LITMIR.BIZ

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pleasurable. He was leading her, teasing her. Why?

      Suddenly a lightbulb went on in her brain.

      Had he sent them? Just like he’d written that letter? Was he as shy about intimacy as she was about sex? Was it possible he was afraid to tell her? Was it possible that he couldn’t put himself out like that, not when she’d rejected him for so many years? What if he really felt bad about those wet T-shirt pictures? If so, the whole thing, the letter, the flowers, was sweet in a way.

      Don’t be a fool. He’s the enemy. He’s after your job.

      “Are you here to take credit for the flowers?” she whispered, challenging him.

      “I’ll take any credit I can get,” he said smoothly. “Lord knows where you’re concerned I damn sure need it.”

      “You’re not afraid,” she said shyly.

      “Why the hell should I be?”

      “What does the card say then?” she asked, testing him.

      “Ah, a test.”

      She stared at him in shock, realizing that she was enjoying this exchange way too much.

      “Love, Matt.” He blushed when he said it. He actually blushed. His quick smile was unpretentious and sweet.

      She felt her own face growing hot beneath his steady gaze. “P-please—don’t tease me about this.” With fingers that trembled, she placed the card in his. “You know what you wrote…and it wasn’t Love, Matt.”

      “Name withheld upon request,” he read aloud in his deep baritone, watching her. “This guy is good. As good as me.”

      “I wonder why?” Those green eyes of his were still on her. She felt him reading her mind, her heart. Strangely she didn’t mind as much as she usually did. “If you really sent them, write the words you didn’t say,” she said, stealing the sentiment from his anonymous love letter in the Gazette.

      He took the card and laid it on her desk. With a flourish of black ink, he wrote, “Love, Matt,” and then placed the card in her palm. “There. Satisfied?”

      Their fingertips touched and again she sizzled.

      At her gasp when she pulled her hand free, he gave her another startled look. “Happy Birthday then, darlin’.”

      “It’s been quite a birthday,” she said. “Full of surprises.”

      “For me, too. It’s not even 9:00 a.m. yet. Your smiles are getting friendlier. Does this mean you’ll go to the Spring Fling with me?”

      “I don’t think so.”

      “Don’t say no yet. I’ll forgive you for high school if you’ll forgive me.”

      “What?”

      “After your father talked to the superintendent, I got expelled, remember?”

      “It’s just too sudden,” she said.

      “Okay,” he murmured. “I guess we’d both better get to work. Happy birthday, beautiful.”

      “I’m not beautiful. My sister, Mindy, is beautiful. Your Carol is beautiful.”

      “You’ve always been way too hard on yourself.”

      “I can’t believe you know that about me.”

      “I pay attention—when I’m interested. And you are beautiful,” he repeated. “Furthermore, just to set the record straight, she’s not my Carol anymore. In fact, she never was. We went out a few times. People in Red Rock thought it meant more than it did.”

      “Carol thought so, too.”

      “So you’re tuned into the twenty-four-hour grapevine.”

      “Isn’t everybody?”

      “I’m a free man, darlin’, unless some pretty lady takes pity on me and decides to love and reform me.”

      “You could definitely use some reforming.”

      “I’d prefer the lovin’ part, but more on that later.” He was grinning as he strode out of her office, pulling the door shut behind him.

      Alone with his sweet-smelling flowers, she plucked a daisy out of the bunch, went to the window and twirled it against her nose. She was so wrapped up in her conflicting thoughts and feelings about Matt that she had no idea how long she’d stood there when voices outside in the hall snapped her out of her reverie. Quickly she jabbed the daisy back into the vase and went back to her desk to search for the fund-raiser folder.

      Much to her surprise, it lay on her desk on top of the clutter she’d shaken out of her briefcase.

      Crossing her arms, she shook her head in confusion. Then she opened the file to make sure all the papers were inside it, and even though they were, she felt vague little prickles of alarm.

      She could have sworn it hadn’t been there before Matthew Harper had come in to see her.

      The River Walk was idyllic. The brown serpentine river sparkled, and sunlight shone through the cypress trees. Jane and Mindy were sitting in a shady spot under a red-and-white umbrella beside the water. There were enough tourists on the old limestone walkways so that Jane and Mindy had people to watch, but their riverside French restaurant wasn’t too crowded. Not like a happening Saturday night when all the restaurants, shops and clubs were jammed.

      “I hate to cut this short, but I really do have to get back to the office,” Jane said. “I have an important presentation.”

      “First we have to light your candles on your chocolate birthday cake so you can make a wish.”

      For a birthday that had started off all wrong and had been filled with unsettling surprises, Jane couldn’t remember when she’d had more fun. Why was that? she wondered.

      As Mindy struck a match to light her candles, Jane closed her eyes.

      “Think of something you truly truly want, and your wish will come true,” Mindy said softly.

      Jane tried to concentrate on the position of director of market research but drew a blank. Instead she conjured a broad-shouldered hunky giant with a sculpted mouth and black-lashed, green eyes, who was wearing a red tie with even hotter pink flamingos flapping all over it.

      She squeezed her eyes tighter and tried to focus on the job she wanted. Matt’s image was as stubborn as the man himself and refused to budge.

      “Are you thinking of something you really want yet?” Mindy quizzed hopefully.

      “No!” she snapped and mentally stuck out her tongue at the vision of Matt.

      “Mind if I sit down?” murmured a deep, familiar baritone.

      Her eyes flew open, and there he was—as if she’d truly conjured him. Mom would love this.

      “I certainly do mind. I was trying to make a wish before my candles go out.”

      He sat down anyway and closed his eyes. A look of fiendish bliss transformed his dark, rugged features. His eyes opened. He leaned forward and blew out her candles.

      “What do you think you’re doing?”

      “I made a wish for you on your birthday.” He began plucking candles out of the cake and licking chocolate icing off their bottoms.

      “You can’t do that.”

      “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s a done deal, darlin’.” He licked another candle. “Besides, you were blocked and I was feeling creative. When are you going to realize we’re a team?”

      “No, we’re not.”

      “We could be—if you’d let it happen.”

      “What did you wish for?” she asked him, to change the

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