“I remember interviewing you,” he said as he held the door and they stepped into the waning light casting long shadows on Park. He dipped a little closer to her ear and lowered his voice. “Before you entered your horn-rimmed phase.”
He didn’t expect her to pale at that. He really expected a light, melodic laugh…and maybe she’d slip the glasses off. Instead, she tapped the frames as though she needed to be sure they were still there.
“I can’t wear contacts,” she said, a note of apology in her voice.
He suddenly realized she must have taken it as an insult. “Jessie.” He stopped walking and held her elbow so that she stopped, too. “I didn’t mean that you aren’t…” Pretty. “I just noticed that you didn’t wear them before.”
She eased her elbow out from his light grasp. “They’re part of my whole New York look,” she said with a lightheartedness that sounded just a tad hollow. “So, where are we going?”
“French. Soho. You’ll love it.” He guided her toward the corner. “But we need to get a cab headed in the other direction.”
With a quick glance at an opening in the traffic, he put his hand on her back and started across Park. She took a few steps and stopped, her attention on a taxi barreling into the intersection.
He gave Jessie a little prompt and hustled her along. “Don’t hesitate. Ever.” They dashed across the intersection and the taxi flew behind them. “Never show them you’re uncertain. Never pause, never scuttle, never show them they have any power. Those are the rules of the city.” The rules of his life, too.
“It’s a little like horseback riding then,” she said, laughing.
“You’ve got to let them know who’s in charge.”
“Exactly.” Cade raised his arm and instantly a taxi pulled over for them. “I’ve seen all those pictures in your cubicle. You must love horses.”
He let her slide into the back seat first, and then he spoke through the safety glass to give the cabbie the address. Leaning back, he stayed in the middle of the back seat, much closer than he would ride with any business colleague.
He ignored the thought and draped his arm over the seat behind her. It was too natural, too…nice. And she didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she still wore that fresh smile he’d elicited with the lecture on how to cross city streets.
“I do love horses,” she told him. “I miss Oscar most of all.”
He choked out a laugh. “Oscar? That doesn’t sound like a horse. Horses are supposed to be called Silver and Gypsy.”
She gave him a light punch in the rib cage and his body tensed. “Spoken like a true city boy. As a matter of fact, my horse is named after a famous designer.”
“De la Renta?”
“Is there any other Oscar? I told you I love fashion. That’s why I came to Charisma.” She dropped her glasses just a smidge to peek out over the rims. “Or don’t you believe me?”
Oh, they were green. No, no. They were way more than green. They were deep, endless, intriguing seas of emerald. And all Cade wanted to do was gaze into those eyes for hours.
“Why wouldn’t I believe you?” he asked. “You’re not lying about anything, are you?”
She slipped the frames back up. “Certainly not about a horse named Oscar.”
He laughed at that, and about two hours later, he was still laughing. Tucked in the back corner of an ultra-trendy Soho restaurant, sharing a pear sorbet Jessie had called the most sinful piece of fruit she’d ever tasted, Cade nearly forgot the reason he’d asked her to dinner.
Because Jessie was as cool and refreshing and tangy as the dessert that finished their perfect meal. And Cade found himself sharing stories he’d never dreamed of telling the women he’d been dating.
Not that this was a date. The mantra was definitely not working because the closer they got to each other, the more he wanted to kiss her. And that did not qualify as research or work. That qualified as a mistake.
“Believe me,” he said, setting down his spoon as he pushed the dish back to her. “I never missed another ballet recital after my sisters pulled that stunt.”
She slipped another slow, sensual taste of the icy concoction between her lips, a soft moan of appreciation rumbling from her throat. “They sound intriguing.”
What was intriguing? Her mouth over that sorbet? “Who?” he asked.
Her lips twitched in a sneaky grin. “Your sisters.” She slid some more sorbet on the spoon and held it toward him. “You want some more, Cade?”
