Chapter 13

Penelope and Cole had been co-editors for nearly two months now, and Penelope thought she’d done a darn good job not thinking about that kiss in the snow.

She’d done a good job not reading too much into the fact that Cole brought her onion rings just because he knew that she liked them. She’d done a good job of not reading into it when he asked her out to Friday happy hour most weeks.

It was self-preservation, really. Penelope had made the mistake once of reading too much into a man’s friendliness, and she was determined not to make the same mistake with Cole.

They worked well together—no surprise there, but more than that, they respected each other. Were comfortable with each other.

Liked each other.

And if every so often Penelope found herself wishing she could go back in time and do things just a little bit differently the night of that kiss, she reminded herself that the way they were now was better.

Safer.

And then…

And then she walked in on Cole and another woman.

“Oh!” Penelope skidded to a halt in the doorway of his office. “Oh!”

Cole had a curvy blonde pinned against his desk, one hand on either side of the woman’s ample hips as they kissed.

Penelope flashed back to the time Evan had told her he was seeing someone.

It hurt. It shouldn’t. But it did.

Cole acknowledged the interruption before his lady friend did, and he lazily pulled his mouth away from the blonde’s before his eyes met Penelope’s across the office.

“Hey, Tiny.”

The man didn’t look the least bit embarrassed, but Penelope was mortified.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice coming out all croaky and awkward. “The door was shut, and I should have knocked, it’s just…”

It’s just that they never knocked.

He came into her office whenever he damn well felt like it, and vice versa.

A policy she’d be remedying stat.

The blonde had turned around to see the interruption for herself, and Penelope was unsurprised to see that the other woman was pretty—very pretty.

Of course she was.

“Sorry,” Penelope mouthed, even as she was closing the door.

“Hold up,” Cole said, pushing back from his desk. “What did you want to see me about?”

Penelope forced a smile and held up the paper in her hands. “First proofs came in for the Adam Bailey article. I’m thinking we want to revisit which shots we picked. They looked fine on their own, but on the page—you know? Never mind. It can wait.”

Wait until you’re done playing tonsil hockey.

“I was just leaving,” the blonde said, smoothing a hand over her silky pink dress. “I’m Meredith, by the way.”

“Penelope,” she said, feeling horribly out of place.

Penelope snuck a glance at Cole to make sure he wasn’t bothered by the interruption, but he seemed completely indifferent to her presence as he swiped a thumb over his mouth, probably to remove Meredith’s lipstick.

“See you, baby,” Meredith said, leaning forward to brush her lips against Cole’s cheek.

Penelope noted with no small amount of envy that the woman didn’t have to go up on her toes to reach Cole’s face. The combination of her height and heels put cheek—and mouth—within easy kissing distance.

Everything about the other woman made Penelope feel like a child. The height. The curves. The clothes. The confidence.

Meredith grabbed her purse by the door and Penelope all but scampered out of the way as the woman gave her a friendly smile and sailed out of the office in a whoosh of some spicy, exotic perfume.

Penelope started to follow her, but Cole’s voice stopped her. “Yo. Pope. Get in here. Show me what you’ve got.”

She swallowed and approached the desk as he sat in his chair.

So he wanted to play it cool? Fine. She could do that.

“New girlfriend?” she asked, proud that her voice didn’t betray her embarrassment. Or jealousy.

No, not jealousy.

Annoyance.

No, that wasn’t right either.

Agony. That was closer.

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he said, plucking the folder out of her hands and flipping through the proofs. “You’re right. These photos don’t work side by side. They’re too busy.”

“You could have put a sock on the door or something.”

He glanced up in confusion. “What?”

She pointed to the door. “Next time you’re going to have sex in your office, give me some sort of warning.”

He lifted his eyebrows and leaned back in his chair. “One kiss hardly equates to having sex.”

“Well, it was quite the kiss.” Who was this snotty, peevish woman running her mouth?

He lifted his eyebrows. “Everything okay? You sound—”

“Don’t say it,” she snapped.

“Say what?”

“Don’t say that I sound jealous.”

“Were you?”

“Why would I be jealous?”

He flung his hands out in exasperation. “You tell me.”

Penelope leaned forward and snatched the folder off the desk, before turning on her heel and marching out of the office.

“Where the hell are you going?” he called after her.

Penelope didn’t stop. Didn’t want to have a conversation until she’d sorted out her thoughts.

And to think, just a couple weeks earlier she’d turned down Adam Bailey’s invitation to go back to his hotel room because she’d been thinking about Cole.

She should have taken up the slutty golf pro on his invitation, she thought, as she slammed her office door shut behind her. She should have—

The door opened again as Cole entered her office uninvited, then slammed it once again behind him.

“What’s going on with you?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said, the single word managing to sound huffy.

“Look, I’m sorry you had to see that, but—”

“It was hardly appropriate, Cole.”

“The only thing inappropriate is Meredith. The woman is up here every other week. Thinks that Oxford is her personal hunting ground for her next flavor of the week. Lincoln’s rejected her one too many times, so she’s moved on to me.”

Penelope pointed an accusing finger at him. “You didn’t seem to mind.

