It was oh-so-tempting to ignore it and keep sleeping, but I probably wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep anyway while wondering who it was and if I’d missed something important. I rolled over and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
It was Sam. “Can we meet somewhere?”
“Sure, I guess. What about Johnny Rockets?”
“Great. Be there in five minutes.” He hung up.
Sam was sitting at the soda bar when I walked in, a hamburger and fries on the fifties-style counter in front of him. He waved me over when he saw me.
I saw next to him on a red vinyl stool. “What’s up?”
“Thanks for coming.”
“Oh, it’s no problem. What do you need?”
He leaned close to me with scarily protruding eyes. “You honestly don’t know?”
“Err... no, I don’t.”
He seemed to take a while disseminating that information. Finally, he said, “It’s about your friend.”
“April?”
He put down a half-eaten fry. “I want to take our relationship to the next level.”
I suddenly had no appetite. “I’m sorry, Sam. I’m just an associate and all, but even I know that’s a bad idea. You are considering asking her out?”
His eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about? We’ve already been out. I’m talking about sex. She is putting me off, saying she wants to take things slow, but I’ve had enough. I have needs, you know.”
“I’m very confused. Since when have you two been dating?”
Sam clasped his hands together and formed a steeple with his fingers. “Since Sunday.”
My hand moved toward my stomach, but I stopped it mid-move. I signaled a waiter and asked for water, then turned back to Sam. “This is all news to me. So you are upset that she hasn’t wanted to be intimate with you? Why are you talking to me about it?”
“You’re her best friend. You can talk some sense into her.”
“I’m not going to do that. You shouldn’t be asking any employee—especially one that reports directly to you—to sleep with you.”
He took a large bite out of his hamburger. “I will make it worth your while to help me.”
The waiter set a tall, red plastic glass of ice water in front of me. I sipped the water, crushed ice tickling my nose. “What does that mean?”
Sam put down his hamburger. “I know how much you want to be made partner.”
“What makes you think that?” Some water dribbled down my chin.
“Max told me.”
I hoped he was kidding, but my stomach knew he wasn’t. I stalled, taking a massive amount of water and ice into my mouth. I loudly crunched the ice between my teeth and tried to decide how much punishment Max deserved. “So what are you saying, exactly? You’ll make me a partner if I convince April to sleep with you?”
Sam ate a large handful of fries. With his mouth full, he said, “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m promising.”
“As tempting as that sounds, you don’t have the final say in who gets the partnership this year. What if the other partners vote against me? I realize you have more pull than they do, but there has to be some sort of consensus.”
“Just like you can change April’s mind, I can change their minds. I can even tell them the truth. April is a hot piece. We’ve all been there.”
My stomach turned over and I fiddled with the miniature jukebox on the counter. I couldn’t look at him. “So they would be okay with you using your executive power like that?”
“It’s really not that big a deal.”
It was to me. It seemed there were more things about the “real world” that I wasn’t well versed in. First, it had been the importance of sucking up and ingratiating yourself to your superiors. Now it was sexual harassment and abuse of power. He said April had been officially dating him during the cruise, but he had more than a few screws loose if he really believed that. Who knows what innocent action on her part had caused him to think the wrong thing?
Sam signaled the waiter. “Aren’t you going to order food?”
I jabbed at one of the buttons to select a song, then remembered I hadn’t put any money in. “No appetite. Thanks, anyway.”
“It’s free.”
I sat up straighter on my stool. “Nothing is truly free.”
“Wow. Deep. So are you going to do it?” He drank a quarter of his shake in one gulp.
“I’ll see what I can do.” The thing was, I didn’t know what was happening on April’s side. If she’d been hiding a secret attraction to Sam all that time, maybe she was already planning to do what he wanted. I could let the corrupt system work for me. I swiveled so I was facing him directly.
He swirled the shake around to dislodge some large cookie pieces. “She and I are going dancing tonight, and I want my night to have a happy ending.”
I groaned. “By any chance, do you happen to know where Max is?”
Sam made a disgusted face. “He’s at the ice-skating rink. I told him I’d meet him there, but I didn’t feel like it. This was more important.”
“Right.” I slid off my stool and grabbed my bag. “I’ll catch up with you later, okay?”
He nodded. “I know you can do this, Kate. You’re a go-getter.”
I hurried out of there without looking back. Life was interesting. The kind of thing I’d been waiting to hear all this time had finally been said.
But it had all the wrong reasons behind it.
I pushed through the heavy double doors of the ice-skating rink and looked for Max. At first I thought he wasn’t there, but when I moved farther into the room, I saw him. He was leaning against the chest-high barrier that surrounded the rink.
I hurried to the rental desk without another word. The lady at the counter didn’t blink when I requested size nines. Good thing, too. She’d hate to hear my rant that most supermodels wore size nines, if not larger. So what if they had a few inches on my five foot six inch frame? My feet were still within the average range.
I accepted the skates and walked over to a bench to put them on, all before Max saw me. I took off my flip-flops and tucked them under the bench. I slipped my foot into the first skate and winced at the tight fit.