What he wanted was to taste the smidgen that remained on her lips. “Nah. But I’m having fun watching it melt in your mouth.”
She smiled and looked down at her plate, then back at him. Man, she was flirting with him. “I don’t get a lot of fine French cuisine.”
“You’re making me feel guilty about our intern policies.”
“Don’t. It’s a standard industry practice and I’m happy to pay my dues.”
“But not happy enough to take the shadowing assignment,” he said, giving himself a mental pat on the back for getting back on track.
She let the spoon clink softly against the porcelain dessert dish. “I told you I’d rather not.”
“Why don’t you tell me the real reason you don’t want the assignment, Jessie?”
She dabbed her mouth with the corner of her napkin, then folded it next to her plate. A little twinge of disappointment poked at his heart at the finality of the act. Flirting and shared dessert were over.
“Never mind,” he said impulsively. “Just think about it some more. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
“Okay.” She gave him a quick smile that probably didn’t reach her eyes. He’d know if he could see behind the damn glasses. “Let’s get back to your sisters. Are you planning to go home to see your family anytime soon?”
He shook his head. “I doubt I’ll be taking any time off this year.”
“Because of the pressure for Charisma to finish the year with the highest profits?”
Great. She just brought the topic back to something that made him suspicious instead of just plain intrigued. “How about you, Jessie?” he volleyed back without answering the question. “Will you get home to the ranch this year?”
“I plan to go home for Christmas. I really miss my dad.”
“And Oscar,” he said with a teasing wink. “The high-fashion horse.”
She put her elbows on the table and balanced her chin on her knuckles. “I do miss Oscar,” she said wistfully. “Believe it or not, I miss the smell of horses, the clip-clop sound of their hooves.”
“You sure don’t get a lot of that in New York City.”
“Or mountains, rivers, valleys and flowers.”
He gave an apologetic shrug. “There are some plants in the traffic island on Park Avenue. Do they count?”
“Mmmm.” She smiled. “They count. This spring, when I got here, the Parks Department had planted some lilacs in that median strip.”
“I don’t think I noticed.”
“No, probably not. But lilacs were my mother’s favorite. She had a whole field of them on the ranch and every April and May they would explode in the most incredible sea of lavender and violet you can imagine and oh, the glorious smell.” She closed her eyes and inhaled as though she could sniff the fragrance she described. “I thought, when I moved here, that the lilacs were like a message from my mother. Telling me that coming here was the right thing to do.”
“How could it not be?” he asked. “You love fashion and design, and doesn’t everyone want to take a stab at life in the big city?”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, the flicker of the candle casting just enough light for him to see a whisper of sadness behind her tinted lenses.
“Anyway,” she finally said with a sigh, “I love that smell. I even wear lilac perfume sometimes, to remember it.”
“Oh.” This time he inhaled softly, taking the excuse of her perfume to move a little closer to her. “I thought it was honeysuckle.”
She didn’t back away, not an inch. “Honeysuckle is much sweeter.”
“Smells pretty sweet to me.” He sniffed again. “You left a trail lingering in my office today. A whole trail of trouble.”
At the word, her jaw slackened and she let out a disbelieving laugh. “Me? Except for not wanting to accept your assignment, I’ve never been any trouble at Charisma.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he said lowering his face close enough so that he could practically taste a kiss. “And you know it.”
He couldn’t help it. Wordlessly, he reached up and slid her glasses off. She flinched at first, then held his gaze. “So, who is hiding behind these things, Jessie Clayton?” he teased.
Her eyes widened, and stayed on him. Cade stared back into her tempting eyes, as green as the deep sea and just as dangerous.
“I’m not trouble and I’m not hiding anything,” she said.
“Yes you are.”
“I am?” Her voice cracked with just a hint of trepidation but she didn’t look away. And neither did he.
“You’re hiding your beautiful eyes.”
There was absolutely no way he could stop himself from kissing her. Her lips were cool from the sorbet, but as soft as he’d imagined they’d be. A shimmer of heat lightning streaked through him as their lips touched.
