Lindsay Evans - Pleasure Under the Sun

Seven opened the bottle of white wine and poured some into two of the plastic cups.

“I can’t.” Bailey held up a hand in refusal. “I’m working, remember?”

“It’s just sparkling grape juice.” He lifted the cup and brought it to her mouth. “Here, see for yourself.”

Bailey blushed, warmed by his nearness, the low and intimate sound of his breathing. She smelled his musk, the kiss of sweat on his skin, and swayed closer. Her thoughts flickered on and off like a dying light bulb. Don’t touch him. Tell him to leave. You can’t afford this kind of man in your life. God! He smells so good.

She’d never felt this deep an attraction for someone. It frightened her a little. Made her want to draw back from the simple offering he made. Seven’s dark, curly-lashed eyes peered deeply into hers, as if he was offering her more than grape juice. She opened her mouth and tasted the crisp sweetness of what he gave her. The grape juice effervesced over her tongue. An unexpected bite of spice made her mouth tingle. She sneezed.

Seven laughed. “It has ginger in it.”

“Damn. Ginger always makes me sneeze.” To prove it, she sneezed again.

He sipped from the same cup he’d asked her to taste. “That is adorable.”

His laughter mingled with the sound of her cell phone’s ring tone. Smiling, Bailey wiped her nose with a napkin and stood to grab her phone off the desk. Marcus’s image and name flashed on the phone’s display. For a moment, she debated not answering. The last thing she wanted to do was deal with Marcus and his foolishness, especially when she’d managed to all but forgive and forget that he was a friend to her good-looking and damn near irresistible office guest.

Bailey sighed and picked up the call. “Hi, Marcus.”

Seven looked up when she mentioned his friend’s name, a frown on his otherwise smooth forehead. Then he looked away, busying himself with taking something out of the picnic basket. Bailey sank down into her chair and turned her attention back to the phone call.

“You sound happy,” Marcus said.

“Don’t make it seem like such an unusual occurrence.”

“Isn’t it? You’re the only chick I’d ever tell she needs to get laid. Since Clive, you act like you’ve been saving the kitty for marriage.”

Bailey’s good mood abruptly evaporated. “What do you want, Marcus?”

He had the nerve to laugh in her ear. “I was calling to check on my boy, Seven. Did you take care of him?”

“We’re talking right now,” she said.

Marcus whistled. “Damn. It’s like that?” He laughed again, this time with a whole other meaning behind it.

“No. It’s not.” Bailey’s face flushed with heat, but she kept her voice hard.

“This is shocking the hell out of me. You don’t have time for any man that’s not—”

“Get to the point, please. I have things I need to get back to.”

“I bet you do.” He chuckled, a low and dirty sound. “Anyway, tell Seven that Nilda wants to buy one of his pieces. I’m with her right now. I tried to call his cell but he’s not picking up.”

Bailey knew Nilda. Another one of Marcus’s friends with more money than sense.

“Pieces?”

“Yeah. Your new boyfriend likes to hammer on things and sell them as art. Chicks can’t get enough of him or his stuff.”

“He’s a sculptor?”

Seven looked up at her tone of voice. Bailey turned away from him to stare, blinking, out the window. “You didn’t mention that before.”

“Does it matter? You want clients and he’s got money to help you get that corner office.” The sound of laughter and a popped bottle of champagne gurgled to Bailey through the phone. “Anyway, I gotta go. Pass my message on to the man, will you? He can call me if he wants to get together later.” Marcus hung up.

Slowly, Bailey did the same. An artist.

It made sense. All along, there had been something about Seven that reminded Bailey of her father—her dear broke and irresponsible father.

“You didn’t tell me you were an artist,” she said, voice brittle with the frost of her disappointment.

Frowning, Seven slowly got up from the floor and sat in the chair across from her desk, putting them at a relatively even height. “You look upset. Why does it matter?”

“It matters.” Bailey clenched her fist and realized she still held the cell phone in her hand. She put it on the desk and leaned back in her chair. The fact that he was Marcus’s friend, she could have possibly overlooked, but this... This slammed the door on every possibility between them.

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

Suddenly, Bailey felt tired. The stress of her day and the seesaw of emotions from Seven’s appearance hit her like a Mack truck.

“Actually, there’s no problem,” she said.

“If that isn’t giving me mixed messages, I don’t know what is.” Seven raised an eyebrow in her direction. “What is it? You don’t like artists. Did one break your heart or something?”

“I have a lot to do tonight. Can you just pack all this stuff up and go, please?” She slipped her stockinged feet into the four-inch black Manolo Blahnik pumps under her desk to regain some semblance of power in the conversation.

Seven leveled a steady gaze at her. “Okay,” he said.

Although his movements seemed slow and unhurried, he quickly gathered the remains of their impromptu picnic into the basket and tucked them away. Soon, he stood at the door, ready to leave.

“Thanks for stopping by,” Bailey said. Even with every disastrous thing she now knew about him, she still wanted to rush over to Seven and ask him to stay. Beg him to stay. “It’s unfortunate we won’t be working together, after all.” Slowly, she stood up to her full height and then some in the couture stilettos, giving him her coolest and most professional smile.

He held her gaze for a long moment before responding. “Yes, a shame.” Then he was gone.

Bailey’s smile withered away. After his faint footsteps had faded down the hallway, she stood in the middle of her office, with the after-fragrance of their picnic swirling around her, disappointment like ashes on her tongue.

* * *

She left the office shortly after Seven did, unable to concentrate on work. With him gone, the building seemed lonely in a way it hadn’t before. Lonely and cold. Bailey gathered her briefcase, turned off the lights in her office and got on the elevator, pressing the button for the parking garage.

The last time a man had intrigued her as much as Seven, she’d quickly opened herself to him, excited that, for the first time in her twenty-eight years, she felt something close to love, a feeling her sister always swam in like some rarified pool in an otherwise dry universe. Bailey had almost drowned. She hadn’t realized that Clive, a professor at the University of Miami, had been steadily sleeping his way through his graduate students. Even after he’d asked her to marry him.

Bailey’s heels clicked a sad tattoo against the cement floor of the garage. Although it was almost nine in the evening, hers wasn’t the only car in the well-lit parking structure. She pressed a key on the remote and it chirped once, unlocking the pale blue Volvo C70 with a quick flash of the headlights. She climbed in and turned on her stereo and the Alice Smith song that had been playing on her way to work blasted into the small confines of the car. The bluesy, big-throated song blew away her unproductive thoughts about her love life and anything else lurking in her subconscious.

With the top down, she drove to her beachside condo, enjoying the feel of the wind in her hair during the short drive. She knew the route well and had driven it most of the eight years she’d been working at Braithwaite and Fernandez. It hadn’t been her first job offer after graduating from the University of Miami with her degrees in finance and business administration, but it was the one that had the most potential for growth and allowed her to stay in Miami. Stability. She had it. And it was something she was grateful for.