Once Upon a Dare (Risky Business)(41)

Jack looked at Olivia uncertainly before he scampered away.

“You shouldn’t do that to him,” she chided.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he countered, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

As if he didn’t know what she meant. He clearly got a kick out of messing with Jack’s head, leaving her the daunting task of building the kid’s confidence back up, day in and day out. She frowned at him, but held her tongue. Arguing wasn’t going to get her anywhere, and they had much bigger problems than Jack.

“You can’t avoid me forever, you know.” Cole stripped off his jacket and tossed it on the back of an empty chair, narrowing the distance between them. He crossed his arms, flexing the muscles of his rock hard biceps.

A burning need to touch him stirred deep within her. She remembered the feel of those arms wrapped around her last weekend and she longed to get it back. But he was right. They needed to get off this lust/hate rollercoaster. It wasn’t good for either one of them.

Easier said than done.

If only the man wasn’t so freaking hot. Couldn’t he just be like the other frumpy slobs running around the office? Then she’d have no trouble ignoring him.

“Don’t be so sure about that,” she responded, doing her best to wrestle her oversexed libido into submission. She’d been avoiding him as much as possible for the last couple of days, using Jack and other junior associates to run interference. She knew he’d come around eventually, but she hadn’t expected it to happen so fast.

“We need to hammer things out for the Vixen pitch. We’re running out of time.”

She sighed. He had a point. The clock was ticking and both their reputations were on the line. Cole sat on the edge of the table, crowding her as he’d done Jack. She ignored him, fiddling with her glasses. Why was she wearing them anyway? It wasn’t like she needed them; they were really only good for reading small print. It was more habit, she supposed. She had noticed a long time ago the more intellectual she looked, the more weight her ideas carried.

She threw the stupid glasses on the table.

Cole raised a curious eyebrow, but said nothing.

“What did you have in mind?”

Something wicked flared in his eyes as they bored into her with an intensity she’d never seen before. Her heart clenched and for a moment she feared he could see her every thought, her every desire. Really, how did he expect her to concentrate when he was looking at her like that, like he might devour her any second?

“Down, boy.” She thrust out her chin. Sure, it was impossible to form a coherent thought with his bits so close to her face, but she wouldn’t let him turn her into a puddle of goo. They had work to do. “Can you turn it back a notch already?”

To her surprise, he threw his head back and laughed. It was a beautiful sound, the kind most women dreamed of coming home to at night. But Olivia wasn’t most women. Cole pushed off the table and rose to his feet. She sighed with relief when he moved to the window, giving her some breathing room. She watched as he rolled up his sleeves, revealing well-muscled forearms. Blood went rushing to her core, riding on a wave of arousal.

So much for breathing room.

“Think,” he urged, locking his fingers behind his head. “This shouldn’t be so hard. You’re the target audience, right? A modern woman, hear you roar and all that?”

“If you’d asked me a month ago, I’d have said yes. Now?” She grinned. “Not so much. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m still paying the price for my last hurrah.” Olivia shrugged. “Bad karma, I guess.”

He glowered at her. “Can you be serious for a minute?”

Jeez. Since when did Cole turn into Mr. Seriouspants? She rolled her shoulders, shaking off her sarcasm, and put on her game face. “What’s your point?”

“What do women want?”

“I don’t know.” She drummed her fingers on the tabletop as she thought about it. What did she want? “To be taken seriously? Treated like equals?”

“I’d feel better about that response if it didn’t sound like a question.”

Olivia stretched and slipped out of her jacket. The first heat wave of summer had arrived early, turning the conference room into a freaking sauna, and the A/C was struggling to keep up. Then again, maybe it wasn’t the temperature so much as the memory of Cole feasting on her in this very room—on this very table—that had her body simmering. What the hell had she been thinking anyway?

His intense gaze burned through her, ripping her from her thoughts. His eyes radiated sex as he stared at her bare arm with lust. Olivia glanced down, realizing too late that the strap of her red lace bra had slipped loose. She hastily pushed it back up, hiding it under the sleeveless blouse.

…

Cole didn’t consider himself a genius by any stretch of the imagination, but every now and then he had his moments. As he watched Olivia tuck the strap of her hard-on-inducing bra back in her shirt, inspiration struck. And it was an honest to goddamn epiphany. It was so obvious. The Vixen angle had been right in front of them all along, but they were too busy fighting to see it.

“I’ve got it,” he announced. He pulled a chair up to the table and sat across from Olivia. “I know what women want.”

“Really? You know what women want? Outside of the bedroom?” She wrinkled her nose. “Because I don’t really think Vixen is looking for a how-to tutorial on pleasing your one-night stand.”