A moment later, Max was seated beside me with his own skates. “Sam told you about the ice-skating?”
“Yes. He’s not coming, by the way.”
“That figures.” There were little number thirteens stamped on the back of the skates he was starting to put on. He saw me looking. “I hope these work. They didn’t have my size.”
“Which would be?”
“Fourteen.”
“Show off.” I fought the temptation to look anywhere near his groin. I slipped on my second skate. “I hope you know that I’m awful at this.”
Max slipped his large foot into an equally large skate. “Then why did you come?”
“We need to talk.”
“Uh-oh.” He tightened his skate. “What were you doing with Sam, anyway? Should I be jealous?”
“Why would you be?” I stood up on wobbly, uncertain feet. The blades weren’t as sturdy as I remembered. I felt as though I was standing on a kayak in the middle of the Mississippi.
Max finished tying on his second skate. “He told me he was meeting you for lunch, but was very secretive about why. I don’t like it when people keep secrets from me.”
I stomped my foot on the soft, foam matting. “What a coincidence. Neither do I.”
Max stood up, towering over me. “Do you even know how to stand in those things?”
I imagined flipping my hair into his face, spinning around, and skating off like an Olympic ice dancer. The minute my blades touched the ice, it was obvious that I wouldn’t be performing any triple axels that afternoon. “Are you trying to change the subject?”
“What subject?”
I rolled my eyes and took a few baby steps across the ice. Every muscle in my body was tense with the effort of staying on my feet. Even when I bre
athed, I made sure not to inhale too deeply so that the air intake wouldn’t knock me off my careful balance.
Max caught up easily. “Refresh my memory as to what you’re mad at me about?”
“Talking about me to Sam behind my back.” I huffed and skated past him as fast as a granny on a skateboard.
“What did he say I said?” Max glided along effortlessly, sometimes pulling ahead of me, then slowing down so I could catch up.
“That I really want to become a partner.”
“Oh, that? Isn’t it true?”
“That’s not the point.” I wobbled, so I held my arms akimbo like a tightrope walker until I’d regained my balance. “I’m not trying to overact, I’m justifiably concerned about what else you said. And not only that: that’s not the kind of thing I want my boss to know. It’s like when you plan on sleeping with a guy. You don’t want someone telling him how badly you want it.”
His skates made cool swishing sounds on the ice, just like on television. “Now I’m totally distracted. What are we talking about? Want to get out of here?”
Stuttering across the ice, I still managed to give him a pointed look when I replied, “I’m serious about this. I wish you hadn’t talked to him about it.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way. I mean it. I think you are looking at this the wrong way. When you work for someone, they are happy to hear you are ambitious. I was doing you a favor. Why are you so secretive about everything?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you don’t really like getting close to anyone.”
“That’s not always true,” I said, feeling hot at the memory of his kiss.
“No.” His voice was low and smooth. “Not always.”
I tried to skate faster to avoid him, but I’d have had a better chance at swimming back to solid ground.
“Also, Sam is my friend. We hang out together outside of work. Sometimes it’s hard to separate those two different spheres.”
“How are you even friends with him? No offense, but I don’t see much to recommend.”
“I wouldn’t date the guy, but he’s not so bad to have drinks with or see a movie.”
I wondered what he’d think of the proposition Sam had made to me. I didn’t know if I could tell him, not when it might actually work. I guess in my fantasy world, April liked Sam and was planning on rocking his world. Although, under normal circumstances, I would have tried to convince her not to do it. Now I was confused.
Max skated ahead, then turned around, and, facing me, skated backwards. “So what are you doing tonight?”
I stumbled a little, but caught myself before falling. If I fell, I’d take a nosedive into his crotch and it would probably be a very hard landing. “I don’t know. Apparently April and Sam are going dancing.”
“Then we should go, too.”
“Hmm.” I tried to focus on our conversation rather than my feet, hoping it would help. “I guess.”
“Well, let me know. I’m not going to force you.” Max stopped skating, a smooth break that he accomplished without running into anything.
I realized I wasn’t as skilled when I sailed ineptly into his waiting, open arms. I slammed against his chest. I tried to catch my breath, looking up into his dark eyes. “Why do you always do that?”
“Catch you?”
“No. Suggest something, then give up the minute I sound the least bit hesitant. Sometimes I need a minute to come around.” His chest was warm and hard against my cheek. I wanted to stay almost as much as I wanted to escape. Unfortunately, my feet weren’t interested in coordinating with my upper body, and they slowly slid backwards as I shifted down Max’s chest.
Max lifted me up by the armpits and planted me back on my feet. “I always knew I’d fall for a woman like my mother.”
“Excuse me?”
Probably realizing how long his hands had been wedged beneath my armpits, Max let me go. “Whenever you offer her something, even something as simple as a glass of water, my mother says no the first time. She doesn’t mean it. She wants you to ask her again.”
I swallowed over a nervous lump in my throat. “Then she says yes?”
