Mr. Right There All Along Read online

  Trevor’s laughter could be heard over the music and conversation. “Just a heads up, friend. Society frowns on guys looking at their sisters the way you’re looking at Chloe right now.”

  “I’m not looking—”

  Trevor cut him off. “It must really suck that she’s seeing someone else.”

  No, what sucked was that she didn’t see Simon.

  Not that he wanted her to, he amended quickly. That unspoken lie, unlike the whoppers he’d just told Trevor, left a nasty taste in his mouth.

  “Want a drink?” God knew Simon could use a refill.

  “Sure.”

  It was closing in on two in the morning. The party was on its last leg and so was Simon. Most of the guests already had left, including Trevor and Shauna. In fact, they were among the first to leave. With the food nearly gone and the bar running low, the last of the holdouts finally staggered toward the exit and the cabs Simon had called to ferry them home.

  He’d dismissed his housekeeper early in the evening and then the waitstaff and bartender just before one o’clock. He’d seen no need for them to hang around for the handful of his colleagues who’d remained. Now, finally, he was alone.

  Except for Chloe.

  He found her in the kitchen, standing next to a platter of cold hors d’oeuvres and staring at them with a covetous expression.

  “Step away from the stuffed mushrooms,” he commanded in an appropriately stern voice.

  She actually jumped.

  “I’ve only had one. Okay, two, but I dropped half of the second one on the floor, so it doesn’t count.”

  “How much have you had to drink?” He’d counted at least three glasses of wine, but then he hadn’t been with her every moment of the evening. She could have slipped in a fourth. Maybe even a fifth.

  “Not nearly enough.” She sighed and levered herself up onto the granite countertop. One wedge sandal hit the floor, followed by the other. She wiggled her toes and sighed again.

  “I’m sorry the night didn’t turn out how you’d hoped.”

  Guilt nipped at him after he said it, since Trevor had expressed interest in her and might very well have approached her if not for Simon’s comments. He shouldn’t have lied and said she was involved with someone. As for the jujitsu and power-lifting comments, they weren’t completely baseless. She’d taken an aerobic kickboxing class last summer, and when they went for their morning jogs, she often carried hand weights.

  “He asked me out.”

  “Wh-wh-what?” he sputtered. “Who?”

  “Trevor.”

  That son of a… “Even after I…”

  “Even after you what?”

  “Nothing.” He popped a cold stuffed mushroom into his mouth, stalling as he searched for a plausible response. It turned out he didn’t need one.

  “You were right about him, Simon. He’s a serial dater of the worst sort. Here he is out with a beautiful and interesting—if totally self-absorbed—woman, and the moment she excuses herself to go to the restroom, he comes on to me. Me!” She frowned. “For some reason, he asked me to show him some martial arts moves.”

  Simon swallowed. “Kinky.”

  “A guy like that is a snake, no matter how gorgeous.”

  “So, you said no?”

  “I’ll probably regret this for the rest of my life, but yes. I said no. My luck, if he’d gone with me to the reunion he would have hit on my archrival.”

  Whatever the reason, Simon wasn’t going to quibble. “I’m glad.”

  “Yeah, and I’m dateless for the reunion.” She fussed with her hair, pulling it into a ponytail at the back of her head before letting it fall free. It spread around her shoulders in a fiery cascade. He jerked his gaze away before a full-fledged fantasy could form and focused on her bare feet instead.

  “You kept your shoes on until the guests left. That’s a record.”

  She smiled and stretched out her legs. Copper-tipped toes wiggled again. He swallowed. Damn those fantasies. They just kept coming.

  “I’m paying for it now,” she was saying.

  “Here, let me.” It was pure folly and he would regret it later. But he pulled a chair in front of her and sat down. Taking one slender foot in his hands, he began to massage the arch. Her eyelids slid shut and her expression turned rhapsodic. The moan that escaped was nearly his undoing.

