“The usual for me,” Bryan said. “Kat? You want something?”
“Just an iced tea would be great.”
Bryan tilted his head as if he were trying to figure me out. I was throwing him curveballs. He’d expected one thing from me, but I gave him another.
“And whatever you want of course, Delaney. And if you could see what the finishing crew wants as well,” he said, referring to the employees he’d promised the coffee to.
As she left, Bryan asked me more questions about My Favorite Mistakes and how I envisioned growing the business. The truth was I didn’t entirely know, and I admitted that. Soon, Delaney returned with the Stella’s run, carrying a cardboard drink holder with an iced tea and a coffee.
As she handed Bryan the coffee, I pictured her tripping and spilling it on his shirt and then fumbling through cleaning it up like on a bad sitcom. But she was graceful and poised. “I have the papers from the board on the Wilco termination,” she told him. “I’m just reviewing their comments and emailing them to you for your two p.m. call.”
“Great. Thank you. I look forward to reading them.” Delaney left, and closed the door behind her. “She’s very involved. Eager to learn. So she has a lot of responsibility,” he said to me, as if he felt the need to explain why Delaney was reviewing termination papers.
“So she’s clearly a lot more than just a minion,” I teased.
He laughed. “Definitely. But let me tell you this. Minions are overrated. Once you have them, they come in your office and want things.”
“Minion management. Never thought about that before.”
“Oh, it’s not like the old days when you could beat them with a cane.”
“I bet HR comes down pretty hard on you for that,” I said and that cracked him up. He sat down in his chair, still laughing and not paying close attention. Then, he spilled his coffee on himself.
Now it was my turn. “I’m so sorry for laughing,” I said in between big chuckles. “That was just so unexpected. It’s usually the other person who spills the coffee. You don’t usually spill it on yourself.”
His eyes widened. “Evidently, I’m the world’s biggest dork.”
“It didn’t burn you, did it?”
He shook his head as he stood up, placing the half-empty cup on the low table. The front of his white shirt was covered in a coffee-colored blotch. “No, it wasn’t that hot. I can’t stand the way some places make their drinks scalding, so Delaney always makes sure it’s a civilized temperature.”
He walked to a small closet in the corner of the office and took out a new shirt. “I guess I better change.”
“I’ll leave,” I offered, and started to rise.
“I don’t mind. Unless it makes you uncomfortable.”
Uncomfortable was not the word I’d use. More like turned on. When I looked over at Bryan, he was already unbuttoning his shirt, and I was quite simply rooted to my seat. If Channing Tatum were in the office taking off his shirt, I’d find it physically impossible to do anything else but stare at the spectacle of him undressing too. Bryan reached his cufflinks, and I watched as he deftly removed them, then laid them on top of a nearby bookshelf. He took off the shirt, and rested it on the back of a chair. He wore a white tee-shirt underneath.
“Your tee-shirt is stained too.”
He glanced at the front of his shirt. “Let’s call this a major win for you for making me laugh so hard.”
I mimed making a check mark on a scorecard, feeling pretty good about the way power was flowing these days. I was the one steering the ship. Then, I sucked in a breath as he removed his tee-shirt. All my anger slinked away, all my hurt crept out quietly. I was left only with the one thing that had never been far away for the last five years – desire for him.
I stared and I didn’t try to play it cool. He was hot, and I wanted to enjoy the view. His chest was broad and firm, his arms strong, and his stomach as flat as the earth was rumored to be before Columbus discovered the truth. There was the slightest trace of hair running from his belly button to the waistband of his jeans, disappearing beneath his clothes suggestively. He reached for a fresh tee-shirt in the closet, and a crisp, clean button-down too.
Fuck it.
Fuck the act. Fuck the cool girl routine.
So much for my plan to be tough, to be civil, to be immune to his charms. I threw that playbook out the window and started writing a new one – one that was filled with payoff. This was the real starting over, because he’d called me pretty, he’d remembered my coffee drink, he’d told me he was glad to see me. This wasn’t one-sided and I was going to take what I wanted most right now. To be touched. To be kissed.
I removed my bulletproof vest, and spoke my mind. “Come here.”
He walked to the back of the couch and leaned down, his face inches from me.
“Hi,” he said softly.
“Hi.”
“Can I?” he asked, and then reached a hand into my hair, letting my dark brown strands fall through his fingers. I leaned into his hand, like a cat, as my answer. I wouldn’t be surprised if I had started purring.
“Kat,” he said in a hungry voice.
I looked into his eyes, those crisp green eyes that drew me in. “I need you to kiss me now,” I said, as if it were a command.
“Consider it done.”
I closed my eyes as his lips brushed mine with a softness, tenderness and eagerness all wrapped up in one. I felt as if the whole office, the factory, the city was gone. There was nothing else but this kiss and I melted into him, as I had with all our kisses five years ago. But then, there was something new, something less innocent, as the kiss shifted into another gear. The way his lips suddenly crushed mine was feverish. It was frenzied, and it was electric, and full of need. I needed to feel him. I needed to touch him. I explored his arms, traversing the shape and size of his forearms and the strength in them, and then outlining the sharp contours of his flexed biceps, until I returned to his chest, then down to his belly, so trim and tight that I longed to touch and trace and hold onto his perfectly cut waist all through the day and the night.
He stopped, moving to the door, locking it this time, then returning to the couch with me.
“We can’t go all the way. Not even close,” I said, holding up my hand as a stop sign to sex.
“I’m good with that. But we don’t have much time for anything.”
“Do you want to stop then?”