“Yes. You can tell me all about it tonight.” He grinned and stood up straight, the check in his hand. “See you later, Brianna.”
Brianna nodded and smoothed her hair. “For our meeting.”
“And our date,” he called over his shoulder.
Chapter Two
Brianna leaned back in her desk chair with a sigh and rubbed her eyes. The financial projections on her screen looked grim. She hated that Thomas was right. But most of all, she hated that even now, Thomas Jones wouldn’t stop creeping into her thoughts.
Obnoxiously persistent even when he wasn’t here. Typical.
Why was he so insistent on taking her out tonight? Men like him normally didn’t give her a second glance; they were more interested in Bambi on the pole than Brianna behind the desk. He looked like he’d been a football player in high school. Some kind of jock. Just the type who would have scorned her back then, as the fat, ugly girl everyone shot spitballs at.
Just the type who should scorn her now.
She’d spent too many adolescent nights crying herself to sleep to entirely trust his motives. A football player had played nice with her once. Pretended to like her, invited her to Homecoming, then pulled a Carrie on her and left her at the mercy of the entire cheerleading squad. They’d used glue in the spitballs, that time. Shampoo hadn’t worked. Nothing had worked. She’d had to shave her head, endure the cue-ball taunts, and tell her mother she was going through a punk phase.
If her mother had known the real reason, she’d have fainted in a dead heap on the floor—and probably pulled her out of school faster than it would take Brianna to get the smelling salts and revive Scarlett from the vapors. Her mother had idly mentioned home schooling once. With a choice between torture or her mother’s idea of teaching, she’d chosen the torture.
She shook her head and glared at the screen. Enough with the maudlin thoughts. She had a company to run, and she wasn’t that chubby insecure little girl anymore—but she was realistic. There had to be another reason he was interested in her…but what? Did he hope to charm her into accepting his account?
That had to be it.
With a sigh, she checked the time. Five more minutes and she could clock out and head downstairs. She wasn’t sure if she should even bother freshening up. Since she’d come back from the lunch meeting with Thomas, she’d been putting out fires left and right. A customer had been caught counting cards. Another had passed out across the table, very close to a severe case of alcohol poisoning, and when a waitress had checked his pulse he’d woken up and claimed sexual harassment.
A fairly typical day on the job, and she was a mess. Exhausted. Irritable. Bleary-eyed. She was pretty sure she had mascara on her lips, and she was too tired to care.
Yet five minutes later, she somehow found herself in the employee bathroom looking at her frazzled reflection in the mirror. Hopeless. It would take more than a little foundation to fix this, more like a tub of spackle. She hadn’t thought to bring anything with her but her business suit, but maybe that was for the best. She didn’t want to look available. She didn’t want to look desperate, and give him reason to think she could be wooed into acceptance.
But she didn’t want to look like death warmed over, either.
She washed her face with a damp paper towel and re-applied her makeup, slicking her lips with a sheen of cherry red. The tired blond waves of her hair were beyond recovery. She frowned, held her hair up off her neck, then twisted it up into a messy bun, fiddled a few pencils from her purse, and used them to pin her hair into place. It left her with a tumbled spray that looked as if she’d deliberately left it this messy, falling artfully into her face and wisping out from the bun. It would have to do.
Her reflection looked back at her with lips pinched in disapproval. What was she doing? It had been years since she’d tried to look good for a date…or for a man. Part of her had died with Michael. The part that made her feel like a woman. She wasn’t sure what was looking back at her from the mirror with wide, worried eyes: a woman or an androgynous business professional.
She shrugged out of her jacket, tossed it onto her desk chair, and flicked open the top two buttons of her blouse. A woman. Tonight she would be a woman, and even if she wasn’t really dressed for a date, at least she looked a little less uptight.
Though she wouldn’t let him past her defenses.
He had an agenda and she was part of it. This was simply another kind of business. Men like him knew how to schmooze, and thought their abs, shoulders, and cocks were just more bargaining chips on the boardroom table. He’d try to bag her and the deal all in one.
She squared her shoulders and slipped out through the casino and to the door. The hot Vegas evening opened before her like a sweltering, wet mouth. She perched her sunglasses on her nose. A few feet ahead, a man stood with his back to her, motionless beneath the shadow of the walkway’s overhang. Even from the back, she recognized him. The way he carried himself was distinctive. Underneath that practiced slickness was a certain grave, quiet authority and a brooding restlessness that spoke louder than the glib spiel he’d trotted out over lunch.
His white dress shirt clung to his back and biceps. She wondered if he’d done that on purpose. Dazzled her. Taunted her with the hard lines of his body. Made her want him until she wasn’t thinking about anything else.
If he thought she’d stammer and drool her way through dinner, he had another thing coming.
She lifted her chin and strode forward. She would get through this evening with dignity. “Thomas.”
He tensed, then turned. “Brianna.”
His gaze roamed her body, darkening with each moment, heated. When his eyes met hers again, the molten intensity there stole her voice and ran titillating fingers down her spine. He had this down to an art form, didn’t he? Slick.
“You look lovely,” he said.
“I’m wearing the exact same thing I had on at lunch.”
“A little less of it, actually.” He smiled, but something about it caught her. It wasn’t a real smile. It was too smooth, too practiced.
She tilted her head, studying him. He was smiling because it was appropriate at the moment, she thought. Not because he meant it.
He raked another look over her. “But if you’re that worried, we can swing by your place—”
“No.” Her heart seized. She forcibly lowered her voice and took a slow breath. “I mean, no. I’m fine, really. There’s no need.”