Polished Slick (Natural Beauty) (6 page)

She dragged a hand across her heated brow and swallowed. “No, I’m just curious. I…”

My, is that what everyone else feels when asking Nikki for time off? Now I totally get the sweating.
Those green eyes were intense.

“I’m just wondering how you come about building a team,” she hedged, and shit, even she knew it was lame.

“Bullshit.” Nikki bobbed her head toward the barn, and Beth sighed, but sashayed away, leaving the two women in relative privacy. She patted a hay bale, and Trinity sat like the well-trained puppy she was.

“Look, I know you two butt heads. I’m not blind, and I totally get it. I know what it’s like to have a strong personality and having to deal with people who don’t want to play nice.”

“Exactly!”

Nikki held up one hand and shook her head. “Hear me out. Jerry’s one of the must trustworthy people I know. For all the shit he puts up with at work and especially with his mother, he should be sainted. He’s a loose cannon, but I’ve learned the hard way that ninety-five percent of the time, his energy is pointed in the right direction.” Nikki stood and grabbed a handful of Chex Mix from the craft services table. “Truth be told, he reminds me of Charlie in some ways.”

“I don’t see that.” Not even superficially. Charlie was pretty close to the ideal man as far as country boys went. He had a bit of scruff, but he earned it being so busy on the farm. Unlike Jerry, Charlie actually made efforts to clean up every now and then, and the results were spectacular. David Gandy himself couldn’t wear a suit with the same raw sex appeal Charlie did. Trinity had only seen him in a suit once—during the company’s launch—and she’d ogled him in a most impolite fashion. That had been before he and Nikki got it together, so she didn’t feel too guilty about it.

“Well, I don’t mean physically, obviously. They have a lot of similar personality quirks. On the surface, they’re both really laid-back, but can be rather tenacious about people and things they care about. You shouldn’t write him off.”

“Who, Charlie?”

Nikki bopped her on the forehead. “No, silly,
Jerry
.”

Trinity’s resulting expression must have been quite telling because Nikki threw her head back and laughed. She gave Trinity a hearty pat on the back and leaned in close. “I’ll let you in on a bit of a secret. He doesn’t date much. He’s ridiculously discriminating.”

Coming from Nikki, that was saying a lot.

“If you could snag him, it’d be a real feather in your cap. A win for the underdog.”

The ligaments holding Trinity’s jaw to her skull popped, her mouth dropped open so fast. “First Aunt Ginger and now you? What am I missing?”

“Just look at him.”

“I did!”

“So, what’s the problem?”

Trinity scanned the area for bystanders, and seeing none, leaned in to whisper, “I’m no snitch, but…I’m pretty sure he smokes pot.”

Nikki crossed her legs at the ankles and clamped her hand over her mouth. Her olive skin flushed to a dark red tone, and the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes deepened from unrestrained mirth. Finally, she snorted behind her hand, then laughed outright because she couldn’t hold all that in and the baby at the same time, apparently. “Stop or I’ll pee myself. Jerry wouldn’t even smoke a peace pipe if offered. Guess you’ve never seen him harass smokers outside of Christine’s.”

“I’ve never had that particular privilege, but second, the un-showered beach bum look isn’t something I’m programmed to appreciate. I just can’t look beyond the
un-showered
component.” Maybe he looked it, but he didn’t smell it. He smelled wonderful, actually. Not that Trinity had been taking notes. But if she
had
been taking notes, they’d say he smelled like salt air and good soap.

Nikki’s laughter trailed off, and she flicked a hand in Trinity’s general direction. “Okay, that’s a matter of preference I can’t fault you for. Can’t really do anything about that if you don’t like it. I don’t particularly like plaid and faded jeans, but I hooked up with Charlie, right?”

“How’d that happen, anyway?”

Nikki’s cheeks flushed red, and she swallowed, pulling her collar back with a crooked index finger. “Saw him in a suit. Scrambled a few of my brain cells. But just think about it. Jerry’s got a lot of fantastic raw material.” Nikki lumbered toward the barn door and Trinity followed close behind, scratching her head. Nikki’s hormone levels must have spiked in a new and unnatural direction.

“If by raw material you mean modeling dough…” Trinity let her voice trail off, confident she’d made her point.

