Merry and Bright(3)

“Invite someone from work,” Janie said. “Not the boss you’re going to kill, but the other one.”

“I want him to ask me out. But my Mr. Rights all seem gun shy.”

“Then invite a Mr. Wrong.”

“You mean purposely go out with someone who isn’t right for me?”

“Honey, you’ve gone two years without sex. What do you have to lose by changing tactics? I mean, honest to God, your good parts are going to wither from nonuse.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do, just take off my clothes and have wild sex with the first guy I come across?”

“Yes,” Janie said. “The first wrong guy, the one you wouldn’t normally go out with.”

“You want me to have sex with Mr. Wrong.”

“Use a condom.”

Maggie laughed. “You can’t be serious.”

“Seriously serious. You need to go for the first Mr. Wrong to cross your path—as long as he’s not an ax murderer or rapist,” she qualified. “And probably he should have a job and love his mother. That can be my Christmas present—you having sex with Mr. Wrong. Promise me.”

Since that was as unlikely to happen as having sex with a Mr. Right, Maggie laughed as she walked back into the building. Back on the sixth floor, she dodged through the obstacle course of construction equipment. The construction crew was desperately trying to finish before Christmas, and apparently they were working late tonight. Still on the phone with her sister, she ducked under a ladder, over a cord, and then around a huge stack of unused drywall, catching her shoulder on the sharp edge. She heard the rip of her coat and sighed as she dropped her briefcase to look. “Dammit.”

“What?” Janie asked. “Mr. Wrong?”

“No! Jeez. Hold on.” She bent for her briefcase, just as someone beat her to it, scooping up the loose change that had spilled out.

“Thanks—” Maggie lifted her head and froze at the wide chest in her vision.

A chest that once upon a time she’d dreamed about in chemistry. She took the coins from Jacob’s big, work-roughened palm, her nerves suddenly crackling as well as all the good spots Janie had mentioned, which meant that they hadn’t withered up, at least not yet. “Three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies,” she said. “$1.19.”

“That’s fast math.”

Yes, her brain always sped up when she was anxious. Plus, there was the other thing. She was also a little revved up. Sexually speaking. Which was Janie’s fault, she decided, for putting the idea of hot sex in her head in the first place. “A dollar and nineteen cents is the largest amount of money in coins you can have and still not be able to make change for a dollar.”

He blinked, then nodded. “That’s . . . inter--esting.”

“It’s fact.” Oh, God. Shut up.

“Who’s that?” Janie whispered in her ear. “Who are you talking to? A man? It’s got to be a man because you’re spouting off useless trivia like you do when you’re nervous. Oh! He’s your Mr. Wrong, isn’t he? Ask him to have hot sex with you! ”

“Hush,” Maggie said, and Jacob blinked again. Oh, God. “Not you.” She stood, and he did the same, giving her a quick peek of him close up and personal. His scuffed work boots, the mile-long legs and lean hips, covered in Levi’s, all faded and stressed white in all the right places, of which there appeared to be a tantalizing many. God bless denim . . . “Thanks, Jacob.”

At his surprise, she nodded. “Yeah, we know each other, or used to. Chem 101, your junior year at South Pasadena High. Before you moved to New Orleans.”

“Maggie Bell?” His eyes warmed. “I remember now. You came up directly from eighth grade, right? You saved my ass that year.”

“Jacob . . .” Janie whispered in her ear. “I don’t remember a Jacob. Is he cute?”

Yeah, he was cute. Cute like a wild cheetah. As in look but don’t touch. And while she stood there, still enjoying his jeans—what was with her?—her mouth ran loose. “Until you and your crew started retrofitting the building, the dress code around here was pretty much limited to white lab coats.”

His mouth quirked. “I can’t climb ladders in a white lab coat.”

“No, no it’s okay.” So okay. “I get tired of looking at all that white anyway. So it’s good that you’re not.” Oh, just shut up already! “Wearing one,” she added weakly.

“You should probably not talk anymore,” Janie said, ever so helpfully over the phone.

Maggie bit her lip to keep it shut. He was so close, so big. And she felt a little like a doe caught in the headlights.

“You tore your coat,” he said, and fingered the hole.

At his touch, her body tightened, and her mouth opened again. “It’s okay. I tend to do things like this a lot.”

“Run into drywall?”

“Run into stuff, period.” Someone had opened a window, and the evening breeze came in, as well as the sounds from the street six floors below. Traffic, an airplane, a sudden blare of a horn so loud she jumped.

“Just a car,” he said.

“In the tone of an F.”

“Excuse me?”

“All car horns are in the chord of F.”