Desk Jockey Jam (11 page)

He said, “Okay,” and she
wasn’t sure if he meant the state of her arms or it was the beginning of his
response.  “You look good.”

She sighed.  She’d have
left the blasted jacket on if he was going to get personal.  Especially if
she’d known she was going to like it.  Like the hand holding and the knee
touching and the eye contact that held and was so much more engaging than
shoes.

“Hey, I’m sorry.  You’re
beautiful.” 

She started, her back
straightening.  He interpreted that as annoyance.  He didn’t know, couldn’t
know, how much trouble she was in after hearing that. 

His hand came up, a stop
gesture to hold back the protest he expected her to make.  “I know I’m not
supposed to notice because you’re one of the boys and it’s work, but it’s nice
to see you looking,” he hesitated; he’d done enough damage by calling her
beautiful, she held her breath, “healthy.”  

He grinned at her over the
top of his bottle and she forgave him.  He’d called her beautiful, so in this
moment she’d forgive him almost anything—almost.  “Answer the question.”

“Ah, Bree.”  That pointed
look at her arms became a lazy inspection of the rest of her.  She worked to
keep the heat it caused from her face.  “You went to a good school, right?”

“Yes.”  Where was this
going?

“And got top grades.  Then
went to Sydney or NSW uni, yeah?”

She nodded.  That wasn’t
so hard to guess.  She was a success story cliché unless you knew everything
about her.  About how being cute and good and smart had bored her, then scared
her into doing things differently.

“You did a double degree,
commerce, law.  And you were high distinctions all the way.”

She smiled.  He might not
be a good poker player but he was a good analyst.  “Mostly.  There was that one
distinction, but I was robbed.”

He tapped his hand on the
cushion space between them, three times.  “You’re first job was in a
professional office.  You probably did work experience with an accountancy firm
or another broker, and you walked into this job with a recommendation from
someone well connected in the city.”

She nodded.  He had the
‘for public consumption’ version of her story down pat.  “Close enough, what’s
your point?”

“I didn’t do any of those
things.  I had to quit school at sixteen.  I finished it at night while I
worked in a hardware store during the day.  Then I got a low paying office job
at a no name stockbroker and I did every dirty job they threw at me while I
went to uni part-time and did odd jobs on the weekend.  I got passes and
credits.  I talked myself into this job and my probationary period was six
months.  I’m betting yours was three.”

She gasped.  She had no
idea his background was so different, or that he’d done it the hard way.  Her
senses were flooded with admiration for him and his big, loud, intense ways.

“I’m a fake, Bree.  And
you’re the real deal.  The only way I can belong in a world you were made for,
trained for, is to work harder than anyone else and do better.  So when you ask
me why winning is so important, I’d say it’s because I’m a fish and even a fish
out of water tries bloody hard to swim.”

10:      Confession

Christ he needed another drink. 
But it was probably that second one that made him shove a knife in his chest, carve
himself open and spill his guts all over Bree.  She was looking at him as
though he was a combined dose of Bali belly and leprosy, and continued contact
with him would rot her gut first then make her limbs fall off, one by painful
one.

He looked over his
shoulder.  “Where’s a jumpsuit when you need one.”  Bree’s hand on his arm made
his head snap back like a ringpull.

“You need a medal, that’s
what you need.”

She gripped him firmly. 
She didn’t look like she was having a lend.  “Yeah, right.”  His bitterness
burned his own ears.  Fuck knows how she felt about his whinging.

“No, Ant.  I mean it.”

He took her hand in his
and squeezed it.  “I shouldn’t have said all that.  I didn’t mean to make a big
deal of it.  I’m sorry.  I caused a scene and ruined your victory dinner.”   He
looked around at the room full of people not having a fucking awkward moment
like this.  “I hauled you down here for a drink you don’t want.  I crossed the
line with that stupid comment about you being beautiful, then I whinged at you
like a flaming five year old.”

“You forgot the fact you
bet against me with your shithead mates.”

“You got the better end of
the stick when we ignored each other.”  He didn’t want to see revulsion in her
eyes.  He let go her hand and tried to get some waitress eye contact happening.

“Look at me, Ant.”

“Do you want another
drink?”  She’d barely sipped the last one.

She put both hands on his
face, framing it, turning it so he had to look in her lovely eyes.  “You have
nothing to be ashamed about.”

“I’m not ashamed.”  Never. 
There was nothing shameful about doing things the hard way.  He was annoyed
he’d reframed her achievements in the light of his disadvantages.  As though
what she’d done was less amazing.  He tried to pull away, but she scooted
closer.  She was looking at him as if he was some goal she had to capture and
hold. 

“You don’t think I’m
beautiful?”

“Shit, yeah.  I think
you’re gorgeous.”  Since day one.  She’d had those red shoes with the stripy
heels on.  And he’d known he wasn’t supposed to be attracted to her.  Made it
easy to paint her all kinds of wrong in his head.

“Are you going to ask me
out properly?”

He peeled her hands away,
but kept them in his and she didn’t shuffle back across the lounge.  What was
going on here?  From the minute she’d taken his hand back at the restaurant,
he’d been fantasising about getting closer to her.  But that was a whole lot of
bullshit, because she was way out of his pay grade and postcode, so there was
no chance that was ever going to happen.  Even if they weren’t work colleagues,
and work colleagues weren’t totally out of bounds for a whole bunch of good
reasons, least of all hysterics in the office when things inevitably went south
because he screwed up.  The best he could ever hope for from a classy chick
like Bree was some hasty tasty drunken favour, never referred to again. 
So
what the fuck was she asking him to ask her out properly for?

“I told the guys you were
a colleague and it wasn’t right to involve you in this.”  He could chew out his
own tongue for every shitty thing he’d said to the boys about Bree.  He did not
need to subject her to their scrutiny and he’d do anything to stop it
happening.

