Bad Boys Online (11 page)

Her eyes went wide. The full smile came back.

Shit. She was flirting with him. And he was doing it back.

Before she could say something that he would regret, he quickly spoke in what he prayed was a casual, innocent, no-sexual-intent kind of voice. “What about you? Any brothers or sisters down there in Tennessee?”

There was a slight pause, before she said, “I have a younger sister.”

Jared tried to picture another woman looking like Candy and couldn’t quite conceive it. Candy was one of a kind. Delicious.

“So what’s her name? Taffy?” He realized immediately that sounded a lot ruder than he’d intended.

But Candy just laughed. “Actually, her name is Margaret and she’s studying the cello at Julliard.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Margaret?

Jared got a visual of Candy sitting with a cello between her legs. Somehow the image was hard to conjure, though he did feel a pang of envy for the fictional cello and the prized position between Candy’s legs. But Candy and orchestral instruments just didn’t go together in his mind, no matter what erotic spin he could put on it.

Yet he could see Candy smiling and intelligently directing a room full of ad clients. Damn. Smart and sexy. It was a lethal combination.

“No, I’m not kidding.” Candy pulled a strand of hair out of her mouth, one leg still straight, the other bending at the knee, sending her hip out provocatively to the side.

It also dragged her skirt up another solid inch on that side, showing way more than Jared needed to see. Not that he was complaining. It just sent scissors through another thread of his control.

“Margaret and I have different fathers. My mom says my daddy was her true love, a brief burst of passion that left her heart broken and alone before I was even born.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

Candy shrugged. “He left her for another woman when he found out she was pregnant. So two years later she married Margaret’s dad because she thought he would stick around and take care of her.”

Jared dragged his eyes off Candy’s thighs. Leering at her suddenly made him feel no better than the lecher who had run out on her mom. He placed his eyes squarely on her face and vowed not to let his gaze stray. “Did he stick around?”

“Yeah. They’re still married and very happy. They really love each other and he never made me feel any different from Margaret even though I wasn’t his blood daughter.”

She smiled then, and Jared was amazed at the lack of bitterness in her voice. “He adopted me and gave me the last name Appleton. I was three by then, so too late to change my first name from Candy. So I’ve been Candy Appleton ever since.”

Then she stood up. Her legs went way, way up as she stretched, reaching her arms over her head while she went up onto the tips of her toes in her high heeled shoes. Her blouse tugged and pulled, straining to escape the waist of her skirt and molding to her breasts. Her suit jacket splayed, held together by one overworked button, and Jared watched in morbid fascination.

He was waiting for the whole thing to blow. The button to fly off, the blouse to slide up, her creamy navel skin to be exposed to him all while she tottered on heels at his mercy.

Then he would take the spot previously reserved for the cello and ease her skirt up.

Jared calculated how much money was left in his checking account and gave himself up for lost.

Candy hoped like heck she knew what she was doing. Jared looked like he could chew up nails and tie them into bows with his tongue. Heaven help her, she couldn’t tell if he was turned on, furious, or both.

And what had possessed her to run on at the mouth about her mother and stepfather? Not that she had an ounce of experience in having casual affairs, but she had to assume you didn’t start them out by talking about your family.

Give her another five minutes and she’d be whipping out photos of last Christmas and her cat wearing a Santa hat.

She finished stretching, her legs stiff from bending over the desk, and chewed her lip as she thought over her next move. This shouldn’t be so doggone hard. She’d been flirting since the cradle, as her mother frequently liked to remind her. But now when she needed it, all she could think to do was smile, which was lame and appeared to have no impact on Jared whatsoever.

It must be nerves. After all, there was a lot more at stake here than getting good restaurant service. Before she left this office today, she wanted a date with Jared. A date that would end up with them naked and Jared turning that intense concentration squarely on her.

Time to take a deep breath and turn up the heat.

“What’s the next question?” Jared said, shrugging out of his suit jacket.

Oh, Lord, he had broad shoulders. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him without his jacket on, and it was a sight worth lingering over. She lingered so long he raised an eyebrow.

