This was ridiculous, she chided herself. She regularly faced rich, powerful and/or beautiful individuals all over the world, and she persuaded them to come to heel. She refused to be intimidated by a mild-mannered goody-goody author, no matter how nicely defined his abs were.
Avoidance still wasn’t a character trait she was interested in possessing. Akira turned off the sound on her computer so she wouldn’t be distracted by new email alerts, and grimly dialed the number Tammy had provided.
It rang twice before he answered. “This is Jacob.” His voice was raspy, as if he hadn’t used it much recently. A bolt of lust shook her, and her hand tightened on the phone. Was this what he sounded like right after he woke up in the morning? When he was still in bed, tangled in a mess of sheets?
Maybe hewasin bed. His nocturnal floral deliveries of late had probably wreaked havoc on his sleep cycle.
“Hello?”
We’re done. Go away. Stop sending me presents. Your tongue wasn’t that amazing.
That last lie would have been impossible to choke out, but there were a million other words she could’ve lobbed at him. Instead, she found herself saying, “Why Chinese food?”
There was a long pause.
“Akira.”
Her fingers curled into a fist in her lap. Had he ever said her name quite like that? Caressing every syllable? Because if she had loved the way he spoke it before, this thrilled her to her toes.
“Yes.” Committed to the question now, she shifted. “I get the orange flowers. I get the scone. Why the Chinese food?”
He was silent for a long minute before he spoke. “Can I come up?”
She drew back and looked at the phone before putting it to her ear. “Come up?”
“I’m outside your building. Do you mind if we do this in person?”
She glanced at her windows, but she was in the back corner, with no view of the street. “Super creepy, Campbell.”
“I know. The Chinese place I like won’t deliver out this far.”
So pragmatic. “Are you holding a boom box in your hands?”
“No, but I can get one if it’ll get me upstairs.”
She bit the inside of her cheek, refusing to be charmed. “It’s probably not a good idea.”
“It’s probably a worse idea to talk about this where people can hear me.”
Good point. Reporters weren’t often a problem for her, unless her father was up to some shenanigans. Still, a lifetime of carefully controlling the image she portrayed to the world wouldn’t permit her to have anyone eavesdrop on even half of their conversation. “Fine. Come up.”
It took a second to alert the guard downstairs and place Jacob on the visitor list. Eager to give her hands something to do, she fished out the cartons of food from the bag while she waited for him. The rose she pushed to the corner of her desk, unwilling to let him see she’d been fondling it.
When he knocked on the slightly ajar door, she jerked and clasped her hands together to hide their slight trembling. “Come in.”
His heavy footfalls were swallowed by the thick carpet as he walked inside. Though Tammy was gone and there was no one in the outer office, he closed the door with a solid click and faced her.
They stared at each other for a long minute. His face was somber, wiped clean of the heavy mix of lust and panic that had characterized it the last time she had seen him.
She licked her lips. Again, there were a million things she wanted to ask him.What is wrong with youandwhy do you treat me like thisanddid you go home and jerk off, thinking about that storage closet?All important questions. “Why the Chinese food?”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. She had always preferred a man in a tux over casual clothes, but not Jacob. No, she liked him as he was, barely tamed, with stubble growing on his jaw. Another pair of those old, comfortable jeans sat low on his hips. The blue long-sleeved Henley was snug enough to display his muscles but loose enough so he didn’t look like a showoff.
He wrapped his hand around the strap of the brown messenger bag slung across his body. “It’s your favorite,” he said quietly.
Her eyes narrowed. Not true. She didn’t really have a favorite food. Food was fuel, enabling her to get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible. Her preferences didn’t come into play when she inhaled a protein shake or a salad. “Where’d you get that idea?”
“At the wedding.”