He didn’t even try to invade her mouth; he just let their lips meld, let the electricity arc, let the promise of more spark in the air. And then he very slowly broke the contact.
“Are you sure you wanted to do that, Cade?”
He’d never been more sure in his life. “If you have to ask, then I did something wrong.”
“No, not wrong.” Then she quietly slid the glasses back on and that sense of loss and disappointment punched him again.
“Just surprising.”
“Do you have to wear those?” he asked, aching to take them off again. To gaze into those eyes until the sorbet in the dish was nothing but a puddle of pears and sugar and she was his for the night.
“I only take them off to kiss.”
Leaning into her ear, he let his lips graze a few strands of silky hair. “You might need to give contacts another shot, Jess.”
She gave him a questioning look. “Why’s that?”
Cade only hesitated a moment before he took any caution he’d brought to this dinner and cast it to the wind. “Because I’d like to kiss you. A lot.”
Three
“I need your bosom.”
The announcement snapped Jessie to attention. She looked up from the staff memo she’d been reading—well, the words had been in front of her, but they hadn’t exactly reached her brain—to see the humor sparking in Scarlet Elliott’s pale green eyes as she propped against Jessie’s cube wall.
“You have a fine bosom of your own, Scarlet,” Jessie replied. “Just ask John Harlan if you need a second opinion.”
Scarlet’s smile deepened at the mention of the man she loved. “He’s partial to mine, it’s true,” she said with an audacious wink. “But I’ve decided you have the perfect cleavage.”
Jessie didn’t like the sound of that. “Perfect for what, Scarlet?”
“I have to doctor up the ‘Color Me Charismatic’ feature again. The January theme is ‘How Low Can You Go’ and I think you—” Scarlet leaned over and eased out the V of Jessie’s cotton blouse enough to show the edge of a very functional white bra “—can go nice and low. In something from The Closet, of course.”
“No way.” Jessie pulled back and grasped the armrests with both hands. “I’m no model.”
“First of all, you could be if you’d lose the frames and let that hair down. But you know this feature. We never show the face. I sent two photographers out this weekend to get me some colorful cleavage shots, and this is what they came back with.”
Scarlet slapped two proof sheets on top of the staff memo, each showing an array of deeply cut blouses and sweaters on women walking the streets of New York City. The colors were blah and the shots unremarkable.
“Oh, these won’t do,” Jessie agreed. “Color Me Charismatic” was one of Charisma’s most popular monthly features—a candid photograph of an anonymous woman on the street wearing something in a maverick, memorable color and making it work for her. They always had a theme like “Skirts that Flirt” or “Watch Your Back” and the photographers usually managed to get an angle where the woman’s face was at least partially obscured, which protected the magazine and the unwitting “model.”
Scarlet tapped one manicured nail on the mess of pictures. “You have a good eye, Jessie. I knew you’d recognize dreck when you see it. So, come on, I have an outfit in mind and a body. Yours. Let’s go.”
Jessie narrowed her eyes at Scarlet. Why today? Today she wanted to hide in her cube and relive every single moment of last night’s “date” with Cade. Especially the last kiss at her door. Or maybe the one in the cab, when his tongue touched hers and—
“Why don’t you ask someone else, Scarlet? I have so much to do.”
Scarlet tugged the staff memo out from under the pictures and peered at it. “You have to read a staff memo that came out last Monday?”
Busted. The memo was the first thing she had grabbed to look busy while she relived the way Cade held her hand. The way he smelled and sounded and, oh saints alive, the way he kissed.
“Hel-lo?” Scarlet leaned a little closer to Jessie and waved a hand in front of her face. “You with me today, Jess?”
Jessie started to laugh. “I’m just a little tired this morning.”
“Great, I’ve got just the color to wake you up.” Scarlet managed to pull Jessie from her chair. “You have to be the ‘Color Me Charismatic’ woman on the street sometime during your tenure as an intern. Them’s the rules, darling.”
