact. “Because he is off-limits, a cocky egomaniac, and most definitely not thinking of you as anything but a pain in his ass he would like to have surgically removed ASAP.”
With a nod, I snick my compact closed and head for Jack’s office, mustacheanddefenses firmly in place and fingers crossed that they’ll stay that way.
CHAPTER 5
Jack
Day 3 Friday 8/3
“Close the door.” I don’t give Ellie a chance to sit before I start in on her. “You’ve got thirty seconds to convince me not to shut this whole thing down.”
“What? Why?” She turns from the door and walks—sashays, rather—toward me, making me more aware of her curves with every swish of her hips, despite her low-riding men’s dress pants. “We had a deal, Jack. You’re supposed to back me up.”
“And you’re supposed to lay low, but clearly there’s been a miscommunication about—”
“Lie.” Ellie sighs as she flops into the chair across from my desk.
“I beg to differ. We agreed—”
“No, I mean the phrase. It’slielow. Lay is the past tense of lie, as in—I lay low yesterday, but today I’m going to lie low. Present-tense lay refers to something you physically do to an object.”
Fucking hell.
I’d like to present-tense layher, right here on my desk. And maybe in my fifteen-hundred-dollar ergonomically superior Herman Miller office chair.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and squeeze my eyes shut, forcing the entirely-too-detailed image out of my head before I do something insane, like ask Ellie if she’s interested in a little afternoon delight. I have a meeting in ten minutes, and ten minutes isn’t nearly enough time for a woman like Ellie. I’d want to savor every moment of her, the sweet taste of her kiss, the silky-smooth feel of her skin, the sounds she’d make as—
“Sorry for being the grammar police,” she says, biting her lip. Her voice yanks me out of the fantasy, but the lip-nibbling does nothing to ease the ache below my belt. “That’s what you get for hiring a writer.”