Chapter5
Jeffrey let her finish her second glass of wine, and then he picked up the car keys and took her by the hand. “Come on. You said you need love and light. You’re coming with me,” he stated it simply, as if there was no discussion about it, and she followed obediently.
They waved to Auntie as Jeffrey set the map on the computer screen in the car and took off down the road out of Hawaii Kai.
“Where are we going?” Nicole asked, feeling light headed and slightly less miserable.
“We’re going to do just what Tia told us to do. I made notes. We’re heading up the windward side of the island, and we’re going to check out some of the places she told us that we should see.” He gave his best friend a smile, and Nicole found herself grinning.
She took his hand in hers and gave it a squeeze as she looked at him. “Have I told you yet today how blessed and lucky I am that you’re here with me? Because I am both blessed and lucky and unbelievably grateful to have you here. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“I’m glad that I’m here too,” he replied. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” He touched her cheek gently and then reached for the volume on the radio, turning up the sounds of the island music coming from the speakers.
The sun shone on their heads and shoulders, the wind danced in their hair, and the road beneath them wound side to side and up and down as they drove around the base of a volcanic crater and headed north up the coast.
The view was stunning, and it seemed in some spots that the ocean might be ready to wave itself right up onto the road. Neither of them had ever seen anything like the beaches, the mountains, and the sea that could begin to rival the windward side of Oahu. It was beyond imagination, and it looked to them as if they were out driving in their own perfect postcard, or a dream that neither one of them could have come up with.
They passed several spots where Tia had told them to stop, because Jeffrey had only their destination in mind, though they did get out twice just to put their feet in the sand and feel the water on their skin, before they hopped back in the car and continued on their way north.
He didn’t pull the car off of the road until they got to Haleiwa on the very northern end of the north shore. “I looked it up today,” he told her proudly. “This is where all the big wave surfers come, and many of them grew up surfing these waves. They come in from all over the world from January through March for the biggest waves of the year, the winter waves. We’ll have to come to a surfing competition here and check it out. It seems like it’s a pretty big deal.”
“That sounds like fun,” Nicole agreed. They walked along the road that led through town for a short distance, and Jeffrey took her to a small country store with a line of people that went out the door. They moved to the end of the line, and she looked at him.
“What are we in line for?” she asked curiously.
He grinned at her. “Matsumoto shave ice,” he answered happily.
She laughed and nodded. “I forgot! Shave ice. Best on the island right here.” She looked at the line and gave her head a shake. “Looks like the locals definitely know that!”
They waited until it was their turn, and they bought their shave ice and then walked around the few shops that were there, going into one that she had heard about in San Francisco. “Oh, look! It’s the Clark Little gallery! My friend Megan told me about this guy. He lives here on the north shore somewhere, and he has some fancy underwater camera. He goes out all the time and gets inside the waves and shoots amazing photographs in the water. I guess he’s done a lot of sea life too. Turtles and sharks and things. I’m so curious to see what he’s got here in his gallery. Let’s go in!”
Her mood had lightened some, and she was grateful for it. She wasn’t thinking too much about Alexander or Dane or work, and she was enjoying herself, and at that moment on that day, not much more could be as precious to her as that.
They wandered through the small gallery and talked with the girl behind the counter who was minding the place, and they fell so much in love with Clark’s work that they bought two large fine art framed photographs, and was told that they would be delivered after Clark signed them.
Feeling downright happy, Nicole walked out with Jeffrey, and they went to a small restaurant for lunch.
When their food had been brought out for them, Jeffrey looked at her seriously. “Listen, I know we’re out having fun, but I do want to say this to you. The best thing that you can do about this situation at work is to avoid him. Just avoid him as much as you can unless you have to see him, and slowly let your professional relationship with him build over time on its own. It’s only intensely awkward right now because you have no history together, other than the night you two shared.
