“What are you doing here?” He glanced up at her face. “Come to take me up on my
offer?”
“No.” She stepped over and sat the information down on his desk. “I already told you.
I came to drop off the information I promised you. I finished earlier than I’d planned, and
you mentioned the tight deadline, so I thought I’d jump on it. Call me efficient.”
“You have a fax machine.” He answered her more abrasively than necessary. “Next
time, you can call my secretary and she’ll give you the number, unless you want to swing
by and replay the last time you knocked on my office door sans clothes.”
She crossed her arms. “I’m going to ignore that comment. I assumed it would be easier
to stop in and deliver them since I’m staying with my dad and I pass the tennis center on
the way home, but next time I won’t.”
He sat up and shrugged. “Fine.”
She scoffed.
“What’d you make that noise for?”
“You. I thought you forgave me for all the things I used to put you through but
apparently, you’re still holding it against me. I thought bigger of you.” She licked her
lips. “At one time, you were the only thing that kept me sane after my mom left. When I
couldn’t go to my dad, I threw myself into my lessons and spent every spare moment at
the center. I thought we were friends. I might have been a little incorrigible—”
“A little?” He laughed. “Do you have any idea how many of my girlfriends you
chased away?”
She waved off his question. “You weren’t serious about any of them. Besides, I was
doing you a favor.”
“Some favor.” He shook his head. “What about the time you packed a picnic basket
and insisted I join you outside for lunch?”
“I was sixteen, Grayson.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “All you had to do
was say no.”
“You asked me in the middle of a press conference!” He narrowed his eyes. “I had to
go to lunch with you, or be verbally whipped every time I stepped out of the house by
reporters wanting to know what was going on between us. Do you know what kind of
light that would’ve cast over my career if they found out how you...you wanted me? I
was twenty-three years old. The press would’ve nailed me to the billboard on the edge of
town if they even thought I was returning your affection.”
“I—”
“If that wasn’t bad enough, you asked the camera guys to film the whole picnic. What
kind of person does such a thing?” He waited for her to answer.
“Well, then, I apologize,” she whispered.
“Listen, sweetheart.” He stood up and stepped in front of her. “Maybe having us work
together isn’t such a good idea.”
A gleam of deviltry flashed in her eyes. “Why? Because I drove you nuts when I was
younger? How many times must I say I’m sorry...for my past?”
“You stalked me.”
“Which I’ve apologized for many times over. Maybe you’re the one having problems
forgiving and forgetting.” She glanced away. “Don’t make me sound crazy. You were
there. You felt it too.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Do you still have all those pictures of me you cut out of
magazines stapled above your bed?”
“No.” Shauna’s gaze flickered to the window, and her hesitation amused him.
“Shauna...” He leaned down, until his lips were inches from her mouth. “It’d be good
between us. You’re no longer a little girl, and I’m not a man who plays games. Nothing
will stop me. I have no problem with taking you right here, on top of my desk, for the
whole town to see. You’re no longer an eighteen-year-old girl wanting to lose her
virginity—there’s nothing stopping me from taking what I see in your eyes.”
“My eyes?”
“Mmhm.” His nostrils flared. “I see how your eyelids flutter and your pupils dilate
every time I step close to you.”
“They do?” She raised her hand to her cheek.
“You have this little habit of catching your lower lip between your teeth, and staring at
my mouth as if you want to lean forward and—”
“I do not!” She clamped her lips closed.
“Oh yeah, I’d have no problems taking what you offer me, right now.” He cocked his
head. “Twice.”
“You would not.”
“Try me.”
“You seem to have a faulty memory, because I’ve asked you before. You chickened
out. A woman doesn’t forget when a man tells her no, especially when she’s stripped
bare, emotionally and physically.” She stepped around him, but he called out her name
before she could slink away. “What?”
He paused, but he never stopped looking at her. “I remember. I remember every little
detail about that night. I remember how willing you were to give me your body.”
“Then you walked away and called my dad.”
He nodded. “Biggest mistake of my life.”
“I was crushed.”
“I know.” He sighed. “Maybe I can make up for hurting your feelings.”
“By having sex with me now?” She laughed harshly. “I don’t think so.”
