The Boss's Proposal (8 page)

He'd stopped before a series of granite columns set tightly together to form a solid barrier with a lintel on top. He glanced over at Max. “I suppose this one could be you. A wall wants its own way, doesn't it,” he mused. “It wants to direct people, control who gets in and who gets out.”

“Lucky me, another personality assessment,” she said. “Of course, if you really think I am a stone wall, just remember, rock is notoriously hard of hearing.”

“Of course there's more to you than that.” He circled the piece as he talked. Abruptly, he stopped, his expression first surprised, then amused. “How about that? If you look at it just right, the wall turns into a gate. I mean it, come see.” He stood her in front of him and stretched an arm over her shoulder to point. “Now the columns look like slats and that little knob looks like a latch,” he murmured in her ear. “It's a little bit ajar, so it can let in new ideas. Or people.”

She stared blindly ahead as he settled his palms on her shoulders, feeling only the warmth of his touch, every hair on the back of her head prickling with awareness. “That could be your portrait, Max. It could be you, that wall, that gate.” He nuzzled his lips against her neck for a fraction of an instant and she felt a tug in her belly. “It could be you,” he whispered, “but it's not.”

This time, he caught her hand as he moved on and she found herself following.

“Nope, nope, nope,” Dylan kept saying to himself as they passed one piece after another. And then he stopped. “Bingo. That's it.”

It came up out of a rough-cut granite base, a graceful, sinuous band of steel that rose in a shallow S-curve higher than their heads.

And she stared at him, stunned. “How did you know?”

“Look at it. It's you, exactly. It's grounded in something very solid. It's made of steel, which means that it may be slender but it's strong.” He drew her around to the other side. “Funny thing about steel, it can hold things in place, but it also gives. Look at the way it curves, it's graceful. There's a softness about it that you see the longer you're around it.” He turned to face her, drawing her to him with her hands. “Oh, yeah, it's you.” His gaze was dark on hers, intense as he reached up to stroke his fingers over her cheek.

Max stared at him, in the quiet of the summer afternoon, held by the simple contact. Her heart began to hammer. He'd stared at her once as though they were the only two people in the room, made her feel it. And in this moment, everything else fell away. All that mattered was the two of them standing there. She might have resisted him over and over, but like the steel, now she gave.

“Open the gate, Max,” he whispered. “Kiss me.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Kiss me.” He
brushed his lips over her cheek. “Kiss me.” He leaned in toward her, his lips a hairsbreadth from hers. “Kiss me.”

And bridging that narrow gap, she did.

It was as different from that fierce, heedless kiss they'd shared in the hospital parking lot as water was from fire. This contact was all lazy warmth and quiet persuasion in the soft summer sunlight. Cicadas droned somewhere nearby. The scent of grass and wildflowers rose from the field around them.

She should think, Max knew she should think, but she couldn't with his lips so soft and warm on hers, the gentlest of caresses, teasing a response from her. Instead of dragging her into desire, he had her melting with it, the muscles in her legs softening with the urge to simply sink down onto the soft grass and lie with him.

She'd promised herself she would keep control, but how could she with this gentle seduction that tempted her into an answering response? It was like trying to grasp water flowing through her hands.

She tasted of honey and spice, sweetness and surprise. She was addictive, Dylan thought. Over and over, the two of them had come together and he'd felt the strength of her. Now, he felt the give.

And found himself wanting to give even more.

He pressed his lips against her throat, inhaling her scent as she tilted her head back. He enjoyed having her just a little bit off balance, hearing the soft intake of her breath, feeling her shift just a bit closer to him.
And the need to give became a need to take. She was a woman accustomed to being in control.

He wanted to show her what it was like to lose it. He changed the angle of the kiss, tightened his arms.

As though the ground had abruptly shifted underfoot, Max found herself clutching at his shoulders searching for an equilibrium that she'd suddenly lost. Now, that furious need whipped through her, now desire didn't tug but raked, dragging out a response whether she wanted it or not.

She'd known what to expect, she'd thought. She'd gone in with her eyes open. A simple kiss shouldn't have taken her over. It did.

He did.

If she were the curved steel, Dylan was the wave, insistent and powerful. A wave started from calm waters, rising and gathering, turning into an irresistible force. And like a wave, Dylan swept her up in a tide of arousal, carrying her along, whirling her around until he was all she could think of, all she could feel.

