Читать книгу Stress and The City - Stephanie Rowe - Страница 10

MALCOLM TYLER PARKER.

Ty.

Duh.

Was she an idiot or what? So blinded by his gallantry that she hadn’t noted the possibility that “Ty” and “Malcolm Tyler” could be the same person.

Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

“You’re Malcolm Tyler Parker, aren’t you?” As if she needed to ask.

He scowled. “How did you know my name? Or where to find me? I’m not in Information.” His voice was cautious, his body blocking the doorway as if to keep her out of his house.

“You gave it to me.” Sure sign of his stress. Didn’t even recall hiring Halloway Consulting to save him. There you go, Cassie. Think about work and not about how completely embarrassed you are to be standing here on his doorstep thinking about what his tongue feels like against yours.

He raised an eyebrow and shifted in the doorway, then shifted again. Too tense to relax? He was in such need of her services. “I told you my name was Ty. Didn’t give you my full name or my address.”

“Sure you did. How else would I have gotten it?”

Ty frowned and, despite her best efforts, she couldn’t help but notice that he looked quite sexy in his suit. In the light of day, it was apparent that Ty’s eyes were not black. They were a deep brown and they were narrowed in…disgust? Irritation? Raging desire for her body?

And he smelled so good. It was the same scent that had embedded itself in her sweater on New Year’s Eve…and hadn’t left the fibers all day Sunday.

Not that she’d pressed the sweater to her face all day or slept with it under her pillow just so she could smell him.…

Definitely not.

Cassie! What was she doing? Ty’s enticing scent was clearly not what she should be concerned about. A much bigger issue was his stress. And how she was going to explain sexually assaulting him a week ago.

Damn. She was going to have to explain that one.

But he really did look good in the light of day, didn’t he? He was the epitome of a wealthy businessman heading into New York City for work. A ridiculously sexy capitalist who undoubtedly had stolen many a woman away from her man.

Not that Cassie was attracted to him. She didn’t go for the corporate type. Except for Drew, and that had worked out oh-so-well. She’d always fantasized about the down-home boy who’d sling the kids over his shoulder and take them to work with him. A man who’d come home during lunch to build a new tree house. But Ty, with his sleek suit and efficient haircut, was giving her second thoughts on that particular stance. Maybe it was because she had no trouble picturing him with a kid hanging from each arm and a cat clawing its way up his leg. Either she was ultraperceptive or it was the first sign of the gradual deterioration of her grip on reality.

Perhaps it was his slightly crooked tie that was softening his image. Hmm…the off-kilter tie was probably a sign of his stress. A man who took such obvious care with his appearance couldn’t quite get the details right.

He needed her.

Ty’s eyes narrowed and Cassie realized how thick and dark his eyelashes were. So sexy they nearly made her pass out.…Well, if she were the fainting type.

“Why are you here? It’s not about New Year’s Eve, is it? Because that didn’t mean anything. It was to make Drew suffer because he’s a jerk.”

Oh, wow. He thought she was stalking him. Super. What an excellent first impression for a stress management therapist. Hi, I’m your therapist. Let me suck on your tongue and then stalk you.

No problem. She could handle this, right? Of course right. It wasn’t as if she was an emotional wreck or anything from the wedding that never happened. She lifted her chin and smiled calmly, ignoring the swirling whirlpool in her belly. “Ty. Listen, I’m not here about the kiss.”

“You aren’t?” His eyebrows were raised in visible skepticism. “Then why are you here?”

“To do you. I mean to do your stress. I mean…” Oh, if only the porch would collapse under her right now and bury her beneath two-hundred-year-old boards. No such luck, as the house was apparently built much too solidly for her convenience. She cleared her throat. “Six weeks ago you hired me to de-stress you. I’m here. Therapy has begun.”

He stared at her.

The man was like a mountain. An immovable mass of heaving masculinity. Oh, great. There went her hormones again, dancing ‘round the campfire doing the “seduce me” dance. When she got home, she was going to have a little chat with them about behaving appropriately when in public places.

“I hired you.” He did not sound convinced.

