“After the last hour, I’m not worried at all.” He glanced toward the kitchen and his office beyond. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay for lunch?”
She shook her head. “I really need to get going.”
“Before you go, your sketches from the other night had a note about a table for the kitchen.”
She looked surprised that he’d remembered. “They did. I can email you a link, if you’d like.”
“Or you could show me now.”
“Your lunch is getting cold.”
“I’ve got a microwave.”
Liz and Mike both looked up from their seats at the conference table as they entered Dean’s office. The smell of the food made his stomach grumble. All he’d eaten so far was a bowl of cereal before his swim at six-thirty a.m.
“May I?” Gina tossed the question over her shoulder, indicating his computer on the way to his desk.
“Uh…” He’d intended to look up the address while she watched, but she’d already sat down. Other than himself, no one used his computer, not even his friends sitting twenty feet away. He snuck a glance toward them and saw Liz’s astonishment turn to a frown while Mike’s became a thumbs up.
Determined to ignore them, he focused on the woman in front of him. The leather executive chair dwarfed her small figure as she perched on the edge of the seat. A jiggle of the mouse unlocked his screensaver, and the page of program code he’d been debugging earlier appeared on screen.
Shit. He’d forgotten that’s what he was working on when he’d heard the doorbell.
“Can I close out of this?” she asked.
“I probably should save it.” He moved in close, bracing a hand on the arm of his chair while automatically reaching for the mouse. When their hands touched, a spark of static electricity caused her to jerk back. He managed to control his reaction to a flinch.
“Sorry,” they mumbled in unison.
He did his best to quickly save his work and clear the screen as his heart thumped at an increased rate in his chest. Not only was he conscious of the proprietary secrets right before her eyes, he couldn’t help but be wholly aware of her a mere foot away. With each breath he inhaled, the stimulating sweet scent of her promised to linger in his memory until he couldn’t concentrate at all.
What felt like forever was in reality only about twenty seconds, and he was finally able to click over to the internet search engine. “It’s all yours.”
He straightened as she tapped the website in with lightning fast keystrokes. A few more clicks, and she had the picture of the table in front of them. The rectangle top appeared to be a long, single slab of wood cut from a huge tree that had to have been hundreds of years old. A redwood maybe? The overall dimensions were large by most standards, but in his kitchen, it would fit well.
“What do you think?”
“Nice.” Dean leaned over her shoulder to get a closer look at the description beneath the photo. Redwood was confirmed, and the sales pitch boasted comfortable seating combined with rustic elegance in the one-of-a-kind hand carvings on the high backs. “How many chairs?”
“Ten.”
He nodded and pushed back before her scent impaired all his common sense. “I like it. If it’s available, buy it.”
She glanced up in surprise. “Do you even want to know how much it is?”
Only his VP and stepdad knew the financial situation the company was in, so he shrugged to keep up appearances with the women in the room. “Not really.”
“Okay.” Gina’s attention returned to the screen. “What about seeing some other choices?”
He’d seen enough during the brief time he’d taken to furnish his office space a couple months ago. “Did you have anything else in mind?”
“No, but—”
“Then buy it.”
She huffed out a sigh. “I was going to say, but I haven’t looked yet.”
“I know what I want when I see it.”