Best Of Makeovers Bundle Part 65

He'd even taken to going to the break room several times a day to pick up coffee in hopes of running into Jane. In fact, he'd even been tempted to attend the Butler pitch meeting this afternoon, just so he could see her. Thank goodness, he'd talked himself out of that.

He scrubbed a hand down his face and stood to leave. This had to stop.

It didn't matter what she looked like under her clothes. It didn't matter how erotic her imagination was. It didn't even matter if he starred in every one of her s.e.xiest fantasies.

She was an employee. Off limits. Forever.

Until she either quit or he fired her. He paused, giving it some thought.

"Yep, fire her," he muttered aloud as he grabbed his jacket from the coatrack by the door. "That'll drive her right into your arms."

Feeling too restless to go home and too edgy to go out, he went up to the roof to watch the sunset, something that always calmed his nerves.

Maybe once the sun went down he'd feel better. Maybe he'd grab a bite to eat on the way home. Maybe even at one of the pubs downtown where singles hung out. An evening of mindless s.e.x would certainly take the edge off.

Unfortunately, it wasn't mindless s.e.x that interested him.

CHAPTER FOUR.

SASHA was a hit. The guys at Butler loved her and they adored the idea for the ad. Sasha had won the account, effectively securing Teresa's and Jane's jobs and practically guaranteeing Jane her own team during the reorganization. Matt had beamed with pride. Which was exactly what she wanted.

Wasn't it?

So why did she feel so blue? Was Keegan right, or could she just chalk up her funk to hunger and exhaustion?

At any rate, by the time Jane left the Butler headquarters and made it across town it was nearly eight. She still hadn't eaten and she still needed to stop by the office to drop off the laptop she'd borrowed for the presentation. She guided her car off Interstate 35 at the downtown exit and turned west towards the Capitol and The Prescott Towers where Forester+Blake had its offices.

The Prescott Towers were two twenty-story buildings in the heart of downtown Austin. The North Tower, which housed Forester+Blake and a host of other businesses, had a view of the state capitol grounds and the University of Texas campus. The South Tower, the Prescott Hotel, from which the Towers got their name, looked down on Town Lake as it snaked through downtown. The Towers shared a ground-level lobby and atrium, complete with a handful of cafes, shops and a full-service business center.

The hotel's top floor was taken up with a five-star restaurant, The River City Grill, which overflowed up to the patio on the roof. But no one ever went up to the roof of the business tower.

Watching the hotel guests come and go through the lobby had always fascinated Jane. Not long after she'd been hired at Forester+Blake, Jane had made friends with one of the hotel's bellboys and talked him into giving her the full "behind the scenes" tour of the buildings. She'd seen the kitchens, the service elevators, and even the laundry chutes. While the view from the roof of the hotel was certainly impressive, her favorite spot in either of the buildings was the rooftop of the business tower where no one else ever went. A calm-if somewhat dingy-oasis from the bustle and pressures of the office. A haven in the otherwise frantic buildings.

On a Friday night, most of the shops in the lobby had already closed, but the restaurants would be open for a few more hours. Hunger got the better of her and she stopped to buy a sandwich and an iced tea before taking the elevator up to the tenth floor to drop off the laptop.

A few minutes later, she stood by her desk, the empty white paper bag discarded by her keyboard, the sandwich still wrapped in butcher paper. Funny, she didn't feel tired anymore. All alone in the empty offices, her take-out sandwich seemed a sad way to end such an important day. She would have gone to Keegan's to celebrate if he hadn't been acting so oddly lately. He obviously didn't approve of Jane's plan or of Sasha.

She dropped the Italian sub back in the bag, grabbed her iced tea and headed to the elevators. She got off at the nineteenth floor, then took the stairs up to the roof.

When the weather was nice, she came up here sometimes for lunch or just to think. Today would have been too hot, but the evening had brought a respite from the Indian summer and the breeze felt good against her bare legs and exposed neck.

