Ah, of course. He’d probably been thinking about this nonstop.
“How’d it go at the bar the other night? Where’d you end up going?”
“We went to The Knock.”
He nodded. “Good choice.” He was probably saying this because he knew I’d slept with at least half of the women there, so I wouldn’t be as likely to have my eye on Daisy. Except there was something that interested me about her, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it yet.
It was somewhat perplexing, I admit. Despite her complete lack of fashion sense, you could tell that Daisy was an attractive person. But I was around attractive people all the time; The Knock was full of them. And there were the handful of times that I’d sleep with people who might not be considered prime physical specimens, too. I couldn’t remember feeling this . . . I didn’t know what you’d call it, maybe a spark, but that sounds so fucking cliché . . . intrigue toward any of them. It went beyond a mere physical attraction or horniness. Which was absolutely ridiculous, I knew that, because I barely even knew her and my general modus operandi was not to actually get to know any of these women that well, anyway. That had been the whole thing with Annie: she wanted us to get to know each other better. A goal, she eventually confessed to me, was to wake up next to me, just so she could know what I looked like sleeping, what I liked to eat for breakfast.
Yeah, no thanks.
Chapter Ten
Daisy
Around two o’clock, Ian came over to my desk, leaning against it, waiting until I got off the phone. I hung up and looked at him.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“Good. That was Lily Parker, the lady from Friends of the Library. They’re—”
“It’s okay—you don’t need to tell me all the details with that. Jonathan’s handling their account. I was actually wondering if you might be up for a little adventure.”
“Adventure?” I said. I could see his idea of an adventure being something like skydiving or caving or going to the race car track. “Um . . . I guess that depends. What were you thinking?”
“Well, it’s a beautiful day out, and I haven’t been out on my boat in a while. I’d like to take you out.”
“Now? It’s Tuesday. It’s the middle of the day.”
“I know.” He gave me a wolfish grin. “But you know? I’m the boss, so I get to make the rules. Jonathan’s on his way back to the office right now, so I’ll just text him and let him know that we’ve got . . . a couple errands to run.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and started tapping away at the screen before I could say anything. Was this sort of thing normal? Did he always do this? I’d certainly never had a job like this before, and part of me thought that I should do the responsible thing and stay here, because what if someone called? What if someone came in? Then I remembered that he said Jonathan would be back soon, but still . . . I pushed those thoughts away, though. He was the boss, after all. And when was the last time that I’d been on an adventure?
I’d only been boating a few times in my life, so long ago that I barely remembered it. But I could recall lying on my side near the front of the small sailboat, letting my arm dangle, my fingertips just skimming the surface of the blue water. Then, my cousin came up and said I better watch out or a shark was going to appear from the depths and snatch me.
Ian’s boat was too big for me to be able to lie on my side and let my arm hang and my fingers touch the water, but I was able to sit up near the bow and watch the water stretched out before us, looking like liquid crystal with the sunshine glinting off of it.
His boat was called Man Cave, and he said he didn’t get to take it out too often. “So when there’s a gorgeous day like this and things at work are slow, it kind of makes sense to do this, doesn’t it?”
“It’s really beautiful,” I said, walking back to him.
“Yeah,” he said. He was stretched out on the cream-colored leather couch on deck. “Sure as hell beats being stuck in the city right now. Come, sit down.”
I went over to the couch and he swung his legs around, so he was in a sitting position. I sat next to him.
“One of the perks of the job, I guess,” he said. He gave me a stern look. “But don’t get used to this. Unfortunately, it can’t be a regular occurrence.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. I could tell he was looking at me, but I suddenly felt shy, so I looked toward the horizon, where the sky met the water. Time almost seemed to slow down, or maybe it sped up; I suddenly felt as though I were in some sort of capsule, it was just Ian and me on this boat, and even though I could look to my left and see the city, it felt like we were the last people on the face of the earth.
He leaned forward, his face just inches from my own. I could feel my pulse racing, though it was hard to take a breath. I wanted him to kiss me, yet at the same time, I was terrified.
/> “Daisy,” he said in a low voice.
I looked over and met his eyes, but looked away quickly. It just felt like too much; this whole thing was making me feel like I was going to spontaneously combust. But his lips were right there, and all I had to do was lean in a little . . .
But I couldn’t move. I felt completely paralyzed, other than the racing heart, though Ian didn’t seem at all bothered by this. Other guys might have taken it to mean I wasn’t interested, but Ian just continued to look at me. He brought his hand up to my chin and gently tilted my head back. He leaned down and closed the short distance between us, just brushing his lips to mine.
A warm shiver reverberated through my whole body, and I felt goosebumps on my arms, even though I wasn’t cold at all and the sun was bathing us in a warm glow. He pressed his mouth more firmly against my own, now, cupping my chin in his hand, holding me there, the tip of his tongue tracing the contours of my lips.
I kissed him back. Slowly, at first, because it had been so long since I’d last kissed someone—really kissed someone—that I was afraid I’d have forgotten, but no, it was like my body knew exactly what it was doing and it didn’t need my brain to offer any instruction. My lips moved with his in perfect synchronicity; there were no miscues, no banging of teeth, no awkwardness whatsoever.