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Her signals clearly saidhands-off. So he’d done just that—kept his hands off her.
Just as he kept his eyes well above her neckline—after that first shattering glimpse of the shimmering, flirty dark blue velvet dress had forced him to loosen his collar to ease the sensation of strangling.
She might have been exaggerating, or she might have meant it literally. Either way, he’d done as instructed and not mentioned her clothes. At all. He wasn’t going to risk her changing her mind.
It wasn’t that there was anything inappropriate about what she was wearing; it was standard holiday formalwear with a high button-up neckline, the princess cut tasteful and flattering. But it outlined every curve of her voluptuous shape. A shape he now knew felt as silky and soft as it looked. He had carefully swallowed and avoided looking down again.
This had its own hazards. Her hair was now in its familiar cloud, a mass of soft, tiny curls that invited him to wind his fingers through it and tug her up to him for a kiss. A kiss on that mouth. That sweet, sensual mouth he’d tasted and ached to taste again.
Like he ached to flip up her skirt, explore down her tights and find the heat between her thighs, learn how slick she was, how tightly she clamped down on his fingers. He ached to feel her, lick her up as she sputtered feverishly about coding challenges and system tests and begged for release.
Why couldn’t tonight be all about watching beautiful Paula snark at him between orgasms?
Oh, yes. Christmas. Business. And the woman’s mercurial switches of mood.
Keeping the frustrated hunger out of his expression was easiest when he didn’t look at her. He’d forced his gaze elsewhere at the bistro, and now he kept his eyes firmly on the road.
“Wrong?” she asked now, bristling as he hoped she would. “How was I wrong?”
“Earlier you said I had no idea of your talents. I do, actually. Any developer for TineeSoft will have advanced qualifications and have been put through grueling tests. Getting hired there is a monumental accomplishment.”
“You sound pretty sure about that.”
“It’s my business to know these things.”
“How so? Aren’t you a professor? Not that I’m stalking you. I’m not.” Her defense sounded grumpy. “I read the news, and you feature in it sometimes.”
“Well.” He spoke with caution. “I hold an associate professorship in the business school. But there’s also my private company.”
“You have a company?”
She sounded astonished. He wondered if she seriously didn’t know. “With my partners, yes.”
“What is it that you do?”
He shot her a quick sidelong glance. “It’s an employment website.”
“And the name of your site?”
After a considering silence, he said it. The thing that, if she didn’t already know it, she probably didn’t want to know. “Proformers.”
There was a long silence.
Then she said, very deliberately, “Proformers.”
“Yes.”
“Proformers dot com is your company.”
“Yes.”
“Proformers.”
Her stunned, almost outraged, shock seemed authentic. He gave her the benefit of the doubt. She really hadn’t known.
“Mm. We assist traditional industry to digitally outsource their personnel worldwide. TineeSoft happens to be one of our largest clients. Back in college my partners and I started offering freelance services connecting businesses to IT professionals, content creators, virtual assistants and such.” He shot her a quick glance. She was still as stone. “We keep a steady global client base for our freelance division, but these days our growth focuses on industry, mostly in the Pacific Northwest. Local manufacturers, science labs—SARG, Feehan Engineering...we still crowdsource our labor, but we also work with innovative education platforms like ConnectEDG to link up talent and opportunity. Quoting from the brochure here obviously.”
“I see.” She shifted in her seat and glanced out the window with fake nonchalance. “I’m, ah, registered on your site. That’s where I get most of my work, in fact.”