So, you have to build a business relationship. You have to build a new history together, and that’s going to take some time, but there’s no reason that you should be miserable while you’re building it. So, avoid him most of the time for now, and as time changes your relationship at work, you will build a new history, and there will be a cushion of time between last night and your present with him. Temporary avoidance will give you both the time and space you need to put that hot night of yours last night behind you both, and the more time there is between last night and your present with him, the easier it will be. Right?”
He looked at her with hopeful eyes, and she nodded. “You’re right. I know that you’re right. It’s just going to take some time. At least the worst is over, right? I mean, meeting each other in front of everyone, especially after what happened last night, that was the worst. Nothing else is going to be that bad. So, we just go forward. We each know now that the other one is there, and we can move on and make a business relationship. It will be okay. It’s like you said, it will just take some time. That’s all.”
“That’s the spirit!” Jeffrey gave her an encouraging smile. “Now, focus on your pizza and forget about it for the rest of tonight. You don’t have to deal with it until tomorrow, so don’t deal with it until you have to.”
She nodded and smiled and picked up a big piece of pizza. “I’m all over it.” She grinned at him.
Nicole told herself that she could do just what Jeffrey had advised, and when she went into work the next day, she managed to go the whole day without seeing Dane. She wondered if he was doing the same thing or if she had just gotten lucky. She hadn’t wandered too far from her office though, and she had to admit that that might have had something to do with it. Tia said nothing about Dane bursting into her office the afternoon before, and Nicole was glad for that too.
On her third day there, she was thinking less about Dane and more about her job and what she was doing there. She had drawn up some ideas and created a proposal, and with a little more lightness in her heart, she headed up to Ed’s office to show him.
Rose wasn’t at her desk when Nicole stepped off of the elevator, so she headed to Ed’s door and knocked.
“Come in!” he called out.
She opened the door with a big smile on her face and took two steps into the office before she stopped in her tracks and froze. Edward wasn’t in his office, but Dane was. Everything in her froze for a second, and then heated up as if her whole body had been set on fire. She did her best to hide her reaction to him, thought it was a struggle.
There was immediate tension between them, and his eyes took on that same look of unchecked hunger when he saw her, his gaze drifting over her curves and form before he made himself look away from her and draw in a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were here. I’ll come back later.” She turned to go, and just as she reached the door handle, he spoke and stopped her.
“What were you coming to see Ed about?” he asked with a level tone that defied the look in his eyes.
With her heart pounding in her chest, she turned and looked over her shoulder at him. “Oh… well, I have some initial drafts of new international territories that I think we should build and promote the business in,” she began, feeling that if her heart pounded any harder, it might pop out of her chest altogether.
He took a few steps toward her and stopped, his eyes steady on her. “I am one of the partners of this business. One of the co-owners,” he reminded her gently. “I’d like to see the work that you’re doing too.”
She swallowed and wished that her blood wasn’t racing through her at lightning speed, and that the heat that was growing in her would cool off and go away forever. “Of course,” she replied, realizing that she was in fact talking with one of her bosses. She remembered what Jeffrey had told her about building a business relationship with him, and while she wished that she didn’t have to, she knew that she was going to have to start doing it at some time, and that time was going to be right then.
With almost wooden steps, she forced herself to cross the room toward him, and she stopped at a round table there and laid the scroll of papers in her hands out on the table, flattening them smooth.
Standing over the papers, she moved her hand over the one on the top of the pile. It was a map, color coded and notated on, and she spoke to it, rather than lifting her head and speaking to the man who came to stand beside her.
“So, this is a map of the areas where we should be expanding. Here’s New Zealand, Australia, and a whole host of Pacific islands in between them and Hawaii.” She gazed down at the work that she had done in such a short time and felt proud of it. And then, he stood close to her, and thoughts of her work left her, dissipating like fog in the heat of the morning sun.
He was too close. There was an electric charge in the air between them, and she began to grow breathless.
“This is really good work. This is…” He paused as he reached his own hand out to the map, sliding his fingers over it, and she closed her eyes, willing herself to forget how those fingers felt on her skin and inside of her body. Beads of moisture grew in the dark hollow of the tender skin between her breasts. She swallowed hard.
