Call Me Saffron (Greenpoint Pleasures) (9 page)

I nodded. My lips felt chapped. I flicked my tongue out to moisten them. He watched. My throat was dry. I swallowed. He watched that too. The air out here was cool, presaging winter, but I felt stiflingly hot. My cheeks, my chest, my groin. Throbbingly hot. This man. In my bed. At my bidding. All night long. Tonight? “So what now? Do we go to your place?”

He touched my hair, tucking a stray lock back into place. Oddly gentle. “Not tonight. I’ll let you know when. And where.” He kissed my nose—my
nose
—and then went off down the street, strolling past the late-night diehards on the restaurant patio huddled under heat lamps while they ate their fries. I could hear him whistling.
 

I shivered in my thin dress. My jacket was still on the pile of outerwear in the stockroom. I went back inside.
 

“I’ll let you know when. And where.”

Boyish Cowlick guy was chatting with Annie near the door. Good luck, dude. Annie wore her shawl like a shield and her lovely white-blonde hair pulled back. He was ignoring the keep-away signs, but he’d run up against them soon enough. She was seriously into her unavailable, unattainable boss. Awkward Dude didn’t stand a chance. Too bad. He was rather charming in his way.
 

I nodded to them and squeezed past to get my jacket. On my way to the stockroom, Jeanine snagged me. “What happened back there?” she hissed at me. “He left without you.”

“You noticed.”
 

Wait a second. She hadn’t asked who he was. Hadn’t asked why he was here. And he’d said,
“Your roommate has my number.”
She’d called him. Tonight. “You set me up. Again.” I wrenched my arm away and stomped into the stockroom.
 

Dylan had known I’d be here. He’d planned this out. That explained the coolness, the calculating gleam in his eye.
 

Jeanine came into the stockroom behind me. “You bailed on dinner with him. I thought you needed a nudge.”

“You thought you should stage-manage my life. Again.”

“Someone has to! You’re not exactly doing a stellar job of it.”

“Maybe I don’t need a man in my life, have you thought of that? You don’t have one. Not everyone needs a relationship, or even a hookup. I was perfectly happy with my vibrator until you set me up with Dylan.”
 

“And since then? Not so much, right? You’ve been moping for six months straight. I live with you. It’s been hell. Plus, there’s never any ice cream left after your self-loathing binges. Being with him reminded you that you prefer boys to your plastic toy, but you’re too scared of real emotions to act on it.”

I grabbed my jacket. “Stop meddling. Just stop.”

“Whatever. I was only trying to help.”

“I don’t need your help. I don’t need anyone’s help.” I slid my arms into the sleeves. In my haste, I got it fouled up. My right arm got stuck, and the jacket was twisted around and upside down.
 

Jeanine grabbed the jacket from me, turned it right-side up. I took it back. “Thanks.” Hard to thank someone when you’re mad. It inevitably comes out like a scold. “I could have fixed that.”

“I know.”

I put my arms into the sleeves the right way this time. “I think I should find my own place to live.”

“You do that. And remind me to never do
you
a favor. Fix you up with a hot guy? Forget it. I’m the devil. You screw things up with the hot guy? Heaven forbid I try to help you figure it out by, oh,
I don’t know
, putting you together in the same room so you can talk like normal people do. Clearly I’m a bad friend. Got it. You can mess up your own life from now on. I’m done.”

She flounced out of the room, destroying my own chance to make a huffy exit. I sank into the armchair, onto a pile of jackets, which puffed up around me, then subsided.

Jeanine. My best friend. I’d run into her in the college quad after my second attempt at a relationship dissolved in a pile of recriminations and miscommunication. She’d taken me to her dorm room, plied me with hot chocolate liberally dosed with schnapps, and told me firmly that I wasn’t broken. She’d said nobody gets it right the first or even the second time, and that was okay. I knew she was wrong and that I wasn’t built for intimacy—that I
was
broken, at least in that way—but I let her think I agreed. I loved having someone so confident on my side. The next week, she’d brought me here. To Greenpoint Pleasures. Where I’d found a home with the other off-kilter souls in search of a nonjudgmental home away from home.
 

