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He stood and buttoned his shirt. Tucked the hem into his pants. Reached for his jacket and slipped into the garment.
Then he told her, “The decision is yours to make. And if that’s what you choose, I can’t do anything about it. But I will tell you that two people who responded to each other the way we did—right off the bat—” His gaze turned steely. “That’s something, Maxi.”
She swallowed hard.
Yes, it is!
But she kept that thought to herself. Watched him scoop up his tie before he kissed her and walked out the door. Suddenly realizing that she’d wanted him to convince her to leap from that precipice—with him.
That wasn’t fair to Ryan, though. She had to feel that following through on what they’d started was the right thing to do—not hope that he’d talk her into anything.
So why’d her decision to let him go feel so…wrong?
Chapter Five
Ryan wasn’t the love ’em and leave ’em type.
Never would be.
It had taken every ounce of willpower he possessed to slip out of Maxi’s office without making some sort of suggestion about her coming back to his place or perhaps having dinner the next night, or otherwise trying to convince her that sweeping their unexpected affair under the rug was the last thing he wanted.
Should he have been more insistent?
Would it have made a difference?
And what if it had…and they ended up getting carried away and losing focus on work?
Damn! This was all so new to him, and it frustrated the hell out of him to not have all the answers when it came to Maxi Shayne.
He’d met this incredible creature who complemented him in so many ways, while also challenging him, stimulating him. And he didn’t have the correct experience, possess the right knowledge, to ascertain whether he should let her take her stand…or talk her into giving them more of a chance than a one-day romance.
Even his gut instincts served no purpose in this particular situation. Because, again, with their intense attraction, they could easily get caught up in each other and ruin things for Staci Kay Shoes.
He stewed over this as he ripped tape from the boxes that had been delivered to his new house in Baltimore—a gorgeous Colonial he’d bought sight-unseen and wholly on a whim. Unusual for analytical him, but that was how desperate he’d been to get the hell out of DC and sprout roots somewhere well beyond the confines of Dr. Elizabeth Sherman’s social circle. Anything to keep him from wandering back to that life. Anything to break free of the debilitating anchor she’d been for far too long.
Ryan had always considered himself a man of his own destiny. In control of his scholastic aspirations and his career goals. Then he’d hooked up with Elizabeth, and goddamn, had that sent him barreling completely off course.
He’d carried on his back that monkey called “personal derailment” for four years. Time to kick it to the curb, as he suspected colorful Maxi would say.
Not the least bit interested in dwelling on the catastrophe that was his past relationship—although in the far recesses of his mind, he had to admit that it was quite possible his inability to grasp the appropriate direction to take with Maxi could be directly related to his failed engagement to Elizabeth—he put some thought into the layout of the new house and where his most prized possessions would reside.
When he had a solid plan, he shifted to business, considering how to adjust his projections to accommodate the fantastic work the team had jumped on today. Talk about rising to the occasion!
He had not missed from the get-go the tension his sudden presence had incited with the team. Not that he blamed them by any means. They were all under immense pressure and so, of course, having an outsider step in and dissect their efforts naturally left a sour taste in everyone’s mouth. But he felt as though he’d conveyed the fact that they were all in this together. It wasn’t one person’s fiasco, but the responsibility of the group as a whole to rectify the situation.
Chances were very good that they’d just wanted to show him up by jumping on fixes in their own departments. That didn’t bother Ryan. Whatever it took to get the train back on the track.
Ryan wasn’t much for tooting his own horn. He liked being a part of the process. Doing everything he could to help. It wasn’t about personal glory or gloating. It was about finding solutions to problems.
Certainly, he thought it’d be nice to figure out the solution to the new issue that arose with Maxi—not surprisingly, his thoughts circled back to her.
Since everyone had embraced his ideas rather than run him out of Maryland, tarred and feathered, he’d be sticking around a bit longer. How would that affect Maxi and him in the grand scheme of things?
Building his life here in Baltimore and at Staci Kay Shoes meant, in a sense, that he was building his life around the woman who’d deeply ensnared him. A direct correlation to what he’d discussed with her over lunch. They’d be spending fifty or more hours a week with each other. How could they ignore the fireworks when more than a third of their time was spent in such close proximity to each other?
He tapped a finger against his temple, as though that might help him to dislodge from his mind images of the saucy, uninhibited brunette, the sound of her voice, the feel of her lips, the smell of her skin.
There was so much more to his infatuation than the fact that she was gorgeous and turned him on. She was also smart, even if she wasn’t one hundred percent certain of her brimming intellect. She deflected the cerebral from time to time, but then gleaming moments shone through. Even if she meant them caustically, they resonated.
