The Dimple Strikes Back (33 page)

The tension finally broke when he snickered. “It does? How often does it happen? You should avoid potato balls.”

“And accountants.”

We laughed at each other. For once I wasn’t laughing by myself.

My ears pricked at the silence surrounding us. The back office echoed, and we were alone. The whirring hum of the old refrigerator sounded like a Lionel Ritchie love song to me in my hyper-aroused state.
Hello? Is it me you want to do on the floor?

I stared at him, knowing I resembled an enraptured puppy, but unable to help it. Unbelievably, he gazed right back. Soft green eyes mesmerised me. After what felt like ten minutes, I found my voice again. “I think I’ll wait here until my boo—sweater dries.”

“I understand.” His focus never left my face. “We don’t want to start any lactating rumours.”

“No. It takes a long time for those to go away—I know from experience.”

Sam chuckled, flashing the dimple again.

What happened next was one hundred per cent the dimple’s fault—the evil dent winked in his cheek like a boozy lounge singer, urging me to bad behaviour.

I reached up his five-nine or so height and pulled the collar of his green shirt down to my five-foot lip level to kiss him.

He smelt divine—shaving cream and man skin. An enticing combination. His lips were soft and surprised at first, but soon parted to allow my exploration. Sweet. He tasted sweet, warm, delicious. Oh, God.

My fantasies about kissing him were pale, pathetic compared to the real thing. Sparks flew from my lips through my veins to my toes, singeing various important parts in between. The sudden heat emanating from his talented mouth made me dizzy. Blood pounding, I clutched him harder to remain upright. This was not an ordinary kiss. This was a masterpiece painted by the two of us.

I let his shirt go before his lips.

His hazy gaze melted into mine. “I should be inappropriate more often.” 

“I wrinkled your nice green shirt.” I smoothed the cloth over his chest—his solid, inviting, muscled, taut…
What on earth is going on? Oh, yes, I’ve messed up his shirt
.

“I don’t care. Do you like it?” His eyebrows hovered upward, as if he really cared about me liking his clothes.

I dared a glance into his eyes again. I should learn not to do that. Warmth pooled in my stomach when he leaned in, desire writ large in the purse of his lips, the falling of his eyelashes. I gripped his shirt. I didn’t have to pull very hard—this time his arms locked around my waist and lifted me until I stood on his feet. On my tiptoes, I flicked my tongue across his bottom lip. Marvellous. With an approving grunt, he sucked on mine, and I heard myself moan into his open mouth. Accountants shouldn’t have such nice bodies, but I felt firm, delicious muscle when my belly pressed against his.

“Ahem.” We froze.

In slow motion, I turned around to find Scott, the company scumbag, leering. Scott made office irritation an art form by eavesdropping, rumour-mongering, licking his fingers and leaving messes in the communal microwave. He gave his best smarmy laugh before leaving.

Sam closed his eyes. “Crap.”

“Crap,” I agreed. “I should have taken you home, and
then
kissed you.”

Grinning, he said, “Samantha, I like you.”

He did? I held my breath. There was no candid camera. No pointing and/or laughing. A hot, normal guy liked me.

I did not believe that women should derive their self-worth from the approval of male persons. However, the dating scene in Los Angeles was…unique. It was riddled with loser actors, and loser producers, and loser losers and more tall, tanned silicone than you could shake a jiggling arm at. Let’s just say that pale, short girls who don’t speak Dipshit did not enjoy as robust a dating life as they might have desired. In other words, there were slim fucking pickings. Therefore, it was cause for real celebration when he continued—

“I have to ask you out now. For the office’s sake. To ensure a legacy of rakishness.”

“There aren’t enough old-fashioned rakes nowadays.”

His response was a leer Casanova would have envied.

This man caused my brain to revert to Primal Mode, where the animalistic priorities were food and sex. Usually food was my number one passion, but this man was locked in a dead heat with fried chicken. “I’m not really easy, you know.”

“Too bad. I am.”

