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I hold in a groan. I’d love to ask if he’d mind lying down with me and helping me out with the cobwebs lining my vagina since I’ve been divorced and without for two years…but I’m not up for the humiliation of his polite refusal. And it would be oh-so-polite.

Noah isn’t just yummy but kind. The total package, in fact. Looks, brains, and charisma…with an occasional shy-guy sparkle in his eyes that never fails to make me ache.

Even now, his concern is obvious. His wintery blue eyes roam me in a thorough assessment. His brow furrows. He reaches out to cup my shoulder…then apparently changes his mind and retracts his hand like he’s been burned.

The man can’t even bring himself to touch me. It’s mortifying.

I shake my head. “No, thank you. I have copies of the site visit reports on my desk. I’ll run and get them…”

Noah raises a tanned forearm, visible under the rolled-up cuff of his dress shirt, and checks his watch.

Try as I might to suppress it, a dull ache throbs behind my clit from my constant, gnawing desire for this man. Noah is so close I could reach out and run my fingers through those temptingly tousled dark locks, but I can’t have him. I can’t even bring myself to make the slightest advance. The mortification of his rejection would be too much to bear.

Instead, I silently drink in the sculpted angles of his face, that delicious five-o’clock shadow, those full lips that trail scorching kisses along my skin in my fantasies. I commit every detail to memory to replay later tonight alone, when I can finally allow myself to imagine his hands roaming freely over my aching body as I cry out his name…

“I didn’t realize it was so late,” he remarks. “I have a proposition for you. That is…if you’re game.”

I bite back a gasp. A proposition? For me?

“What do you say we break for lunch?” Noah asks.

So he’s not propositioning me, but…lunch together is a start. I perk up. “I found a great little place a few miles from here. Awesome sandwiches. I can drive.”

Noah hesitates, his expression more like a grimace. I nearly cringe. Lord, he wasn’t asking me out, merely saying we need a break. When will I get a clue?

“You know, in case you wanted to bring work with us and keep talking. But we can reconvene at two, if you’d rather.” I shrug like it doesn’t matter.

And hope to hell he buys my indifferent routine.

“Meeting back here at two works for me, actually. I have an errand to run.”

Hmm. I bet his “errand” is named Misty, a bombshell in her mid-twenties he started dating a few months ago. Misty is, of all things, a professional cheerleader. No doubt Noah will spend his lunch hour shaking her pom-poms.

“You’ll be okay alone?” he asks.

Of course. I’ve been alone for the last two years—longer, really. Tim, my ex-husband, wasn’t home much during the last five years of our marriage. Noah, his college pal and my current boss, won’t be volunteering to fill the void. Besides the fact he isn’t attracted to me, men have that sacred bro-code thing. Sisters and wives are off limits. Clearly, that rule applies to exes, too. And even if Noah was interested, I’m not looking for more than a fling. Happily ever after isn’t real, and I can’t handle the pain of another breakup. A sweaty one-night stand would be just fine, thank you very much. Except Noah isn’t cooperating.

Probably just as well. He’s the kind of man I could seriously fall for—even if I didn’t mean to.

“Fine. I have some phone calls to return and…stuff to do. I’ll see you back here in an hour.”

Before he can say another word, I rise, tug on my skirt that suddenly feels embarrassingly short, and hustle out of his office.

Back at my desk, I take a deep breath and squeeze my thighs together. Being beside Noah for the better part of four hours has made me achy and wet, despite the fact we discussed nothing more exciting than ongoing construction and possible new restaurant sites. If the man ever talked dirty to me, I’d flood my panties. And have an orgasm from his voice alone. The fantasies I’ve been spinning of him deep inside me haven’t helped. A glance down proves my nipples stand straight out, in full salute. He couldn’t possibly have missed them. They just don’t matter. Because I don’t matter to him sexually.

I have no one to blame but myself. I’m fixated on a man who simply doesn’t want me. Men who ask me out, like the new guy in accounting, Gary, don’t interest me. No one but Noah does. I don’t know what to do.

Since I won’t solve this conundrum in the next sixty minutes, I grab my keys and purse, and I head out of Tender Forks’ offices, through the building’s shared lobby, then out to the parking lot.

Noah’s reserved space already sits empty. Apparently, he couldn’t wait to do his “errand”—or rather, to do Misty.

I hold back unexpected tears. Rah freakin’ rah…

An hour later, I return to Noah’s office. He’s waiting for me behind his desk, looking a bit disheveled, a forgotten sandwich at his elbow. Apparently, his little cheerleader spent the last hour with her hands mussing up his hair while he, no doubt, completely sated her. After such great sex, who cares about something as mundane as turkey on wheat with sprouts?

When I sit at the small round table on the other side of his office and drag out my folder, Noah’s head shoots up. “Good lunch?”

Fabulous. I hooked up with four Marines in the parking lot at Denny’s. “Fine.”