Forcing herself, she turned and headed to where he was bent over his desk, one hand hovering over his trackpad, one finger pointing at the screen.
She fixed her gaze on where his finger rested, doing her damnedest to ignore the steamy male scent and the inviting warmth radiating off him.
She planted her hands on the cold glass desktop and read. And then she read some more. But the words weren’t going in. She couldn’t set her focus, her head going dizzy with his appeal.
He straightened on a sigh, and she caught sight of his chest flexing as he did so, which sent desire climbing up her throat.
He was less than an arm’s reach away. Why couldn’t she just give in?
And then came the painful retort—He can’t love you back—and she almost choked with it.
Love? Was that where she was at?
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘Think...?’ Get with it, Jennifer.
She swallowed and he coughed. She glanced at him and caught a brief sweep of his tensed muscles, his heated gaze, and knew he wanted her.
But he doesn’t want more.
It served to up her resolve. ‘I have some ideas.’
‘Ideas?’
‘Yes.’ Pulling her plait over her shoulder, she righted herself and turned to face him fully. ‘Why don’t you get dressed and join me in my office?’
He brushed a hand over his hair, sweeping the damp curls away from his face and she almost snapped, almost reached up to repeat his exact move.
She fisted her hands at her sides. ‘Unless you want to do this half-naked?’
He gave her a lop-sided grin. ‘I will if you will!’
‘Marcus.’ She whirled away and threw her hands in the air, her sexual frustration and teetering resolve sending her storming for the door. ‘My office—when you’ve bothered to put some clothes on.’
He would have laughed if he hadn’t been working so damn hard to appear normal.
Seeing her, knowing now how he felt, had intensified every sensation. When he’d heard her say his name his heart had ballooned, cutting off his ability to breathe. And then he’d seen her, his eyes devouring every last inch of her, and his towel had been lucky to stay steady.
It was fortunate that he hadn’t just kissed the look of shock right off her face. The hint of lip gloss glistening on her otherwise innocently bare features had pleaded with him to do as much. Her woven hair, still wet, told of a recent shower, and the thought of her in it, naked and slick, had teased him senseless.
And if someone had told him he’d find a polo neck and trousers sexy he would’ve laughed them out of the room.
In the bathroom he hit the cold tap, turning it on full, and doused his face, trying to send a message to the searing burn making camp in his gut.
The thing was, if it was just that—desire—then he would be able to cope. He knew he would. It was the fact it was so much more than desire now. Seeing her and knowing that left him all kinds of vulnerable, and it was chewing him up inside.
He’d barely slept the night before, battling with it all, the risk weighing heavy on him. But he couldn’t carry on like this. He knew that now. He just had to work out how to broach the subject and not send her running for the hills with his turnaround.
He raked the towel over himself and got dressed, prepping his mind for the topic at hand—the competitor’s product launch. They would deal with that and then he would make sense of the rest.
He found her at her desk, scribbling furiously on her notepad. The professional Jennifer he had come to know so well was in full swing. She was every bit the businesswoman he had come to respect above all others, her brain working like no one else’s he knew, piecing things together even quicker than him—and that, frankly, was saying something.
‘I see you really do have some ideas.’
She glanced up, her eyes bright with excitement.
‘I do—check this out.’