  “You’ve got great hands,” she said.

  “This isn’t even my best work.”

  Her eyes opened. Neither of them said anything as the moment stretched. All the while, he continued his ministrations on her instep.

  “Don’t…don’t neglect the other one,” she whispered when his hands finally stilled.

  He did as instructed.

  “You’ve got such soft skin.” He was no longer rubbing her foot. He’d worked his way up to her calf. “It feels like silk.”

  “I…I…always apply lotion right after I get out of the shower,” she told him. Simon didn’t think he’d ever heard her sound quite so breathless. Unless it was after a run. “It locks in mmm-moisture.”

  “I’ll have to remember that.” It was his voice that sounded breathless now. He started to work on the other leg from ankle to knee. “Do you…apply it all over?”

  “On every inch of me.”

  “That must take a while.”

  “Uh-huh. If you do it right.” The knuckles on the hands wrapped around the edge of the countertop turned white, telling Simon that he was doing something right.

  “Anything worth doing is worth doing right.”

  He rose from his chair. His hands caressed the backs of her knees, finding a sensitive spot that caused her to moan. He knew he should stop. He was flirting with disaster. He never should have let it get this far. He wanted to blame his lapse in control on the beverages he’d consumed. But he’d cut himself off over two hours earlier, and even then after only three relatively diluted gin and tonics. No, what had him intoxicated now was the woman before him. The woman whose legs he was literally standing between.

  “I…I must have had more to drink than I thought,” Chloe said. She pulled her legs free, swiveled to the side and hopped down.

  So, she was going to use the excuse he’d already discarded. He would let her. “Light-headed?”

  “Out of my mind,” it sounded like she muttered. Or maybe he just needed her to say something to that effect. He didn’t want to be the only one who felt so desperate and disturbed.

  “Maybe you should stay here. I hate the thought of you going home at this hour, especially if you’re a little drunk.”

  “I’m not drunk.”

  “You just said—”

  “Light-headed. Which could be attributed to not eating more than a few appetizers all evening.”

  “I’ve got leftover pizza in the fridge. It’s from our favorite place.”

  “At this time of night? Too many calories and fat grams. That kind of indulgence requires a strenuous workout afterward to keep the guilt at bay.”

  “I can think of a strenuous workout.”

  She blinked at that, but was the color rising in her cheeks from surprise or interest? He decided not to find out. Too much was at stake to change the rules of their relationship now. “We’re going running in the morning, aren’t we?”

  Chloe nodded vigorously. “Of course. Exactly. I knew that was what you meant.”

  “Does that mean you’ll have some pizza?”

  “It means you’d better call me a cab before I make a huge mistake.”

  He nodded. He knew exactly what she meant.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Best Complexion

  PANIC BUILT AS the taxi Chloe had splurged on crawled through midday Manhattan traffic.

  What was she going to do?

  Well, besides lock herself in her apartment and live like a hermit until several layers of her epidermis had sloughed off.

  How come she had to get the one person at the tanning salon who was new and, well, stupid? These kind
s of mistakes had a way of finding Chloe. It was as if she’d been born as the test subject for practical jokes and laughable mishaps.

  Only, she wasn’t laughing.

  She was hiding.

  And probably looking like a wannabe celebrity with a scarf pulled over her hair and a pair of oversized sun glasses covering much of her face. She’d bought both from a street vendor outside the salon who’d been so preoccupied with her appearance that he hadn’t even bothered to try to sell her any of the knockoff designer watches strapped to his arms.

  The cabdriver was eyeing her in the rearview mirror. Since she was talking to herself, she understood why.

  “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.” She’d been chanting those words since leaving the salon.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” she said. When the driver didn’t respond, she leaned forward and tapped the Plexiglas partition. “I’ve changed my mind.”

  “It’s not going to be okay?” he asked warily.

  Chloe cleared her throat. “No. I mean, yes. It’s going to be…forget it. I’ve changed my mind about where I want you to take me.”