Dylan had known what to expect, he'd thought. He'd been wrong. It was like lighting a candle wick and discovering it was the fuse that started a bonfire. Max was ardent, greedy against him, her demand intoxicating. She stunned, she dazzled. And yet as much as she took, she gave far more, meeting him passion for passion, throwing all of herself into the
embrace. It was too much and yet so far from enough. He burned with the need to have her. Not just her body, her, all of her.

It was that thought that had him breaking the kiss, raising his head to look down at her even as desire surged through his veins.

Max watched him, waiting for the beat of her heart to slow.

Not entirely sure that it ever would.

What she'd just experienced hadn't had anything to do with surprise or anger. She couldn't blame it on being dragged into it. He'd given her the choice, and she had made one. It hadn't been about the heat of the moment. It had been about desire, pure and simple.

But there was nothing simple about deciding what happened next.

Dylan stared at her, his gaze searching. He no longer looked like he knew a secret but as if he was looking for an answer. “If you start in with the ‘I'm not interested in colleagues' speech, I won't be responsible for how I'll react.”

“I wasn't planning to start in with that speech,” Max said, stepping back. “Glory's going to be coming out in a minute. We should get back to the house.”

“Don't hide behind that excuse.”

“It's not an excuse. And I'm not hiding, I just have to think about this.”

“You're right, we both do.” He studied her. “And we both know what the answer's going to be.”

Max shook her head. “I can't… I have to…” She turned for the house.

He caught her arm. “Why is this so difficult for you? What happened?”

“You don't—”

And then they heard Glory's voice calling from the house and Max felt a wave of relief. “Look, we should go in. You need to look at her sketches and decide what you want.”

Dylan held her arm for just a moment longer before releasing her. “I know what I want,” he said.

And she was pretty sure his words had nothing at all to do with art.

 

The cries of gulls, the lap of water against the pilings of the dock, the snap of sail in the breeze…they were the sounds Dylan had associated with summertime for as long as he could remember. He sat next to his father on the back deck of his parents' house, looking out at Casco Bay. The water glinted blue in the afternoon sun. A seagull landed on one of the dark pilings. A little way out from the shore, white sailboats bobbed at their moorings.

Hal Reynolds reached for his highball and took a sip. “You know, in all the years we've lived here, I've never gotten tired of this view. We may not have any man-made islands here shaped like palm trees, but you're never going to see anything like this in Dubai.”

“You're right,” Dylan said, “but Dubai does have
its attractions.” It was funny, usually about this time in a visit he'd start thinking about some of those attractions, about being on the move, being in a place where anything could happen. This time around, the restlessness hadn't hit. Maybe it was because he'd been occupied with the proposal work. Or maybe because he'd been occupied with a pair of golden eyes.

If he could have marked it down to pure attraction, he would have been more comfortable. Then again, he hadn't been comfortable once since meeting Max. If the events of the afternoon had shown him anything, it was that whatever lay between them went far beyond simple chemistry. The thought made him a little uneasy. Of course, he'd never been one to take the easy out.

And he sure as hell was not going to walk away from Max simply because he was worried about getting in a little too deep. He knew where his life was going, he always had, and nothing was going to change that.

Not even a woman like Max.

Behind him, the screen door opened and his mother stepped out. “You've got half an hour to relax and then one of you two manly types needs to start a fire and char some beast for dinner.”

Arianne Reynolds had the black eyes and brown hair of her Greek heritage, the same coloring she'd passed along to her son. She stepped up behind her husband's chair and rested a hand on his shoulder. He
covered her fingers with his. “Give me just a minute and I'll take care of it.”

“You two talk for now.”

Dylan's father swirled his drink a little. “Now that you've had some time to work with her, what do you think of Max?”

Dylan could think of a whole lot of answers to that question, almost none of which were suitable to share with his parents. Go with the obvious, he thought. It was also the safest. “She's talented.”

“Yep.”

“Quick.”

“Definitely.”

“Too smart for her own good.”

His father chuckled. “You mean too smart for your own good. Is she giving you a run for your money?”

“She can be challenging.”

His mother laughed. “Sometimes those are the best kind.”

“I figure we're going to lose her one of these days, probably sooner rather than later,” Hal said. “I'm kind of surprised that she hasn't gone somewhere else already. She's got talent for bigger things.”

“Maybe she likes Portland,” Dylan suggested.

His father shook his head. “She's got bigger ambitions than that.”

Dylan considered the idea of Max working at one of the other big agencies in Manhattan and found he didn't much like it. It would squash her spontaneity
and either kill her spirit or leave her so frustrated that she eventually walked away. “Not everybody is as fair as you are. Some of the big firms can be pretty tough on women.”

