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Jake’s dark eyes reflected confusion, but nothing else in his expression gave him away. He stepped aside and allowed me to enter, then followed me in.
“Close the door, please.” He dutifully followed the instruction.
“Take a seat.” I gestured between the seat in front of my desk and my cozy corner nook, then claimed the chair behind my desk.
Jake’s gaze followed, then returned to me with a slight curl to his lip. “In the jungle? Is that the time out jungle?”
A snort of laughter escaped me. “It’s just a chair. I wanted it to feel like a retreat when I needed one.” My eyes roved over the tall plants on either side of the over-sized chair that almost created a screen from the rest of the room. “Maybe it is a bit much,” I admitted.
Jake sat on the edge of the chair with a serious expression, then leaned back so some of the foliage was now in front of his face. “I feel like I’m on ‘Between Two Ferns’. Do I look like Zach Galifianakis?”
That drew a burst of laughter from my lips. “Okay, enough jokes about my décor, old man. We need to talk.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “We do. Obviously, if I had known who you were Friday-”
“Exactly, if I’d known who you were…” I agreed.
“…nothing would have happened,” Jake finished.
“Right.”
“Because it’s awkward as fuck now, isn’t it?” His dark eyes held my gaze, his posture slightly slouched in defeat.
“Well, I dunno about awkward, but it definitely sucks.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s too bad. I was looking forward to your cat-and-mouse texting game. I heard you were a champ.”
“Whoever told you that was lying,” he replied with a grin. “I have no game. At all.”
“I’m not sure I agree with you,” I answered with a smile of my own. “I’d say your game was pretty strong Friday.”
“I think you just liked the mystery.” His grin widened, and he leaned further behind the plant. “Does this do it for you? Should I carry around a giant plant to be more mysterious?”
Laughter bubbled up in my chest. He was just so disarming it was impossible not to like him.
“No, you’d better not. Now we both know who each other is, and what my dad has planned, we obviously can’t be dating, or doing anything else.”
Jake straightened up immediately. “Yes, of course.” His voice took on a completely different tone, a serious, taking-orders-in-the-military sort of tone.
I already missed the warmth of his teasing.
“That doesn’t mean we can’t be friendly, but we have to keep it strictly business from here on out.” Surprisingly, I managed to say that with a completely straight face. My brain kept pulling up delicious flashes of stripping that suit from his body and mounting him on that chair.
“Agreed. Strictly business. I certainly don’t want anyone to think I slept my way to the top.”
He said it with such conviction that I paused for a second, wondering if he was being sarcastic or not. When the corner of his lips twitched, I allowed myself to smile.
“Yeah, we’d better maintain your Captain America image. Don’t want the boss’s rebellious daughter to taint you.”
“What if I want to be tainted?” His half-smile deepened.
“Jake!”
“Okay, sorry, I promise I’ll stop.”
“We have to. There is no intra-office romance allowed. Period. It wouldn’t help either of us.”
