The cat made gentle biscuits on her belly while Sam hooked a left to take the ice cream to the mini fridge they kept in an office-turned-breakroom. While he was there, he grabbed a sleeve of paper plates. By the time he returned to the conference table, Fisher was back from his errands and Eliza had arrived with a giant thermos of hot chocolate and enough mugs to go around.
“Look at them go.” Eliza gestured with her chin toward Ozzie and Hannah.
The two computer geniuses sat at their machines, leaning forward to get their faces closer to their monitors and rattling their keyboards as their fingers flew through the motions.
“It’s like seein’ master artists paint. Or watchin’ a prima ballerina dance,” Fisher observed.
“You see beauty and poetry in everything, don’t you, Fish?” Samantha said.
“Were all the stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky and feel its total darkness sublime, though this might take a little time,” Fisher quoted. “W.H. Auden. Who had a far better way of sayin’ that, for a guy like me, finding beauty and poetry in all things comes with the territory.”
“And what territory is that?” Eliza asked.
“When ya grow up hard and in a place where most things are out to bite ya or sting ya, you learn to look for rhyme and grace in the world.”
“There you go again.” Eliza shook her head. “Making it impossible for me not to like you.”
“Still not clear on why you’re so set on tryin’.” Fisher frowned, but Sam stopped listening and instead pulled a couple slices off the pie closest to him.
After sliding them onto a paper plate, he walked to where Hannah sat typing away. Not wanting to distract her, he was quiet as a church mouse while placing the pizza beside her elbow.
All the same, before he could return to the conference table, she glanced up and caught his wrist in her hand. Her fingers were soft and cool as she gave his joint a squeeze. “Thanks.”
The loveliness of her heart-shaped face, that delicate prettiness that was so different from her sister’s striking beauty—and yet no less enchanting—struck him mute.
All he could do was nod before making his way back to the others, rubbing the spot on his wrist where her fingers had been as if to hold on to the memory of her touch.
Yes. I want her.
The certainty of it hit him in the solar plexus like a frag grenade.
HewantedHannah Blue not because he was suffering a dry spell. But because she washer.A smart, sassy, sexy as hell woman whom he’d liked and appreciated when she’d been a tender-aged thirteen. And whom, at the decidedlygrown-upage of nearly thirty, he admired, respected, and absolutelylustedafter.
All he could think was…Fuck.
15
Distracted with patting grease off the top of her pizza slice with a paper towel, Eliza was unprepared for the feel of Fisher’s leg brushing against her own.
Lightning.
That’s what struck her anytime they touched.
Not little sparks of electricity. Not a zap to the system that made her sit up straight. But a full-on firebolt that fried her brain and turned her insides to molten lava.
A gasp shot out of her before she could stop it. Embarrassed by her involuntary outburst, her eyes jumped up to find him staring at her.
“What’s wrong?” A deep line appeared between his eyebrows. “Is something the matter with your leg? I barely touched ya.”
Her pulse beat in her neck like a butterfly’s wings. With him laser-focused on her, she worried he’d notice.
Although, he probably won’t, she thought.
Just becausesheregistered every minor detail abouthim, the tiniest change in his expression or the slightest quickening of his breath, that didn’t mean he did the same with her. A person only laser-focused on the object of their obsession, right?
Rubbing a hand over her throat, she cleared her voice. “No. I was in my own world and you startled me. That’s all.”
“Are ya jumpier than usual tonight, or is it just me?”
