“Uh, I guess,” I stuttered, looking at James in confusion.
“I had a great time tonight, Della,” James murmured, summoning my attention away from the mysterious car. “Thank you again for dinner and...everything.”
I stared up in silent surprise, still trying to catch up with how quickly things had changed. Th-thank you,” I countered quickly. “Thank you for taking me, and... Well, thanks for everything before, with your brother, I mean. Also that Japanese deal.”
A faint shadow passed over his face at the mention of Robert, but he was quick to eliminate it. “If it’s all right, I’d love to call you tomorrow.” A sudden flicker of nerves tightened his eyes, like he was worried I might say no. “If you’re too busy, I understand.”
Shy? James fucking Cross gets cold feet? Do my ears deceive me?
“No, I’d love that.” Without thinking, I stretched up on my toes and kissed him swiftly on the cheek. The feeling was electric, just like the first time we touched, sending a cascade of shivers running down my spine. “I have work, but call me anytime, anytime at all.”
My eyes snapped shut in a momentary grimace, and I really wished I didn’t repeat the words, but James didn’t seem to notice my verbal stumbling. In fact, it seemed he tuned me out completely since the moment I leapt up and kissed him on the cheek. It wasn’t until his driver cleared his throat that he snapped back to the present. “Yeah, I-I’ll do that,” he said. His lips twitched up in a quirky smile before he headed swiftly off into the night. “Goodnight, Della.”
“Wait!” I called after him, my eyes flickering between him and the waiting car. “Aren’t you coming? How will you get home?”
Even halfway down the block, I could still see the way his eyes twinkled in the moonlight, the way his face lit up with a breathtaking smile as he answered, “I’ll walk.”
Chapter 9
I DIDN’T SEE ANY MORE of James Cross that night, except in my dreams. Needless to say, I didn’t stop thinking about him for a single second all night, and he was still on my mind when I arrived at work the next morning.
Madison wasn’t home when I got there, so I assumed she was out with Caleb again. When I walked onto the sixtieth floor the next day, though, her eyes perked up immediately, swarming with questions and demands for kiss-and-tell stories. The client in her office gave her a questioning look, but she dismissed him with a wave of her hand and gestured me inside in the same motion.
I deliberately ignored her plea and bypassed her office to head to my own instead. I didn’t want to talk about my dinner with James, and even someone as close to the fire as I was couldn’t fail to see the significance of that. I talked for hours about Robert, before I knew who he was, expounding, hypothesizing, and planning, but my dinner date with James was ours, not something I wanted to share with the general public. It was sacred ground, not something I wanted to analyze and dissect piece by piece. I simply wanted to enjoy it, cherish it, and secure a place for it forever in my memory, but Madison was obviously unwilling to comply with that.
“Uh... Hi, loser!”
I glanced up from my desk, hoping she would at least have the wherewithal to close the door before she started asking pointed questions as to whether or not I had fucked the boss’s son.
“So, did you and James do the deed or what?”
Nope. No such luck.
“Uh, Madison, you want to close the door?” I asked wearily, rubbing my sleep-deprived eyes and offering a half-hearted grin. “And to answer your question, no. We didn’t... The only deal we closed yesterday was the one with Japan, if you must know.”
“You didn’t?” she asked, looking at me as if I was speaking Latin or some language she didn’t understand. There was no recognition as she repeated the words back to me, and no little light came on above her head. For Madison, going out with a man was almost always synonymous with going to bed. “So if you didn’t have sex, what did you do?”
A little smile wormed across my face as I mentally traveled back to the restaurant, picturing every minute detail in my mind, imagining each perfect moment as if they were happening all over again. “We...dated,” I offered, and that was all.
There was a pause, followed by a confused frown, followed by an even longer pause as Madison tried to string the nonsensical words together. “You dated? What does that mean
exactly?”
I stifled a smile, trying to pair it down into words she could comprehend. “We just went out to dinner and talked—you know, like normal people.”
Processing, processing, processing, yet nothing is registering on that scrunched-up face of hers. If she doesn’t quit thinking so hard... Is that burning I smell?
“I-I don’t understand.” She tossed her white-blonde hair back with a touch of impatience as she lowered her hands slowly onto the desk. “You only talked, nothing more? No seductive winks, footsie, hand-jobs under the table?”
I shook my head. “Just nice dinner and conversation. Sorry to disappoint you.”
She threw up her hands, completely exasperated. “Did he even bother to kiss you goodnight?”
My mind flashed back to the moment, that exact moment when I was sure he would, that moment when I thought he was going to suggest doing far more than that. Suddenly, I recalled that everything stopped when his eyes locked on that ruby. “He asked if he could call me today,” I volunteered, hoping it would make up some of the difference. “He was super sweet, even gave me his jacket when the cold got to me.”
“Ick,” Madison said, as if the thought of such sweetness gave her an instant cavity. She was, however, interested in the rest of what I said. “He asked for permission to call you?” she repeated, a slight frown creasing her lovely face. “Who does that nowadays?”
Until she mentioned it, it never struck me as strange. A frown flickered across my face to mirror hers as I leaned forward in my chair, tapping my pencil pensively against my desk. “Yeah, he asked. Why? Is that weird or something?”