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“Just a tad,” he agreed. “But your loyalty is one of your more admirable qualities,” he told her.
Closing the door again, he rounded the hood and got in on the driver’s side. Buckling up, he asked, “So, have you decided?” Then, when Marlowe gave him a puzzled look, Bowie prompted. “You know, have you made your choice? Where you want me to drive you tonight?” he added.
“To your place,” she answered.
“Good choice,” Bowie said with approval. Starting up his car, he waited until he pulled out before asking, “So, how was your day?”
“I just told you the highlight,” Marlowe said. “Otherwise, my day was filled with everyone stopping by, asking me how I was doing and if they could get me something.” She shrugged, not comfortable about having everyone being so solicitous toward her. “But I suppose that is only to be expected, since I am the boss’s daughter—and the new CEO—and this just might be their way of trying to butter me up.”
“You’re forgetting the most important part,” Bowie told her. He could feel her looking at him, waiting for him to continue, so he explained, “You’re a terrific person.”
“Now who’s doing the buttering up?” she asked, trying her best to suppress a grin.
“I can’t give you a compliment without an ulterior motive?” he asked Marlowe innocently.
A smile played on her lips. “I don’t know, can you?”
“Absolutely,” Bowie told her.
Marlowe suppressed a sigh. He was making her feel things, want things.
Want him.
She knew she needed to change the subject before she went with her impulse and asked him to pull over to the side of the road so she could give in to those feelings. The overwhelming warmth she was experiencing was liable to make her do things she didn’t want to be caught doing out in the open.
But it was getting harder and harder to bank down those feelings.
“How’s Wallace doing?” she asked Bowie without any preamble.
That caught him by surprise. “Wallace?”
“Yes, you know, the man whose head was used as a football while he was doing his best to guard me?” she reminded Bowie.
“I know who Wallace is,” he told her, “although I tend to think of him by his last name. I was just surprised that you’re asking me about him out of the blue like this.”
“Not out of the blue,” she protested. “I’ve been thinking about him all day.”
He slanted a glance in her direction. “Should I be jealous?”
“No, you idiot,” she retorted, curbing the strong impulse to hit him, “you should be relieved that I’m not this self-centered woman whose only focus in life is herself.”
He hadn’t seen her in that light for weeks now. “I realized you weren’t like that when we slept together at the conference.”
His response surprised her. “I thought you said that you didn’t remember anything about that night,” Marlowe told him.
“Oh, but how could I have possibly forgotten you?” Bowie asked teasingly.
He pulled his car into a driveway and then turned off the engine.
For a moment, she thought he was reading her mind, then she realized that they were in front of a condominium. He had arrived at his home.
“Wallace is doing fine,” he answered. “He’s not here,” he continued, anticipating her next question, “because I told him to take some more time. I thought with your stalker safely locked up in jail and out of the way, you didn’t need a full-time bodyguard anymore. Just maybe a part-time one,” he added, then flashed a smile at her. “I could fill that position,” he told her. “Actually, I’d like to fill that position.” He turned toward her. “Ready to come in?”
Marlowe looked at him uneasily, responding to his tone. “You make it sound like I should be bracing myself for something.”
“Maybe,” he allowed. And then, with what she could only term as an impish grin, he said, “I’ll tell you a secret.”
“A secret?” she echoed, a little bewildered. What kind of a secret could he possibly be sharing?
