was a doozy.
“I’d really rather you not sit on the designer floor,” he admitted with a firm gaze locked on hers now.
She leaned in, mesmerized. “Why?”
“That floor is chaotic. I can’t think straight when I’m down there.”
She sat back, regretting how she wished he’d given her another excuse. “I think it’s kind of fun.”
She shrugged. “Lots of energy. It’ll be like watching Project Runway every day, all day.” She wiggled her shoulders, letting her passion show through. “I love the creative process. Seeing the designers take a bolt of fabric and with a few clips of the scissors and stabs of the sewing machine needle, voila! A dress. It’s really quite fascinating.” She paused and stared into her wine to break the eye contact. “Besides, you can’t like me being in your office.”
“Actually, I do.”
She looked up, shocked by the confession.
He pressed his fingers together. “I thought it would be annoying. But you’re pleasant enough to be around.”
Pleasant enough... Oh yeah, Mr. Morgan, you can talk dirty to me better than that. “I have to be honest though, the mess and clutter I have to look at every day is kind of getting to me.”
“I’ll work on that. I promise.” He finished his beer and took out his wallet. “You won’t like listening to Salvatore yell all day, trust me.”
“Yeah, but it’s mostly in Italian.” Her fingernails scraped the bottom of the empty pretzel bowl, but she felt too embarrassed to ask for another refill.
“Thank goodness. I’m sure if it were English, we’d have dozens of lawsuits on our hands.” He wanted to keep her away from Salvatore to protect the company from a lawsuit. How very corporate of him.
She exhaled. “Okay. At least until the fashion show, deal?”
“Deal.” His lips agreed, but his eyes said, maybe.
Her phone buzzed and vibrated. Greg. Again. She dumped it in her bag. She didn’t want him or her father to worry, but she was an adult. And allowed to go out after work and come home late.
Or...not at all.
Her wary eyes snuck a glance at Andrew paying for his beer. A knot of emotion settled in her throat. How could a man be that handsome? Jet-black lashes tipped his round, deep-set eyes. Thick and expressive eyebrows curved down toward his Roman nose. His fair skin held on to a few shades of a left-over Italian summer tan. When he smiled, his square jaw tapered down to a round edge.
Underneath, she could see the gentle curve of his throat. Soft skin she bit and nibbled at. He liked that all right.
Gasp. Stop. Stop. Stop. Hooking up with a stranger had already shoved Gwen way out of her comfort zone. A fling with a co-worker, one she had to sit across from every day for the foreseeable future, was a bad idea.
“Well, this was...fun. But I should get going.” She slid off the seat and her head felt lighter than she had expected.
“I didn’t realize it was this late.” For the first time, Andrew checked his phone. Its glossy screen had stayed dark and silent the entire time they’d been talking. “Are you okay to get home?”
“Sure, sure,” she answered, not looking at him and checking the area around her for all her bags.
“Gwendolyn, do you want to share a cab?” His gesture sounded inviting, but his voice shook with nerves and tension. Like his instinct as a gentleman knee-jerked the offer until he thought better of it.
“Nah. I want to walk for a little bit,” she said pulling her laptop bag over her shoulder. “And please, call me Gwen. We have many secrets to laud over each other now.”
The way he smiled made her wonder if getting this man to soften up was such a good idea. What if he did want her again? Would she have the resolve to say no?
He followed her out the door and bent his body into a bow. “Have a good weekend, Gwen.”
She’d made so much progress, anything but a smile now might push her back. An uncontrollable urge overpowered her better senses. She leaned in and hugged him. God, he still felt so good. His powerful body made her shiver.
While she hugged him, reveling in how good it felt, Andrew’s body, however, stiffened like a piece of plywood.
Uh-oh.
She stepped back and looked down at the sidewalk. “You have a good one, too. Bye.”
Gwen sprinted away from Andrew as fast as she could, her high Prada heels wobbling with every repentant step.
ANDREW DIDN’T MOVE. The feel of Gwen’s body again, strong and healthy against his, rendered him speechless. He’d been cold and mean to her these past couple of days, yet it came so easy to forgive and embrace him. She wasn’t a petty person or a grudge-holder, and those unique qualities elevated her in his mind.
And in his desire to have her again. Shit!
A cutting wind woke him out of the trance he’d been in. If he spent any more time standing outside the bar with a catatonic look on his face someone might call the cops. He walked a few feet toward his subway, but stopped, and trudged back to the office instead.
He stepped through Prada’s quiet marketing floor and reached his locked office. Once inside, he closed the door behind him.
How did this office get so out of control?
He never thought he would be under a microscope. Shows were the priority, not cleaning out his office.
Andrew dropped his bag on the messy desk and put his hands on his hips. The unoccupied office on the designer floor made him curious. He turned to check it out, but smacked into a body.
“Sir?” A startled man stood there. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes. Yes.” Andrew got his breath back. The white patch on a blue shirt caught his interest.
Maintenance. “Is there a way you can give me a hand with something?”
“Of course, sir.”
Andrew brought him down to the designer floor. Ah! Just what he hoped, a large office and a small desk. “Okay.” He turned to the maintenance man. “What are the chances we can move this desk upstairs and move my desk down here?”
The man nodded his head and seemed eager to help. Andrew guessed he spent every Friday night sitting on a chair with nothing to do. In two hours, a team of porters had Andrew’s old desk emptied, dissembled, brought down to the designer floor, and reassembled. Another team took the smaller desk and did the reverse.
When he tried to help, the porter cheerfully dismissed him. “No, no sir, we got it.”
While the desks were being switched, Andrew went through his file cabinets. In the staff lounge, he grabbed a box of large garbage bags. He’d been in his position long enough to know he could toss
fabric samples from a fashion show six seasons back. He emptied several drawers, which weren’t even full, without any stress at all. Two whole cabinets were moved to Gwen’s side of the office.
Their office.
In his bookcases, fancy binders lined the first few shelves, but he’d filled the rest with crap. He tossed the crap, consolidated the binders to one bookcase, and gave the other to Gwen as well.
By three a.m., there were six black trash bags in the hall, and he’d transformed the office into a comfortable neat space with two desks on opposite corners. The walls were now neatly lined with bookshelves and file cabinets. He wanted it to look perfect and even wiped all the furniture down with polish. Andrew also dug out his round conference table from under a blanket of old newspapers.