“I think our Max can give as good as she gets,” Hal said. “I'm not worried about her. If she goes somewhere else she'll land on her feet.”

Dylan glanced at him. “If you know she's that far along, why didn't you go ahead and give her the project?”

“She probably could have done it, but it's a pretty important project. I didn't want to take the chance of losing. What do you think? Is she ready to take on the next one that comes up?”

“She's definitely got the talent. And she's pretty clear about what she thinks needs to happen.”

His father looked amused. “You sound frustrated. Do you want people on your team who have ideas? Or have you surrounded yourself with a bunch of yes-men? You need to have someone question you, make you account for yourself. Otherwise you run the risk of having an exploding ego. I used to be at one of the big firms, I remember what it was like. Why do you think I left Manhattan?”

Dylan blinked. “I thought you left Manhattan because you and Mom wanted to have family nearby once I was born.”

“That was certainly part of it, but it was also a way to escape all of the jackasses.” He held up his glass and squinted into the liquor. “I got tired of dealing
with it and your mother got tired of hearing me complain about it. I figured I couldn't do any worse than starting my own firm and getting out from under it all.”

His wife leaned down to kiss him. “I'd say overall, it worked out pretty well.”

“They don't have places like this in Manhattan. Or Dubai.”

Dylan smiled. “Is this the part where you start harassing me about coming home?”

“It would be nice to know that you're closer than an eighteen-hour flight away,” he said.

“The more you badger him, Hal, the more likely it is he's going to stay away for good,” Arianne said.

“I'm just saying.”

“I've got no plans of moving to Dubai for good, trust me,” Dylan said. “Although it is an eye-opener. You guys really ought to come visit before I finish up.”

“Who knows, maybe we will.” Hal gave his wife a speculative look. “I think your mother might look pretty fetching in a burka. Maybe it'll make her a more obedient wife.”

Arianne punched his shoulder lightly. “Just for that, you're doing the dishes tonight.”

“This is what happens when you get married,” Hal said, shaking his head. “No respect.”

Arianne leaned down to press a kiss on him. “But lots of love.”

“O
kay, now watch this.” Eli Gardner, the stubby little BRS animation specialist, moved the mouse around as though he were playing one of the video games that occupied his every nonworking hour. First the Portland General logo, then the BRS logo floated up from the bottom of the screen to stay for a moment before dissolving into a view of the as-yet-unbuilt addition. In the background synthesizer music played with a pulse like the beat of the heart.

“Coming in from the parking lot with a pan shot lets them get the first impression,” he said, narrating the action on screen. “Then we get to the good stuff when we hit the steps to the entrance plaza.” The view rose abruptly to cross the brick apron, pan
the fountain, then swoop through the sliding glass doors into the lobby to point toward the dome of the atrium.

Max reached for the back of Eli's chair. “Wow.”

Eli grinned. “Cool, huh? Hal wants vertigo, I'll give him vertigo.”

“Make sure you also give him the design,” Dylan said.

“Have a little faith.” On screen, the view rotated through three hundred and sixty degrees to show the lobby with its information desk and seating. Sunlight flooded the space. Little rainbow trapezoids thrown by a suncatcher dotted the floor. Then the viewpoint swung around the corner to where the long, unbroken space of the concourse opened out.

And she finally understood why he'd been so insistent on the changes. “You're right, the committee's going to love it,” she told Dylan.

His look held both surprise and appreciation. “I'm glad you think so. It's too bad we had to make the trade-offs to get it.”

“If anything's going to get us that contract, it's this,” she said.

“Thanks.” He held her gaze.

Her pulse bumped and just for a moment she could feel it all again, the pounding need, the furious desire, the almost overwhelming urge to cast aside all of her reservations and dive into the experience, an experience that might never come again.

“Guys,” Eli said impatiently, scrubbing his fingers
through his curly black hair. “Okay, I'm going to restart it, so pay attention.”

But it had been hard to pay attention to anything since that moment two days before. Oh, sure, Max had gone through the motions, she'd done her work. But through it all, her thoughts kept returning to what had happened between them, as though it were a puzzle she had to solve.

Because she did have to solve it. She needed to figure out what to do.

Trying to convince herself she wasn't attracted hadn't worked, and neither, it seemed, had trying to manage and compartmentalize those feelings. If the kiss at Glory's had shown her anything, it had shown her that the feelings were too big to walk away from.

And that she didn't want to.

But what she wanted and what was smart were two different things. Which brought her right back to the same point she'd reached over and over again in the past two days. She had to make a decision.