“This is excellent. I’m very impressed,” he said quietly.
Blood was rushing in her ears, and she was doing her best to focus. She reminded herself that she was building professional history between them. “I have more detail here about Tonga, Samoa, and Fiji. Those islands are specific priority spots where we want to be concentrating our promotions.”
“Where are they?” he asked, leaning closer to her and the map.
She reached out a short way and touched a small area in the deep of the south Pacific Ocean. “They’re here,” she replied.
“Are there any…” He trailed off and grew silent, and she turned in place to look up at him. He was standing so close to her that they were almost touching. She drew in a sharp breath at the nearness of him and at the tremendous reaction she felt inside at his being so close.
He was staring into her eyes, his lips parted, and she grew lightheaded from the blood that was shooting through every part of her. “Any what?” she asked in a whisper, struggling with all of her might not to fall to any kind of temptation. She was bent on repairing the damage that already existed between them, and it took everything in her to remember that.
Dane looked as if he wasn’t breathing, as if he was rooted to the spot, and it took a long moment before he blinked and shook his head a little. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly as he stared at her. “It’s just… you were wearing that same perfume when we…” He hesitated. “On the night that we… met,” he finished slowly and carefully. “I apologize, I was distracted by it.” His chest was rising and falling rapidly, and his pupils were dilated and dark.
It was she who couldn’t breathe then, and she felt like she might fall over as he turned slowly on the spot and walked over to the other side of the table. Clearing his throat, he looked down at the map and made himself focus.
“So… are there any other places in this area that we want to add on to this part of the growth mission?” His voice sounded as if he was doing his best to make it sound more businesslike than it was.
She gave her head a small shake and looked back at the map as her pulse raced onward. “No, I’m going to include the Philippines in the Asian expansion.”
She bent over then and reached her finger to the northern part of the map, closer to where Dane was standing, and she showed him how much closer the Philippines were to Asia, and how much easier it would be for them to include it in a separate expansion.
“I believe that we could have this southern projected area on board with the company within two months,” she said, fighting to focus on her task. “As long as we follow the plan that I have outlined.”
She raised her eyes to him then and froze in place again. She hadn’t realized when she bent over her maps in front of him that her loose-fitting blouse had fallen open at the neck, directly toward his line of sight, and when her eyes lifted to see his face, she found his gaze set on the swells of her breasts, just down the front of her blouse.
He raised his eyes from them, and looked into her dark brown eyes. His lips were parted, and his face turned in a haunted expression. His eyes were flooded with hunger, the same hunger and desire that she had seen in them when they had met at the party, when they were both so much on fire for one another. That same fire began to burn in her as she stood there before him, and a dull ache formed deep in her as her body yearned to be touched by him.
With a turn of her head, she looked away from him, turning her eyes to the wall and then the floor. “You know, I have a few other things that I’ve really got to get to,” she spoke breathlessly. “I’m just going to leave this here for Ed, and he can have a look at it. That’s really all that there is for me to show you two anyway. I’ll… I’ll see you later.”
With swift steps, she left Ed’s office, and she left Dane standing behind her, staring after her, just as much ablaze with desire as she was.
Nicole went back to her office in frustration, telling herself that it was just going to take time, and all her desires and all the fire in her, the awkwardness between them, her lust for the man who had been the best lover she had ever had was going to fade. It would be replaced with professional business history, and the night that they had shared once would be lost in the days that passed, with each day putting more and more time between them and it.
Things would be easier. There was a day that would come soon on which she would be able to work at his side and not feel the keen sting of desire and breathless need, and she hoped with everything in her that that day would come soon, because no matter when it did come, it wouldn’t come soon enough.
She worked harder than she had since she had walked through the door of the company, giving all of her attention and focus to her work, and she was so intent on it that she jumped when Tia poked her head in the door of the office.
“I’m headed home,” she said with a smile. “Don’t stay too late.”
Nicole smiled at her. “I won’t.”