Only the last gray streaks of dusk lingered in the west as she carefully made her way across the rooftop to the northeast corner and the best view of the Capitol, lit from hundreds of ground lights so that it gleamed nearly white. A long-abandoned wrought-iron table and chairs were the only evidence anyone else had ever come up here to enjoy the view and the solitude.

When she reached the table, she realized only one chair remained. She set down her tea and pulled her sandwich from the bag. Before she could sit, she heard a voice from the shadows.

"You missed the sunset."

She whirled towards the sound. Even with his face and form obscured by the darkness, she knew instantly that the voice belonged to Reid Forester.

When her eyes adjusted to the growing darkness, she made out his silhouette, seated in a chair, his elbows propped on his knees.

"I didn't mean to startle you. I'm sorry."

As he stood and walked towards her, she struggled to think of something to say. Something brilliant. Something witty. Something that would come out smoothly without any embarra.s.sing stumbling and stammering. But her words failed her, as they so often did.

"I-I thought I was alone," she muttered.

He stopped just at the other side of the table. In the half-light, his clothes were all shades of gray, but she could just make out the image of Spongebob Square-pants on his loosened tie.

When her gaze drifted back to his, she found him studying her. Heat flashed through her body in response. In the years she'd known him, he'd seen her hundreds of times, but he'd never really looked at her, never turned the full force of his attention solely to her. The sensation was more potent than she'd ever imagined.

That was saying a lot.

Her heart rate kicked up a notch and she found herself struggling to suck air into her lungs. Things like breathing and pumping blood were so much easier when he wasn't near.

How could a man look s.e.xy when she could barely see him? Still, she could picture him-and she'd spent enough time studying him to do the image justice.

She could even sense the smile in his voice as he spoke. "I thought I was the only one who came up here."

Hoping to hide how much she wanted to melt into a puddle at his feet, she toyed with the straw of her iced tea. "I-I, um...b-bribed one of the bellboys. He said the best view of the Capitol was from up here," she admitted. Then she laughed awkwardly. "That seems strange, doesn't it?"

Her self-consciousness surprised Reid. In his experience, women with knockout figures like hers rarely felt self-conscious about anything. He couldn't make out her features, but the city lights beyond the rooftop clearly defined her silhouette.

Wanting to put her at ease, he said, "I won't tell anyone."

Despite himself, he couldn't stop staring at the woman who'd invaded the private spot he'd been coming to for years to be alone and think. Not that he minded the intrusion. Of all the hotel guests to wander up onto the roof...

The details of her face were indiscernible in the fading light, but he caught a hint of a plucky chin and a small, upturned nose. The backlighting made her hair appear as a halo of s.e.xy jaw-length curls.

In fact, from the way she kept toying with her straw and glancing at him from under her lashes, she seemed more nervous-schoolgirl than s.e.x G.o.ddess.

Intrigued, he held out his hand. "I'm Reid Forester."

She stiffened, her gaze darting to his face. He sensed her confusion as her whole body seemed to recoil from him. Had he misread her earlier friendliness?

He shoved his hand back in his pocket. "Well, then, I'll leave you to the view." He'd made it nearly to the door when her words stopped him.

"Don't go."

He turned to face her. The failing light that rendered her expression unreadable accentuated the curvy femininity of her figure.

"You seemed to want to be alone," he explained.

"I did. But-"

"But?"

"But now I think it might be nice to have you here, Mr. Forester."

Her voice caught on his name and he was struck again by the familiarity of her.

"Have you eaten?" She gestured towards the white paper bag. "If not, we could share my sandwich."

"Call me Reid. The only person who calls me Mr. Forester is my a.s.sistant."

A smile played at the corners of her lips. "Reid."

He imagined he heard a blush of embarra.s.sment, but he knew it was a trick of the darkness. He could no more see the color of her cheeks than the color of her eyes.

"And you are..." he prodded.

She hesitated only a second before giving him her name. "Sasha."

This time, it was she who extended her hand to him. As he took it in his he felt that same twinge of familiarity-as if there was something about her that he should recognize.

