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I thought about the dark expressive eyes, the stone cut of his jaw, and the way Hale’s muscles challenged the fabric of his shirt. Muscles deep inside me tightened just in response to the thought of him. “Yeah, he’s hot.”
“Perfect,” Delia said. “You can knock out numbers one and two at the same time, then. You love efficiency!” She pointed a long finger at me.
I did love efficiency, but Hale was not part of my plan. I wasn’t sure what he was. “We’ll see,” I said. Whatever he was, he was hard to forget.
***
I wandered into the coffeehouse at six the next day. I’d vowed not to go down there, but I was starving again and tired of the same four cubicle walls upstairs. I ordered my sandwich and my flat white, and then settled in to work at my usual table. I glanced around, expecting to find Hale brooding at a table near the back, but the place was empty of scruffy T-shirt-clad mystery men. I tried to push down a swirl of disappointment. It was for the best.
When the bell above the door chimed an hour later, I was too absorbed look up. But when the bench next to me depressed and the distinct scent of alcohol hit me, my eyes rose from my screen to find Hale sitting beside me.
“You’re working late again,” he said, his voice scrapingsomething inside me that I wished wouldn’t respond to him at all.
“You smell like the inside of a distillery.” I dropped my eyes back to my screen, willing my heartbeat to slow down, my nerves to stop jumping around. I hated that I responded to him, when it was clear that was exactly what he was used to.
“Had to make a stop to visit a friend.”
“Is your friend named Jack Daniel’s?” Why was I encouraging this conversation?
He laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. I scooted away from him, feigned extreme focus.
“I’ve been thinking more about your project, about StrokeStat,” he said. I couldn’t help the way my eyes jumped to his face, my interest undoubtedly clear. “I think you’re onto something.”
I blinked hard at him. I still hadn’t decided how to categorize him, or whether I could trust him. I was having trouble accepting that I was going to look for help from a guy who looked like he’d been finding most of his answers in a bottle, but I didn’t have a lot of options. “I already know that,” I told him, pulling my best bitchy tone from somewhere deep inside.
He smiled and for a second I caught a glimpse of pure handsome boyishness, but then the façade dropped back into place. Ambivalence, nonchalance, and arrogance beamed from the dark moody eyes.
I stared at my computer, focused all myenergy on the screen before me. The screen where I was still stuck on one niggling aspect of my solution.
He leaned over, close enough that the whiskers of his too-long scruff tickled my cheek before I jumped away. He was peering at my screen, and for a split second, I let him before I slammed it shut. “Seriously?” I said.
“I think I know what you need,” he offered, a tone in his gravelly voice that made me think of things far removed from coffee and computers.
I stole a quick glance up. He’d sure as hell better be talking about my solution—shit, why did my blood rush at the thought he might be talking about something else? Traitorous body. His eyes danced when I met them, clear for a moment of the darkness they’d held the few times I’d looked into them. “What’s that?”
He shrugged and gave me a cocky half-smile. “You’re not a developer. You’re a statistician. You need to team up if you’re going to sell this, Holland.”
A shock of unbidden pleasure ran through me as he said my name. How did he know I was a statistician? I ran back through our conversations. Had I told him that? “Are we really having this conversation?” I asked, myself as much as him.
“I told you, I can help you.”
I closed the screen and sighed, turning to face him, finally giving him my full attention. “Okay, Hale. What’s your angle?” I’d purposely avoided teaming with anyone in development because most of those guys were linked directly tothe guys in my department. I needed to find out if I could really trust this guy.
Hale dropped the cocky smile, and for a split second before he began speaking, he looked sad. “Honestly? I don’t know.”
“I can see why you don’t work in sales.” I wanted to turn back to my screen, keep beating my head against this problem until it was solved, but I couldn’t. I was held by the sadness on Hale’s face, as much as by the sheer magnetism radiating from his broad body as he sat just inches from me.
He chuckled, his eyes holding mine. “I guess I just don’t like to see people struggle.”
I put my elbows on the table in front of me and dropped my head into my hands. Showing this stranger the details of what I was working on could be risky. I still didn’t know exactly how he was connected to the company, but if he was a former developer, he probably could help. Lord knew I needed it. “Okay,” I whispered, the rational voice inside me screaming arguments at the exhausted part that thought maybe it’d be nice to let someone else in for a change.
“Holland,” he said, pulling my gaze back to his. His dark eyes shimmered beneath the lights of the coffeehouse, and I caught flecks of green and gold in the deep rich brown. They were eyes a girl could get lost in. I squeezed my own eyes shut. I didn’t have time to get lost. I just needed help. “Holland,” he said again, and I opened one eye. A smile—a genuine one—spread across the full lips, exposing straight white teeth. I noticed that the front righttooth was chipped in the corner, lending just the right amount of character to an otherwise perfect smile. “You can trust me.”
Under normal circumstances, having a stranger in a coffee shop—one who smelled like he’d touched his pulse points with whiskey—tell me I could trust him wouldn’t carry much weight with me. But I was tired, drained, and feeling a little weepy after Carl and Delia had highlighted how far I was from ever getting to plan item two or three. And part of me wanted to trust this man. It was the pain in his eyes that compelled me.
“Prove it.”
He smiled, that sadness gleaming in the dark eyes again. “Ask Sam.” He nodded toward the barista.
