Just About Sex (8 page)

Still, Simone couldn’t remember when she’d ever felt edgier, and the day promised to get worse before it got better. The source of all the turmoil, Beelzebub himself, was due here at the office in half an hour for a subcommittee meeting with Juan Romero.

Who knew what unpleasant surprises the man had in store for her this time? It’d be just her luck if he set up a webcam outside her apartment to see exactly who came and went during the night.

Her stomach churned like the class five rapids she’d once rafted on the New River in West Virginia. It’d serve Greene right if she vomited all over his polished shoes. Reaching inside her top drawer, she pulled out her bottle of Tums, popped several, and put the bottle back. They gave her no relief, not that she’d really expected any. Her only goal for the day was to make it through the meeting with Greene without blowing up or freaking out.

Or growing any more attracted to him.

Pat would help calm her nerves immensely if she’d get out of her space and give her a little breathing room. Simone rolled her chair away from Pat and closer to her computer screen. “Can you give me a little space here?” she said irritably. “I can’t breathe.”

Ignoring her, Pat scooted closer and leaned over Simone’s shoulder to point at something on the screen. “Read that one.”

Simone sighed but scrolled down to the next hit.

You should be ashamed of yourself. Dr. Simone gives wonderful advice. Ever since she told me to go ahead and let my husband suck my toes if he wanted to, our sex life has never been better. Leave her alone!

—Lisa in Hyde Park

“No, not that one!” Pat barked. She snatched the mouse from Simone’s hand and moved it until she came to the comment she wanted.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to do here, but Simone is a beautiful, classy lady I’ve had the good fortune to date a few times. Any man would be lucky to have her in his bed. Who cares how good she is?

—John Daniels

A wicked smile split Pat’s face and she rubbed her hands together with what could only be described as glee. “Sooooo. Who’s this John Daniels, and why didn’t you give him any?”

“That’s exactly what I’d like to know.”

At the deep rumbling voice, both Simone and Pat jumped a foot in the air. Simone’s pulse went haywire. She knew even before she looked that it was Greene.

He leaned against the door frame, crossing his arms and ankles as if he owned the place and could come and go at will. Today he’d worn a navy suit with maroon tie and looked, much as Simone hated to admit it, mouthwatering. His gaze went directly to her and his lips turned up in that mocking little smile she’d come to think of as perma-smirk.

“Hello, Simone,” he said in a silky, intimate voice he’d undoubtedly used on countless women on countless mornings after.

Flushing, Simone pressed her lips together and glared at him, desperately wishing that his voice didn’t slide over her skin like a warm island breeze, and that he’d stop looking at her as if he planned to peel her clothes off at the earliest possible opportunity. “Oh, hello.”

Pat jumped to her feet and turned to face him. “Who are you?”

“Alex Greene,” he said, not bothering to look at Pat. “Who are you?”

Pat went right into snarling pit bull mode. She drew herself up, squared her shoulders and bared her teeth. “Pat White. Her lawyer. Gimme one good reason why we shouldn’t sue your butt off over this little Web site you put up.”

Greene sauntered over to one of the chairs in front of the desk. He sat, crossing one ankle over the other knee and draping both forearms over the arms of the chair. To Simone’s supreme annoyance, he exuded relaxed confidence, as if he was lounging in a poolside deck chair waiting for a server to bring him his frosty tropical drink.

He smiled and shrugged, finally looking at Pat as he addressed her. “Do what you want. Don’t let me stop you.”

Greene’s cool, unfazed gaze locked with Pat’s. Pat faltered and spluttered, the battery on her motor mouth apparently dead.

Simone, having never seen Pat speechless before, almost laughed. Pat’s attack dog routine usually had opponents cowering in her path, but not this time. Simone felt the unwelcome stirrings of a new feeling for Greene: grudging respect.

Recharged after a few seconds of silence, Pat revved up again. “If it was up to me, we’d’ve sued you into oblivion and back already.”

Greene looked back at Simone. “Protecting me, are you?” His voice lowered. “Or hiding something? I wonder.”