I owed Jeanine everything. I owed her whatever emotional stability I had.
 

I looked for her as I left the stockroom. We had to talk this out. We couldn’t leave it alone, or it would fester and decay. I couldn’t move out. I couldn’t lose her friendship.
 

But when I found her, she was wrapped in the arms of a skinny, bearded redhead, kissing him like he was whiskey and she was on a bender.
 

I went home.

Chapter Eight

By the time Jeanine came home, it was dawn. I woke briefly to hear her giggling in the living room with the redheaded guy as they stumbled inside, shushing each other, and tiptoed loudly to her bedroom right across the tiny hallway from mine.
 

I put the pillow over my head to block out light and sound and the male intruder in my home, and went back to sleep. I’d have to catch her later.

But later came and our male intruder was still there. As I made myself a sandwich in our narrow galley kitchen, Jeanine didn’t budge from her cozy perch on the couch, her legs thrown over the guy’s legs. They had their heads bent over his iPad, watching something that was apparently hysterically funny.
 

“Do you want lunch? There’s cold cuts but not enough cheese.” I knew I sounded surly. I couldn’t help it.
 

“Nah, we’ll go down to the deli later.” She lifted her head from the guy’s shoulder. “This is Sean.”
 

Sean nodded at me. “Pleasure to meet you.”
 

“Yeah.” It sounded so halfhearted, I belatedly blurted, “You too.” Which made it worse. It just underlined the faux pas.
 

Did this Sean know what Jeanine did for a living? Did he care? It usually made guys uncomfortable. On the other hand, he met her at a party at Greenpoint Pleasures, so maybe it didn’t matter.

Jeanine gave me a sideways look. I wasn’t forgiven for last night.
 

I should be the one forgiving her.
I slapped together the two slices of bread, ignoring the mayo oozing out the sides, and sliced it down the middle. No, that wasn’t fair. She’d meddled, but for the right reasons. Maybe.
 

Dylan.

Our arrangement.
 

I came halfway into the living room. “Have you checked your email yet today?”

“I did, not that it’s your business.” She went back to the iPad. “I want to see that again.” She tapped the screen, and a loud noise bleated from the device.
 

I leaned against the kitchen counter and bit into the sandwich. Too much mayo. “Did Dylan email you?”

She frowned at me. “Should he have?”

Yes. He’s supposed to seduce me. He needs to set a time and place for an encounter. But I can’t tell you any of that, because you’re not alone. And maybe you don’t care anymore. And I miss you.
“Let me know if he does, okay?” I took my sandwich into my bedroom and turned on the computer. I should get some work done.
 

And yet somehow I found myself doing a web search for Dylan Krause, Juniper Designs. I pulled up his executive profile, the one I’d seen that first day.
 

Chiseled jaw. Dark slashes of eyebrows. That hungry gaze, which seemed more like yearning to me now and less like pure sex.
 

Dylan. My boy-toy to-be.
 

Ha. That was a joke, a man like that acting the role of escort.
 

But he was going to follow through on it.
 

Wasn’t he?

~*~

The on-screen walk-through glared from the screen reproachfully. My part of it was due to the group by the end of the day, and yet instead of working on it, I was on the phone, listening to it ring on the other end, then a click. I tensed, ready to talk.
 

Jeanine’s cheery recorded message told me to
leave a message, yo.
 

“Hey, you. You were busy with Redheaded Boy all weekend, and I’m happy for you and all, but we need to talk. Let me know when. I, uh—” I paused to formulate the thought. It seemed tacky to apologize in voice mail, but I had to say something. Before I could figure out the right phrasing—assuming there
was
one—I spotted a group of suits walking into the main room with Fernando. Five of them. One was Dylan. “Let me know.” I hung up.
 

Dylan’s shoulders seemed larger in his dark blue tailored suit. He looked so formal, so professional. Maybe I’d ask him to wear the jacket on our rendezvous. The jacket and nothing else.
 

“What’s that wicked smile about?” Rudy peered over the top edge of my widescreen monitor, holding a mug, a tendril of steam rising from the dark liquid. Coffee run, clearly. “Thinking wicked thoughts? You? Ms. I Don’t Date?”

