Driving in Neutral (8 page)

“I’m sorry.”

“Does knowing those details make me a little more respectable now?”

“I didn’t think you were unrespectable.”

“Then what was with the surprised look on your face?”

“What surprised look?”

As she planted her hands on her hips she made a face, her mouth hanging open in a round
O
. “Your jaw made a pretty big clunk when it hit the pavement after I said I was married twice. In fact, it made more noise that time than when you found out I used to race.”

“You just don’t look the type.”

“For what, racing and test driving?”

“No, for being married twice.”

“There’s a type?”

“Sure.”

“And that is…”

“Las Vegas strippers and gold-digging girls in their twenties.” His eyes wandered over her, dipping low to glance at her breasts before returning to her face. “You don’t look like a girl to me.”

“I don’t?”

“No. And I don’t like girls.”

“I guess I’m not your type then.”

“Why would you think that?”

“You don’t like girls.”

“I don’t like girls. I like
women
.”

“How old are you, Maxwell?”

“Almost forty-eight.”

“Then you’re old enough to know better than to play this kind of game.”

“I’m not into playing games.”

She moved to the car’s open door, leaving one hand on the frame and the other on the low roof before she swung inside. “You’re my boss, so how about we just keep this a strictly business, employer-employee relationship and handle it with good taste?”

“I know exactly how good you taste.”

Olivia maintained a blank façade. There was no way she’d let on she’d thought about how he tasted too. Kissing him had switched on a natural yearning to be touched, only she didn’t want him touching her again. She didn’t want to think about the flavor of his kiss or how it felt to sit in his lap, and she most certainly didn’t want to add more fodder to the office grapevine than they’d already managed to create from this morning’s elevator extravaganza. She’d ridden the gossip-go-round with Karl and had wanted to throw up from all the spinning.

Never again
. Never
again
.

“Listen, Maxwell—”

“
Emerson
. People who work for me call me Maxwell. My friends call me Emerson.”

“I hardly know you—”

The Jeep honked again.

Emerson put his hand over the top of hers. “So get to know me,” he said, his voice low and full of promise. Her rich brown eyes wandered over his face and he knew his appeal was indisputable, he knew the chemistry was there and she couldn’t deny it. “Don’t be such a cynic and automatically think the worst of me because we had an unusual start.”

“I’m not a cynic. I’m merely realistic. I don’t fool myself into thinking this would amount to anything more than a fling and I’ve got other things to concentrate on, more important things.”

“Spoken like a true wet blanket.”

“I think you mean
wet rodent
.” She pulled her hand away. “Good night, Maxwell.”

A weekend of sitting around with his knee elevated was all it took to realize exactly how much his curiosity had been piqued. That first Monday morning, after he’d rummaged around in a pile on his desk and finally read her impressive CV, Emerson did an Internet search on Olivia.

He was further impressed.

She’d been a member of the Halray Touring Car Race Team before she turned design engineer and test driver for the team and moved on to BMW Formula One prototypes. She hadn’t competed in over fifteen years, but the Team Halray website had a photo history of past and present members. There was a sweet picture of Olivia Regen in a red fireproof suit, and she looked so damned cute standing beside a green car with a crash helmet tucked under one arm.

Emerson enlarged the image and studied it. She wore dark sunglasses; the pointy kind popular in the ’50s. The pink scar near her mouth was missing.

Chicks were supposed to dig scars on guys, but damn, that crescent-shaped scar of hers fascinated him. It reminded him of Cindy Crawford’s mole. That tiny brown button above Cindy’s top lip was the thing that made her stand out, what made her incredibly gorgeous. Little flaws like that were so much more appealing than china-skinned perfection.

More curious than ever, Emerson continued his web search. He keyed her name into Google and a slew of web links popped up. Each one listed Olivia’s name with an Austrian driver named Karl Abenteuer, and the first line of every web link mentioned a video. There were other words too, words like
raunchy
,
naked
, and
porn
.

Porn?

Olivia had done a
porn
video?

Emerson’s palm hovered on his wireless mouse, his finger poised to click a link.

