“Well, hello.” His voice was warm with amusement, and the corners of his eyes crinkled.
“Hi,” she said, pushing confidence she didn’t feel into her voice. Despite radio being, well,radio, she normally put effort into her appearance at work. But this morning she’d woken in a panic to find that her phone was dead and she had twenty minutes before she was due on air. While her ego could normally absorb a day of roaming the WNCB halls greasy and unshowered, that wasbeforethe hottest guy she’d ever met had started working down the hall from her, all tall and good-smelling. She might not allow herself to date him, but that didn’t mean she’d lost her vanity.
When his lips twitched in amusement, she groaned. “I know, I know. I’m a walking dumpster fire.”
“Did I say anything?” He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, his mouth curling as he took in her limp ponytail, her makeup-free face, and worst of all, her sleeping ensemble.
“You didn’t have to.” She huffed her way across the room and dropped the stack of papers onto the corner of Brandon’s desk, cursing herself for not shoving the damn things under the door and running. “I overslept. This is me in my natural state.”
She’d burst into the studio with seconds to spare that morning in the shirt she’d slept in, a tiny pair of lime-green running shorts, and battered floral gardening clogs. At least she’d managed to scrounge a cleanish sports bra from a gym bag in her car to wiggle into at a stoplight.
“A Minnesotan, huh?”
She plucked at her threadbare Mankato East T-shirt, which featured a cartoonish drawing of her high school’s cougar mascot.
“Oh, you betcha.” She hadn’t felt self-conscious sitting across from Dave all morning, but Jake’s scrutiny made her want to squirm. Then again, was she really going to let a lack of mascara hold her back? She was tougher than that.
“I thought Minnesotans were a punctual people.”
He flipped his laptop closed, and she took it as a sign that, not only was he not bothered by her dishevelment, but he was open to a longer conversation. Sacrificing a little vanity was a small price to satisfy her curiosity about this guy with the pricey haircut and the unpretentious vehicle, so she plopped into Brandon’s chair. “We are, but when I ditched my accent, I was required to give up all my other Minnesotan ways. Goodbye, hotdish.”
He snagged a clear plastic blender bottle off his desk and took a swig.
“Is that your lunch?”
He looked down at his hand, as if surprised to be holding something in it. “Yes. Why?”
She wrinkled her nose at the grayish mass inside. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those guys who doesn’t stop for lunch and just powers down a protein shake so he can ‘get right back to it.’” She adopted a macho tone for that last bit and laughed when he paused with the bottle halfway to his mouth. “Oooh, you are.”
He finished the motion and took another swig, allowing her to eye the play of muscles rippling under his jacket. What she wouldn’t give for a little of that Clark Kent X-ray vision right now to see what delights were hidden by the layers of fabric. No wonder his palm had been rough against hers when he’d helped her up from the couch during their first meeting. She’d bet all the loose change in her purse he’d earned those calluses in the gym.
She tilted her head playfully. “Don’t you know that you’re missing out on a whole world of restaurant lunch specials and inane coworker chitchat? Don’t your fellow numbers people at wherever you work—”
“Black, Phelps, and Suarez.”
So seriousabout his big fancy job. “Sure, them. Don’t you ever grab lunch with Black? Or Phelps or Suarez?”
He leaned back in his chair, looking fractionally more relaxed than when she’d walked in. Good. He should take a little time for himself during the day. From what she’d been able to observe, his work hours were long, intense, and rarely interrupted except by maniacs forcing cupcakes on him.
“Ha. No. Black pretty much lives full time in France, and Phelps wouldn’t be caught dead dining with us rabble. Susan Suarez took me to lunch on my first official day and then not again for the past nine years.”
He took another drink, and she considered leaving him to his lunch. She should really slide right out that door and on home. But he seemed… lonely? Was she reading him right? He was alone in a strange city with only Brandon for company after all; if she were him, she might welcome some friendly conversation over the noon hour. She might be a grubby little urchin, but she was a good talker.
“So did you start there straight out of college?”
He swirled the contents of his bottle and raised his brows as if daring her to mock his lunch again. She let it go without comment. “Actually, I started interning there the summer before my sophomore year of college. So I’ve been with them in some capacity for twelve years.” He must’ve seen the math on her face because he added, “That makes me thirty-one, if you’re wondering.”
More likedirty-one. Did he have any idea what it was doing to her as he swiped his thumb across his lower lip to catch an errant drop of shake? She cleared her throat and reminded herself of how quickly a bad work relationship could detonate in the middle of her life. This man’s mouth was not worth the risk.
She forced a light tone. “Thirty-one? So ancient, whereas I’m a mere twenty-eight.”
“A veritable baby.” He saluted her with his bottle.
Even though he was forbidden office fruit, her perverse brain was apparently on a mission to drag more information out of him. “You went to school in Chicago?”
“University-of. And high-school-of before that.”
“The fancy suburban kind?”