And, as she had over and over again in the past two days, she set it aside for later.

“—so that's what I've got so far,” Eli said. “It's a pretty good, huh?”

“Oh, yeah, great, Eli,” she said quickly. “Thanks for all the hard work.”

“It's been fun. The guys in my gaming group aren't so happy about it, but they'll live.”

Dylan glanced at his watch. “It's almost two. Why
don't you call it a day? It's Saturday, it's a holiday weekend. You've already put in enough hours.”

“Cool.” As though he'd just been waiting for the words, Eli started shutting down his software immediately. “If you thought I'd be one of those guys who'd say no, everyone else is working hard, too, you thought wrong.” He picked up a videogame that sat next to his computer. “My Xbox and I have a date with Grant's copy of ‘Fallout.'”

Dylan shook his head as they walked toward Max's office. “He makes me feel old.”

“Of course he does, he's twenty-four. Anyway, you could have a date with ‘Fallout' if you wanted, you just have to stop at an electronics store on the way home.”

Dylan reached out and toyed with her earring. “I'd rather have a date with you.”

Max stepped back quickly as Eli rose and turned toward them.

“I'll see you guys. Have a good holiday.” He waved and turned toward the elevators.

“That's right, tomorrow's the holiday,” Dylan said. “What time do you want me to pick you up?”

The clambake, of course. Max had hoped he'd forgetten. “You really don't have to go to that.”

Out in the lobby, Eli's elevator arrived with a ping.

“Oh, I want to. Besides, I'd hate to disappoint your sister.” He traced a fingertip down her throat.

“That was just Cady being Cady. She was just trying to tease me.”

“Mmm.” He ran his finger along Max's collarbone, sending little shivers through her. “I can see why she would. It's an appealing idea. I'll need directions to your house,” he added, just about the time her legs began to weaken. “Just think, it's a chance for you to tell me what to do.”

She swallowed. “Or where to go.”

“No,” he said. “I already know where we're going.”

 

The thing to do was to be smart, Max decided as she gave her eyelashes a last brush of mascara the next day. Having an affair with Dylan—if she had an affair—wouldn't be the same thing as having an affair with a regular coworker. Yes, they were working together, but the situation was temporary. He wasn't actually an employee of BRS, and soon he'd be gone. Why shouldn't they pursue the attraction they both felt?

After all, she'd been attracted to men before and gotten involved with them. She had her share of affairs, even some very intense ones.

Never one like this.

The thought gave her a little stir of nerves. She could manage it, Max told herself. She only had another week with him. There was no way she could get in too deep.

The doorbell sounded as she was putting on her
earrings. Frowning, she walked to the door and opened it to see Dylan standing there. Something skittered around in her stomach. It was the first time she'd seen him in casual clothes. Not just casual clothes, but beach clothes that showed tanned arms and powerful legs. Somehow, it made him look even more male than before.

“Taxi,” he said.

She blinked. “You're early.”

“A bad habit, I'm afraid.”

“I thought you were going to meet me downstairs.”

“Change of plans,” he said and waited. “Now is the part where you invite me in.”

Max narrowed her eyes before moving back from the doorway. “Don't get any ideas.”

She couldn't possibly have meant what she said, Dylan thought. A man couldn't look at her without getting ideas, especially not in that little white skirt that showed about a half a mile of legs. A red tank top and the blue earrings she was fastening on completed the ensemble.

“I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy?”

Her smile came and went. Nervous, he thought. “I'm nothing if not festive,” she said.

“You're festive and a whole lot of other things besides.” It took an effort not to touch her. He figured he deserved some kind of an award for tearing his gaze away to at least make an attempt to look around her condo. The exposed brick walls of the living room
went straight up to the second story. A staircase to one side let up to a second-floor loft that held her bedroom, he assumed. Which held her bed.

And that quickly, his mind was filled with the image of Max, naked, lying back on the sheets with her hair spread across the pillows as he moved to—

“—don't you?”

He'd tuned out, Dylan realized. “What?”

“I said, we could take back roads down but I think it would be smarter to stay on the main highway, don't you?”

A long, meandering drive with Max sprawled in the seat beside him certainly held its appeal, but they probably needed to arrive at the party at a reasonable hour. “Sure, whatever you think. Nice condo, by the way.”

She sat on the sofa and leaned over to buckle on her sandals. A silver bracelet gleamed on a leather thong around her ankle. “I bought it right around the time this block was cleaning up. I got a reasonable deal on it. I'm actually close enough to walk to work when the weather's nice.” She finished and stood up. “All set. Shall we go?”