Quite breathless, I smiled and stepped off his feet. Everyone knew what they said about large feet. That they were easy to stand on when you kissed the guy attached.

He tucked a tendril of hair behind my ear. I felt that shivery little touch like it was an earthquake. “Do you have the keys to Oliver’s office?” he asked.

“Oliver the CEO?”

“Yeah, I saw him leave.” He twirled a strand of my hair—it shimmered like gold against his skin, making me suddenly feel beautiful. It had been a while since that had happened. Leaning closer, he whispered, “His empty office might be a better place to…let your sweater dry. Besides, if we go back out to the buffet table everyone will
stare
.”

We wouldn’t want staring. Staring might impede the clandestine nakedness we planned to perpetrate. “I have the keys. I’ll meet you up there.”

Warning bells permeated the din of lust in my head. I
knew
I should not do this, but that damn dimple was a con man of the highest order. Later I would send a thousand dollars to a Nigerian prince because it asked me to.

I put my hand over my chest in a probably futile attempt to cover up the boob disaster and hurried to find my best friend, fellow office drone and love consultant Ellen. As I suspected, she occupied my old spot by the buffet tables. Great minds and all that. I hoped the food wouldn’t forget me now.

“Ellen!”

She paused mid-potato ball. She’d thank me later.

I pulled her into a nearby cube and shoved aside someone’s work papers to sit on the white, plastic counter. The files probably weren’t important. This was the Steak on a Stick corporation—the United Nations it was not. “Should I go make out with The Accountant?” I asked.

Her brown eyes narrowed. “You pulled me away from hot hors d’oeuvres to ask me that?”

“I fully deserve that reprimand, but this is important, too. Kissing or no kissing?” I didn’t mention that there had already been kissing. No need to complicate the matter.

She set her martini down and took on a more properly ponderous attitude. The politics of inter-office romance were tricky. “Kissing.”

I fist-pumped. “Yes!”

“But don’t screw him in the copy room. You’ll always be the girl who screwed a guy in the copy room. Remember poor Mary Lou and the supply closet?”

“That nickname was just evil. How come the men never get vile rhymes made up about them?”

Ellen was indeed wise. A few months ago, she’d sold a book—an awesome young adult novel about the zombie apocalypse starring a lesbian heroine named Samantha. Oh, yeah, I would forever be personified as the tough, yet sensitive saviour of humankind with a penchant for both justice and redheads.

“Where you gonna do it?” she asked.

“Oliver’s office.”

“Nope.”

“Why? It’s deserted. Oliver fled his unwashed minions an hour ago.”

She opened her mouth and closed it again, but the furrow between her eyebrows remained.

“Besides, he has couches.” I hoisted my boobs farther up in my push-up bra. Almost time for my pretties to shine!

“Do not have sex with that man in your boss’s office! You’d always be—”

“Yes, yes, I know. Besides, it would be slutty.”

Ellen pulled my sweater down so it stretched over my cleavage more. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Ellen was indeed wise.

“What’s going on with your boob there?” She pointed just as some guy passed by. He snickered and moved on. Now those gay rumours would circulate again. When they resurfaced I got hit on more by skeevy vice presidents who dreamed of getting to watch. I didn’t know if Ellen minded. She was a lesbian, so she didn’t care about that part. But perhaps she hated that people thought I was her main squeeze. She dated taller and cooler than me. Her words.

* * * *

I unlocked the door and tiptoed into the CEO’s well-appointed office. It smelt of leather furniture and large, ridiculous bonuses. I had been Oliver Taylor’s second assistant for over a year at Steak on a Stick, whose slogan read, ‘What doesn’t taste better on a stick!’ It wasn’t the best rhetorical question ever. I’d gone to school to learn how to act. Now every day I acted as if being a secretary at Steak on a Stick didn’t murder my soul one beefy bite at a time.

Sam hadn’t arrived yet. I planted myself on Oliver’s desk and turned off the negative voices in my head. After all, I wasn’t here to rehash my disastrous acting career—I was here to begin a disastrous affair.

