Call Me Saffron (Greenpoint Pleasures) (7 page)

No. It was better this way. I’d figure out how to do uncomplicated one-night stands at some point. And maybe I’d eventually find a guy who didn’t scare me. I’d move in with him, or he’d move in with me, or we’d get a house in the suburbs and commute into Manhattan and live a picture-perfect life.
 

Or maybe I’d collect cats and sleep under a big asexual fur pile every night.
 

But a man like Dylan, he was off-limits. He’d seemed to accept it at the end. He hadn’t pushed again to see me. I wouldn’t hear from him again.
 

I bent over my drafting table and focused on the columns I was sketching in. If they were square and spaced three feet apart, with wood beams along the ceiling in between…

My cell chimed, an incoming text. Dylan? My heart gave a traitorous leap. But no. Of course it wasn’t him. He didn’t have my phone number. It was Fernando.
 

Come into my office, I need to talk to you.

Was it against company policy to have mad sex with a potential client? Had I turned Dylan off to working with us? How bad was this going to be? Firing bad or reprimand bad?
 

Yearning for the dignity of my lost panties, I walked the long path between desks to Fernando’s office. Naked and vulnerable was not a good combination. Even secretly naked. I felt off-kilter. Nothing about this afternoon was part of my carefully plotted out five-year plan. Dylan made me reckless. A perfect example of why I was right to avoid him.

Chapter Six

Fernando was facing away from the door, gazing out the window behind his desk. He slouched in his chair. His posture seemed irritable. Tense, at least.

“Sit.” He spoke without turning around.

I sat. “Am I in trouble?”

He swiveled around. “Are you?”

“It won’t happen again.”

His eyebrows shot up. “What won’t happen?”

“Whatever you think happened.”
 

His eyebrows stayed up. “With Mr. Krause, I presume.”

I glanced out the door, irrationally hoping for escape. No escape was forthcoming. Nothing for it, then. “I am deeply sorry if anything I did led to scuttling the contract. I know it’s a big coup. I realize my behavior was unprofessional, but you have to admit it was also wildly out of character.”
 

Oddly, Fernando looked more puzzled than angry. “He’s not scuttling anything. He said he liked our preliminary work and thinks our vision is what his company is looking for. He needs to take it to his partners, but it sounds like they’ll be on board.”

Whew. “Glad to hear it. But…if you didn’t know…”

“Know what?”

I rushed past that. “And he didn’t decide to go elsewhere—then what did you want to see me about?”

The distraction worked. “You’re on the Juniper project. As a second lead. It’s a big commitment, a lot of late nights on top of your current workload, but you’re on.” He didn’t look pleased. In fact, he seemed more like he was telling me I was relegated to the basement mopping floors.
 

I swallowed. It didn’t help. I still felt like something large and uncomfortable was stuck in my throat. Second lead on the Juniper storefronts, presumably working directly with Dylan? I had a pretty good idea who came up with this gem of an idea, and his name wasn’t Fernando.

Since I started at Alvarez and Associates two years ago, I’d been the best worker bee in their hive. I worked through lunch, stayed late finishing projects, and woke up in the middle of the night with remodeling ideas in my head. Got 3-D models and blueprints in ahead of schedule. Never spoke out of turn. Never did anything to ruffle anyone’s feathers. I wanted this job to go well. I wanted a promotion based on my performance. I wanted to be Ms. Lilly, the outstanding employee, not Samantha the complicated human being.
 

And yet here I was. Exposed in every way. Impromptu angry sex in the workplace, which apparently led straight to a promotion I hadn’t earned, where my every move would be scrutinized and probably found wanting.
 

Damn Dylan.
 

No, I’d been equally complicit. Damn
me
.
 

That wasn’t right either. The sex, yes, I’d been so caught up in the emotion of it—the rawness, the need—I’d forgotten myself.
 

But the Juniper gig, no. That was all his doing.
 

To my surprise, I said it aloud. “No.”

“Excuse me?” Fernando leaned back in his expensive ergonomic office chair, his tone cool. But he looked less like he’d spit out a lemon rind.
 