“I think he’s got more of a backbone than he lets on.”

“He’s nothing.” Trinity cleared her throat. Perfect body and Adonis face aside, that was.

Nikki pulled the door open and let Trinity pass in front of her. “I wouldn’t generally encourage employee fraternization, but as peers, I think you two are a match. I wish you would get it together. You’ve been giving me heartburn for months with all the sniping.”

“Nikki, I’ve never said this out loud before, and you’ll probably fire me upon hearing it, but I think it needs to be said.” Trinity paused at her workstation, and leaned her butt against it. She crossed her arms over her chest, and when Nikki turned to look at her, waiting for her to finish, Trinity said, “You may be a little crazy.”

“Not gonna fire you for that.” Nikki approached Jerry’s cube, and extended a hand to ruffle his stiff hair as she passed by.

He looked back at her, gave her a head bob of acknowledgement, and readjusted his headphones to their previous, unmolested position.

“Oh, I know I’m crazy.” Nikki bent one side of her lush lips up into a smirk and narrowed her gaze. Walking backward, she raised her chin and pointed at her assistant. “Don’t ever forget it. Me being just a touch unbalanced is how I manage to run this business…and if I remember correctly, you want to run this business, too.”

Busted.

Trinity cringed.

Nikki closed her office door, and Trinity slid her gaze over to Jerry. He was totally oblivious, and likely hadn’t heard a thing given the deep scowl he directed at his oversized computer monitor. He rubbed his smooth chin and mouthed something written on the screen. Was he coding again? Making up some unintelligible programming language?

Trinity considered him and massaged a nearby chemical lid while chewing the inside of her mouth.

“Hmm.”

No witnesses. Seemed a good time to carry out a little experiment. She was a scientist, after all, and that’s what scientists did. They formed theories and tested them, changing one variable at a time.

Just how unflappable was Jerry Rouse? She was willing to bet her next bonus that a change in tactic would knock him off-kilter a while. Maybe treat him to a little sweet for a while, instead of heat.

She patted her hair down and padded up behind him.

He didn’t sense her there after a moment, so she slid between his chair and the cubicle wall and leaned against his desktop.

She crossed her arms over her chest and put on what she hoped was a coy smile. Wasn’t like she’d had practice with it. Her usual pleasant expression was something akin to what Internet pundits called “resting bitch face.” Once in college, a homeless man had told her, “Smile. It can’t be that bad.”

She’d put her two bucks back into her pocket and walked away, grumbling, “I’m smiling on the inside.”

Jerry pushed back his headphones. “What happened? Did something blow up? Do I need to get the fire extinguisher down again?” He stood.

“No, no!” She put her hands on his shoulders and gave him a gentle shove back into his seat. “Just wanted to talk.”

Both of his dark blond eyebrows crept up, and briefly, she wondered if his carpet matched the drapes. Where
that
thought came from, she had no idea, especially since she had absolutely no intention of squelching her curiosity regarding it.

“Really? About what? Can’t it wait until the next meeting?” His bottom jaw ground left, then right.

Poor guy, already annoyed.
Good
.

She pressed on, and hoped the grin she wore wasn’t too jubilant. “Oh, I didn’t want to talk about work. I just wanted to chat. Get to know you. We’ve been here nearly two years, and I don’t know a thing about you, really.”

He blinked.

Not the response she was hoping for. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and chewed.

What would Ginger do?

The to-do list pinned onto the wall at Jerry’s left, scribbled onto neon green paper, drew her attention. She hoped she’d be able to grab some conversational snippet from it, but no. May have well have been written in Greek for all the sense she could make of it. SQL queries? What were those?

Bullshittery would have to do. She forced herself to meet his hard stare once again, and crooked her thumb toward his headphones. “So, what are you listening to?”

“What am I listening to?” He studied her for a moment, as if waiting for her to recant—to say, “Just kidding”—then lifted his headphones over his head. He untangled the cord from around his armrest, and handed the unit to Trinity.

She stared at them, warily, for a minute, expecting his calm and cool expression belied a musical accompaniment that would rip her eardrums to shreds.

“Do you want an alcohol wipe or something to rub over them or something?” he asked, now smirking. “Nikki probably has some in her desk drawer.”