“The question?”

The quiz. Right. With elephantine effort she turned around and tried to focus on the computer screen, her cheeks burning.

Jared was turning up the heat, and he didn’t even know it.

After quickly typing in their responses to birth place, she went on. “Question three. Describe the moment you met.”

That was easy. Jared had strolled into the office one Monday morning back in January and she had known lickety split that he would be the one to pull her out of the sexual deep freeze she’d been in since her divorce. He had been wearing a black suit with a burgundy shirt and tie, and he had looked at her, scanned her, and moved on. Dismissed. Dissed.

He had never once deviated in his behavior since.

Jared said nothing. Candy kept her eyes on the screen.

“I guess I’ll just type in that we met at work.”

“Fine.”

Her fingers trembled as she typed and she blew her hair out of her eyes, ignoring the disappointment she felt. Dang, what did she expect? Jared to say his eyes had met hers over the length of the meeting room table and it had been fate?

There was no doubt in her mind he could not even pinpoint the first time he had seen her.

Jared was desperate. They hadn’t even gotten to the hard questions yet and he was in danger of barking and drooling.

The first time he had seen Candy was branded into his mind. He had walked into Stratford Marketing and had gone into the meeting room for an eight am appointment with Harold.

Candy had been there, wearing a cherry red turtleneck sweater that matched her lips. Her blond hair had been pulled back into a twist of some kind and she had on a knee length white wool skirt and boots. He had felt like he was staring at a life-sized peppermint, all white and shiny and sweet.

The sight had stunned him, giving him a spontaneous and mortifying erection, and had left his brain and body sizzling like a pound of bacon.

He’d gotten the hell out of that meeting room and thus had started the past eight weeks of dodging her like a bullet. She wouldn’t kill him, but she’d send him back to the unemployment lines.

“Next question.” He crossed his leg, widely, to accommodate for the throb in his pants, and picked a nice spot on Harold’s desk to study. There was a picture of a couple of preteen kids. Gangly. Little Harolds with hair.

“We’re cooking now,” she said with a perky little smile. “We’re already up to question four.”

Just what he did not need. She was acting cute. It had been better when she’d been talking about her family. That had at least made her seem real, a live human being with feelings and obviously someone he could not just tangle with in Harold’s office and walk away with no regrets or recriminations. But when she did this… this bent over smiling thing, he forgot everything, including his own name.

“What’s the matter?” She sat down in the chair next to him, and pulled the laptop closer to the edge of the desk. “You’re scowling and I haven’t even read the question yet.”

He glanced at his watch. “It doesn’t feel like we’re accomplishing anything. I think we need to skip a few questions or something.”

With a little laugh, her fingers fell onto the back of his hand. Her fingers, for God’s sake. On his skin. Touching him.

“What’s your hurry?”

Now hold on. He turned in his chair, hoping the movement would knock her hand off his. It didn’t.

He didn’t like that tone in her voice. That let’s-see-where-this-goes laugh.

“I thought we were in a hurry. You said you were before.”

“Did I?” Her fingers squeezed his hand, her thumb sliding down around his, rubbing back and forth. “If I did then I’ve changed my mind. Sometimes slow is better than fast, don’t you think?”

It was a struggle not to twitch. Or grab her and kiss the Southern smile out of her.

“Slow isn’t better with Internet speeds. Or when you’re driving on the highway. Or waiting for a paycheck.”

Her head tilted. There was a gleam in her eye he just didn’t trust.

“But slow is better when you’re savoring a good meal. Or taking a stroll by the lake. Or making love.”

Ah, hell. He’d been really, really afraid she would say something like that. Jared went perfectly still, concerned that any sort of movement, of any muscle in his body, might be misinterpreted as an invitation.

He said slowly, carefully, neither smiling nor frowning, “But we aren’t doing any of those things.”

Candy pulled her hand back. He was not reassured by the action since it was accompanied by her leaning way forward and undoing that loyal button on her jacket.