I didn’t wait long. A couple of minutes later, he sauntered into the room, cool, collected, debonair. Ellen’s cock-blocking face filled my brain. I tried to conjure chaste thoughts—nuns, priests, naughty monks…hot priests listening to dirty confessions…

I wasn’t very good at chaste thoughts. Whoever it was who said that only men thought about sex all the time was dead wrong, or simply rubbish at picking up ladies.

Sam paused a moment in the dim light, then came towards me, slowly, almost prowling like a jungle cat. That was what romance novels always said the hero did and boy, did Sam panther with the best of them. Appropriate, for while my bodice hadn’t exactly been ripped, it had been stained thoroughly.

“Hello,” he said.

I jumped. The room had been so quiet. He threw me a cheeky smile that said he wasn’t sorry for making me jittery.

“I’ve never been in here before.” He ran his hand across the back of a sofa that probably cost more than my car.

The twinkling lights of downtown Los Angeles filtered in through the enormous executive windows, illuminating him in warm, sultry yellows—Hollywood’s modern version of candlelight. I slid off the desk and jutted out a curvy, come-hither hip. “Well, here is where it all goes down.”

“Where all what goes down?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t care. I avoid thinking about my job any more than I have to as a tremendously dedicated professional.”

He laughed and said, “But he never sees people up here, right? That’s the scuttlebutt.” Sam’s eyes caressed every inch of the room instead of caressing every inch of me.

“Yes, that’s true, I guess. It’s a
secret
office,” I joked. He didn’t say anything. I glanced in the ornate wall mirror and floofed up my hair.

Sam made a slow circuit of the room while I almost jumped out of my skin. I ought to be the jumpee, not the jumper—why was he ignoring my obvious signals? My seduction techniques were rusty. Perhaps in true Tinseltown fashion I should have sent him a sex tape as a warm-up act.

“I heard there was a secret,
secret
room.” he said.

My heart tripped just enough to make me flustered. “How do you—?” Shit. A good assistant would have denied the secret,
secret
room. Truth be told, I was a competent, bored assistant at best. “I mean, what room?”

He prowled some more in my direction, a dangerous smile playing about his features. “I mean this door right here beside you.”

FYI, when you make a hidden hideaway, you shouldn’t put a giant, undisguised metal door on it.

“I can’t let you in. I don’t even go in there.”

“So you know the code?” He’d taken on an I-dare-you air.

I was the worst secret keeper in the world. Saying nothing was obviously the best course of action.

He leaned in so that we stood cheek to cheek. His breath tickled my ear when he murmured, “I want to kiss a masterpiece like you amongst other masterpieces.”

I’d never been whispered such an overblown load of obviously seductive bullshit in my life. It was wonderful. A naughty thrill set my skin to tingling—the urge to break rules overcame me. Peeking inside Oliver’s secret gallery wasn’t too rowdy, as rebellions went, but it was fun, and it was mine.

I backed away and walked to the keypad outside the not-so-hush-hush vault. I punched in the code—sixty-nine, sixty-nine, six. Did I mention how classy Oliver was?

Cool air whooshed into the office as the door swung open. Rows of tiny spotlights flashed to attention. His body behind mine, Sam shuffled me into a world of rare artefacts and priceless artworks. If you dismembered me and sold me for parts, I wouldn’t be worth one square inch of this room. Every once in a while I would steal in here and sit, drinking in the kind of beauty rare in this life. It wasn’t a huge vault—about twenty by thirty feet, with a cushioned, velvet-covered bench running down the centre—but it was an island of pure tranquillity.

There was a gorgeous wooden mask from Oliver’s trip to Mali a month ago. A collection of ancient Egyptian
ushabtis
sat in a plexiglass display case. Paintings by Matisse, Dali, Kahlo and a dozen others lined the walls, jammed together in double rows, embracing the mere mortals in the middle.