“Just because I don’t date doesn’t mean I have no interest in sex.”
 

Wrong thing to say. His eyebrows shot up, and his smile showed a perfect row of white teeth. “Good to know.”
 

Dylan walked past. He glanced over at us. I flushed and gave him a look that I hoped conveyed
it’s not what it appears
and
I still want you
and
when do we do this thing?
 

His mouth twitched, but he said nothing, not even hello. He just went past. As he walked down the row of drafting tables toward Fernando’s office, I watched his ass in those well-fitted pants, grateful he wasn’t one of those guys who stuffed a wallet in his back pocket.
 

Beside me, Rudy whistled quietly. “Those guys are something, huh?”

“What do you mean?”

“They stroll through here like they own us. It’s kind of pissing me off. Especially since rumor has it we’re going to have to work overtime on their stupid project.”

“I’m not scheduled to work on it.” Even though I’d stood him up for dinner, Dylan hadn’t threatened to back out of our deal. I figured our upcoming liaison made up for it—assuming that was still on.
 

 
“I bet you are. Why do you think we have to hand in the blueprints for the Newark building ahead of our original deadline? So we can be free for Juniper. Fernando’s going to tell us at the meeting this afternoon. They must be forking over a lot of money.”
 

I must have looked dismayed, because Rudy shook his head and grinned at me. “Hey, I’m only grouching because I can’t afford their furniture. It’ll be fine. It’s a good company. A good gig.”

“I know. It’s just hard to switch gears.”
 

“True that.”
 

I shifted my attention to the screen and slid my finger on the trackpad, signaling the end of the conversation. Still, I glanced down the row toward the conference room. The door was open. I could see a glimpse of dark blue fabric. A leg, seated. Dylan’s?
 

He was in there. In my workplace. Again. And now his company had hired mine. To work for him.
 

If Juniper had hired Alvarez, if I had to work on the project despite myself, then it was all kinds of wrong for me to order the client around in the bedroom. Tell him to strip for me, tell him to kneel in front of me, tell him to lick my…

My computer beeped at me, a CAD program warning. I’d done something against code. What? I stared at it for a good two minutes before I realized I’d created an entire floor plan with no bathrooms, no doors, no access points at all.
 

The meeting lasted an hour and forty-one minutes. Not that I was counting. When they were done, Fernando came out, clapped Dylan on the back, and chatted with him as they walked down the row of desks. I couldn’t even meet Dylan’s eye without Fernando catching me at it.

Our liaison was a nonstarter. Dylan had obviously reconsidered. Maybe he’d decided it would be too complicated, what with my firm working for his. He’d ignored me on the way to Fernando’s office, and he looked like he was about to ignore me again on the way out.
 

The thought felt like a rock in my gut. I’d had my first real fight with my best friend over this, and now I couldn’t even have him for a single, greedy night.
 

Not that I wanted him. Just his body. And that hungry gaze, trained on me. And those whispered words. And that sharp intelligence.
 

This was not good. I didn’t do relationships. Maybe it was just as well we weren’t in one, not even for one night.
 

Yeah, I could keep telling myself that and maybe I’d eventually believe it.
 

After Dylan and Fernando passed by and my heart stopped skipping unnecessary beats, I realized there was now a folded piece of paper on my blotter. No doubt Dylan’s discreet way of calling our assignation off. I unfolded it ever so casually, as if it were a normal note from a coworker.
 

The note only had a few words, written in a slanted, strong script.
 

Keats Hotel. 8 p.m. Friday. Check in as Samantha Saffron. Bring checkbook. Corset optional.
 

My body woke up. My nerve endings were alive, sparking like a child’s firecracker.
 

It was going to be a long week.

I picked up my cell phone to call Jeanine, but put it down. She wouldn’t want to hear from me. But before I could set it back on the desk, it rang. Her ringtone. I grabbed it. “I’m so glad you called. I—”
 

“Found another place to live? Good, because I have rights over the place, you know. It’s my aunt’s rent control.” She sounded grumpy.