Sighing deeply, Jessie left her cube and followed Scarlet down the hall to where Lainie protected a closet stocked full of clothing samples from the top designers in the world and every imaginable accessory. The Closet was located perilously close to Cade’s office, but he hadn’t arrived yet this morning. Since he was never late, Jessie assumed he had a meeting out of the office.
Which was just as well, because she’d probably melt at the sight of him.
“I see you found a victim,” Lainie said dryly as she handed an oversize key ring to Scarlet.
“Why don’t you do it?” Jessie asked her roommate.
Lainie slapped her hands over her breasts. “Evidently my little double A’s don’t make for great cleavage.”
Jessie glanced down at her chest. “I’m just a B.”
“A B-plus,” Scarlet insisted as she slipped the key into the door and reached in to flip on the light. “And I have a bra in here that will take you to a C in record time. Lainie, undo her braid, will you?”
Jessie automatically protected her head. She didn’t want anyone to notice her hair, the color and texture of so many other Elliotts’. “Can’t my hair stay back?”
“Not a chance,” Scarlet said from inside the closet. “And don’t even think about wearing those glasses. That’s an order.”
Twenty minutes later, Jessie was out on Park Avenue, wearing a screaming yellow sweater with a giant black zipper up the front and black leather pants, her hair whipping in the breeze and her glasses somewhere on Lainie’s desk. And all Scarlet could do was tug that zipper lower and lower.
“Any farther and you’ll run into my pants,” Jessie said as she brushed a hair from her face.
“That’s next month’s feature,” Scarlet said dryly. “‘Hips You Want to Hug.’”
“Count me out,” Jessie said as she inched the zipper up just enough to cover the single front clasp of the black lace bra she now wore. “By the way, this isn’t a bra. This is an optical illusion.”
Scarlet chuckled and snagged the zipper down again. “That cleavage is real. Just…enhanced.” She stepped back and eyed her work, signaling over her shoulder. “We’re ready, Nick.”
A few passersby
glanced at them, but for the most part they were ignored by the pedestrian traffic. Scarlet gave Jessie a little push toward the freelance photographer they used for lots of Charisma shoots. “Walk straight to Nick. Think sexy thoughts.”
Sexy thoughts? Now that was the first thing she’d been asked to do that felt easy.
Sexy thoughts…Cade McMann.
“Chin up, shoulders back, think about something provocative,” Scarlet ordered.
Provocative…Cade McMann.
From behind her, Scarlet fanned Jessie’s long hair over her shoulders. “Keep going toward Nick,” she said as she dodged out of the frame. “Push your chest out. Look toward the street and think about something absolutely lusty.”
Oh, lusty would definitely be Cade McMann.
Turning toward the noise and traffic, Jessie thought about Cade’s smile. His silvery eyes. His incredible mouth.
And then she stumbled on a crack in the sidewalk as she stared right into all three.
The subject of her fantasies leaned against a street sign, his arms crossed, a wide smile on his face. “Now that is what I would call a charismatic cleavage.”
Cade levered himself off the sign pole and ambled toward her, his gaze drifting all the way down to her toes, and back up again to settle in the V of her neckline. The rush of heat in her lower half could melt the leather pants.
“You run this photo, Scarlet,” he said as he approached Jessie and continued to sear her with his stare, “and zipper sales will skyrocket within an hour and yellow will be pronounced the new black.”
For a moment, Jessie couldn’t breathe. She looked up at Cade, her heart thundering like a thousand horses over the Colorado prairie. As he neared her, he locked on her eyes and she realized with a start that she had left her glasses upstairs.
But she couldn’t look away. His wolflike gaze swallowed her up, and all of Park Avenue just disappeared into the background.
He leaned into her ear and whispered, “You look like a bumblebee who could seriously sting the most unsuspecting victim.”