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There was a muffled sob, then a whimper and a guttural moan. Becca leaned forward just long enough to see that the man was kissing her. His hand gripped her crotch, working it. The woman writhed, clutching him around the neck as if she were drowning.
Becca jerked back, feeling slimed and fouled for having witnessed it.
The woman stumbled back with a sob and bumped into Marla’s desk. Mathes had evidently shoved her away from himself.
“Be good, Diana,” he warned. The door snapped shut behind him.
Diana blubbered noisily for so long, Becca actually started to get bored. Her legs went to sleep from being folded up so tightly. She was intensely grateful when the woman pulled herself together and stumbled out the door, still sniffling.
Becca fell forward onto her face and struggled up onto numb legs. Stomping and staggering until the pins and needles subsided enough so that she could actually walk, she flung her purse over her shoulder, and peered out the door in time to catch the flash of Diana’s beige raincoat, disappearing down the staircase that led to the back parking lot. Where Becca’s own rental car was parked.
She didn’t dare to examine the impulse, or she’d lose her nerve.It has to be you, and it has to be now. Tonight,the man had said.
Funny. Go figure. The exact same thing held true for her, too.
She took a deep breath and followed.
“Um, excuse me? May I ask you a technical question?” the soft, faintly accented female voice asked.
Josh Cattrell readjusted the fan inside the computer’s hard case, and groaned inwardly at this hundred and fifty thousandth interruption. He would never get this damn computer assembled before closing time unless he could get people to leave him the hell alone. “Miss, why don’t you talk to one of the other guys out on the floor?” He looked up. “One of them can answer your…uh…”
The distracted words disintegrated in his mind, like a smoke ring coming softly apart in the air until it vanished completely. Leaving the slate of his mind wiped clean. And his mouth dangling wide open.
This girl was beautiful. So outlandishly beautiful, it was like she was from another planet. Long, swinging white-blond hair, huge, dark blue eyes, bee-stung lips, flower-petal-smooth skin.
And it only got more outrageous from there. He rose to his feet so that he could send his peripheral vision downward and catalog the rest of her supernatural perfection. Double D’s that defied gravity beneath a tight white tee, tiny waist with a bare midriff, pierced navel. Jeans, clinging for dear life to the curve of a world-class ass.
He forced himself to look at her face again. He had no idea how long he’d been gawking. She was smiling at him. That mouth was amazing, full and perfect and sexily shaped. She glowed. She shone. A miracle of nature, right here in Eric’s Electronics Barn.
“I am so very sorry,” she said, those long dark lashes sweeping down, casting fan-shaped shadows over her cheeks. “I disturbed you from your work. Please excuse me, I will simply go and ask that other man, no? The red-haired man standing by the counter? Perhaps he can—”
“Oh, no! It’s no trouble at all!” Josh said. “Ask away. Anything you like. Anything.” Aw,shit.He was babbling, like an idiot. He hated himself when he did that.
But she was still smiling, amazingly. A tender, radiant smile, like he’d just offered her the moon.
It took all his brainpower to actually listen and understand her computer problem, with the combined difficulty of her accent and her unbelievable, insane gorgeousness, but eventually he started to get a vague clue: a desktop publishing program which went into conflict with other stuff on her computer and froze her system.
“Bring it in for me and I’ll take a look,” he suggested. “Did you buy it here?”
She looked suddenly worried. “No, it was a used computer.”
“Aw,” he said, crestfallen. “So it, uh, won’t be covered by the warranty, then.” Damn. He totally wanted to solve her problem, save her money, be her hero. “Um, I guess you could still bring it in to me,” he suggested. “I could still take a look. Completely free of charge, of course. I’ll do it after hours.”
She looked radiantly hopeful. “Oh. You are so very kind. But if I may ask…I hope you do not think I am asking too much…”
“Ask! Anything,” he said rashly.
“Could you perhaps consider, ah, coming to my house, to see it?” Her words came out in an anxious, embarrassed little rush. “Like a consultant? I have no car, you see, and the computer is very big and heavy for me, and I have no one who will help me here—”
“Sure! Yes, absolutely!” He was practically dizzy. Her house? This was too much. Holy crapola. He was going to blow a gasket.
“I will pay you for your time, of course,” she said earnestly.
“Oh, God, no. Don’t worry about it,” he assured her. “It’s my pleasure. It’s just…uh…when?”
Her fathomless blue eyes blinked. “As soon as convenient for you?”
He swallowed, hard. “Um, how about now, then?”