Alarm squirmed to life in Simone’s gut. She studied her cuticles, both to pretend she was bored and to avoid Greene’s intent, glittering gaze. “I would
never
protect you, and I’m certainly not hiding anything,” she said coolly. “It’s just that something as obviously idiotic as your Web site doesn’t deserve that much of my attention.”

One dark, heavy, mocking brow shot to his hairline. “Then why were you reading it when I came in? Just curious.”

Trapped and pinned, Simone couldn’t think of anything to say. Luckily, Pat came to her rescue. “We’re monitoring the situation.”

“Of course.” He paused. “Why don’t you just apologize, so I can pull it?”

“No.”

Greene fell silent and continued to stare at Simone as if that had been his sole purpose for coming. She felt exposed, like one of the polar bears at the Cincinnati Zoo. How did those poor animals go about their daily business of swimming and sunning with idiots like Greene watching their every move?

The warm flush she’d felt when he first arrived turned to a burn, and her heart rate stubbornly refused to return to normal. Flustered, she fidgeted, uncapping and recapping her ballpoint pen. Finally, thoroughly unraveled, she tossed the pen down and opened her mouth.

Greene’s eyes widened with obvious anticipation.

“I’m assuming you’re here for the meeting, even though it doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes,” she said tartly. “Didn’t they teach you how to tell time in law school?”

Greene smiled with a devastating flash of white teeth and dimples. Simone heard Pat’s breath catch, and Simone felt mollified to discover that she wasn’t the only woman on the planet who had trouble breathing around Greene’s masculine perfection.

Greene didn’t seem to notice their turmoil. “Believe it or not, I do know how to tell time. I even have a watch. But I wanted to come early.”

“Why?” Simone demanded.

“I’m eager.”

“For what?”

His gleaming gaze skimmed over her face, lingered on her lips, and then slipped to her torso—the only part of her body visible while she sat at her desk. She felt naked, and with good reason. Why, oh, why had she taken off her lavender suit jacket earlier? Wearing only her white silk tank top, with its lacy vee between her breasts, she looked, from the waist up at least, like she was off to a day at the beach.

He didn’t miss anything. Neck, shoulders, arms, cleavage—he saw it all. And approved. She could tell because an interesting, deep shade of red crept over his high cheekbones.

Finally he met her gaze again. “I’m eager to…talk to you.”

Breathless now, her breasts tight and aching, Simone tried to focus, but couldn’t stop fidgeting. One of her hands insisted on running through the side of her hair, ruffling it.

She cleared her throat. “Fine. Go ahead.”

Frowning, he looked back to Pat who stared, mesmerized and silent, between the two of them.
“Alone,”
Greene said.

After going what was surely the longest stretch in her lifetime without talking, Pat found her tongue. “Now you wait one minute, buddy—”

Simone caught her wrist and silenced her. “It’s okay,” she said, pretending she didn’t see Greene’s satisfied grin. “We were finished, weren’t we?”

Pat glared. “Noooo. We were
not
finished. I haven’t told you anything about—”

“Great.” Simone patted her on the shoulder and gave her a gentle push, dismissive gestures even Pat couldn’t misunderstand. “I’ll call you later.”

Pat opened her mouth to argue, but Simone stared her down and narrowed her eyes into a silent
don’t make me ask you again look.
Huffing, Pat snatched her purse off the sofa, lobbied one last glare at Greene, and marched off.

Greene waited until Pat disappeared from view. The second she did, he uncrossed his legs, leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “So why didn’t you?” he asked, waiting intently, as if he were watching some tennis player serve for the title at Wimbledon.

“Why didn’t I what?”

“Sleep with John Daniels.”

Chapter 7

S
imone’s brain clicked off and she kept perfectly still, not daring to blink with Greene studying her like an amoeba on a microscope slide. His bland expression couldn’t hide the new tension she felt radiating from him like heat waves from the sun.

She smiled crookedly. “My sex life is none of your business.”

“I thought sex was your life.”

Simone scowled. He had the uncanny ability to lace everything he said with innuendo. No doubt he could recite a page from the phone book and have women stumbling over each other to be the first one to dive into his bed. Well, not her.

“I help other people with their sex lives,” she told him. “I don’t discuss mine. Especially with casual strangers.”

“But you do have one…?”

