Chapter 4
S
he bolted upright in bed, her heart beating erratically. She'd had the dream again, the one where she got fired and where, driving home to her condo, she started shrinking until she wasn't even tall enough to touch the gas pedal. She usually didn't wake up until the car started veering wildly toward the edge of the coastal highway, coming awake just as the car started going over the cliff.
Ring
.
She turned toward the sound, still disoriented by her dream and the brutal return to reality.
Ring
.
It was the phone.
It had woken her, stopping the nightmare right after she started getting smaller.
She fumbled for the receiver in the darkness of her room.
“Hello?”
“Good morning, Amanda.”
“Simon?” Was it morning? She blearily tried to focus on the clock beside her bed. Twelve minutes after five A.M. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“It's still dark, so not yet six.”
“I was asleep.”
“I'm sorry I woke you.” He paused. “Would you like me to call back later?”
Remembering how easily he lost track of his surroundings and her, she jumped in with a very hasty, “No.”
“Jacob said you wanted me to call.”
“That's right. You didn't listen to my presentation. You said you would,” she reminded him. “I believe it was something you promised your sister-in-law?”
“I promised Eric because Elaine was getting teary eyed. Pregnant women are emotional.”
“I wouldn't know.”
Lance hadn't wanted children right away and neither had she. She didn't regret that, not since it would have meant putting any child they'd had through the upheaval of divorce. Still, sometimes when she saw mothers with little babies, she felt like she was missing something pretty important in her life.
“Jacob also said I upset you when I disappeared into my lab.” He sounded almost apologetic.
“You forgot about me.”
“I didn't mean to.”
“Don't worry about it. I'm used to it.” Why had she said that? She was still too rummy from sleep to control her tongue.
The tendency that first her family, and then her ex-husband, had had to dismiss her as of little importance, was not something she wanted to share with Simon.
“You're used to being forgotten?”
“Never mind.” She scooted into a sitting position, dragging the covers with her to maintain their cocoon of warmth. “I'm not quite awake. I don't know what I'm saying. Are you calling to reschedule our meeting?”
Another pause, longer this time. “Yes.”
“Can we meet today?” The sooner she got this situation handled, the faster she could put Simon Brant and her strange reaction to him out of her mind and life.
“Yes.”
That was promising. “When?”
“I'll be between timed experiments late this afternoon.”
She took a second to go back over what she remembered of the ferry schedule. “I can be on the three o'clock ferry.”
“I'll see you about four then.”
“Right.”
“Okay, then.”
“Simon . . .” What did she want to say? She had an inexplicable urge to keep him on the phone with meaningless chatter. “Thank you for calling.”
“I woke you up.”
“I don't mind, really.”
“I'm going to bed. If you call me in about fifteen minutes you can repay me in kind.”
“You haven't been to bed yet?” He must be exhausted.
“No.”
“I'm not into revenge.”
“I'm glad. I can use some sleep.”
“Sweet dreams.”
“I believe they will be. Until later.”
She was foolish to think the words had special meaning, particularly directed at her. She was dynamite in the boardroom, but more like a wet sparkler in the bedroom. No fizzle at all. She stifled a sigh. “Bye.” She listened for the click on his end before she hung up.
She wished her dreams were sweet, but too often she had the Amanda-shrinks-to-nothing nightmare or one where she relived walking into Lance's office while he had sex with two people. Only in her dream, they realized she was there and they all laughed at her.
She snuggled down into the covers and thought about Simon. She liked his voice. It was deep and masculine, but smooth too, like well-aged scotch. He had very sexy lips. She recalled how they moved when he talked and wondered how they would feel moving on her own.
She was still chastising herself for her totally inappropriate, not to mention incredibly unlikely, thoughts when she slipped back into sleep.
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This time when she arrived at Simon's, she didn't give Jacob a chance to harass her. She stopped her car, got out and pushed the button to call him. She barely refrained from a few choice expletives when he informed her that now they had met, a visual I.D. through the car window was sufficient.
Jacob answered the door when she rang the bell and she was immediately concerned that Simon hadn't come out of his lab after all.
“Has he surfaced, Jacob?”
“The boss is not a submarine, Ms. Zachary.”
That was a matter of opinion. He certainly disappeared as easily as if he were one, and a stealthy one at that. “Is he available?”
“Not strictly speaking, no.”
“I knew it!” She dropped her briefcase and glared in disgust at Jacob. “He woke me up before dawn this morning and then he didn't even bother to come out of his lab when he promised he would.” She dug through her purse looking for headache medicine. She came across an antacid tablet and popped it for good measure. “No wonder the man isn't married. If he had a wife, she would have killed him by now.”
“I did not say that my employer was still in his laboratory.”
She stopped trying to get the stupid cap off the small white bottle of pain reliever she'd found and looked up at Jacob. He was looking down his nose at her in the best tradition of a snobbish English butler.
“You play more parts than Jillian!”
Jacob in his superior butler mode didn't deign to answer.