“We could. Or we could just stay here and you could give me a tour.”

“There's not very much to see,” Max said as she grabbed her purse.

“Oh, I think there is.”

At the look in his eyes, her pulse sped up. He
moved closer. Max raised her chin. “If you start with that stuff, we'll never get out of here.”

“That's kind of the idea.”

“What makes you think I've decided to sleep with you?” she challenged.

His slow smile sent something fluttering inside her. “We both know it's just a matter of time.”

“Given that you're leaving in a couple of weeks, that doesn't exactly make it a foregone conclusion.”

“All the more reason we should seize the moment.” There it was again, that gaze that suggested he knew a secret, except this time Max knew exactly what that secret was.

And because she wanted to stay there with him, she forced herself to turn toward the door. “Are you going to drive us there, or do I have to?”

“My father warned me about demanding women.” Dylan followed her out the door, shaking his head.

He'd swapped his usual luxury sedan for a sporty red convertible. With the top down and the wind in her hair on the open highway, it was impossible to be tense. Instead, she sat back and enjoyed the drive to Grace Harbor.

“I love hot days like this,” Max said idly, moving one hand out into the slipstream of the car to surf up and down.

Dylan glanced over, amused. “Why don't you live somewhere farther south? Atlanta? Miami? Hell, even New York's warmer than up here.”

“I've thought about it. I will when I'm ready.”

“What are you waiting for?”

She watched her hand for a few seconds, banking it like an airplane. “I've been waiting to get enough experience, I guess. I don't want to go to some giant firm and just be a tiny little cog. I know how those companies can be.”

“That's right, you interned at the Chicago Design Group.”

She gave him a quick stare. “Have you been looking at my résumé?”

He shrugged. “It's part of the proposal package. I'm supposed to look at everything. I have to confess, I found it much more interesting than Eli's. But then I find pretty much everything about you more interesting than Eli.”

“Gosh, well, count me flattered.”

“It's not all just cog in the machine at firms like the Chicago Design Group, though. You can get a chance to see a lot of different kinds of projects. You can learn a lot.”

Without thinking, Max snorted. “Oh, I learned, all right.”

He gave her a quick look. “What happened?”

Her stomach tightened. “Nothing.”

“You know, every time you start talking about how you don't want to get involved with a colleague, I get a really strong feeling that it's not just general caution. I get a feeling that something happened with you. Was it there? At Chicago Design?”

Max looked out at the highway unspooling before
them and let out a long breath. “Yes. I got involved with one of the architects when I was interning there. It didn't go well.”

And he could feel her retreating from him. There was more there, but this wasn't the time, not when he couldn't touch her, not when he couldn't look into her eyes. So he set aside all those questions for later. “Why architecture?” he asked instead.

She relaxed a bit. “The standard answer is watching them put up an addition on our property when I was a kid. Before that, buildings had just been there, you know? All of a sudden I got to see the whole thing, start to finish. I got to see how the architects thought about the people and how they were going to use it. I figured, I liked art and I liked people, so it seemed like a good fit.” She stretched out her legs and turned a bit toward him. “It was probably a no-brainer for you, being around it all the time. Did you ever feel pressured to be an architect?”

“No.” In a gesture that seemed natural, he reached over to rest a hand on her knee. “I suppose if my dad were a different kind of man, maybe, but he never pushed me. In fact, it was almost the opposite. He encouraged me to try a lot of other different things. But architecture just felt right. I love the whole process of thinking about a problem and then, pow, the answer comes to you, like a muscle flexing.”

“Do you have a lot of ‘pows' in Dubai?”

Dylan snorted. “With my client? Constantly. He can be rather…challenging.”

“The prince?”

Dylan nodded.

“How's my painting?” she asked.

“It misses you. Want to visit it?”

“I hardly think we want your father to know about this…” She waved her hand. “This what?”

“Whatever's between us.”

“So you agree that something is?”

Max looked down at his hand on her knee. “Yes.”

“Have you decided what you're going to do about it?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Let me know when you decide. Only, Max—”

“Yes?”

He stroked her leg. “Don't take too long.”

 

The Compass Rose Inn looked as Dylan remembered, a sprawling, white clapboard house with a confusion of additions and outbuildings. Somehow, unlike Portland General, the effect was charming rather than discordant. Perhaps it was because of the rambling grounds and the plantings that softened the harsh edges. Perhaps it was the marina next door with its ranks of small sailboats bobbing at the docks. It felt welcoming and natural.