Well, well. Racing cars and kissing strangers in elevators certainly meant she was daring, despite the
No Trespassing
sign she wore like a pendant around her neck, but Olivia doing a raunchy skin flick? Now that was sure a surprise.

Porn…home sex videos…YouTube links… They were out there. In the public domain. For everyone to see.

It was like an itch, a devilish itch at the base of his… He glanced at sentence fragments in the YouTube link and read words like
wife
…
threesome
…
nude actress…tattoos on her amazing
…and
Abenteuer’s Adventure
.

His finger was still poised over the mouse. He looked at thumbnail photos, grainy pictures of a couple. He made out shapes, what could have been the peachy curve of a woman’s bare buttock, a bare shoulder, an open mouth that was too small to see if there was a scar beside it.

Emerson felt his tongue lick at the edge of his mouth. Ideas began to float about his mind, natural ideas that men were built to have, randy ideas that came without thinking. The film clips and photos were in the public domain and he was the public in that domain. Which meant he wouldn’t be the first or last to see what was freely available, what was broadcast worldwide.

He was about to click his mouse, to watch a clip on YouTube, but something stopped him. While it wouldn’t be the first time he goofed off and played around on the Internet instead of doing work, it would be the first time he considered looking at
adult
content in the office. Yet that wasn’t what stopped him cold. The sweaty sleaziness stopped him from clicking the link. Well, sweaty sleaziness and the fact he suddenly remembered he was the boss.

Her
boss.

An employer didn’t take advantage of an employee, even if she presented herself naked on what looked like…a bed of rose petals. Looking at nude photos or sex videos of employees was unprofessional and probably unethical.

Annoyed with himself, and more than a little turned on, Emerson closed the page only to have his screen return to the Team Halray website. Olivia, in her red fireproof suit, smiled at him from behind her dark sunglasses.

The practical, neck-to-ankle safety gear covered her up completely, and it stoked his imagination better than the partly downloaded images, the idea of a naked video, or the memory of how Olivia’s rain-soaked dress clung transparently to her breasts.

He copied the picture and saved it in a folder on his computer desktop.

Five minutes later, he was outside her office. She had music playing. It was an old song. The Electric Light Orchestra sang about an evil woman making a fool of someone. He tapped on her half-open office door.

“Come on in,” she called out.

Confident he was not about to make an ass of himself, he went inside and tried to think of something appropriately boss-like to say.

For someone employed in a temporary position, Pete had given Olivia the most elegant and well-equipped workspace. It was huge and had a view that rivaled his. He whistled. “You can see nearly all the way up to the Drake.”

When she turned down the volume on the music compilation she was listening to, he looked out the window instead of staring at her like he wanted to.

“Yes, it’s a lovely view,” Olivia said, careful to keep her gaze fixed on images on a flat screen monitor.

“Is translating that technical stuff difficult?”

He came to the side of her desk. Olivia felt her pulse quicken. She pulled off reading glasses and set them beside the keyboard. “Not at all.”

“I wondered because a lot was written in that German script, the one where an
s
looks like an
f
and then there’s that weird looking
B
that’s really a double
s
.”

“It’s not a problem.”

“Is anyone giving you any grief about your underwear?”

“Not since Timmons and Josh asked if I’d be willing to conduct an experiment to see if a thong could get you into an elevator faster than a bikini.”

Emerson exhaled in annoyance. “I’m sorry. I’ll have a word with the little tadpoles.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “We made a deal. They keep their mouths shut and I reward them with a caffeine treat. They’ve responded pretty well since Starbucks is half a block down the street. So, it’s in the past and let’s leave it there.”

Olivia watched him nod and sit on the edge of her desk. Holy hell he smelled good. No, he smelled lickable.

Lickable?

She groaned inside.
Now that’s a little over the top, isn’t it Olivia? What is he, a big postage stamp? Pay attention to your work. Ignore the rising tide of middle-aged lust flooding your brain and be sensible
.

“Okay,” he said, “we’ll leave it in the past. Are you having any difficulties with the animation?”

