To her shock, a reply popped up right away.
“Tell him you’re meeting an old friend for drinks. Trust me, Bunny, your boss is peddling you like candy to schoolchildren at this conference. He doesn’t actually need you to sell you… hm, no wonder he’s so successful at selling dumps in DC.”
Lana giggled. Dangit. Why did this guy make her giggle? It got Roger’s attention, his cocked eyebrow silently asking if she needed some medicine for her extreme change in personality. Lana said something about a funny email forward and searched for Ken one last time. Oh, there he was. All the way on the other side of the lobby with his laptop in his lap, legs casually slung one over the other and his jacket off. I could take off more of his clothes for him. Lana didn’t usually go for the businessman type, but Ken absolutely did it for her. He had to be one of the only men that made her fantasize about entering his office and crawling beneath his command center desk to give him the oral sex of his life.
“Like how he tried to barter me off to you a few minutes ago?”
“Like it? I’m not usually one who gets off on harboring secrets, but I get tingly thinking how nobody here knows about us.”
“You would be into that.”
“You aren’t?”
Lana sank so deeply into her chair that she almost couldn’t peer above the laptop. Which was a shame, because no man was more worth looking at than Ken Andrews. “I’m into a lot of things you don’t even know about yet.”
“Tell me. Tonight at dinner. I know a great place around the corner from here. I’ll have my assistant make reservations for us to dine in private. Then I’ll take you back to my place so you can see one of the best views in Manhattan.”
“That better not be all I’m doing with those views.”
“Let’s play it by ear. Meet me at Eden’s at seven thirty. We’ll treat it like a real date.”
Lana considered the man making eyes at her from across the room. He did it so casually that she almost forgot there were other people in the crowded lobby. “A real date, huh? You do realize that tomorrow is the last day of the conference, right? I’m going back to DC in two days.”
“What about it? We’ll talk about it later. At dinner. I look forward to it, Bunny.”
Ken closed his laptop and shoved it back into his bag. Legs uncrossed. Stature improved. Ken couldn’t afford Lana one more look as he said something to David Bachman and left the lobby by himself. Such a busy man. A busy man making time for little ol’ Lana.
“I know this is like the second night in a row I’m bailing on you,” she said to Roger. “But an old college friend of mine is apparently in town and wants to get drinks at seven thirty. Can you bear to be without me?”
Her boss was so dramatically put out by her free spirit that he was compelled to groan in his chair. “If I say no, will you honor that?”
“Absolutely not.” Lana grinned. “I really want to see this friend. You can manage without me until I get my award tomorrow.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” Lana logged out of her email and handed Roger his laptop back. He instantly cursed her for changing his homepage from Yahoo! to Google. He’d have to live with it. Like he’d have to live without Lana for one more night. For all she knew, it was her last night to be with Ken, and she planned on making the most of it. Perhaps to spite her career possibilities, but she would pretend otherwise.
Chapter 8
“It Doesn’t Have To End, You Know.”
There wasn’t enough time to go shopping for a cute new date outfit, so Lana had to make due with one of the few outfits left in her luggage. When she was free from other responsibilities at seven, she hurried up to her room and changed into the first dress she grabbed. So happened it was a sexy and chic black cocktail number that she had planned on wearing to her award party the next night, but was willing to reserve for a man named Ken Andrews tonight.
Did he like her hair up or down? Should she go with a smoky eyeliner or ease up a bit? How far away was Eden’s? She could wear her black stilettos, right? Oh, good, it was still light outside. Lana reused her black blazer from the night before but had every intention of taking it off when she met up with Ken.