Tia closed the door, and Nicole went back to her work. She was focused on it again with laser beam intensity when her door opened again, and she looked up with a smile that faded immediately when she saw that it wasn’t Tia. It was Dane.
He entered the office and closed the door behind him. She stood up out of her chair and faced him, walking around the desk to him. He had a tussled look about him; his wavy brown hair was no longer neatly combed, and it looked as if he had run his hands through it several times. His tie was no longer knotted neatly at his throat, but instead pulled loose. The top two buttons on his shirt were undone, and his sleeves were rolled up, showing his bared arms.
“What is it?” she asked, wishing that she had already been gone, but more than that she wished that she could erase away the reactions that his mere presence caused in her. Her heart began pounding in her chest, and her breath grew short.
He sighed and slid his hands halfway into his pants pockets. “I wanted to apologize,” he began, coming nearer to her until he was only a few feet away. “I don’t mean for it to be awkward between us, and I can see that it is. I wanted you to come here to Hawaii and be glad that you did. You know, enjoy your job and your work and feel good about being here every day. I wanted you to feel like this was one of the best moves you ever made. I didn’t mean for it to… to get so tangled up before you even got started.”
She bit at her lower lip and regretted it as she saw his eyes shift there and stare for a long moment before looking away. She drew in a breath. “I understand. It’s awkward for us, but we’ll get through this. We’ll get through it if we both work on making that happen.”
“I don’t know if that’s a realistic possibility.” He shook his head as he gazed into her dark eyes. “I don’t know if we can really do that.”
Nicole frowned. “Why not?”
Dane grew somehow more serious and intense. He took another step toward her, and she saw in his eyes that he looked tortured. He hesitated for a long moment and then spoke with a strained voice. “Because I don’t know if I can just pretend that the most incredible night of my life never happened and still be around the woman who shared it with me, almost every day!”
He sighed heavily in frustration, and pulling one hand from his pocket, he raked his fingers through his hair, and she saw how it had become so tousled looking.
“You! You affect me to total distraction! Everything about you does it! Your look, your clothes, your beauty, your voice, your body… all of it! The very nearness of you makes me want you!” He sounded almost as if he was in some pain just admitting it all to her.
She felt her breath catch in her throat, and her heart thudded against her even harder as her body began to burn for him, for his touch, for his skin, for the taste of him in her mouth. “It will pass!” she insisted, hearing Jeffrey’s distant voice somewhere in the far reaches of her mind.
Dane shook his head and reached his hands to her shoulders. “That’s just it, don’t you see? It isn’t passing! It’s only growing more intense with time and with every second I see you here and even worse with every second that I don’t see you here yet I know that I will see you again.”
She shook her head weakly. “Just… just ignore it,” she pleaded in a quiet voice.
Frustration flashed over his face. “I can’t ignore it! I’ve tried, and it’s only getting stronger! It’s consuming me! Don’t you feel it? You must be feeling it too!”
Nicole swallowed hard and wrestled with herself internally, with her logic, with her dedication to the job, with her desire for him, with her own morality and with her goals and standards. She wrestled with all of it and felt her grip on every bit of it slipping.
“I know exactly how difficult it is, because I do feel it too, every bit as much as you do, but I am choosing to ignore it. It’s the only choice that we have! We have to ignore it!” she insisted as she tried to look away from him and found that she couldn’t. It was as if the magnetic force between them had locked her gaze onto his.
“Well, you might be able to ignore it, but I can’t,” he vowed deeply as he pulled her to him and planted his mouth over hers, kissing her hard and slow. She only tried to pull away from him for a moment as he held her fast in his arms, crushing her soft curves to his solid form, but as his kisses burned their way through her resolve, she gave in to her overwhelming desire, and a soft sigh of surrender escaped her.
She kissed him back, and with every passing moment the sparks inside of her and between them both burst into flames of desperate need. His mouth moved from her lips down her throat as his hands canvassed her curves, and she felt flames erupting inside of her.
