Girl Gear 1: All Tied Up (16 page)

“Well, I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

“Wrong?”

“Dead wrong. It seems we both were. Because we’ve just proved that three-thousand square feet isn’t enough living room for two people, now, haven’t we?” With a mocking nod, he swung around and headed for the elevator.

By the time she found her voice, the motor’s hum announced his swift descent.

Funny how her own stomach dropped to her toes.

C
OMING TO THE OFFICE
had sounded like a good idea an hour ago, Leo thought, staring at a point between the far edge of his desk and the closed door across the room. Slumped back in his chair, one ankle squared over the opposite knee, he mindlessly rolled the barrel of his pen up and down the legal pad propped on his thigh. He wasn’t getting a damn thing accomplished.

It was all
her
fault.

At the loft, his concentration had been cracked by the pecking of ten thousand hens. Feathers ruffled, he’d barged into the coop, prepared to demand silence—only to be met with the same. Immediate and total. Not a cackle. Not a peep. At least not until the flock started in on his underwear…

His frustration level already hovered at an all-time high. The eye-popping stares, the clucks and the twitters, had splintered his thin shell of patience. Unable to face another frustration on top of his inability to keep his mind on work and his hands off Macy, he’d taken flight.
And now here he was, as disturbed by the lull as he had been by the storm.

It was all
her
fault.

He picked up the pen, sketched the head, the beak and the eye of a chicken, added a comb and feathers, penciled in the wings, the breast and a Celtic tattoo. Funny how five women had the capability of sounding like fifty. Or maybe what was funny was the way he’d strained to hear Macy’s voice above the others.

Of course, the funniest thing was that none of this was funny at all. Macy Webb had turned his world upside down. And for the first time in his life, he was at a loss as to how to fix what never should’ve been able to break.

His concentration. His focus. His single-minded drive for success.

How had this moppet of a woman, this wild child, this little girl all grown up, made such a mess of his life? No. How had she managed to get
him
to make such a mess of his life? Playing silly kid games that weren’t even a means to an end. Partying with no purpose but to have fun. Living in a madhouse run on no schedule but that dictated by Macy’s whims.

It was all
her
fault.

Why had he ever thought he’d get any work done living—even temporarily—at her place, in an atmosphere that crossed a carnival with a cartoon? Look at him now. Paperwork shoved into his satchel without a care for organization. Gray jersey sweat shorts over his red cotton knit boxers. A plain white undershirt. High-top Nikes, untied, no socks.

There wasn’t a member of his firm who wouldn’t think him off his rocker if they caught him in the office looking like the dragged-in leftovers of a thousand cats. He couldn’t name a single woman he’d dated who
wouldn’t pay cash to get a good look at how far he’d fallen from the standards he’d held so high.

Using bold capital letters, he scratched the word
LOSER
across the top of the legal pad, then returned to the chicken and filled in the feathered details, outlined a pair of clogs over the three-toed feet, drew a pair of knee-length pants over the legs.

If only his father could see him now. The son who’d never disappointed, who’d never failed, who’d followed the footsteps so precisely measured and positioned along the path to success. The son who’d gone on to lose his mind over a woman as unsuitable as the mother who’d rebelled against the life his father had demanded she live.

Rebel.
The word described Macy from the piercings in her ears right down to the flannel pajamas she insisted qualified as business casual. Leo snorted. Flannel pajamas weren’t even bedroom casual…except he couldn’t see Macy wearing anything else when she crawled into his bed.

She was like no woman he’d ever known, and he didn’t know what to do with her. Women didn’t wear Walt Disney underwear. Women didn’t eat pancakes with their fingers, licking away sticky syrup while laughing at his over-the-breakfast-table stories. Women didn’t sleep with an entire plush zoo of endangered species, in the glow of a dozen night-lights, beneath iridescent starfish pasted to a ceiling painted to look like the ocean floor.

Leo groaned. He wished he’d never stepped foot in her bedroom. She’d tempted him to swim in her dangerous waters, coaxed him to dive headfirst into the unknown. He’d done both, only to sink to the bottom like a stone. And now he was drowning in confusion.