I took a deep breath to steady myself. “I’m not ready for something this big. I’d be leapfrogging over half the office.”

 
“Are you saying you’re not good enough?”

“Not at all. I’m simply not ready. I will be, but not yet.”
 

“Are you turning it down?”

“Can I?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“What if—” I realized my fingers were clutching the carved wooden arms of my chair so hard they were leaving tiny half-moon nail marks. I made myself relax. Breathe. Not think about Dylan.
 

So, of course, I blurted his name. “Dylan Krause.”

Fernando rubbed his forehead as if he was warding off a headache. I knew the feeling. “What if Dylan Krause what?”

“What if he was okay with my withdrawing from the project? Would that be acceptable to you?”

Unexpectedly, he laughed. Of all the reactions I’d anticipated, this was most emphatically not one of them. “You have hidden depths, Samantha. I had no idea.” He shook his head.
 

His phone rang. He answered it. “Alvarez. What’s up?” As the person on the other end of the line started talking, Fernando hit Mute and turned back to me. “What is Krause to you? You didn’t just meet him at a party, I take it.” When I hesitated, he waved his hand. “Forget it. The less I know the better, I suspect. I agree, you aren’t ready to take on the Juniper project. Do what you need to do to get out of it without burning the client. And good luck with your love life, but keep it out of the workplace in the future.”

Before I could respond, he unmuted his phone and started talking to the caller.

I walked back to my table on legs that didn’t support my weight very well, then sagged onto my stool.
 

Well, that was one way to make an impression on the boss.
 

I was going to kill Dylan.

~*~

Trouble was, I didn’t know where to find him. The security guard at his office building sent me up when I said I was working with Alvarez and Associates, but the receptionist on the top floor gave me a puzzled frown. “Is he expecting you?”

“Fernando Alvarez sent me over to sort out some details after their meeting. I thought he called…?” I trailed off suggestively.

“Right. Of course. He does this. You’d think… Never mind.” She paged through some documents on her computer. “He’s at the warehouse. Come back tomorrow?”

Tomorrow felt like an eternity. My fingernails bit into my palms. I needed the release of yelling at the man right now, not some theoretical future date. Plus, I’d gotten out of work early today to go to a theoretical dentist’s appointment. Unless I manufactured an emergency root canal and threw in a Vicodin stupor for good measure, I couldn’t exactly sneak away two days in a row.
 

“Where’s the warehouse?”

She gave me a skeptical look. “I don’t think…”

I leaned in, lowering my voice. “It’s kind of personal too. After that disaster with his wife, he and I…. And now he’s…and I think I might…” I took a deep breath. “I need to talk to him. He’ll thank you. I promise.”

It did the trick. Her gaze softened. “He’s been in a snit the past few months. Is that about you?”

I blanched. Because yeah, it probably was. My lie wasn’t much of a lie, was it?
 

She gave me the address, which turned out to be at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, miles from the subway. As I walked from the F, the streetscape morphed from the familiar funky, intriguing area under the Manhattan Bridge to something more desolate and scary.
 

The Navy Yard was less exciting than I’d expected. All I saw was a large parking lot surrounded by long, low buildings. One had the familiar Juniper logo out front. Thank
God
.
 

The building wasn’t locked, and there was no security at the front desk. No front desk, for that matter. Just a huge room filled with carved wood furniture. The place smelled of sawdust and wood oil.
 

Dylan was easy to spot. He stood in a clump with two other men and a woman, discussing a dining table. He gestured over it, his movement elegant and certain, but it was easy to see his unhappiness. The taller guy stepped back and talked a blue streak, wildly animated, obviously trying to convince Dylan he was wrong.
 

I laughed to myself. Convince Dylan Krause he was wrong? Good luck with that. My guy had the worst case of the arrogant stubborns I’d ever met.
 

My guy?
Where had that come from?

He was emphatically not, and never would be, my guy.
 

Now that I was here, I felt frozen in place. No way could I go over there and interrupt. It was impossible. Besides, why? I’d spent the past months running away from him. What was I doing running toward him?
 