“I don’t want Meredith,” he said quietly, “but Tiny, you can’t go around telling me you hate my kisses and then get mad when I try to give them to someone else—”

“I never said I hated that kiss,” she interrupted.

He broke off, and then his smile was slow and sexy.

Too late, she realized she’d walked into the trap of a very, very skilled seducer.

“Is that so?” he said, in a low, sexy voice.

She rolled her eyes and tried to play it off. “I just meant, it didn’t suck.”

“But you didn’t want me to do it again,” he said, moving toward her.

“I—I didn’t think it was a good idea,” she said, backing up.

He continued moving toward her and Penelope’s butt hit the desk; she was completely out of room to back away.

Cole paused when there were just inches between them.

“That’s not an answer. Do you want me to do it again? Have you been thinking about me? Kissing you? Touching you?”

She could feel his breath on her face as she glanced down to avoid eye contact.

A mistake, because her eyes latched onto his arm.

No suit jacket today, and he’d rolled his dress shirt up to his elbows, exposing forearms covered in crinkly, gorgeous arm hair.

Gorgeous arm hair?

Oh, man. She was in trouble. Serious trouble.

She tried to move to the side, but his hands came up, caging her against the desk.

The posture was an almost exact replica of the scene she’d walked in on just minutes earlier, and it was exactly the reminder she needed that Cole didn’t want her.

He wanted conquests.

Penelope folded her arms across her chest and forced herself to meet his eyes. “Go call Meredith back if you want to get frisky on a desk,” she snapped. “I’m not interested.”

“Aren’t you?” he said, his eyes on her mouth.

“I just said I wasn’t.”

“So you don’t want my lips on yours? You’re sure?”

Penelope hesitated. It was just for a second, but she saw from the flare of triumph in his eyes that he’d noticed the pause.

“Leave me alone, Cole.”

His palms were so close that with just the slightest movement of his thumbs, he would have brushed the outside of her hips.

Hips that were tiny and boyish instead of lush and curvy. If she leaned forward, her chest would brush his, but it was a chest that was flat and barely filled out a bra.

And still, she wanted…She desperately wanted.

“Penelope.”

His voice was gentle now. More concerned than seductive.

“What?” she said, her own voice low. Defeated. Maybe a little sad.

“You really don’t want me to kiss you? I’m not going to force myself on a woman, so if you tell me to go, I’ll go. You want me to release you, I’ll release you. But I’ve gotta tell you, babe, the way you’re looking at me…”

She felt a spike of anger. “You were just kissing another woman.”

“Actually, she was kissing me.”

“And I’m sure you were just standing there, not enjoying it.”

“I hadn’t decided whether I wanted to get into it or not,” he said.

She made a disgusted noise, shoved at his shoulders. “You’re disgusting.”

He held fast, refusing to move. “The thing is, Tiny…When it comes to you, I don’t have to decide. I don’t have to stop and think about if I want to kiss you. I know. I know every damn day when I see you put on mascara in the reflection of your computer monitor because you forgot to do it at home. I know when we go get coffee together and you can recite every single thing that happened on ESPN the night before. I know when I share my French fries with you at lunch and you eat all of them. I know—”

Penelope placed her lips against his.

She didn’t mean to. Really she didn’t. She didn’t remember making the decision to move.

But she had, and she was kissing Cole.

His response was immediate, his lips fighting with hers to get control of the kiss, and yet his hands never moved. He used nothing but lips and body heat to seduce her.

But Penelope used her hands. His tongue slipped into her mouth and she made a little sighing noise as her hands lifted to tug at his collar and hold his lips to hers.

He tilted his head, deepened the kiss, and if Penelope thought the kiss in the snow had been out of this world, this kiss was in an entirely different universe. A universe where gorgeous men wanted to kiss tomboys.

Objectively, she knew that he only wanted her because she’d rejected him. A man like Cole liked a challenge. After this kiss—this wonderfully wanton kiss that she’d initiated—his ardor would cool and he’d be off to chase some other woman.

But that was okay. He wasn’t Evan. She wasn’t in love with him.

If he never kissed her again, it wouldn’t break her heart.

She wouldn’t let it.

Cole pulled away slowly, straightening until his hands slid off the desk to his sides, and they stared at each other.

“So?” he asked finally, when the silence had stretched long enough to get awkward.

She licked her lips. “So, what?”

“Which did you like better? Head-holding? Or what we just did?”

She rolled her eyes and went to the other side of her desk, feeling a bit safer with the distance between them. “Lincoln’s already turned in that stupid article. The time for research has long passed.”

“Oh, I’m not doing research for Lincoln’s article. And I have no interest in being an expert in all things kissing, although honestly, I suspect I’m pretty damn close to getting my black belt—”

She held up a hand. “Then what are you after?”

He grinned and pulled the folder with their story proofs off her desk as he strolled toward the door. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m out to be an expert on Penelope Pope. Because, despite your efforts to prove otherwise, I don’t believe for one second that you don’t want me.”

“You’re wrong,” she called after him, even though he was out the door.

He backed up two steps, just enough to poke his head back into her office.

The look he gave her was positively panty-dropping. “We’ll see, Tiny. We’ll see.”