"This isn't bad at all, Jared. I think it's supposed to illustrate to couples how little they really know about each other. And to rediscover their interest in one another."
Whatever. Jared sat back down in the chair so Candy's thigh would stop brushing his arm. "So what does it say?"
"Question number one just asks where you're from. You know, where were you born and where did you grow up."
Candy was right. It wasn't as bad as he had suspected. And if Harold wanted to pay him to talk about growing up in Skokie, that was fine with him.
She glanced back at him with a smile, her long legs still straight, her elbow resting on the desk. "Guess where I was born."
He pictured her wandering around a wicker-filled bedroom with louvered windows, wearing a satiny camisole and panties and biting a peach. God, when had he gotten such a vivid imagination? And why did it have to involve Candy in her underwear? " Georgia."
She scoffed. "No, dead wrong. Tennessee."
Oh, there was a difference? "Sorry, I'm not an expert on Southern dialects."
Her little pink tongue slipped out and wet her bottom lip. The full one. The one that demanded he bite it. Jared shifted again, wondering if it was possible to sustain an erection for three hours with no other stimulus than dirty thoughts.
"You're a Yankee through and through, aren't you?"
She made it sound like that was slightly more desirable than an ant infestation in her kitchen.
"I've lived in Chicago all my life."
"Brothers and sisters?" Candy wasn't looking at the computer screen, but was just lounging there draped across the desk, looking mildly curious with a little curving smile gracing the corner of her mouth.
He had no reason to answer. He should suggest they get on with the damn quiz. Instead, he found himself saying, "Three older brothers and one little sister. My parents were insane, apparently."
She threw her head back and laughed, those blond wispy curls tumbling down her back. "Your mother must have loved kids, that's all."
He fought a smile, but couldn't stop it. "I'm not sure that she did. She used to tell us that she was guaranteed a spot in heaven. That God would never deny entrance to a woman with five kids as bad as we were."
She laughed.
"Were you bad, Jared?" Her voice was throaty, her laughter evaporating, but amusement still lingering in her eyes.
For a second, he thought she was flirting with him. And his answer slipped out before he could check it. "Oh, yeah. I was very, very bad."
Her eyes went wide. The full smile came back.
Shit. She was flirting with him. And he was doing it back.
Before she could say something that he would regret, he quickly spoke in what he prayed was a casual, innocent, no-sexual-intent kind of voice. "What about you? Any brothers or sisters down there in Tennessee?"
There was a slight pause, before she said, "I have a younger sister."
Jared tried to picture another woman looking like Candy and couldn't quite conceive it. Candy was one of a kind. Delicious.
"So what's her name? Taffy?" He realized immediately that sounded a lot ruder than he'd intended.
But Candy just laughed. "Actually, her name is Margaret and she's studying the cello at Julliard."
"You've got to be kidding me." Margaret?
Jared got a visual of Candy sitting with a cello between her legs. Somehow the image was hard to conjure, though he did feel a pang of envy for the fictional cello and the prized position between Candy's legs. But Candy and orchestral instruments just didn't go together in his mind, no matter what erotic spin he could put on it.
Yet he could see Candy smiling and intelligently directing a room full of ad clients. Damn. Smart and sexy. It was a lethal combination.
"No, I'm not kidding." Candy pulled a strand of hair out of her mouth, one leg still straight, the other bending at the knee, sending her hip out provocatively to the side.
It also dragged her skirt up another solid inch on that side, showing way more than Jared needed to see. Not that he was complaining. It just sent scissors through another thread of his control.
"Margaret and I have different fathers. My mom says my daddy was her true love, a brief burst of passion that left her heartbroken and alone before I was even born."
Candy shrugged. "He left her for another woman when he found out she was pregnant. So two years later she married Margaret's dad because she thought he would stick around and take care of her."
Jared dragged his eyes off Candy's thighs. Leering at her suddenly made him feel no better than the lecher who had run out on her mom. He placed his eyes squarely on her face and vowed not to let his gaze stray. "Did he stick around?"
"Yeah. They're still married and very happy. They really love each other and he never made me feel any different from Margaret even though I wasn't his blood daughter."
She smiled then, and Jared was amazed at the lack of bitterness in her voice. "He adopted me and gave me the last name Appleton. I was three by then, so too late to change my first name from Candy. So I've been Candy Appleton ever since."
Then she stood up. Her legs went way, way up as she stretched, reaching her arms over her head while she went up onto the tips of her toes in her high-heel shoes. Her blouse tugged and pulled, straining to escape the waist of her skirt and molding to her breasts. Her suit jacket splayed, held together by one overworked button, and Jared watched in morbid fascination.
He was waiting for the whole thing to blow. The button to fly off, the blouse to slide up, her creamy navel skin bared to him all while she tottered on heels at his mercy.
Then he would take the spot previously reserved for the cello and ease her skirt up.
Jared calculated how much money was left in his checking account and gave himself up for lost.
Chapter Three
Candy hoped like heck she knew what she was doing. Jared looked as if he could chew up nails and tie them into bows with his tongue. She couldn't tell if he was turned on, furious, or both.
And what had possessed her to run on at the mouth about her mother and stepfather? Not that she had an ounce of experience in having casual affairs, but she had to assume you didn't start them out by talking about your family.
Give her another five minutes and she'd be whipping out photos of last Christmas and her cat wearing a Santa hat.
She finished stretching, her legs stiff from bending over the desk, and chewed her lip as she thought over her next move. This shouldn't be so doggone hard. She'd been flirting since the cradle, as her mother frequently liked to remind her. But now when she needed it, all she could think to do was smile, which was lame and appeared to have no impact on Jared whatsoever.
It must be nerves. After all, there was a lot more at stake here than getting good restaurant service. Before she left this office today, she wanted a date with Jared. A date that would end up with them naked and Jared turning that intense concentration squarely on her.
Time to take a deep breath and turn up the heat.
"What's the next question?" Jared said, shrugging out of his suit jacket.
Oh, Lord, he had broad shoulders. She didn't think she'd ever seen him without his jacket on, and it was a sight worth lingering over. She lingered so long he raised an eyebrow.
"The question?"
The quiz. Right. With elephantine effort, she turned around and tried to focus on the computer screen, her cheeks burning.
Jared was turning up the heat, and he didn't even know it.
After quickly typing in their responses to birth place, she went on to three. "Question three. Describe the moment you met."
That was easy. Jared had strolled into the office one Monday morning back in January and she had known lickety split that he would be the one to pull her out of the sexual deep freeze she'd been in since her divorce. He had been wearing a black suit with a burgundy shirt and tie, and he had looked at her, scanned her, and moved on. Dismissed. Dissed.