Hanna Martine - Long Shot

She spun through a series of slides, going through her marketing plan and potential clients, like he was some sort of investor. Maybe he was. Because every sentence, every word she said drove into his brain, slowly making him realize that she wasn’t running away. She wasn’t leaving him this time; she was joining him. This place was only half an hour from where he’d chosen to base his own new company.

“You were right. I didn’t love my job before. Working in Gleann, I discovered what I do love, and it’s this.”

“Wow.” He just sat there, stunned into silence, surely looking like a fool with his mouth hanging open. “I—”

“I’m not finished.” She held up a teasingly prim hand, then walked across the projector beam to the other side. As she did, the light cast her figure in silhouette—the gentle swing of her ponytail, the curve of her ass, the proud lift of her chin—and it mesmerized him.

She extended out a slim metal pointer with a balled tip.

“This”—she advanced a slide and slapped the pointer with gusto to the wall—“is why we belong together.”

On the wall, in bright rectangles of color, was one of her famous charts. He ground his molars into his cheek to keep from smiling.

On scales of one to one hundred, she’d bar-graphed the following categories: Sense of Humor, Mutual Respect, Future Goals, Sexual Compatibility, and Physical Proximity.

“Sense of Humor,” she began in that same businesslike tone. “You and I are at one hundred. It’s why we became friends in the first place, right? We laugh at the same things, make jokes no one else gets—”

“Relocate Mayor Sue’s outdoor doghouses to the lawn of Town Hall.”

“Ahhh, now there’s an idea to file away for later. Put that on our Action Item list.”

“Will do.” He leaned forward, rubbing his hands together. “Go on.”

“Mutual Respect. As you can see, I’ve divided this column into two. One for you, one for me.” She turned serious, the pointer dropping as she faced him. The light from the projector reflected off her glasses. “My respect for you is one hundred, as high as it can possibly get. I want you to know that. I need you to know that.”

He couldn’t talk around the pressure in his chest.

“But I only gave myself a fifty from your point of view, because of what you told me earlier. How you thought I was compromising myself for revenge or for some reason other than what was in my heart. You were right, you know. It took me going away to see that, to know what I lost, what I wanted back, and where I want to be for good. I know it all now. It’s very, very clear to me.”

He pumped a thumb a couple of times toward the ceiling. “My number needs to go up a few notches. Like, say, fifty.”

She drew a deep breath. “Well. Then, that brings me to my next point. We have similar goals. We want our own businesses to be successful. We have dreams and I know we would support each other in those dreams.”

He nodded, completely agreeing. “What about family?” The question surprised them both. He held on to it though, grinding his teeth. He wouldn’t take it back. “I mean, you have Aimee and Ainsley, but that’s about it. I don’t have anyone.” He cleared his throat. “Would you want family? With me?”

She looked at him for a long moment. “I think we need to get our careers going first, make sure they’re nice and established.” Her expression turned wonderfully warm. “But, yes. I think I might.”

“Action Item list?”

“Given that our Sexual Compatibility score is closer to two hundred”—a slap of the pointer—“I’d say that ‘action’ is a good word for it. But I don’t even want to think about it for a couple of years. That okay?”

Pressing his lips together, he nodded. “A sound plan, boss.”

“Which brings us to the final point: Physical Proximity. As you can see, the score is at zero, but I want to fix that. All the rest doesn’t matter if I don’t, and I know your coming to New York just won’t work for your business. Once my lease runs out in the city, I do not plan on renewing it. I want my own place. Here. With an easy commute to my new work and a bed big enough for you. Maybe someplace like this. Or this. Or this.” She flashed a series of photos of homes for sale in the area.

Leaning an elbow on the armrest, he scratched at his face and then covered his mouth with his hand. If she could see how much he was enjoying this, how much he never wanted her to stop, how hard it was to hold himself back from jumping up from the chair and pinning her against that lit wall, he feared it might scare her off again.

Except nothing about her looked scared right now. She was courageous and gorgeous and brilliant, and he could not stop staring.

“Oh!” she said, setting down the pointer. “One last thing, but perhaps the most important.”

She slid right in front of the projector beam at the same moment she clicked the remote, her body bathed in light. And then her fingers rose to the buttons of her sweater. Starting at the top, between her breasts, she unfastened the first one.

A peek of a nude lace bra had him involuntarily scooting forward on the chair, his mouth first drying up, then watering.

Another button. Her lips quirked. The smooth patch of skin below her bra looked delicious. He wanted to run his tongue up and down the vertical divot between her stomach muscles.

Was that . . .? There were lines on her stomach that he thought could be letters, but were too difficult to make out. Things that hadn’t been there last time she’d undressed for him. Did she get a tattoo over there in London? He squinted.

Another button came undone. The black fabric parted even more, exposing her breasts and coming apart all the way to her bellybutton. Now he was sure. They were definitely letters on her midsection. Not tattooed, not painted, but coming from the projector.

The final button. The sweater halves separated, and then came fully off. She let it drop to the ground. Then she reached around and unzipped her skirt. Shimmied out of the tight thing and then let that fall, too. She stood there, perfectly still, with her perfect body in that perfect lace bra and underwear almost the exact shade of her skin, and he had to concentrate to absorb what he was looking at.

There, in black computerized script, written across the smooth skin of her belly, were the words, “I love you.”

He blinked at them several times.

“So that’s it,” she said, and her voice sounded shaky. “That’s my presentation.”

He ripped his gaze from her beautiful body to her even more beautiful face. “Can you say it?”

“Yes. I can now.” He loved how her body moved, unclothed, when she breathed. “I’m in love with you. I always have been, even when I wasn’t fully aware of it, even over all these years. It’s why coming back to you felt so easy, so natural. I’m not saying that we were meant to be together or destined or anything as new-agey as that, but I do think we had to grow up, that we had to figure things out on our own in order to find our way back to each other. I know that I will always love you, even if . . . even if you give me a taste of my own medicine by walking away right now.”

“Fuck.” He got to his feet. “No way I’m walking out. You did one hell of a job here.”

Now she smiled, and it was shining with relief and happiness. Her eyes were huge and glorious. She started toward him but he threw out a hand. “Don’t. Stay right there.”

He went to her, skirting around the desk to take in the whole sight of her, that gorgeous declaration written across her body just for him. Spoken just for him. He reached out and removed her glasses.