“Yes.” She patted his shoulder, refusing to notice how hard his muscles were beneath her hand. Okay, fine, so she noticed a little. She was human, wasn’t she? “Ty, that’s a sure sign of stress, when you forget appointments.”

He narrowed his eyes. “There’s no way I forgot an appointment this morning.”

Ah, he had her there. “Well, that’s true. I was intending to surprise you this morning.” From the deepening of the scowl on his face, he didn’t appear to take kindly to surprises.

Probably still fretting that she was a stalker.

“Hang on.” Cassie whipped out her handheld PDA, called up the original e-mail Ty had sent her to request her services, then turned the screen toward him. “Read.”

He grabbed her hand to steady the screen, and Cassie’s stomach did a little jump. What was her problem? He was a client, not some man put on this earth to give her thrills.

She didn’t even like men anymore, remember? She certainly wasn’t about to be attracted to one of them, even if she could still feel the heat from his hand infusing hers with…

“Huh.” He released her hand suddenly, as if he’d just realized he was touching her. Jerk. Just because he thought she was a dangerous lunatic was no reason to treat her as if she had cooties. Or maybe he wanted her so badly he couldn’t risk touching her. Good to know her imagination was still functioning.

“Now are you convinced you hired me?” Cassie flipped the screen toward herself and glanced at his e-mail. “You’re having trouble sleeping, your fiancée insisted you contact me or else she wouldn’t come home.…”

Whoa! Fiancée! Cassie had forgotten about that! Since Ty was Malcolm Tyler Parker, her new client, he had a fiancée. That really sucked.

Or it would suck, if she were interested in dating ever again. Which she wasn’t. So she didn’t care. Professional interest only. The burning in her gut? The result of consuming only coffee for breakfast. Not the feeling of disappointment, misery, loneliness or anything stupid like that. “You’re engaged?”

His lips tightened and his eyes darkened. For a long minute, he said nothing.

And then Cassie realized it was the Moment.

The moment where she learned whether all men were like Drew, cheating on their fiancées when they thought they wouldn’t get caught.

Ty could lie to her.

His fiancée would never know.

Don’t lie, Ty!

Not that Cassie cared. It wasn’t as if she was looking for a hero or even believed they existed. And what if, by some fluke of nature, Ty actually was some moral, trustworthy guy who was loyal to his fiancée? Then he’d refuse to ravage Cassie’s body and she wouldn’t get him, anyway. And if he did offer to tear off her clothes and take her right there on the doorstep, then he’d be a cretin who cheated on his fiancée.

See how it worked? If he honored his commitment to his fiancée, then he’d be worth trusting, but then Cassie couldn’t have him.

Not that she actually cared about him. It was just a hypothetical exercise in strategic thinking.

Ty finally nodded. “Yes, I’m engaged.”

Relief and regret surged through her. He was worthy…and he was unavailable. A hero…belonging to someone else.

Or maybe he just didn’t find her remotely attractive and he would have claimed a cockroach for a fiancée if it meant he didn’t have to fend off another one of her attacks.

Not that she had self-esteem issues or anything like that.

She lifted her chin. “Well, that’s great you have a fiancée. Fiancées are great.” Yes, as long as they don’t rip your heart out of your chest and stomp all over it in a public forum. “So, I guess then I’m supposed to de-stress you to save your engagement, huh? Make you tolerable to be around?”

For eight days she’d dreamed about this man…and now she had to ready him for another woman? If she failed and his fiancée ran away screaming, then he’d be available. If she succeeded, then he’d marry another woman.

Not that any of that mattered if the cockroach theory proved to be true.

And even if it didn’t, she had a job to do.

Whoa. What was she thinking? She couldn’t take this job.

He wasn’t a client. He was a man whom she’d sexually assaulted only a week ago. And she could still taste him on her lips.

How could she ever maintain appropriate professionalism with this man, in this situation?

It was completely impossible.

She was tough, but she wasn’t impenetrable.

Not to mention she was still mortally embarrassed about attacking him.

“Cassie? Are you all right?” His brows were furrowed and he actually looked sort of cute when he wasn’t glaring at her and acting as if she was a psycho.