Though she’d clenched them on her lap, her hands wouldn’t keep still any more than her blood would stop roaring in her ears. Reaching for the rose hand cream she kept on her desk, she squirted some on her palm and absorbed herself with rubbing her cold hands together. She did not look at Greene.

“What part of ‘none of your business’ don’t you understand, Greene?”

“But I’ve made your life my business, Simone. Did you forget my Web site? I want to know everything there is to know about you.”

Her face burned as if she’d shoved her head in a hot oven. “I’m not that interesting. Why are you doing this?”

“I don’t know.”

At the odd note in his voice, her gaze shot to his. Sure enough, deep frown lines had formed between his brows. He looked annoyed. Unhappy.

She felt an unexpected tug of understanding on her heart, not that she would ever do anything about it. After all, she wasn’t exactly thrilled she found him attractive, was she?

“Why don’t you fixate on someone else, Greene?”

His lips thinned. “I…can’t,” he said, as if he completely agreed with the logic of her suggestion, but was helpless to do anything about it.

Abruptly he got to his feet and strode across the room to the window. Propping his arm overhead, he stared out at the tree-lined street. “What did you mean?” he asked after a while. “When you called me clueless. What did you mean by that?”

“Why should you care what I think?”

He shot her a quick, sardonic glance over his shoulder. “If, for the sake of argument, I cared what you thought—what would you tell me?”

Every atom—every subatomic particle—in her body screamed that he
did
care, very much, what she thought. Worse, she wanted to tell him what she thought. Her belly writhed anew at these startling realizations. No way would she allow herself to get drawn into a personal conversation with a known enemy.

“This isn’t appropriate,” she said briskly, “and I—”

Now he turned to face her, leaning against the window and crossing his arms. “What if I tell you one of my little secrets first, Simone? Would that make you feel better?”

She didn’t answer and he didn’t seem to mind.

A wry smile touched his lips. “You’re not the only one who thinks I’m clueless. After I talked to you, I spoke to a…” He waved a hand and then trailed off.

An inexplicable surge of annoyance twisted her lips. “An old girlfriend?” she suggested.

“Not really, but you get the idea. Anyway, you’ll be happy to know she said I’m fine in bed—”

Simone made an involuntary strangled sound.

“—actually, I think her exact words were, ‘No one works it better than you, Alex—’”

Hot and bothered, Simone squirmed. Her hands, safely hidden in her lap once again, clenched into tight fists.

“—but she says I’m clueless about women. What does that mean?”

Much as she wanted to tell him to get out, she couldn’t. His earnest expression was her undoing. He seemed like he
needed
to know—as if he’d embarked on some sort of crucial self-improvement project. She could no more refuse to help him than she could refuse to help a child sound out a strange word.

“Well,” she said, “I’m not going to try to imagine what sort of crimes you’ve committed against that woman—”

Greene laughed.

“—but with me, I didn’t like the way you catalogued my body parts like I was a Victoria’s Secret model or something.”

His eyes widened with obvious astonishment, like a caveman who’d just seen fire for the first time. “Oh.”

She mimicked him in a deep voice. “‘You have great legs. Great hips even though they’re not wide enough.’” She smacked herself on the forehead. “
Hello-ooo?
Was that supposed to be
romantic?
Does that routine sweep women off their feet? I don’t
think
so! Don’t you ever think about what you want to say before you say it? Don’t you ever edit yourself?”

It seemed to take him a while to absorb her words and she braced herself for an angry, defensive rant. To her surprise, his shoulders drooped. For a minute or two he blinked furiously but said nothing.

“I didn’t realize…that could be a turn-off to so many women.” He took a deep breath. “Thank you, Simone.”

An odd feeling of satisfaction blossomed in her chest, and she smiled. She’d just given the most arrogant man on the planet a badly needed aha! moment. “You’re welcome.”

His head tilted to a thoughtful angle. He walked back to his chair and dropped into it, studying her as if he’d fallen into a mesmerized trance.

Her face began its slow burn again, causing the fidgets to return. Looking down, she straightened a stack of files and slid them to the side of her desk. Then she drummed her fingers, realized she was doing it, and stopped. Greene didn’t move and she didn’t have to look to know he still stared at her.