“Ha ha.” She placed the headphones on her head, slowly, holding the earpads away from her lobes a moment to assess the volume. Realizing it was moderate, she let the headphones retract into their designed shape and listened quietly, although maintaining eye contact was an distraction she hadn’t expected would test her so.

Maybe looking at the man point-blank had been easier before when she was just looking
through
him. Now, thanks to Aunt Ginger, she had no choice but to not only look at man, but also
see
him.

She’d never noticed his eyes were blue because they were so dark. The most intense blue she’d ever seen, and all that time she’d assumed they were brown.

“Um.” She swallowed, and forced her stare to his computer monitor. “Who is that, Sting?” she asked, studying his music player’s ticker.

Jerry shook his head and extended his hand.

She nudged the headphones forward, and returned them to him.

He pegged them onto the plant hook he’d installed in his cubicle for exactly that purpose, and maximized the music player on the screen. “Gotye.”

“Isn’t he a fashion designer?”

Jerry smiled, this time for real.

It was a nice smile—a gut-warming smile—even though it was at her expense.

“No, not Gaultier.
Gotye
. G-O-T-Y-E, see? He’s a Belgian-Australian musician who actually gets compared to Sting a great deal, so you get half credit.”

“Do I get a gold star?”

“If you want. Where do you want me to put it?” Jerry rested his elbows on the chair’s padded armrests, and tented his fingers. His lips edged dangerously close to forming an irreverent smirk. Lush lips, pink as though they’d been recently crushed in a kiss.

Since she was looking anyway, she let her gaze scan upward to his elegant nose, to his lips again, and paid special attention to the slightly plumper bottom one. Realizing her tongue had started moistening her own lips, she scoffed and closed her eyes.

Taking a breath, she re-engaged, and propped one hand onto the cubicle’s half-wall for support. “Um, never heard of him. I tend to latch onto two or three bands and basically put my blinders on to the rest of the industry.”

“Mm-hmm.”

He had brown rings around those dark blue irises. Polygenics at play. Lots of blue eyes in his family with a brown-eyed rogue, perhaps?

God, what an interesting face
. Now that she’d started looking, she didn’t want to stop. She understood the whispers—the rumors—about Jerry now. She hadn’t understood the reason for the hype before because she’d been mentally compartmentalizing him into that same box she’d put her professors and advisors into.

Her pulse drummed in her ears, and suddenly her mouth was very dry.

What were they saying? Why had she walked over there?

Oh, yes. Now she remembered.

“So, that was smart—the cameras, I mean.”

He swayed from side to side in his rolling chair, giving her that same nonplussed gaze again.

Already, she missed the smirk. At least that had felt personal.

Finally, he opened his mouth. “Well, it’s makeshift until Charlie gets the security system installed. They’re having to call someone in from Virginia to do the work since there’re no approved techs in Chowan County.”

“Great. Sounds like a plan.” She cleared her throat and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She must have looked like a besotted teenager, stuttering and stammering in front of him, and she’d never been prone to that kind of silliness.

What was
wrong
with her?

Wow, those cheekbones.
She cringed. “Okay, so…back to work, I guess.”

“Okay.” He spun his rolling chair back toward his computer, and blandly retorted, “Yes,
ma’am
.”

He went right back to tweaking code as if her presence had been merely an insignificant blip on his radar screen. She certainly
felt
insignificant
.

“Okay, then.” She retreated to her workbench, brain in a state of utter chaos as she filtered through thoughts and emotions, trying to make sense of uncomfortable realizations that made her heart race and mouth dry.

Jerry Rouse was a gorgeous
man
, and a highly intelligent one.

It’d taken two years for that revelation to smack her in the face. If she were to be assigned a grade for her study, she would have gotten the only “F” she’d ever received in her life.

CHAPTER FIVE

What the hell was going on with the women at Natural by Nicolette lately? Trinity was acting weird, which initially he’d ascribed to her Napoleon complex, but now he wasn’t so sure. Keeping her in check didn’t scare him—he’d dated enough girls like her before to have picked up a few tricks. Truth be told, those girls were a lot of fun once they established their ebb and flow, but long-term they weren’t worth the hassle. They required too much maintenance, and Trinity seemed like the sort whom would always keep him hopping.