“I’m excellent.”

“You sure?”

Damn him. He looked so concerned that she wanted to plop down on his couch and tell him all about her miserable month. No, challenging month. “Of course I’m sure.”

He didn’t look as if he believed her, and her belly became warm with appreciation. No doubt he was the kind of man who would take care of his woman. He might even realize when she needed a hug without her having to ask.…

No. Don’t think like that.

Think of the cockroach theory. “So…we have some work to do,” she said.

“No, we don’t.”

Typical denial. “Because you aren’t stressed or because you can’t stand the sight of me after I molested you…?” Oh, super. How had that little gem found its way from her brain to her lips? She certainly hadn’t given it a map.

An endearing smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I’m not stressed.”

And what about the second part of my question? As if she’d ask. He’d ignored it and so would she.

“And the sight of you doesn’t turn my stomach,” he added, as if he could read her mind.

“Oh. Well. That’s good.…I mean, it’s good because it would be hard for us to work together if I made you nauseous.” Brilliant. She was simply dazzling with her manipulation of the English language and her ability to turn a romantic phrase.

He grinned, no doubt amused by her ongoing effort to prove she was a complete dolt.

“The kiss has nothing to do with the fact I don’t want your help,” Ty said.

The kiss. The magical, earth-shattering, devastating kiss.

“I don’t want your help because I don’t need it. I thought I sent you another e-mail canceling the contract.”

“Stress again. You think one thing, you do another, and all the while your subconscious knows you need help. It’s typical.” She flipped open the cover to her PDA again. “You don’t mind if I take notes, do you?”

Ty grabbed the unit out of her hand. “I said I don’t need help.”

Excellent. A recalcitrant client. She was so not up for this. Recalcitrant, hot and a good kisser. Just what she needed.

Ty snapped the cover down. “For your information, I have a demanding job. That’s it. I was busy, hadn’t returned a couple calls to my fiancée and she got annoyed. So I sent the e-mail.”

Ah-hah. He’d done a weird jerky thing with his eyes when he’d mentioned his job. Something wasn’t right at the office. Cassie carved the note in her brain for recall after they’d parted ways and she could jot it down in her handheld device. Look at her: gifted with an attentive and sharp mind that honed in on stress-related signals even while she was in the throes of an emotional breakdown. Was she good or what? She’d always suspected there was a reason she hadn’t tried to knock herself out with a coconut when she was in the Bahamas.

“So what if my job requires long hours? That doesn’t mean I’m stressed,” Ty added.

As if she was that brain-dead. The man was too transparent to escape her sleuthing and suspicious mind. Before Drew, she’d been naive and trusting. Today, she was a bitter, perceptive woman…or harlot, depending on one’s point of view. Maybe having her world shattered by a cheating fiancé would make her a better stress management consultant. No longer would she be so willing to believe the good side her clients projected. A jaded realist, she would dig deeper than ever to find the true misery in her clients’ lives. “And your fiancée? No worries about what might happen when she comes to town and finds you working such long hours?”

“Nope.”

He didn’t flinch there. Definitely no concerns about what his fiancée would think about his work schedule. But something was amiss. It was apparent from the way he shifted on the doorstep and looked at his watch.…

Or maybe Cassie was making him late for a meeting.

Yikes. Why couldn’t she tell the difference between his being late and his being deceptive? What had happened to her instincts? Left on the floor of Drew’s bedroom on the night before their wedding, when she’d walked in…

Ahem.

Hadn’t she banned herself from thinking about that night? Focus on the present. “So, I’ll see you Friday night?”

He blinked. “Friday night?”

“Eight o’clock? Your place. I assume you don’t get home early enough during the week to meet.”

“I told you. I don’t need your help.”

Cassie shrugged, trying not to look into the depths of his dark eyes, wondering what it would feel like to have them roaming her body.…Hello. This was business. And he was engaged. Shut down the hormones.