“Not really. That little guy, the shy one with the orange high tops, came in to explain the software. I guess he didn’t realize I have a pretty extensive technical computer base under my belt. He’s good. Keep him. After he showed me the ropes, he had me demonstrate that I grasped the process as well as the lingo. I know “bones” are the outlined skeleton system used to set up the shapes of the objects. I think he was stunned I picked it up so fast.”

“Well, Pete knew what he was doing when he offered you the job. He’s good like that. That’s why he does all the hiring and I stand there and look good.”

“Are you fishing for compliments?”

“Do I look like I need to be reassured?” He cast an eye about the things she had on her desk. Most people had transferred their music collection to iPods and other digital music players. Olivia preferred CDs. Emerson pulled one from a tall stack she had on the desktop. He turned the jewel case over. “You like these guys?”

“Would they be sitting on my desk if I didn’t?”

He shook his head and looked through the pile. “Vampire Weekend, Daft Punk, The Dead Kennedys, and…” he picked up another CD, “
Disco Super Hits
?” He read the song list out loud. “
Hot Stuff, Le Freak, Ring My Bell
and
YMCA
. The Village People? You don’t strike me as The Village People type. At all.”

“What is it with you and this need to
type
me?”

Emerson’s mouth pursed and twisted. He exhaled and replaced the CD before looking at the photos she had on the desk. “Are these,” he said, pointing to a silver frame, “your grandparents?”

“No, my parents.”

“And this guy?”

“My brother, Hector.”

“He looks like he could be your father. So I guess this,” he lifted a framed playbill from the Chicago Lyric Opera, “is your sister?”

“Yes.”

“They both look a lot older than you.”

“They are.” Olivia lifted her glasses and jiggled them impatiently. She had to get Maxwell out of her office before she did something stupid…like find out what sort of toothpaste he used this morning by sticking her tongue in his mouth. “Is there anything else, Maxwell? I’m in the middle of something. Your boys are tops in computer animation, but no one here seems to know a whole hell of a lot about cars. I’ve got to explain horsepower, aerodynamics, and the reasons race cars are designed with low centers of gravity, so these concept sketches can be turned into computer graphics that are accurate and theoretically possible.”

Emerson slid his rump off the desk. “Lots of things are
theoretically
possible,” he said. The scent of her, that spring rain and lavender fragrance, had started to throttle his good sense. Yeah, lots of things were theoretically possible. He saw himself theoretically reaching for her, theoretically pulling her out of the chair she was in and up into his arms. He headed for the door before he swept the CDs and family photos off the desk and theoretically lowered her to the cleaned-off top with his hands tearing the buttons from her tailored pink blouse, while his mouth theoretically gorged on her Cupid’s-bow lips. “Lot’s of things are theoretical here, but what do you expect when half the guys’ closest experience with sports cars is restricted to Xbox, Wii, and online gaming?”

“Put this in perspective? What the hell do you know about perspective, Pete? This is my damn wedding and I am callin’ the shots! Do you hear me?”

“Everyone can hear you Ella. Trust me,
everyone
can hear you!”

Olivia put down her highlighter, rose from her chair and headed out of her office. Pete was correct. Every word Ella shouted at her older brother traveled from the elevators clear to the other end of the floor.

Employees peeked over the tops of their cubicles, poked their heads through doorways and peered around the corner of the staffroom to see what was going on, some sidling out into the hall to watch. Olivia pushed her way past Josh, Palmer, Timmons, and the kid with orange high tops. She hurried past Maxwell, who stood in the doorway of his office. He caught her eye as she passed by and shrugged, his index finger making a spinning motion at his temple.

Unfortunately, Ella saw the little gesture. Like an angry, clucking hen, she bustled around at the end of the hallway, griping in a squawking voice, “Perspective? How could you do that to me, Pete? Mommy said you reminded her. What were you thinkin’?”

“Calm down,” Pete groaned. He didn’t yell like his sister, but annoyance was clear in his deepened voice. “He’s family and it’s not a big deal if he’s there.”