“No. She says, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t want you to go to any trouble.’ Once again, she doesn’t mean it.” Max offered me his hand.
“Do you get her the water after that?” I asked, gripping his hand like a life preserver.
“I used to, but I got tired of it. I had to teach her that I didn’t like playing games. Especially not when it comes to every little thing. It’s exhausting.” He skated a little faster, forcing me to keep up on unsteady limbs that threatened to betray me at every stride.
“This is a little fast for—” My complaint about the speed of his long, lean legs was lost in the effort to stay on my feet. I tried to keep up, skating beside him like a jerky robot. He didn’t seem to realize that I was dragging so far behind him that only our fingertips now touched. “Help!”
Our hands went from God and Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling to complete separation. I was leaning too far backward and the moment I could no longer feel any part of Max’s strong, cool hand, I started to fall.
From the edge of my perception, I saw Max turn and witness my pathetic attempt to right myself. Then, as I fell toward the ice, I saw more rapid movement. I felt his hands slip around my waist and latch on, but my descent was preordained.
Max swung me on top of me and, in a split second, my back was lightly touching the ice while he loomed above me. His muscular forearms had been the victim of my fall, now crushed between the ice and my back. “Are you okay?” he asked.
I could feel each breath he took, his entire body pressed against mine. I could finally feel all the hard body parts I’d visualized while telling myself I didn’t like him. I could feel his hot breath on my face and the irregular beating of his heart. “Are you okay?”
“Not really,” Max said, almost in a whisper.
“Why did you let go?”
“I was preoccupied with my thoughts.” Each word he spoke made his chest rumble against my swollen breasts.
“About us?”
He didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry about all the cold shoulders, Max. Maybe I get a little childish sometimes. And jealous.”
“Were you jealous when I was talking to April last night?” he asked, his tone deep and bedroom-appropriate.
“Yes. You were completely ignoring me.” As I said these last words, my voice got lower until Max had to strain to hear me.
Which no longer seemed a problem when he lowered his face towards mine, his stubble tickling my cheek. Mouth pressed against my ear, he said, “We are going dancing tonight, and you are going to like it.”
I shivered, pressing my lower body up against his. “Anything you want.”
Max touched my cheek with his lips then smoothly slid them toward my mouth. He kissed me and, for someone whose body was so hard, his lips were achingly soft.
Caught between the cold ice and his hot body, I kissed him back. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pressing up against him. My lips parted to accept his warm tongue, the stirrings of arousal simultaneously awakening between my legs.
He pressed against me. “Kate, I want you so bad.”
The sudden laughter of children echoing through the rink was a better mood killer than an extra thick Trojan. With characteristic smoothness, Max picked us both up off the ice and planted me firmly on my feet. Once I was righted, he left his heavy hand on my waist, a tender reminder of what had happened.
I occupied myself by looking up at the entrance to the rink and saw a family of four busying themselves with their skates. If they’d walked in five minutes later, they’d have gotten a live sex show at no extra charge. Without looking at Max, I skated toward the exit.
I felt his presence beside me and heard the smooth swish of his skates. “We’re still on for tonight, aren’t we?”
There was a good chance that if I went dancing that night, I
would embarrass myself. The way the week had been going, it was pretty much a given. Latching onto the short wall, I gingerly climbed into the seating area and plopped onto the bench. “Sure, I’ll go dancing with you. Why not?”
Chapter Thirteen
THE PROBLEM WITH being on a cruise was that even if your cell phone works, you don’t want to pay the insane roaming charges. So if you get separated from your friends, there’s no way to contact them. You either have to search a huge ship and hope to get lucky, or plan ahead and pack walkie-talkies. April and I weren’t great planners, so all I could do was go back to the cabin and wait until she showed up.
She came after dinnertime. When she opened the door and saw me sitting on the bed, I swear she considered turning back around. She knew it was time to talk.
“So, April,” I said. “I hear you’ve been banging the boss.”
“I haven’t banged him.”
“I know, but I couldn’t think of a cute phrase for dating.” I stood up and stepped toward the vanity. “How about we make some shampoo cocktails and talk about it?”
April retrieved the Pantene bottle from the bathroom. It might have raised some suspicions if she kept it in the bar area above the television. “I have been spending time with Sam, but nothing too serious.”
“I never thought you had any interest in him. Why did you keep it a secret?”
She sighed and poured. “I figured you’d see right through me if I tried to give you any explanation for why I’m doing it other than the truth. So I thought it would be better if you didn’t hear anything about it. I’m surprised it took him this long to tell you.”
“What’s the truth?” I took a sip of my drink. She’d made it strong, and I was glad. I needed it right then. “What are you up to?”
“I’m doing it for you. It didn’t seem like your sucking up was having much of an effect, so I tried thinking outside the box.”
I drank the rest in one quick gulp, savoring the burn. “You started dating him to help my career?”
She nodded. “That night you saw me sneaking around, I was looking for his room. He and Max are in the same one.”
“Ah, that makes sense.” I had never even considered that, because the thought of April and Sam together was unbelievable.