  She rattled off a new address and leaned back in her seat, where she continued her chant. Fifteen minutes later, the taxi driver pulled his cab to a stop outside Ford Technology Solutions, where Chloe quickly dashed inside, slipped into the first available elevator and rudely closed the door on the man rushing toward it, calling, “Hold, please!”

  It was lunchtime, so Simon’s secretary wasn’t manning her usual guard post outside his office. But he was there. He’d mentioned during an earlier phone conversation that he was going to eat a sandwich at his desk while preparing for an afternoon meeting. She nearly went limp with relief when she spied him. Lunch and a sheaf of papers were spread out in front of him. His tie was askew, his shirtsleeves rolled nearly to his elbows. His thick and usually neatly combed hair was mussed, probably from running his fingers through it. She liked it better this way. She found it sexy.

  More and more lately, Chloe was finding things about Simon to be sexy. The way he’d rubbed her feet the other night definitely qualified. She’d engaged in foreplay that hadn’t left her that breathless and keyed up.

  A warning bell went off in her head. She’d done her damnedest not to recall that night or her reaction. She concentrated on the attributes that had brought her here today. Simon was dependable, level-headed and pragmatic. He would know what to do.

  Apparently that was to choke on a mouthful of smoked turkey on whole wheat and spill his opened bottle of water on his desktop.

  “Chloe?” He thumped his chest and reached for a napkin to blot the soggy papers. “I can’t believe you got past security wearing that outfit. Are you impersonating a celebrity or something?”

  “Something,” she replied on a sigh and pulled off the sunglasses and scarf.

  His eyes widened. “Good God! You’re—”

  “Don’t say it,” she warned. Actually, the words came out more as a plea.

  But Simon apparently couldn’t stop himself from stating the obvious: “You’re orange.”

  She wanted to cry. In fact, she already had cried in the salon’s changing room. The only thing a good bout of tears had accomplished, however, was to make her eyes puffy and red-rimmed. Now they clashed with her new complexion.

  Simon tossed the wet napkins into the trash. “Actually, you’re more tangerine than orange.”

  She nodded, as if the distinction made a bit of difference. The fact remained that Chloe looked as if she had escaped from a box of crayons.

  “Mind telling me what happened?”

  “I went to a tanning salon. Frannie suggested—”

  “Why do you listen to her?”

  She ignored him and went on. “Frannie suggested I get a faux tan and gave me the name of the place where she goes. Well, they were busy today. One of the sprayer thingies was broken, and someone had called in sick. The girl who’d just been hired last week to staff the reception desk was pitching in.” Chloe worked up a smile. No doubt her whitened teeth gleamed against her new skin tone. “On the bright side, I didn’t have to pay for my session.”

  “I should hope not.”

  Her bottom lip wobbled. “Is it as bad as I think?”

  “No. Uh-uh.” The fierce way he shook his head was overkill. “The, um, lighting in here is horrible. It gives everything an orange, er, tangerine tint.”

  He was lying and badly, but she loved him for it. She collapsed into one of the chairs that faced his desk.

  “All I wanted was a nice glow, something to tone down my fish-belly whiteness.”

  “Your skin color is called alabaster.”

  “I was just going for off-white,” she cried. “I wanted to camouflage my freckles.”

  “I like your freckles.”

  She scrunched her eyes closed. “My freckles are the least of my problems now.”

  “So, exactly what happened?”

  “I got a teeny-bopper named Cinnamon—”

  “Cinnamon? Are you kidding? Her parents actually named her after a spice?”

  “It happens. Think Rosemary or Sage.”

  Simon nodded in consideration. “Now that you mention it, I went to college with a guy called Basil, and my cousin named her first-born Dill.” He shook his head. “Scratch that. I think his full name is Dillon.”

  Chloe snapped her fingers. “Can I get back to my story, please?”

