AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He found her bewildered expression endearing. “What?” he asked innocently as he came in. And then he gave up his ruse. “Sorry, that’s my impression of me the way I might have sounded as a teenager.”
That cleared up nothing for her. “Why?”
“Well, since we didn’t travel in the same circles back then, I thought I’d pretend to go back in time to see what it might have been like if we did the typical, universal things, you know, like my walking you home after school, things like that.” Reaching Marlowe’s desk, he bent over to brush his lips against hers.
She found the taste of his lips exceedingly arousing as well as comforting. Without thinking, she sighed with pleasure. And then she laughed softly, warning herself not to slip into that trap.
“You’re crazy, you know that?” she asked Bowie.
He didn’t bother pretending to take offense. Instead, he merely grinned at her. “Yeah, maybe a little. All right.” He feigned thinking the matter over. “I’ll drive you home instead of walking.”
It didn’t seem right to have him chauffeur her around, even though she could easily let that become a habit.
“My car’s still parked here,” she reminded him.
“And it’ll still be here tomorrow,” he answered. “I’m sure the parking structure attendant won’t let anything happen to Ms. Colton’s car if it stays here for another night.” Bowie dealt any argument she was going to come up with a death blow by adding, “Your father will have his head.”
Getting up out of her chair, Marlowe gathered her things together. “My father’s not all that bad,” she informed Bowie, feeling it was her obligation to come to her father’s defense, especially after this morning.
Bowie just gave her a very dubious look. “Hey, legend has it that Payne Colton eats interns and new hires for breakfast.”
“Bowie—” she warned as she picked up her briefcase.
Bowie relieved her of the case, taking her other hand in his.
“Okay, I’ll stop,” he conceded, leading the way toward her doorway. “But that means you have to let me take you home.”
“Whose home?” Marlowe asked. “Yours or mine?”
He paused next to a coatrack, took the lone coat hanging there and slipped it onto her shoulders. Bowie kissed her again as he began to close her buttons for her. “Your choice.”
“Seriously?” She thought he’d have had this all plotted out at this point.
“Hey, I’m just trying to be accommodating.” Finished buttoning her coat, he picked up her briefcase again.
“Speaking of being accommodating,” she said, thinking of what she had spent her afternoon working on. “Guess what my father agreed to do this morning?”
They began to head toward the elevator. “That was not where I thought this conversation was going to go,” Bowie admitted playfully. There was no doubt about it. She brought out the lighter side of him. “Okay, I’ll bite—what did your father agree to do this morning?”
Marlowe announced the news proudly. “To open up a day care center here for the employees who have very young children.”
He saw the pleasure in her eyes. Bowie caught himself thinking that Marlowe could even make work seem adorable. “Let me guess—your idea?” he asked her. He held his hand up between the elevator doors to keep them from closing before they got on.
“Yes, but that doesn’t matter,” she said, waving that part away. “He actually agreed to it. He wouldn’t have a few months ago.”
Bowie pressed for the ground floor. “A few months ago, he didn’t have a daughter who was going to make him a grandfather,” he pointed out.
“Be that as it may,” she continued, “it doesn’t change the fact that he’s becoming more human, more sensitive to what people need.”
Heralding Payne Colton didn’t sit quite well with him. “Maybe he doesn’t like falling behind and realizes that he needs to keep up with the times,” Bowie told her. The elevator stopped and its door yawned open. He waited half a beat to allow her to get a step ahead of him.
“My father doesn’t keep up with the times, he blazes trails,” Marlowe informed him.
Leading her back to where he had parked his vehicle, Bowie took her words in stride. And then he smiled at her. “Maybe he should consider having you doing his PR for him.”
About to say something curt, Marlowe realized that she was becoming unduly defensive. She curbed that. “I guess maybe I did come on strong,” she admitted.
Reaching his car, Bowie opened the passenger door for her and waited for Marlowe to get in.
