She tipped her head to one side, spilling her golden hair across the carpet. “Do you still work for Lowell?”
He reached for her hair and twined a strand around his finger. “Technically, I work for Black, Phelps, and Suarez.” In Chicago, no less, but he didn’t add that part. This… whatever they were doing… was too early to be worrying aboutthatwrinkle. Then he saw the look she leveled at him and said, “But yes, Lowell is one of my clients.”
She nodded and flicked her hair out of his grasp. “And do I still work for WNCB?”
“You do,” he said. “You’re burning up the airwaves on the afternoon drive.” His fingers moved down the slope of her left breast now, and he savored the warmth of her skin through the thin material.
Her breath started coming more quickly. “And do you still sit in your office, looking at numbers that impact my job?”
He ran his palm over her bare hip now, marveling at the softness of her skin. “At this particular moment the only numbers that matter are you and me.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” she said with a bemused shake of her head.
“Come to bed with me, Mabel,” he whispered.“Please.”
And then he held his breath, hoping to God she’d say yes.
Thirty-One
Mabel was starting to feel a little self-conscious. She’d barged into Jake’s apartment, stripped, gotten him off, and was now basically naked on the floor. And they still had some things to discuss.
“I’ll come to bed with you, but there’s going to be some talking first.”
Jake’s eyes were heavy lidded as he studied her, a small smile playing across his mouth. “Fine by me. I could listen to you talk all night.”
She nodded and sat up, trying to look as businesslike as the situation would allow.
“First things first: no distractions.” She reached for his discarded T-shirt and shrugged into it. It was too big, but the cotton was soft, and it smelled like him. She wanted to hold it to her nose and give a cartoonishly huge inhale, but she restrained herself.
Next, she twisted around to unzip her left boot, then her right one, wriggling out of them as if she were a snake shedding its skin.
“Oh, thank God,” she groaned, stripping off the thin socks she wore underneath, then flexing her feet and wiggling her toes, trying to get the blood flowing again.
Jake, who’d shucked his jeans and was now seated with his back against the wall, had one ankle crossed over the other and looked perfectly at home lounging in nothing but boxer briefs. “Beauty is pain?”
“When I wear those, yes.” She leaped to her feet and reached for his hands to pull him up. “Take me to your bedroom?”
He rolled to his feet, smooth as a jungle cat, and grinned down at her. “Do you know how many times I’ve dreamed of hearing you say that?”
The idea that he’d imagined it made pleasure curl through her belly, and she followed eagerly when he grabbed her hand and pulled her down the tiny hallway to his room. He skipped the overhead lights, instead flipping on the bedside lamp. It cast a mellow amber glow around the room.
“Wow,” Mabel said, turning in a circle. “You sure you’re not a serial killer? This is really… stark.”
The room was immaculate, the bed crisply made, the nightstand clutter-free, with no stray socks or discarded undershirts in sight. There were also no pictures on the walls and no personal items on top of the nightstand or the bureau. It might as well have been a hotel room.
Jake stretched out on the bed, hands behind his head. “I’m a man of simple tastes.”
Mabel gestured to his closet. “If I opened this right now, would everything be disgustingly organized?”
Jake swept his arm toward the mirrored doors. “Keep in mind that you’ve just sprung an unannounced audit on me, but go ahead.”
Too curious not to, Mabel slid them open and saw, as she suspected, a neat line of suits carefully positioned on hangers alongside a row of starchy dress shirts.
She wrinkled her nose at him. “You have a special hanger for your ties?”
“Oh, that’s nothing; the rest of my collection’s back home.”
Mabel resolutely ignored the reminder that Jake’s actual home was in Chicago and joined him on the bed, rolling to her side and propping her head on her hand. Jake in nothing but underwear was spectacular, and she took her time studying the slopes and dips of his arms, his chest, his abs. He had that abdominal V pointing to his groin that she’d never actually seen in the wild before this. “The time you spend at the gym issoworth it.”