He’d screwed up in a big way, wasted a lot of time playing her childish games. He was no better off now, no further ahead today than he’d been three weeks ago, he realized, studying the rooster he’d drawn wearing a studded choke collar, restraints around both ankles and a long leather leash.

In fact, he’d obviously taken a big step in reverse, judging by the caliber of notes on his notepad. Another hour had passed and what did he have to show for his time but a funky chicken and her henpecked cock?

“Leo?”

He looked up sharply to see Macy standing in his doorway, rubbing the toe of one chunky black boot over the calf of the opposite leg. He hadn’t even heard the door open. Hell, he hadn’t even heard her knock.

“Is this a bad time?” she asked.

His gut knotted. He shook his head, tossed the pad onto his desk, lobbed the pen on top and watched it slide to a stop between the two birds. He turned his attention to Macy, turned the pad facedown while answering, “I’ve done all the damage I can for tonight.”

She smiled shyly, pushed back the hair from the right side of her face, repeated the gesture on the left. “I wouldn’t have come except that I wanted to apologize. For the noise and all. We sorta got…out of control.” She scrunched up her nose. “I’m sorry.”

They’d more than
sorta
gotten on his nerves, but he shrugged it off and relaxed against the high leather back of his chair. He was much more interested in the here and now. “How’d you get in? How’d you know where I’d gone?”

Her fingers fluttered near her waist. She twisted her hands together. Her body language told the apprehensive truth her steady voice concealed. “You’re fairly pre
dictable, Leo. If you’re not at the gym, you’re at the office. That is, when you’re not at home.”

Home. The knot tightened, drew into a ball of twisted, tangled nerves.

“Besides,” she quickly added, before he could remind her and himself that he was nothing but a temporary guest, “I followed you.”

He kept his hands on the chair’s armrests. His fingers gouged deep dimples into the rich brown cordovan leather. With a concentrated effort, he managed to keep from asking why when his body was already stirring with the need to know.

“That’s the thing about these old renovated buildings.” She took one tentative step into the office. “The builders like to use what they can of the original fixtures.” She took a second, bolder step. “The door downstairs didn’t latch all the way, so I invited myself in. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind.” She took her third step, the bravest yet, bringing her far enough inside to close the door behind her. “Do you?”

“Do I what?” He didn’t even remember what she’d been saying. He only knew she was here and that he was supposed to breathe.

“Do you mind that, technically, I committed a breaking-and-entering sort of crime?” She shrugged both shoulders, tilted her head to one side. “You being an upholder of the law and all.”

He waved off her worry. “I should’ve made sure the door was latched.”

“It’s latched now.”

“Good.” It was all he could say as she leaned her light weight back against his heavy office door.

Her small shoulders and slim hips weren’t even as wide as one of the decorative panels. She was a child.
She was a woman. She was everything he wanted and all that he’d learned in life to avoid.

“Anyway, I came here to apologize for the noise.”

“You did that.”

“Oh, right. I did, didn’t I?”

Her anxiousness intrigued him. He’d never known Macy to be anything but full steam ahead when it came to letting him know what she wanted. “It’s your place, Macy. You can be as loud as you want.”

“Well, you’re living there, too. I just keep forgetting you haven’t been there as long as Lauren. It took awhile for her to get used to my…” Macy gestured loosely with one hand, then tucked the fingers of both into the back pockets of her green fatigues. “My need for noise, I guess you could say.”

“You
need
that noise?” he asked, when the question he really wanted answered was how she could possibly forget how long he’d been living in the loft when he’d been there a matter of days.

Again came the scrunched-up nose. “It’s not the noise as much as the interaction. The…company.”

The company. Now this he’d been wondering about. This thing she had for surrounding herself with people—or sea life—twenty-four hours a day. “I don’t see how you get anything done in that zoo.”

“I was the youngest of six kids, Leo. I grew up in a zoo.” She smiled when she said it, so he knew resentment wasn’t an issue.

He picked up his pen, drummed the ball point against the legal pad’s cardboard backing. “Still…you can’t tell me the racket isn’t a distraction.”

This time she chuckled—a quiet sound, as if she didn’t expect him to understand. “Silence is a bigger one. I’ve never known anything but noise. I’ve never
had the sort of privacy and quiet time others take for granted.”