However, that sensation was overwhelmed by the much stronger sense of awareness that washed over him. Awareness of her many contradictions. The delicacy of her hand, the firmness of her grasp. The luxurious scent of her perfume, the no-nonsense blunt cut of her nails. The way she let her hand linger in his, almost caressing his palm, then pulled away abruptly, as if embarra.s.sed by the intimacy of their touch.

"Well, Sasha, I haven't eaten yet. There's a restaurant on the top floor of the hotel tower. We could grab something there."

She laughed, a husky little chuckle that tugged at something in his gut, even though she was so clearly laughing at him.

"What?" he demanded.

"That restaurant where you want to grab a bite is a fifty-dollars-a-plate kind of place."

He hadn't seen that coming. She dressed like a woman who ate at fifty-dollar-a-plate restaurants all the time. And the Prescott wasn't a cheap hotel. If she could afford to stay there, she could afford to eat wherever she wanted.

Still, it pleased him that she didn't prefer the stifling pretensions of The River City Grill. "So?"

"So..." she hemmed, as if she'd just realized she'd said the wrong thing "...you just don't seem like a River-City-Grill kind of guy."

Surely she couldn't see him any better than he could see her. So what had given him away? "What kind of guy do I seem like?"

"Maybe like a share-an-Italian-sub-on-the-roof kind of guy."

Something tightened deep within him at the teasing playfulness of her suggestion and he mentally conceded victory.

She was completely enticing. No woman had captured his attention so totally since...well, since Jane had on Monday.

This woman was nothing like Jane. And yet...and yet there was something familiar about her.

Oh, man. He had it bad.

Here he was with this gorgeous creature, who seemed to be interested in him, and he was trying to convince himself that she reminded him of Jane. Pathetic.

He couldn't have Jane. She was off limits. But there was no reason why he couldn't enjoy Sasha's company for a few hours.

As he walked back towards her he picked up the chair he'd been sitting on and dragged it closer to the table. She pulled the sandwich from the bag and he asked, "From the deli downstairs?" She nodded. "With hot or sweet peppers?"

"Both."

"Really? Not many people go for both."

"That's just the way I like it. Hot and sweet." She lingered over the words as if relis.h.i.+ng their flavor.

Hot and sweet? d.a.m.n, he was in trouble.

He couldn't tell if she'd meant the double entendre or not. If she'd realized the s.e.xual implication of her words before or after she'd said them.

"Is that right?" he asked. "So you've eaten there before?"

"Occasionally."

"Do you always stay at the Prescott when you're in town?"

She paused in the process of unwrapping the sandwich, then said, "Well, this sub shop is a chain. They have locations all over Texas."

"Is that right?"

"They have a couple of locations in Dallas."

After unwrapping the sub, she hesitated, clearly unsure how to divide it. He pulled out his pocketknife and, after wiping the blade clean on a napkin, sawed the sandwich in half. He moved the two halves to opposite corners of the butcher paper.

"Dallas? Is that where you're from?" he asked before taking a bite.

Instead of digging into the sandwich, she tore off a corner of the bread and popped it into her mouth. "I grew up in Richardson, just north of Dallas."

"You're prevaricating."

"I'm not." But her protestation held a smile. "That's where I'm from."

"Is that where you live now?"

"Does it matter?" she asked before taking a bite.

"If I don't know where you live, how can I find you again?"

He said the words half in jest. However, she seemed to take him seriously. She pulled back sharply from her sandwich, leaving a dribble of hot pepper sauce on her lower lip. In a gesture so unconsciously erotic it made him ache, she dabbed at the sauce with her fingertip and then nudged the dribble into her mouth before sucking the remains from her finger.

His gut tightened. Her eyes met his, and she stilled, suddenly aware she'd held his attention. She stiffened, then jerked her hand away from her face. Self-consciously, she blotted her lips with her napkin.

After setting aside the half-eaten sandwich, she asked, "What makes you so sure you'll want to find me again after tonight?"