“If Simon's not tied up with his experiments, where is he?” She managed to get the cap off and tossed back two small caplets without water.
“Mr. Brant is on the level below.”
Hadn't Simon said something about having his gym down there? “Is he exercising?”
“As I cannot see him at this moment in time, I cannot answer that question with any degree of accuracy.”
“Jacob, I bet there's a spear somewhere in Africa with your name on it.”
The left corner of his mouth tilted up before he schooled his expression into somber regard. The old faker. “I will escort you below stairs if you would like.”
She waved her hand in front of her. “By all means.”
All humorous irritation with Jacob faded when Amanda found herself standing inside the open doorway to Simon's gym. Everything faded except the sight of him, as his foot repeatedly connected with the kicking bag hanging from a ceiling beam.
He was fast, faster even than her Tae Bo instructor. His ponytail flipped from side to side like a short black whip.
And graceful. He moved with the lithe agility of a human panther.
He was also almost naked.
Wearing a pair of black karate pants and nothing else, sweat glistened on the smooth, tan skin of his body. His chest had a neat triangle-shape patch of black hair centered between his male nipples. The dark copper circles drew her eyes as did the rippling muscles below them.
He had a six-pack of abs that most weight lifters would die for. The shoulders of his six-foot-two-inch frame were broad and well-developed, as were the bulging biceps of his arms.
He was devastating.
And she was standing there, ogling him like a star-struck teenager on her first visit to Universal Studios.
“It appears he is exercising, Ms. Zachary.”
“As shocking as you may find this to believe, I'd figured that out for myself.” She couldn't make herself stop looking at Simon while she spoke to Jacob, which she had no doubt the old man noticed and found highly amusing.
She might find her behavior amusing too, in someone else, but in herself, she found it both unexplainable and embarrassing. Nevertheless, she could not look away.
Without warning, Simon whirled on his bare feet to face her. “Amanda. You came.”
Had he doubted she would? “Hello, Simon. I can wait for you upstairs while you finish your workout.” Even as she said the words, she regretted them. What if he disappeared while she was waiting for him again?
“There's no need. You can talk while I exercise.”
“You must have better concentration than me. I can't even tell someone my name in my Tae Bo class, or I lose count of where I'm at.”
“You practice Tae Bo?”
She laughed self-consciously. “Not exactly. I'm taking a class in it, strictly for the exercise. My form is terrible.”
“I can help you with that.” He eyed her as if already determining how best to work with her.
Just the thought of being in her Lycra leggings and sports bra in the same room with Simon in his loose fitting karate pants was enough to send her temperature spiking. “Well, uh, thanks for the offer, but I doubt I'll have the opportunity to take you up on it.”
One black brow rose. “What's wrong with right now?”
She gave him an incredulous look. “I'm not dressed for it.” Her smart ice-yellow suit had not been designed with strenuous exercise in mind.
“Take off your shoes.”
What? “No.”
“Come on. You can be my dummy. Watch my form and later you can work on emulating it.”
“I don't need to watch your form.” Watching him stand there doing nothing was bad enough on her equilibrium. “I've got an instructor back home.”
“He can't be very good if your form is still choppy. You're too supple not to excel at it.”
He was a she, as was the entire class, but Simon didn't need to know that.
“You're mistaken.” She'd fought the blasted treadmill for supremacy, how in the world could Simon believe she was supple?
“She moves with innate limberness, doesn't she, Jacob?”
She'd forgotten the eccentric housekeeper.
“Yes, sir. She does.”
“Oh, please. This is ridiculous. You're not going to talk me into being your Tae Kwon Do dummy by complimenting me on the way I move.”
“You said you wanted to talk to me. I'm offering you the opportunity to do so while I exercise.” His gaze shifted to the left of her shoulder. “I'll take care of Ms. Zachary, Jacob.”
The other man must have left because Simon's gray gaze returned to her. “Take off your shoes,” he repeated.
She stared down at her sensible pumps. She couldn't exactly wear them on Simon's exercise mats, even if she didn't act as his dummy.
She slipped the shoes from her feet and lined them up neatly beside the doorway.
“I think you'd better lose the jacket too.”
Simon had several panels of glass open in the wall of windows and there was a nice early summer breeze. “I'm sure it won't be necessary. I'm not going to work up a sweat talking to you.”
“That's true, but you'll have more mobility without it.” Then he stepped forward and started to help her out of her short-waisted blazer.
It was halfway down her arms before she got enough wits to voice a protest. “I don't need mobility to talk.”
“But it
will
make playing my dummy easier.”
She was about to tell him what he could do with the idea of her playing his dummy, when the conversation she'd had with her manager the day before came back to her. This was for her job. She could and would do a lot to clinch this deal.
Playing dummy for Simon's Tae Kwon Do workout was neither immoral, nor demeaning. No matter how stressful she found it personally, she couldn't justify saying “no” simply because she was attracted to him.
She had to drop her briefcase before she could let him pull the jacket the rest of the way off.