Slow Hands

sucking every brain cell from a woman’s head within two minutes of meeting her.
    Considering she’d dreamed about him for the past two nights—hot, Grey’s Anatomy inspired dreams of her being the filling in a triple decker McSteamy, McDreamy and McGigolo sandwich—she should be feeling McPanicked and McCornered. He’d almost surely be able to read the guilty embarrassment on her face the moment he spotted her.
    Somehow, though, she could only muster anticipation and excitement. But she knew that all he’d see on her face was interest and admiration that he’d tracked her down—and sought her out—so quickly.
    “Show him in,” she murmured, knowing she had about thirty seconds, the time it would take Ella to walk out and Number Nineteen to walk in. Just enough time to touch her hair, smooth her blouse and cross her legs.
    She uncrossed them and slid her chair under her desk as soon as he entered. Her skirt wasn’t too short. It was perfectly businesslike, in fact. But the pose seemed a little too blatant… inviting. As if she wanted to encourage him sexually, letting him know he’d been all she’d had on her mind since the moment she’d met him.
    That she did, and he was didn’t change her decision to go for professional rather than come-hither.
    “Hi,” he said. “Found ya.”
    “So you did, Mr. Wallace.”
    “Nice to see you again…Miss Turner. ” He glanced around her cluttered office, at the shelves laden with books and files and the stack of documents awaiting her signature in her in-box. Then he gazed past her at the window overlooking the city, one of the best views in the high-rise building. Whistling, he murmured, “I guess you do have a real job.”
    “What made you think I didn’t?”
    He met her stare, saying nothing.
    “Okay,” she acknowledged with a grudging smile. “I don’t suppose many of the bidders from the auction work on much more than their tans.”
    “But you don’t have one. Meaning you obviously work too much.”
    “It could be that I’m naturally pale-skinned and prone to burning.” And that she hadn’t had one of those lazy summer days on her father’s boat since last summer. She was going to have to remedy that.
    “I somehow suspect you spend twelve hours a day in here and just wave at the sun from your window as it goes by.”
    Smart man. And one who was right now making himself at home, sitting in a chair opposite her desk without being asked. Her office almost seemed to shrink around him, as if his big body had sucked up all the spare particles of air, leaving the two of them cloaked tightly in intimacy.
    Thank God for the desk. If it hadn’t been between them, Maddy might have been tempted to slide her chair closer, until their knees touched. Or their thighs. Or their mouths.
    Stop it.
    “Why’d you ditch me?”
    “Why did you pursue me?”
    “Ha. I asked you a complicated question and you asked me a very simple one.” He grinned. “I tracked you down because I owe you a date and I am not a welsher.”
    That was all. He wasn’t a welsher. Well, didn’t she just feel special, like an average everyday poker player waiting for a five-dollar payoff.
    “Now, your turn.”
    “It isn’t necessarily complicated.” She arched a brow and managed a bored tone. “Maybe I ditched you because I wasn’t interested.”
    His grin still confident, he immediately dispelled that possibility. “Twenty-five thousand bucks is a whole lot of disinterest.”
    “It’s for a worthy cause.”
    “So why didn’t you bid on somebody else early in the evening and get out right away?”
    “What makes you think I didn’t? Maybe you were my second-to-the-last chance to make a difference, so I made an outrageous bid.”
    “You didn’t bid on anybody else.” He leaned toward her desk, dropping his elbows on its surface. “Admit it.” The position sent muscle surging against cotton as his casual, washed-out T-shirt hugged his arms. The flexing of his tanned skin against the black fabric was almost impossible to tear her gaze away from. She honestly didn’t think she’d ever seen a more powerfully built man in person.
    She knew she’d never slept with one.
    Most of the men Maddy had had sex with had been wiry young college guys who wanted any female they could get—especially wealthy, heiress females—or pale, soft businessmen she met in her usual circle. Those men—men like Oliver, her ex-lover, whom she’d kicked out of her life a year and a half