Goddammit, he needed to get control. And quick.
“No, I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure,” he replied. “I’ll take your word for it.”
She arched a brow. “Oh, really? That would be a first between us.”
“Sheathe your sword, Sophie,” he said.
“So you finally admit that you need every bit of help you can muster when going up against me?” she challenged, amusement lighting her eyes like glittering stars.
“I never said I didn’t. Only a fool would encounter you and not be battle ready with everything in his arsenal available to him.”
She heaved an exaggerated sigh and splayed her fingers wide over her chest. “I do believe that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
His wry chuckle caught him by surprise. The last thing he’d ever expected to do with Sophie was laugh. A warning for caution blared in his ears. He couldn’t afford to let down his guard, become too comfortable around her.
“What are you doing on this side of town? The coffee here is great, but I’ve had what you keep at your office and it’s pretty good, too.”
“I’m not headed to work this morning. I’m waiting for my mother. She has a doctor’s appointment right down the street.”
She frowned and laid a hand on his lower arm. “I’m sorry. Is she okay?”
For a moment the flare of heat emanating from her touch seared his voice, rendering it useless. She might as well have settled her palm over his dick the way he throbbed and ached.
Gritting his teeth, he ignored the lust coursing through him like a swollen river and said, “Yes. It’s just a regular checkup.”
“Oh, okay.” Her frown deepened for a moment, and it seemed as if she was going to probe further, but in the next instant she skated a quick survey up and down his frame. “So you’re not going to the office, but this is what you wear on a Saturday morning?”
He didn’t bother glancing down to take in the white long-sleeved shirt and black slacks. “Problem?”
She snorted, a smirk flirting with the corners of her lips. “Oh no. No problem at all. I’m just wondering what you wear to bed. An Armani suit? Or maybe a tuxedo.”
The humor fled from him, chased away by the desire flaring inside him by the mention of “bed.” Hell, she’d reduced him to a fourteen-year-old boy who got hard with the switch of the wind. That didn’t stop him from cocking his head to the side and murmuring, “You’re wondering what I wear to bed, Sophie? All you have to do is ask.”
Slashes of red tinted her cheekbones and her eyes turned to liquid silver. Neither of them spoke as the air hummed with tension, pulsed with an unacknowledged lust volleyed between them. God, he wanted her. Why her—a reporter who sought to paint him as a puppet for his deadbeat father? Would she screw him, then riffle through his drawers to find dirt she could use for the follow-up piece on him and his family?
Something deep inside him objected to that, argued that she wasn’t that kind of woman, but this time logic ruled. He’d known too many people who would sooner use him than blink. As a Lowell, men and women looked at him and saw money, connections, information and sometimes a good fuck. But never the man. Never the son struggling to make good and be honorable where his father had failed.
Sophie blinked, the desire clearing from her gaze, and at the same time he edged back a step.
“Pass,” she rasped, then, clearing her throat, turned back to her table and gathered up her empty coffee cup, paper plate and plastic fork. “Seriously, though, Joshua,” she continued in a stronger voice, that hint of humor returning. “Jeans. Ever heard of them?”
“Sounds familiar,” he drawled, following her toward the exit. She dropped her trash in the receptacle and pushed through the coffeehouse door. “What is this sudden fascination with my clothes?”
She laughed as they moved out onto the sidewalk, stepping aside as more customers entered the café. He ignored the curious glances shot their way. After fifteen years, he should be immune to them. But he’d never managed it. They still got under his skin.
“Not your clothes. I’m just curious if you ever relax. If you’re ever not Joshua Lowell of the Falling Brook Lowells, CEO of Black Crescent Hedge Fund and just Josh. Does anyone call you that?”
“My brothers did. But it’s been a long time,” he murmured.
Just Josh.
There was no such person. Once upon a time there’d been. Josh had been an artist on the precipice of a promising career. He’d been the older brother to Jake and Oliver, who’d been friends as well as brothers. Back before they’d looked on him with scorn and resentment for following in their father’s tainted footsteps. Josh had been carefree, laughed often and pursued his passion.
His family and the company wouldn’t survive if he reverted to Just Josh.
If he tasted the joy, the life-giving fire of art again, he might not survive.
So no, Joshua Lowell, savior and CEO of Black Crescent, was much safer.
Sophie studied him with narrowed eyes, then, slipping the strap of her laptop bag over her head so it crossed her torso, she grabbed his hand in hers and tugged him forward. The shock of her skin touching his reverberated through his body and stunned him long enough that he didn’t resist her leading him down the sidewalk. He should pull away from her, cauterize the connection that bled fire into his veins...
He flipped their hands so he enfolded hers, so soft and delicate, in his.
Minutes later, she paused in front of Henrietta’s Creamery, the town’s only ice-cream shop. He stared at her, confused and more than a little taken aback.
“Ice cream?” he asked, not bothering to eliminate the skepticism from his voice. “At nine thirty in the morning?”
She shook her head and mockingly patted his arm with the hand he wasn’t clasping. “See? This right here