“Hang on.  You bet if I
won I’d get grovelling and a free feed and now you’re reneging.”

“It’s not like that.”

She shook his hands as if
the answer could be rattled out of them.  “What’s it like then?”

It was grubby and
demeaning and he should never have made the bet in the first place.  “You don’t
want anything to do with it.”

“And miss seeing you humiliated,
are you kidding?”

He looked down at their
hands.  “What’s going on here?”

She laughed, a green,
fresh, musical sound, but when she spoke her voice was hot sweet toffee.  “I
don’t know, but I like it.”

“What are we going to do
then?”  His body was at war over this question.  Only the tiniest part of his
brain was holding out, processing what a bad idea pushing for more than just
being with her like this was.  The rest of him was already assessing what her
skin would taste like and what she’d look like with her head thrown back and
her eyes closed when she lost it under him.

“We should probably take
it easy.”  He wanted to lick her throat where her sweet voice came from.

“Is that a nice way of telling
me whoa Nelly?” 

She wet her lips.  “Not
necessarily.”

The remainder of the guts
he hadn’t already spilled in her lap somersaulted.  “Whoa Nelly.  You mean,
you’d consider...” he ran out of words.  Not because there weren’t any left,
but because there were too many that could be used to complete the sentence,
and he couldn’t choose between the professional: ‘developing our relationship’,
the benign, ‘letting me take you out’, or the new truth he suddenly knew was
about to interrupt his romantically carefree life.

He wanted something more
than a one night stand with this girl.

“Do you want to kiss me,
Ant?”

He shook his head.  The
lie coming easy because the truth was foreign and dangerous.  She freaking
pouted, pushing that juicy bottom lip out.  What was he supposed to say?  His,
“Fuck, yeah,” came out hollow and achy, like he’d chewed his tongue out.

She moved first.  She
leaned that extra bit forward, then stopped.  He exhaled in surprise.  Beer and
God knows what other foul, half digested lamb chop smells must’ve been on his
breath.  She didn’t care.  She licked her lips again.  Shit, she was playing
with him.  Polite, reserved, cool, probably shy, private, Bree Robinson was
playing with him.  She put her hand on his cheek and ran her thumb over his bottom
lip. 

“Are you going to kiss
me?” he choked out.

“I might.”  He grunted as
her other hand speared through his hair.  “Do you want me to?”

“You would, girl, if you
were being nice.”

“Oh you don’t think I’m
nice, Ant.”  She breathed on him, heat and desire.  “Tell me what you really
think?”

Where was this coming
from?  This wasn’t Bree who wore conservative suits and tried to stay out of
his way.  This was some other girl, reckless and ruthless, who looked like Bree,
but had made it her ambition to twist him in knots and leave him strung out and
dying on the uncomfortable furniture of a trendy drinking spot for want of a
freaking lip lock.

“You’re a tease and a
bitch, and if you don’t follow through with that kiss things could get ugly.”

“Oh yeah.  What are you
going to do about it?”

He wasn’t going to trade
quips.  He palmed the back of her head and crashed his lips into hers.  Shock
made her body jerk and she resisted, stiffening, flattening her lips.  He let
go of her head, cursing himself for rushing this, ruining this, and she sighed,
her mouth suddenly softening.  Her hands came up to his shoulders, then twisted
around his neck and she hauled herself closer to him.  Now they were really kissing
and she was a sweet drugging sensation on his lips and fresh starched cotton in
his nose.  She went from soft to liquid, her fingers dug into his neck and he
pulled her the rest of the way into his body.

The only sound in the room
was the whimper she made, need and want melded into a thrilling purr that made
him search for her repeat button.  He put his hand back to her head, tunnelled
his fingers through strands of glossy gold and silk and shook the clip holding
it free so her hair fell about her neck and shoulders.  His other hand was low
on her back, pressing the twist in her spine so their thighs were flush and her
breast grazed his ribs.  He fought the notion of climbing over her, pressing
her back into the cushions so he’d have her trapped against him.  He didn’t
fight the one that made him drag her across his lap.  She murmured a protest
but it was easily silence by another mind swamping kiss.

The dress had no openings,
no buttons, no zipper, though his hands sought access, shaping across her back,
ribs, hips.  Only the vaguest memory they were somewhere public and this was
Bree kept him from running his hand under the hem and between her legs.  All
the while their conversation was wordless, tangled and wet, sucking and
searching, probing and chasing, mining the possibilities for what they could do
if that dress came off and they got horizontal.

She stopped him when he
rolled a knuckle across her nipple.  She pushed against his arms and he let her
shift back, her hair wild, her eyes huge.  They’d done about as much as they’d
get away with without being thrown out and there was a whole weekend and clean
sheets for this.  A hard shove to his chest and he dropped his hands from her. 
“Let’s get out of here?”

She put her feet to the
floor and stood, hands to her hair, trying to tame it.  “No.  No.”  She looked panicked. 
He got it.  They’d shifted from hate to passion with the suddenness of a freak
wave and he felt the rip of it too, low in his gut, wide across his chest and
deep in his senses.  This was the kind of thing that happened to other blokes;
had happened to Dan.

“No.  No.  We can’t. 
That, that.  I shouldn’t have.  No.”

He stood, reaching for
her, but she stepped back and put the table between them.  “No one here cares,
Bree.”

She looked around, shaking
her head.  “This is wrong.  We can’t.  I can’t.”  She had a hand over forehead,
like she was holding onto her thoughts.

“We just did, baby.”

She dead eyed him.  “I am
not your baby.”  It felt like a slap, sharp and hard and undeserved.  “What the
hell’s wrong?”  He had to tuck his shirt in, it’s not like she hadn’t wanted to
play.