For the first time it occurred to her that maybe she was going to accept this job offer.
And then, she eyed the bathrobe he had brought in. It was a man’s, huge and plaid, and way too bulky for a summer night.
She shoved all her dirty laundry into the bag Jamie had provided. Let someone else do her laundry! The new Jessica Winton—bold, embracing the adventure of life—threw open her bedroom door and walked out into that luxe apartment in nothing more than her future boss’s oversize T-shirt.
Well, she might have been hiding behind the laundry bag, just a touch.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHILE JESSICA WAS in the shower, Jamie waited for pizza—the-wilder-the-better-be-careful-what-you-ask-for-sweetheart-pizza—to be delivered.
Pizza. She was in New York City. She could have had anything. He had a list of favorite high-end five-star restaurants that were happy to deliver. But no, she wanted pizza, and insisted that she would pay her half when she had some funds.
Who walked into an apartment like this one—at one of New York’s toniest addresses, the three-block stretch that formed Central Park South—and demanded to pay for half the pizza?
The same woman who had seen something here—or a lack of something—that no one else had ever seen. Seen something about him that people did not see.
The same woman who looked at his quarter-million-dollar kitchen remodel and did not see arrival but wondered about Christmas dinner. He had a feeling that she would not approve of the fact there had never even been a Christmas dinner here. There had never even been a Christmas tree.
She wouldn’t approve, either, that the last female guest to his apartment had not had turkey on her mind. In fact, she’d had quite an interesting idea of what the kitchen island could be used for.
He had sent her home without testing her idea. He realized, now, something he had not realized at the time. It was probably the influence of his guest that made him articulate, within his own mind, what he had felt when his last disappointed guest had left the apartment.
Jamie was sick of the kind of women he had deliberately populated his life with. Fast and sophisticated, they liked all the trappings of success that this apartment represented. They didn’t complicate his life.
Not a single one of them had ever suggested, of his space, it doesn’t really suit you.
Why did he care about Jessica Winton’s approval? I do not he told himself, but he was aware it was not quite the truth.
That very same woman who was worried a hotel desk clerk thought she was sporting a come-hither look was the kind of woman who could complicate a man’s life before he knew what had hit him.
Jamie decided to entertain himself by looking up the phrase come-hither. It turned out the saying dated back to the 1800s. It indicated a look of sexual invitation, flirtation and seduction.
Even though he could not think of one person less likely than her to have such a look, he put down his phone as if it had burned him.
Who used a phrase like that?
A bookstore owner, apparently. One who also was familiar with quotes from Hippocrates and the works of the Brontë sisters.
Down the hall, he could hear the shower running in the spare bedroom en suite bathroom. She—Jessica Winton, of come-hither fame—was in his space.
But there would be no come-hithering of any sort. He was a professional. She was a professional. They had been dealt an unexpected hand. They would deal with it professionally. He heard the shower turn off. He imagined her dressed in nothing but a cloud of steam.
She had borrowed his phone to call her parents, he reminded himself. Not one single woman who moved in his circles called her parents to check in. Not under any circumstances.
She wouldn’t be calling her parents if she had a boyfriend, or significant other. She’d be calling him. She wouldn’t have come to New York to investigate a job opportunity, either.
Why was his brain insisting on acting like it had uncovered a very important truth about her? That she was single?
All he needed to know about Jessica Winton was that she was wholesome and innocent and in need of protection. And professionalism. Until he got rid of her. He was probably going to be struck dead with a bolt of lightning for even thinking of her dressed in only a cloud of steam.
When the doorman rang to let him know the pizza was here, Jamie nearly jumped out of his skin. He hated it that his unexpected charge had him wound up tight in some way he was not accustomed to. He elected to go down to the lobby and get the pizza, rather than have it brought up. He took the stairs.
When he came back into the living room, puffing slightly, Jessica was standing at the floor-to-ceiling window, in one of his T-shirts.
The value of the take-his-mind-off-Jessica run down the stairs was instantly dissolved. He might as well have saved his energy.
The T-shirt was falling off one of her shoulders, leaving it completely bare. The shoulder seams came down to her elbows, and the hem of the shirt ended past her knees. She didn’t have on a speck of makeup or a piece of jewelry.
She hadn’t put on the bathrobe he had provided, and though that was completely understandable—it would have been way too large for her and it was summertime, not winter—he resented it.
Because there was something about her standing there, in only a T-shirt, her legs long and bare and slender, her body faintly and femininely curved against the thin fabric, that made his mouth go dry.
Jamie chided himself that he saw much more provocative outfits in the office daily. Really, she should have looked like a child playing dress-up.
Jessica turned and looked at him. Her hair was wet and curling, her face flushed pink from the shower. Her eyes looked huge, as seductive as the chocolate that they matched. She did