The dominant lover in her leaped up out of the embers of what they had shared before, and in moments her resolve had transfigured into raw desire. Her fingers raced down the front of his shirt as she unbuttoned it and yanked it off of him, along with his silken tie.
Both pieces landed on the floor of her office, and he groaned and let his head fall back just a bit as she closed her mouth over the skin on his chest.
“Please…” he begged, sliding his fingers over the back of her neck and into her long loose hair.
Nicole had his pants on the floor in moments, and she grabbed his hands and brought them to her blouse. One by one, his fingers moved down the line of buttons, opening them and exposing the breasts he had been looking at earlier. His fingertips slid over the lacy demi bra she wore, and he squeezed the soft curves in his hands, bringing his mouth to them and kissing them at the swell.
She moaned in pleasure, and pushed his hands down to the hem of her skirt. Feeling the edge of it, he slid it slowly up her legs until he could reach between her thighs and touch her, feeling the softness and heat there.
“God, I need you,” he groaned lustily as he began to stroke his fingers back and forth over her. “No one has ever turned me on as much or as fast as you do.”
It felt as though he was touching her with fire that only made her hotter and hungrier for him. She gasped and held fast to his shoulders as he slid his fingertips inside of her, manipulating and massaging her firmly until her whole body tensed and she shuddered with her orgasm.
He moaned softly and fell to his knees, parting her legs slightly as he slid his tongue in where his fingers had just been. “I need to taste you… cum again!” he insisted as he pushed her skirt up a little higher and pressed his mouth hard against her, biting and sucking at her, driving his tongue into her and all around her.
She slid her fingers into the waves of his hair and twisted them tightly there, pulling his head to her body, and he closed his fingers tight around her ass, squeezing hard as she let her head fall back, standing over him as she cried out loud with release and came again, long and loud.
Dane looked driven as he pulled his mouth from her body and looked up at her. “I need you, I need you now,” he pleaded, and she reached her hand out to his and pulled him off of his knees to his feet. She drew him to the sofa in the corner of the office and pushed him down onto it. As he gazed up at her with ravenous hunger, she lowered herself to him, spreading her thighs over his hips and bringing her core down onto his erection. She filled herself slowly with his thickness, inch by inch, until he was in her fully, and they began to move together as one.
They cried out together softly as he entered her, their voices mingled, the intensity of their pleasure shared, and he moaned deeply as she clamped her hands down tightly over his wrists, holding them firmly above his head as he buried his face in the cleavage of her breasts, sucking at them, biting at her nipples, and thrusting himself all the way into her as she rocked her body over him, driving him into her depths.
Together they moved for a long while, tasting one another’s flesh and lips, losing themselves in their kisses and desires, and she found release as he brought her to her orgasm again and then again, and he held his own back as long as he could before he could no longer withstand the powerful passion between them, and he pushed his head back hard against the sofa and cried out, tightening his hips and pushing them up toward her, flooding her with his orgasm, and giving her one more tremendous moment of ecstasy in doing so.
When they were sated, she looked down at him and touched his face tenderly, stroking his cheek as she brought her mouth to his and kissed him softly and slowly. He wrapped his arms around her back and held her to him, kissing her deeply in return, until at last she lifted her mouth from his, and her smile faded as she planted her hands on his sculpted chest, pushing herself up off of him. He watched her as she reached for her clothes and pulled them back on.
Dane sat up on the sofa and waited, and when she was dressed, he rose from it and walked to her, standing before her nude and beautiful. She admired him and gave him a little smile. “You are a vision,” she told him again, repeating what she had first said to him at the party.
She slid her hands up his bare chest and kissed him long and slow once more, and then she let him go and walked over to her desk, picking up her purse and keys.
When she reached the door, he was still standing in the middle of her office, nude, his eyes locked on her, looking breathless and uncertain.
“This can’t happen again,” she told him quietly. “It can’t ever happen again. We cannot give in to temptation like we just did. I’m your employee, and we are both here for the business, and that’s how it has to be. All business, from now on.”
With a sad frown, she turned and walked out of her office and closed the door behind her, leaving him there staring after her.