Besides, hadn’t she already decided she couldn’t take him on as a client? There was simply too much baggage. And if she refused him as a client, then she wouldn’t have to be near him. And that would be good because she certainly felt the same urge to attack him that had overwhelmed her on New Year’s Eve, only this time she didn’t have the excuse of wanting to destroy Drew’s cockiness. Cassie was definitely going into post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of canceling the wedding. From conservative fiancée to sex-crazed fiend in a matter of weeks.

Not an entirely convenient transformation, given that the only two men in her life were a cheating exfiancé and a stressed-out hunk engaged to another woman. Not exactly appropriate outlets for her newly aroused fantasies. The solution? Retreat. “Fine. I won’t help you.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Fine? Just like that?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“But…”

“But what?”

“Shouldn’t you be more…”

“Tenacious?” she offered.

“Yes.”

“Usually. Not today.”

“Why not?”

“Not in the mood.” To be more precise, she wasn’t in the mood to work with him, and she was taking any excuse to turn down the project. Not that she was too emotionally distraught to cope. It was a tactical ploy designed to lay the foundation for her future career. She held out her hand. “My PDA, please.”

He passed it to her, his fingers brushing against her palm. Dammit! Why were her hormones going all weird every time he touched her? Unprofessional, inappropriate and pathetic. It was time to shape up. “Have a nice day.”

She made it only to the curb before she started doubting her decision.

BY THE TIME CASSIE arrived at Blissful Heaven at nine o’clock that evening, Leo had already laid out a bountiful supply of lush strawberries. A pot of thick, gooey and sinfully delicious chocolate was heating on a burner. The smell of warm cocoa hit Cassie the moment she pushed open the door to the little shop.

Nirvana at last.

She inhaled deeply, waiting for the tension to leave her body.

It didn’t.

She sniffed again, letting the divine scent spread through her being, seep into her lungs.…

Again, no loosening of the tight tendons in her shoulders. What was up with that? Chocolate never failed her. She saved these emergency sessions for the moments of greatest need, and they always worked.

Of course, at the present moment, she was a wee bit more strung out than she’d been in the past. Like when she’d driven into a police car at a stoplight, or the time she’d accidentally set Drew’s house on fire when he was on his way home with clients.…Hah! She’d forgotten about that. Must have been her prophetic subconscious knowing that someday he’d be deserving of having his kitchen turned into a pile of ashes on a very important day.

All well and good now, but at the time she had been more than a little distraught. A quick session at Leo’s with the chocolate and Cassie had recovered enough to call Drew and admit she hadn’t actually been killed in the fire. The jerk hadn’t even been worried about her, a fact she probably should have paid more attention to.

Ah, the beauty of hindsight.

So, anyway, if the chocolate had worked for that very traumatic event, why wasn’t it helping now, when things weren’t nearly that bad? So she’d sucked face with some stranger who was engaged to another woman. So what if he was also her new client and she couldn’t stop fantasizing about him? Those really weren’t big deals, even if you threw in the minor issue of the wedding that never happened. Really. It wasn’t any worse than, say, getting a bad haircut—especially if you got the haircut as your head was stuck through a guillotine and the blade was coming down, gleaming and shining, ready to lop off your head and—

“Cassie! You’re here!” Leo popped up from behind the marble counter, her bleached-blond hair swept into a careful bun to keep stray strands from adding to the texture to her desserts. Her customers would no doubt rebel against finding strands in their succulent sweets, or at least the women would. Cassie suspected the men lived for the hope that such a blessing would befall them.

Men. A strange breed.

“What in the world is going on? You call an emergency chocolate relief session and then make me wait all day without any details! What’s up with that?”

As if she was prepared to talk yet. She needed medicinal treatment first. Cassie grabbed the biggest strawberry and dunked it into the bubbling vat. She held it up, letting thick drops fall back into the pot with a rhythmic, soothing blurp. Ah…she felt better already just watching the chocolate dance. “It’s Ty.”

“Ty? The guy from New Year’s Eve? You saw him again?”

Yes, I saw Sex God again. Smelled dreamy. No, she needed to regroup. Focus. “I’m supposed to de-stress him for his fiancée.” Wow, that really sucked, saying “Ty” and “his fiancée” in the same sentence.

