customer area.
She took a chance and said, “Sure.”
Today Mack' s smile was like a physical thing. It poured over her, carrying away tension. It was like stepping into the hot spray of a shower. Like leaning forward while a man wrung a spongeful of hot water over your back.
Mack came through the gate, glanced around. “The place is looking pretty spiffy.
Things that bad?”
When work was backed up the shop was a pit. During a bad virus outbreak it could probably qualify as a public safety hazard. Right now it was so clean you could perform surgery on the workbench. “It' s been pretty slow. I even broke down and read my sack of snail mail. Junk and all. “
“Whoa. You do need rescuing.”
He put the box on the desk. She lifted a flap partially with one finger. Steam kissed her skin, beads of condensation formed on her knuckle. Jolie sniffed, tasted the flavors she inhaled in the saliva that pooled in response. “Coffee,” she said. “And something sweet…doughnuts?”
“You' re good.”
The words brought her head up.
He nudged a chair toward her and slid the box away, opening the flaps and removing king-size foam cups. “Coffee and cherry doughnuts from Lucille' s over on Main.”
He pushed a wax-paper-wrapped doughnut toward her. It was the dark-brown cake kind with nuggets of glistening cherries baked in. She broke off a piece. It was still warm from the fryer. When she popped it into her mouth, the burst of flavor, tart and sugar-sweet, had her closing her eyes and groaning.
“I think I' m your slave. Name your pleasure, master.” She' d forgotten, until he abruptly turned away-looked everywhere and anywhere but at her-that he was a Quarterz resident, that those words might be taken as a sexual invitation.
She washed down the doughnut with a gulp of black coffee that scalded her throat, and attempted some damage control, steering the topic away from her slip. “Is your program on a CD or is it something we need to download?” She shook the mouse and the computer came out of sleep mode.
He cleared his throat, dug into his pants pocket. “I' ve got the install file on a USB
stick.”
“The only free port is on the back of the tower.” She' d started to get back up, but he put a hand on her shoulder. The touch, the warmth of a man' s skin against hers, even through the barrier of her cotton blouse, carried more sensual punch than the food.
Snatch Me' s hyperaroused state still lingered in Jolie' s body.
“Stay,” he said, his deep voice adding a physical dimension to the word, reigniting the quiver in the pit of her stomach. “I' ve got it.” She polished off half the doughnut while Mack crawled under her desk, fiddling with the tower. It didn' t do a thing for the hunger gnawing through her.
Unlike Snatch Me, Jolie dressed conservatively. She was wearing a skirt that fell to her ankles, something feminine, dressy casual, that allowed her to look professional and female, but still allowed her to do things like crawl under a desk to connect cables without putting on too much of a show. Mack' s body brushed the fabric back and forth over her legs as he moved in the tight space. She gritted her teeth and pushed her chair back. She would lose her mind if he kept this up.
He finally backed out and sat down beside her, looking like the same cheerful Mack he' d been last week, but he was a different Mack.
He wasn' t Mack her dad' s friend anymore, or Mack her customer. He was a guy who did “things” to women-things regular guys, and regular women, didn' t do. She' d known that in a vague way the last time she' d seen him. Now she had a better picture of who Mack was and what he wanted. She' d stepped into that picture, walked around in that world. Why did knowing his fantasies make
They were elbow-to-elbow in front of the computer. Not a good time to be wondering if he was into lucky librarians, if he' d spent quality time in a library today-
in a librarian. Could he have been one of them? She pressed her knees tightly together.
“Jolie?”
“Oh, sorry.” A tingling heat spread across her shoulders, up her neck. She kept her head down, hoping her hair hid the worst of the blush. “I zoned for a minute.” They' d been waiting for the installer to finish running and it had. She was a professional, doing a job. All she had to do was think about that job.
“So show me which part of this baby is giving you trouble.”
“All her parts give me trouble,” he said.
Jolie snagged her coffee cup, took a long swallow. He had to be doing this on purpose.
Mack reached politely across her side of the desk for the mouse. His arm brushed against her hair. His hand cupped over the mouse, the way a man' s hand might cup between a woman' s legs. She flashed on Waster, his hand cupped over Snatch Me' s pussy, the slow stroke and tap of a talented finger over tender flesh. Mack' s finger was tapping the mouse button.
She put her hand over his to stop him.
“Here, let me take the scroll wheel for a minute. I want to see something.” He slid his hand from under hers. She arbitrarily opened menus, scrolled through options.
“You okay, Jolie?”
“Sure.” She forced herself to look at him, made her lips move upward into a smile.
He knew. She could see it in his eyes, not the pitying concern she' d grown accustomed to seeing when someone asked that question. This was something more, like a searching. But all he could know was that she was acting strange and had probably figured out he was into the Quarterz. He wouldn' t know she' d been there or what she' d done there. He might guess. Imagine. But personal information was shielded and voices were morphed to protect privacy. He wouldn' t know.
He still hadn' t said anything. His eyes still probed.
“I' m fine,” she said again. “I didn' t sleep well last night and I' m a little spacey.” She lifted the coffee cup in salute. “Nothing this and some stimulating company can' t fix.”
“I' ll do my best to keep you awake,” he said.
She scalded her tongue with coffee and chased that with a piece of doughnut to keep any more stupid words like “stimulating” from falling out of her mouth.
Mack turned back to the screen and more to his credit than hers, they did finally manage to get down to work. The program was complicated and not terribly intuitive.
This was open-source software-free but you had to be a brainiac to use it. Since 3D
modeling programs could cost thousands of dollars she understood his willingness to brave the learning curve.
“Now, see that?” He tapped the monitor with his finger. “I move the model, her hair stays hanging in the air where she used to be. Or if I turn her head, the side of her hair hangs over her face and I spend another hour pushing buttons trying to get the hair right again.”
While Jolie experimented, worked her way through the problem, Mack talked about the program and other things. He kept the conversation light at first-a movie he' d seen, a funny story about his dog. Subtly the conversation switched from about him to about her.
”So you' re planning to stick around keep your dad' s shop going?” he asked. She paused, letting the mouse arrow hover over an open menu, trying to hang on to her place in the problem solving while answering him.
“I' ll keep it going through the summer.”
“A lot of businesses are closing. A shame the economy is such a mess.” She right-clicked and opened up a menu within a menu. “In this case it' s more than the economy. Computer repair shops are going the way of TV repair shops. Tablets have ramped up the speed of that shift. I have to come up with some sort of application or content angle if I want to keep the business going. I just haven' t figured that out yet.”
“You will.”
She wished she had his faith. An idea about his issue came to her and she backtracked. She dropped the
