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Plus, he’d backed off in a hurry when she’d tried to put parameters around this nebulous thing he’d called “dinner.” Of course, it was crystal clear now that he hadn’t defined it as a date in any way, shape or form.
Which was good. She was telling herself it was good, even as she tried to figure out what you wore to dinner with your husband who wasn’t really a husband. One of her serviceable dove-gray suits felt too…officey, despite the fact that she’d been wearing one all day. Jeans and a T-shirt, like what she wore to the grocery store, seemed too casual. But then, Warren had mentioned they’d be dining at the house, so maybe casual wasn’t off base.
In the end, she couldn’t do it. She picked the brown suit and hid a peacock-blue silk bra with corded straps and a matching thong under it. Defiantly. It was her favorite set, bought with her first paycheck from the Flying Squirrel campaign. She’d waltzed right into that high-end lingerie store in downtown Raleigh and bought the classiest, most beautiful fabrics in the place. The clerk had folded her purchase into silver tissue paper, then tucked her lingerie into a foil bag the size of a paperback. Nothing she’d bought needed a bigger package, since both scraps were tiny and revealing.
Not that she’d ever reveal any of it to anyone. Her little secret. A kick in the teeth to Bryan’s memory, who had never wanted her to wear anything remotely flashy or skimpy. She didn’t dress that way on the outside, but that barrier of boring clothing was for her own peace of mind. Better to avoid attention than to seek it.
Dinner was exactly as advertised. At home, low-key and not a date. Warren wore the same T-shirt and jeans he’d had on earlier, but of course he looked like a dream in anything. She so rarely saw him in something besides a suit that she took time to enjoy the way his shoulders filled out the soft cotton, graceful biceps emerging below the cuffs.
Wordlessly, he pulled out a chair at the twelve-seat dining room table off the foyer.
“Do you entertain a lot?” she inquired politely, since she felt like she had to say something, and heebie-jeebies, are you a good-looking man didn’t seem appropriate.
“Never. This was my mother’s idea. Apparently it’s the done thing to have a room big enough for a basketball team to dine in.”
She smiled at the joke and slid into the chair he offered, careful not to brush him as she sat. But as he helped her push in the chair, it caught on an uneven slat in the hardwood floor and his fingers grazed her shoulders.
The coil of heat low in her belly surprised her with its intensity. The man had barely touched her. What was wrong with her that she had to fight the instinct to lean back against his hands in wordless invitation?
But his heat vanished from behind her as quickly as he’d established his presence. Taking a seat to her left, he eased into his own chair and turned his focus to her.
“Are you unpacked yet? Need any help?” he inquired.
She shook her head. “No, thank you. You’ve already been so generous with your staff and in allowing me time to get settled. We should really go over the project plan again, now that we’ve got Wheatner and Ro—”
“No work.” Warren broke off as his housekeeper came in with plates of white fish and green beans, serving dinner with precise efficiency. Once he’d nodded his thanks, she disappeared. “We’re just eating dinner tonight. As a couple. Not as coworkers.”
“But we’re not a couple,” she countered, wondering how she was supposed to eat with such a thing thrown down between them. And wondering whether that note of panic had sounded as squeaky to him as it did to her. “We agreed. In name only.”
A couple. She’d never been part of a couple, or rather, a normal one. She turned the term over in her head, trying not to attach any significance to it. Her dating life had been nothing remarkable. She’d longed for the kind of relationship that seemed to come so easily to everyone around her, but nothing had ever clicked for her. Until Bryan, whom she’d met at her university roommate’s wedding.
In retrospect, they’d clicked far too easily, largely owing to her desperation to finally have the kind of companionship and intimacy she’d craved.
And over the last year, she’d proven that she could live without either. Being one half of a couple wasn’t her goal any longer.
Warren didn’t pick up his fork, despite having just laid down the law about the activity they were pursuing. “We did agree to in name only. But I’d like to get to know you. We’re going to have some interview rounds for your green card. It would be beneficial if we didn’t stumble through basic things like the names of our siblings or where you were born.”
