“Wouldn’t you rather have an uptight assistant than some Type B sloth?”
“Aren’t all sloths Type B?”
“That’s not my point.” Her fists ball at her sides.
Holy shit, this woman needs to get laid STAT.
“You’re laughing,” she says, lifting a pointed finger in my direction. “I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you and you’re laughing.”
“Am I?”
Keane rolls her eyes, and it takes a second for her vision to focus on me again. “Once an asshole, always an asshole. I knew that whole nicey-nice act today was a fluke.”
“Are we done here?” I ask when the man ahead of me heads into the restroom. I’ve been after the owner for years to add another bathroom, but he refuses, saying that modernizing this place would completely take away from its charm and history. Hell, the cast iron bucket sink in there is the same one they’ve had since the fifties; the same one Sinatra once used to rinse a spilled martini out of his pressed shirt one blustery New Year’s Eve a lifetime ago.
“I don’t know, are we?” she asks.
“You’re not good at this.”
“What? Not good at what?”
“Confrontation.” I glance over her shoulder. Lillie Treadwell and that guy are going at it hardcore, making out in their little booth. Guess we all need to unwind a little after work. “You’re uptight, Keane. But you’re also soft. And you’re unsure of yourself. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t give a shit what I think about you. But you want me to like you. You want me to respect you. You want my approval.” She begins to speak, but I cut her off. “And it’s okay. We’re all like that to a degree. I’m just saying, you’d be better served doing what I do and not giving a fuck about anything.”
“You’re something else, Calder.”
I study her face, trying to determine if she’s saying that in a good way or …
“All I did was ask why you were so nice to me today … and then you told me I wear too much makeup and now you’re telling me I’m insecure.”
“You’re paraphrasing and oversimplifying, but close enough.”
“I’m not insecure. I’m a perfectionist, I’m analytical. There’s a difference. A huge difference.”
“All right.”
“And I couldn’t care less what you think about me,” she says. “I just want to get to a place of mutual respect and understanding so these next twenty-nine days are tolerable for the both of us.”
Twenty-nine days.
Of course she’s counting.
“The only way to do that is to communicate. Thoroughly. Openly. Honestly,” she continues.
The man steps out of the restroom. Finally. And I head in. Only when I get inside, I realize I’m not alone. She’s still talking, still pointing her pink-painted fingernail in my direction, her freckled face twisted as she lets me have it.
My cock twists.
For some completely insane and inexplicable reason, this is making me hard, and I’m getting harder by the second. And miraculously, I no longer feel the need to go.
I let her drone on, something about the importance of being a perfectionist and how it allows her to be the best at what she does and how she notices things and picks up on nuances most people can’t see. She loses me for a second, but only because I can’t stop staring at the quick rise and fall of her breasts through that perfectly pressed dress of hers, but when she starts ranting about how she never makes mistakes, that’s when I silence her with a kiss.
Fuck.
Me.
A moan vibrates against my lips, a half-assed protest maybe, but her body falls limp against mine … a silent surrender? I lift my hand to her face, cupping her cheek and resting my thumb just beneath her jaw, and the saucy little thing kisses me back.
And she keeps kissing me back.
My cock strains against my boxer briefs, and I circle my hands around her waist. A zing of peppermint travels from her tongue to mine, and I twist her around before lifting her onto the counter next to the sink.
“Calder,” she manages to mutter between kisses. For a second, I fully expect her to object, but then her hands wrap around my shoulder and her nails dig into my flesh and she pulls me closer. “What are … this is … we shouldn’t …”
I pull my mouth from hers. “If you want me to stop, tell me now. Tell me right now, Keane.”
Our eyes lock, hers searching mine, but she says nothing, only swallows and leaves her hands exactly where they are.
“That’s what I thought.” I tug the hem of her skirt up her thighs before my fingertips trail across goose-pimpled flesh until they reach the lace fabric of her panties.
She sucks a breath between her teeth the moment my fingers slip beneath the cloth and slide between her folds, plunging deep inside her. Her body stiffens before melting against me, and then her knees lock—her mind and body clearly not on the same page here.