Paxton put her hand up. “Not my business.”
His head jerked back a bit. “So it really is like that?”
“Look, Sawyer, it’s not my business where you spend your free time or who you spend your time with.” She moved her briefcase to the desk and turned to him. Mimicking his pose, she crossed her arms over her chest and said, “As long as you understand that between the hours of eight a.m. and five p.m., your time is my time.”
He made a production of looking at his watch. “Is that the case even when you come in at eight forty-five?”
She’d placed the ball squarely on the tee for that one.
Doing her best to maintain a calm, professional air, she said, “I apologize for being late. As project manager, I should be the one setting the example.”
“I was only joking, Pax.” She continued to stare at him. Waiting. “I mean Paxton,” he corrected himself with a pinch of annoyance.
“Thank you.”
The laugh he huffed out was devoid of all humor, but Paxton would not allow it to affect her. The only way she would get through these next four weeks with her sanity intact was if she stayed within the boundaries she’d laid out in her mind the minute she learned Sawyer would be replacing Ray Burrell as the state’s civil engineer on this project. Allowing Sawyer to speak to her in such familiar terms crossed those boundaries.
“I’m just trying to be professional here,” she explained.
“Yeah, I get it,” he said, pushing himself up from the table. The traces of humor that had colored his voice earlier were nowhere to be found. “I would, however, appreciate a call if you know you’re running late. Just, you know, as aprofessionalcourtesy.”
Paxton acknowledged the slight sting from his words. She guessed she deserved that.
“I agree,” she said. “But I don’t have your number.”
The moment the words left her mouth, the mood in the room shifted. Sawyer’s gaze caught hers and held. Her admission was almost laughable, considering their history. She had knowledge of his body in the most primitive, elemental way, yet she didn’t even know his phone number.
“I guess that’s something we’ll have to rectify,” Sawyer said.
“Yes.” She cleared her throat. Nodded. “I’ll need your number in case I need to get in touch with you about something for the project.”
His gaze remained on her. Probing. Penetrating. It took everything she had within her not to squirm.
One brow peaked over his dark brown eyes. “Is that the only reason?”
“Yes,” Paxton said. “That is theonlyreason I will need your number.”
He released another of those irritated breaths, running a hand down his face before assaulting her once again with that intense stare.
“Trying to pretend it didn’t happen doesn’t erase the fact that it did, Paxton. You know that, don’t you?”
The subtle drop in pitch of his already decadently deep voice caused a million butterflies to take flight in her belly. Her body reacted to the mere memory of hearing that voice. She could still feel it on her skin, the goosebumps that rose as he whispered the sexiest words imaginable into her ear as he slowly entered her.
Paxton sucked in a deep breath. She could not do this to herself. Would not.
There was too much at stake to get distracted by Sawyer and his seductive voice, or the subtle dip in his chin that begged for her tongue to lick at it, or those deep brown bedroom eyes that saw too much. She needed to remain focused. She had a coworker back in Little Rock who tried to show her up every chance he got. Clay Ridgely was on a mission to take Paxton’s spot as the leading project manager, and she’d be damned if she let him do it.
That’s why she was determined to ignore the hormones spinning around inside her. She had too much riding on this project to allow anything to get in the way of it, especially an out-of-control libido.
With a will she didn’t realize she possessed, Paxton reined in her body’s reaction to Sawyer and focused on the myriad reasons it was important they keep things strictly professional.
“It’s obvious I will have to set some ground rules on how things will work over these next four weeks,” she said.
“Ground rules?”
“Yes,” Paxton answered. “We are here to do a job, and that’s the only thing I plan to discuss while we’re here. This conference room is small enough. We don’t have any room for our personal lives to invade it. Are we clear?”
“No,” he said.