I turned to go. I’d write him an email and tell him he’d crossed a line with his imperious demand that I should be included on his design team.
 

Why hadn’t I thought to do that in the first place?

I made it to the door before a hand came down on my own, stopping me.

Dylan. I knew without turning around. He smelled like wood shavings with the faintest hint of musky sex. Of me. His body heat radiated, enveloping me.
 

“Saffron. How did you find me here?” His voice, low and controlled, rippled through me. “Looking for a repeat performance?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” I swiveled toward him, hastily glancing around. His cohorts were safely out of earshot, down at the other end of the warehouse, arguing over an all-wood recliner that looked hideously expensive and even more uncomfortable, with knobs and angles where none should exist. I relaxed a hair. “I’m here to tell you I’m not working with you.”

His eyes lit with a perversely amused gleam. “A phone call would have sufficed.”

“I wanted to make sure you got the message. You can’t tell my boss to put me on the account because you want to sleep with me again.”

“What if that’s not why I asked?” He still stood behind me, his hands braced on the door, but now that I’d turned, it was like I was standing in his embrace. Captive.
 

“Isn’t it?” Was he going to kiss me? Would I let him if he did?
 

“Maybe I wanted to see you in action. In your real job.” His tone caressed me.
 

“You can’t. It doesn’t work like that. I’m not ready. Linda and Blake would resent me like crazy. They’ve been at the firm years longer than me. And Fernando would be watching every move you and I made to make sure nothing inappropriate happened. It would be a disaster.” The words came out in a flood, breathless and unsteady. “You can’t march in and reorganize my life like you’re my master and commander.”

He let go, stepping back abruptly. “Why would I do that? I hardly know you, Samantha Saffron Lilly of the three first names. Maybe I wanted to make sure I saw you again.”

I pulled my jacket tight, feeling the loss of his body heat. “Well, it was a mistake. Call Fernando, tell him you’re fine without me.”

“I will. If you go out to dinner with me.”

Dinner. With this man. I must have licked my lips subconsciously, because I could feel a sudden coolness there, and Dylan’s gaze sharpened, staring at my mouth.
 

But dinner led to drinks, which led to talking, which led to intimacy, both in bed and out. A date. A relationship?

My body felt both heated and chilled. Dylan’s gaze challenged. And I had no answer.

“Friday night. Meet me at the Spotted Pig in the East Village. Seven o’clock. Then I’ll let Fernando know we want to hire Alvarez but that you won’t be part of the team. Deal?” The glint in his eye was more measuring than hungry.
 

It made it easier to say yes. It wasn’t a date, after all. It was the next move in our bizarre game of chess.

~*~

On Friday at six p.m., I sat at my vanity, staring at my reflection. I’d outlined my eyes the way Jeanine had that first night, dark and mysterious.
 

I scooped up a bunch of hair and tried to pin it on top of my head, but half of it fell out immediately, leaving my hair in semiplanned disarray. Now I looked like a ten-year-old tomboy with incongruous kohl eyes.
 

No, I looked like pictures of my mother from her last years. I glanced over at a framed photo I’d put on my dresser. She stared back at me, dark-eyed and painfully vulnerable.
 

I should get going.
 

I picked up the phone and dialed.
 

Three rings. Four. Five, and I was about to hang up.
 

“Hello? Who is this?” My grandfather sounded shaky. So frail.
 

“It’s Samantha, Gramps.”

“Is everything all right there? Do you need money?”

“Everything’s fine. I’ve got a good job now, remember? I don’t need anything.” I picked up the photo and traced my mother’s face with my finger, leaving a smudge on the glass. “I wanted to, I don’t know, hear your voice. See how you were doing.”

“I’m fine.”
 

Someone murmured in the background. A woman.
 

“Do you have company? Should I call back?” I set the picture down.

“Oh, that’s Hattie. My nurse. She’s making dinner. Cabbage soup or something, I don’t know. It smells like a swamp.” He wheezed. “Is everything all right? Do you need money?”

My throat closed. His short-term memory had gotten worse. “I’m fine, Gramps. I have money. I have a good job now, remember? The architecture firm?”