Cassie immediately plunked the chocolate-covered berry in her mouth.…Yikes! Hot!

“You’re supposed to put those on the waxed paper to cool after you dunk them,” Leo said dryly.

“Like I don’t know that.” The fact that she’d seared off the top layer of her tongue would be well worth it once the chocolate kicked in and soothed her stress.…

“Wow. You’re really in bad shape,” Leo said.

“Hang on.” Cassie held up a hand to stall Leo’s inquisition while she assessed her body. One strawberry ingested, but she still didn’t feel any better? Something was definitely wrong. Maybe the chocolate-fruit ratio had been off. Time to go full strength.

She picked up a spoon, dunked it into the simmering pot and scooped up a decadent portion.

“You must be seriously close to cracking up to assault your figure like that,” Leo observed. “He’s just a guy.”

“My need for chocolate has absolutely nothing to do with him.” Gah. How pathetic did Leo think she was? Needing chocolate because of a man. Silliest thing she’d ever heard.

Cassie blew on the chocolate to cool it off. See? Her instincts were still working. She was capable of learning from her mistakes. Burn the tongue on hot chocolate once. Cool it off next time. Someone on the verge of losing her mind would be entirely incapable of such brilliance. “He thought I was stalking him when I first showed up.”

“I wouldn’t recommend the stalking thing.”

Cassie raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’ve been accused of stalking before?”

“I might have been a bit overzealous in my pursuit of men in my reckless youth, but we’re discussing Ty. More specifically the fact that his engagement has sent you into a bout of depression so deep that it’ll take my store’s complete inventory to pull you out of it.”

Cassie poured the entire contents of the spoon into her mouth and swallowed. “It’s not that he’s engaged.”

Leo lifted her brows. “No?”

“It’s that I nearly sampled his tonsils. How am I supposed to work with him?” Darn it. Still no relief. “Are you sure this is real chocolate?”

“I think he still wants to jump your bones. And I’m insulted you could even question the purity of my chocolate.”

“Jump my bones?”

Leo grinned. “I told you. Biker date last night. I’m still in the mind-set.”

Cassie folded her arms across her chest. “Well, Ty’s engaged, so it doesn’t matter if he wants me. Besides, the entire conversation is moot because I’m not going to take him on as a client and I’m never dating anyone ever again, anyway. And are you really positive it’s not diet chocolate or something?”

“You’re going to turn him down? Are you kidding? You have one kiss with the man and you can’t cope with being in the same room with him? I’d have to go into isolation if I couldn’t handle being in the presence of any man I’d kissed. And of course it’s not diet.”

But this kiss was different. It had been more than a kiss. It had been a connecting of their souls.

“Is Ty stressed?”

“No.” Liar! Liar! Liar!

“Cassie…”

“Okay, fine. There’s a distinct possibility he’s stressed. So what?”

“So, you’re going to abandon a person in need of your services? Don’t you have any compassion?”

“I—He—” Where was her brain? Cassie was totally unable to fabricate even a weak excuse, let alone a viable one.

“Face it, Cassie. You called this chocolate relief session because you’re feeling guilty for refusing to help him because of your own baggage.”

“I have no baggage.”

Leo rolled her eyes. “The wedding? Finding Drew naked with another woman? Him declaring his love for you at the dance? Throwing yourself at some hot guy? Your first kiss in four years with someone other than Drew? Broke from your own wedding?”

“Well, when you say it like that…” Forget the stupid red fruit. She needed chocolate straight up. Cassie scooped up another spoonful, blew on it, then dumped the entire contents in her mouth. Swirled it around. Twice. Swallowed.

Nothing!

No respite at all.

Was she building up an immunity?

Just what she needed: a resistance to chocolate. Not.

It certainly couldn’t be that she was so tense that even her fail-safe stress reliever was rendered impotent. That would be unacceptable. Could she even imagine a stress-management consultant who was a complete basket case? Yes, that was definitely something that would add to her credentials.

Leo set her cellphone in Cassie’s hand. “Call him.”

Was she insane? “Ah…No.” Cassie tossed the phone onto the counter.