  “Sure. Sorry.” He picked up his sandwich and motioned for her to continue.

  “So, this Cinnamon girl apparently failed the remedial reading class at her school and…” Chloe’s words trailed off and she let her head fall back on an exasperated shriek. Studying the ceiling tiles, she asked, “Why do the cosmos hate me?”

  Simon didn’t bother trying to answer the unanswerable. He was too practical for that, which was precisely why she’d hightailed it to his office when any sane person would have gone home and begun scrubbing with a loofah.

  “It’s a fake tan, right?”

  A grunt served as her reply.

  “It will fade long before the reunion, which isn’t for three weeks.”

  “Two weeks and four days.” But she straightened in her chair.

  “That’s plenty of time.”

  Chloe sniffled. “Do you really think so?”

  “I know so. You’ll be back to alabaster in no time.”

  “Alabaster. You know, that does have a better ring to it than fish-belly white,” she conceded.

  “You have lovely skin, Chloe. And, as I discovered the other night, incredibly soft.”

  Her hands stilled. Her pulse, meanwhile, took off like a thoroughbred coming out of the chute on race day. She’d replayed every second of their encounter in his kitchen a dozen times since then, wondering what might have happened if she’d stayed. Wishing…

  She realized she was staring at him. He was staring at her, too, his expression indecipherable, which was odd. She’d known him so long that she felt she could read him like a book. Well, if he were a book now, he was written in hieroglyphics.

  “What are you thinking, Simon?”

  Why had she asked him that? Not that she wasn’t curious, but she was in the middle of a crisis and…and…and there had to be some other reason the topic was off-limits.

  “What am I thinking?”

  Here was her opportunity to back away. But did she take it? “What’s on your mind?”

  He put down what remained of his sandwich and wiped his hands on a napkin. “The same thing that’s been on my mind for quite a while.”

  Oh, that was helpful. He could be referring to baseball or work or—and she’d kill him for this—that hot new girl at the lobby’s reception desk that Chloe had spied on her mad dash to the elevators.

  Let it go, she told herself. She asked, “Does it have anything to do with…me?”

  God! She wanted to slap a hand over her mouth, maybe follow it up with several layers of duct tape. The questio
n hung in the air between them. His expression remained unreadable.

  Finally, he said, “It does.”

  Two simple words and her breath hitched. It actually hitched.

  Chloe tried to remember another time in the company of another man when her breath had caught in her throat before shuddering out. The best she could come up with was Justin Timberlake back when he was part of *NSYNC and she’d saved up her allowance for a whole month to buy a ticket to the group’s upcoming concert. For weeks beforehand, she’d listened to the band’s latest CD, singing into her hairbrush and dancing in front of the mirror in her bedroom, all the while dreaming of catching Justin’s eye at the upcoming concert.

  She hadn’t. No big surprise there since her seat had been about three miles from the stage.

  Other than that, even the men she’d dated post-college, the very ones she’d claimed had stomped all over her heart and prompted her to overindulge in ice cream, had never caused her respiratory tract to go all wonky like this.

  “H-h-how?”

  He expelled a breath and then said her name.

  Suddenly, she didn’t want to know. She was misreading signals and being foolish. If Simon were interested in her that way, he would have said something. As it was, since he hadn’t, she’d been content with his friendship. Well, maybe not completely content, but she’d accepted it since she didn’t want to lose him.

  “Getting back to my situation, I guess I can be thankful I went for a trial run.”

  His brow crinkled.

  “At the tanning salon,” she clarified. “Can you imagine if the reunion were this weekend?”

  She wasn’t acting when she shuddered.

  “Would you have gone?” he asked.

  “What? And give those girls another reason to tease me? Not a chance. It’s bad enough I’ll be showing up dateless.”

  “You could go with me, you know.”

  He was being practical. After all, he and Chloe would wind up sitting together anyway. Just as whoever they brought with them would wind up being bored.