“Or demand.” He must’ve sounded like the jackass he looked, stomping into the barnyard wearing nothing but those damn red boxers.

“At least your methods are effective. I can’t remember a staff meeting ever ending on such a climactic note.” She let her eyes drift shut, let her shoulders relax, let her head fall back against the door. And she did it all while wearing an expression that was nothing if not purely angelic. “It was almost…spiritual.”

He blew out a huff and dropped the pen again. She could tease and flirt and go all dreamy-eyed until the cows came home. He was not going to let her get to him. “Spiritual’s taking it a bit far.”

“Maybe not.” She leveled her gaze on him then, and damn it, why did she have to have those eyes that saw so much and so clearly? Saw beyond the facade he was struggling to keep in place. “I specifically remember you telling me how good you are. Surely you’ve inspired a religious experience or two.”

He looked at her then and looked closely, searching for the wild child, but seeing only a woman who knew what she wanted. This wasn’t Macy at play. This was more. Macy with intent. Macy on fire. Macy at her grown-up best.

Hell. The last hour spent chewing himself out? A big fat waste. Leo totally screwed over by the horse he’d rode in on. He’d be walking funny until he got this woman out of his life.

He picked up the pen one more time and righted the legal pad, adjusting his glasses and his frame of mind. “I have to get back to work. Was there something in particular you needed?”

By now she had her arms crossed over her chest and her trademark glare of intense scrutiny turned up high. “You don’t like talking about yourself much, do you?”

He didn’t talk about himself. Or at least he hadn’t, not to anyone the way he had to Macy. And right now he wasn’t in the mood for one of her silly pop-psychology sessions. “I don’t need to talk about myself. My work does it for me.”

“Your work tells others about the kind of attorney you are. It doesn’t say anything about Leo Redding the man.”

She was wrong, but he didn’t want to expend his pent-up energy on an argument. Or even on a conversation. He tossed his pen back to the desk, spun his glasses across the same surface. If she wanted a fight, he’d give her one.

He leaned back, his elbows on the chair arms, and laced his fingers across his middle. “You want to know about Leo the man? Bring your ass over here.”

“I am not coming over there.”

One brow lifted in a dare. “Why not?”

“I think you know.”

The other brow called her a chicken and arched even higher. “Afraid of getting naked?”

“No. I’m not afraid of getting naked.” She stepped away from the door, stood, feet apart, in the center of his office and whipped her camouflage tank top over her head. She dropped it to the floor.

“And, no. I’m not afraid of you, either.” Balancing flamingo-style, first on one foot, then the other, she made quick work of bootlaces and socks. “But there is one thing that scares me.”

Leo thought he’d swallowed his tongue, because he couldn’t find it to speak. “Hmm?”

Buckles and zippers undone, she shimmied out of her fatigues. “I am afraid, if you ask, I won’t be able to tell you no.”

Earlier she’d been bare beneath her top. Now she was wearing the leopard-print bra, what there was of it, which on Macy wasn’t a hell of a lot. But it was still more than enough to pique the interest he kept in his pants. He didn’t know whether to groan or growl or grovel. “So I won’t ask.”

“Good,” she said, and produced a smile the likes of which he’d never before seen—an angel and a devil in one wicked sweetheart of a grin. “Because I don’t want to blame anyone but myself for what I’m about to do.”

His mind pictured dozens of possibilities.

His body only cared about one.

He kept his legs spread, kept his hands laced over his belly. She took a step forward, took another, took one more, slid a bra strap from one shoulder while she walked. She drew closer, reached for strap number two, worked it and worked it until his lower body screamed at him to get rid of his shorts.

Damn sexy woman. Damn leopard-print lingerie. Not good for anything but stripping away, which he was going to do if she didn’t.

She stopped at the edge of his desk and looked down. He swiveled his chair to the side and looked up. A tense moment of nothing but edgy anticipation simmered in the boxy space keeping them apart.

The wait was making him crazy. His heart pounded, his blood rushed hot, his inner caveman grunted. He was seconds away from grabbing her hair and dragging her down to his grotto when she saved him from his primitive Neanderthal urgings by dropping to her knees between his legs.