Private Confessions. Lori Borrill
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his eyes. “What are you really doing tomorrow?”
Bill opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He stuttered a moment before finally confessing through a long exhale, “Okay, so it’s some sort of…poetry reading.”
Logan threw his head back and laughed.
“Oh, come on, man. Adrienne’s mom is making her go. I guess it’s something special and she wants the whole family to be there.”
“I’m not family.”
“There will be music afterward.”
“What, a sitar?” Logan asked through his chuckle.
“Probably.”
“I don’t think so.” Although the thought of watching Bill trying to order a beer in some hippie tea house was tempting.
“Aw, come on. Help me out.”
Logan looked at Bill in amazement. “Are you kidding? My ears are still bleeding from that punk rock festival you dragged me to last year.” He shook his head in disgust. “What was her name?”
“Fawn and it was alternative rock, not punk.”
“It’s all the same to me.”
“You’re just an old fart.”
“And you’ve got bizarre taste in women,” Logan added under his breath. “At least Adrienne’s a move in the right direction.”
“And so is Trisha. I don’t know why you don’t go for her. You two would make a nice conservative couple, elevator music and all.”
Logan ignored the slam and shook his head. “Forget about me and Trisha. I have plans for her and none of them include sleeping with her.”
Bill perked. Insider information was his favorite joy in life. The man relished being in on a secret, and sometimes Logan truly believed that Bill was a thirteen-year-old girl in a past life.
“Spill, big guy. Don’t keep me in the dark.”
Logan smiled and paused, dragging out the tension. He loved toying with Bill, just as Bill loved toying with him. It was a little game they’d been playing since they’d met ten years ago.
Bill held up his hands. “Well?”
“Tyndale’s going to be big. He’s got six resorts along the west coast, with plans to open another in the Caribbean. If we get the account, we’ll need to hire more staff.” He picked up the bag of nuts and studied them for a moment, extending Bill’s agony for as long as possible. “I think Trisha would make a good candidate to head up a new travel segment.”
“So the VP rumor is true.”
Logan slammed the bag on the desk as Bill’s smirk told him he’d just been duped. “Son of a bitch. I can’t trust Sally with a goddamned thing.” He was more annoyed by losing his match with Bill than the knowledge that his Human Resources manager had loose lips.
Bill’s heavy chest rumbled as he laughed. “Sor-a-mundo, buddy boy. I already knew.”
“Well, keep it to yourself, although that’s probably pointless. I haven’t made my decision yet, and if we don’t get Tyndale, we don’t have enough business to form a separate segment. I don’t want Trisha disappointed if it doesn’t happen.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll get Tyndale and everything will work out as planned. I’m sure of it.”
PIMPLY KID, pimply kid, pimply kid.
Trisha hesitated outside Logan’s door for a beat as she repeated the mantra in her head, trying to lose the nerves that held on like an angry cold. She’d hoped some miracle would have brought Devon back in time to join her in Logan’s office, but her last-minute check found him still sitting in O’Hare.
She was on her own.
She took one giant breath, exhaled the memory of the previous night’s chat and stepped into the office.
One look at Logan behind his desk sucked the image back to her mind. Not only was he wearing the starched white shirt she’d envisioned the night before, but he’d removed his tie and unbuttoned the top two buttons, showing a faint hint of dark hair that told her his rocklike chest had the perfect blend of curls that made him masculine but not too hairy.
He’d rolled up his sleeves to the elbows and his hands were planted firmly on the arms of his chair, his fingers splayed over the ends, just as she’d seen it in her head.
She briefly made eye contact. Just enough to catch him sweep his dark eyes over her body in a manner that stopped short of lustful appreciation. He kept it professional, but sincere. Just a glance that made her wonder if he was interested, but didn’t reveal enough to answer the question.
It still sent a blizzard of tingles through her chest that twirled down to the spot between her thighs.
Her hands went numb, as if she’d just been shot with a local anesthetic. She attempted to wiggle her fingers, but they remained cemented to the files she clutched to her chest.
He lifted his hand and waved to her. “Come on in.”
For a brief millisecond her feet wouldn’t move. She didn’t want to sit at his desk. The image of sitting on it kept elbowing to the front of her thoughts. But she couldn’t come up with a plausible reason to ask him to move to the table.
Reluctantly she stepped inside, trying to keep her eyes focused on anything other than Logan Moore and those lips that, just last night, had been planted firmly between her—
Another clench between the legs told her to calm down and let it go. She was a professional. She hadn’t made it to where she was by lusting over something as silly as a few open shirt buttons.
She picked up her pace and casually took a seat across from him. She just wouldn’t look at him. They were here to discuss her ad campaign, not to gaze into each other’s eyes.
Without a word of greeting, she dropped the folders onto the desk and opened the first. She pulled the now sweaty pen from her left hand and flipped open her notebook preparing to get down to business.
“So this is what we’ve got,” she said. “I think Tyndale is going to like these ads.”
“Good afternoon to you, too, Trisha.”
She slowly brought her eyes from the ads to his face. His mouth was cocked in a half-smile, she could swear his gaze had just been planted on her chest, and when their eyes locked, a bolt of lightning shot through her, curling her toes.
Don’t look at his eyes.
She quickly glanced to his hair and those dark, wavy curls that she’d had her fingers threaded through on a number of imaginary occasions.
Hair, bad.
She shot her eyes down to his chest.
No, not the chest.
His ear, she could focus on his ear, she thought, before remembering she’d nibbled on it last Tuesday.
As her eyes shot around his features like a pinball, she realized she was sinking without a net. She needed to pull it together. She quickly glanced at the bronze Remington statue that stood on the credenza behind him. A team of wild horses. How fitting. She’d need a team of horses to jolt the lust from her head.
“You’re always business, aren’t you, Trisha?”
Her eyes met his as she mentally slapped herself in the face. It was time to act like a grown woman, like a company director who was supposedly slated for a VP position at the prestigious Moore Agency. And if she wanted that spot, she was going to have to prove to herself that she could overcome this lust for her boss and act maturely instead of being some sort of flustered teenager.
She cleared her throat, took a deep breath and began acting