Those wonderful full lips parted with a little moist sound and she said, “We’re not doing any of them… yet.”

Jared swallowed. Hard. Instinct told him to ignore the comment, to change the subject, to spill a cup of coffee on Harold’s computer and get out while he still could.

That’s not what he did, of course. He had to know. Just had to. “Are you interested in doing any of those things?”

Candy had him. She had done it. She had gotten a reaction from Jared, and it was a very positive one, if the flare to his nostrils was any indication.

“I’m interested in one or two. How about you?”

He nodded. “A walk by the lake sounds nice.”

She sat straight up. Was he serious? “It’s March and forty degrees outside! One strong wind and we would be coated in icy lake water.”

“It was your idea. And I wasn’t aware we were talking about doing any of those things together.”

His posture didn’t change and his expression was the same neutral gaze, unblinking and in control. It took all she had not to just get up and crawl out of Harold’s office in humiliation. But if she was any judge of men, which given her ex-husband was questionable at best, there was lust brewing in Jared’s eyes.

Way in the back, but there nonetheless. Plus the nostril flare.

It was enough to keep her in her seat. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to do any of those things alone. Would you?”

Candy smiled at him and shrugged out of her jacket, struggling with the sleeves. She ended up wiggling back and forth tugging on the jacket, trying to keep her blouse sleeve in place, until Jared took hold of both sleeves and stripped her of the jacket before she could even take a breath.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. And I don’t like to… eat alone either.”

Have mercy. Having spent the last two years wondering why she couldn’t get the least bit aroused, Candy now had her answer. She had been waiting for Jared. And all he needed to do was breathe and she found herself with damp panties.

“Question four.” Her voice shattered on a mouse-like squeak and she cleared her throat. “Where do you most like your partner to touch you?”

She dropped her feet to the floor and looked closer at the screen. Was that really what it said or had her personal thoughts done a wishful Freudian voice-over?

Jared said, “What the hell kind of question is that?”

One on the couples guide to harmony, apparently. Candy had read the question right.

“Harold can’t possibly expect us to answer that. And we’ve never even touched each other, so it’s completely invalid.”

“Unless we just answered where we’d like, ah, someone to touch us.” Candy shocked herself right out of the chair. She bounced up and paced around the backside of her chair, hiding behind Jared.

Of all the tacky, inappropriate, over the top things to say. He was going to give her a quarter to go buy a clue. He wasn’t interested and throwing herself at him was just embarrassing them both.

She knew it. It was coming. Where was a whale’s mouth to dive into when you needed one?

Jared swiveled around to face her and said, “Well, that’s easy enough for a man to answer. I think we all want to be touched in the same place. And I’m not talking about our feet.”

She was sure he wasn’t.

Before she could think of a response that didn’t make her sound like a priss or a total slut, but a nice I’m interested in-between, Jared spoke again.

His hand was slung over the back of the chair, and his shirt strained across his muscular chest. “So, if
someone
was going to touch me, that’s where I would want it to be.”

Candy forced herself to stop pacing. “Why don’t you type that in on the assessment then?”

Jared let out a laugh. It was the first time she had ever heard him amused enough to laugh. It was a deep rich sound that washed over her and sent her goosepimply.

“I’ll do that.” He grabbed the laptop and typed with both hands, fast and efficiently. “What should I put for your answer? Where would you want to be touched, Candy?”

Everywhere. Times three.

“Weeell,” she drawled the word out, hoping time would give her courage. She knew what she wanted, it was just a matter of saying it out loud.

Squeezing her fists shut tight, Candy tossed back her hair and went for broke. “My breasts.”

Jared wasn’t looking at her, but she saw his fingers pause over the keyboard. His voice was low, persuasive. “Would you say specifically your nipples, or all of your breasts, Candy? And touched with hands, or with a tongue? I want to be as accurate as possible you know, for the counseling.”

Candy gripped the back of chair to prevent falling down in a dead faint. Lord, the man was sexy even on the back of his head. “Both. Everything.”