Her phone dinged to remind her about her lunch meeting. She pushed away from her desk and forced her body into a standing position. With her head swirling and heart thumping, she walked toward the door, moving like a zombie in a B-rated movie.
I think I’d rather die on an airplane than face Finn Anderson.
“I don’t really have time for lunch, today.” Cole’s eyes remained glued to the computer screen, as his fingers flew across the keys. “I was planning to order food and keep working. With Jarrett gone, I’ve got even more to do. Right now, I’m trying to figure out how Research and Development blew through two million dollars without completing a single project. I swear, heads are going to roll on this one.”
“But, Laurie’s going to be there.” Finn had been counting on Cole’s presence at the meeting to diffuse their toxic interaction.
“That’s great,” Cole mumbled, scribbling with a pencil on a yellow legal pad.
“Lunch would probably go a lot smoother if you were there.”
“You guys need to get over yourselves so you can work together,” Cole said, absently, pausing to frown at something he’d scribbled.
“I think it’s too late. I’ve already made her hate me.”
“You made your proverbial bed. Now you can lie in it.” Cole’s gaze traced back and forth on his computer screen, his eyebrows twisting in a knot. “Put on your big-boy pants and fix the mess you made. You don’t need my help.”
Realizing Cole was truly turning him down, Finn went into panic mode. He never would’ve proposed a lunch meeting if he’d known he’d be on his own with her.
“I thought you’d enjoy having lunch with Laurie. Don’t you like her?”
“Yeah… she’s awesome.” Cole tapped the pencil against the desk. “But we already had dinner together. I don’t do repeats.”
“You mean you never take a girl out more than once?”
“That’s right,” he mumbled, as he dropped the pencil and started typing on the keyboard.
“How will you ever have a serious relationship if you don’t have more than one date with a girl?”
“Asks the man who doesn’t date at all…” Cole finally looked up from his work, only to roll his eyes in exaggerated fashion before returning to the Excel spreadsheet on his computer screen.
An image of Cole invaded Finn’s head—that of a lonely old man with no family to care for him. “Listen, Cole. You need to open yourself up. You can’t cut off every woman on earth just because your mother—”
“Don’t. Even. Go. There.”
The glare that met Finn’s eyes made him swallow the rest of his sentence. But he wasn’t ready to give up. He resolved to find a way to broach the subject again when Cole was in a better frame of mind.
Finn cleared his throat. “Eh-hem. I guess this means you aren’t going to lunch with me.”
“Y-e-p.” Like a true Texan, Cole stretched the word into several syllables. And with that one word, he effectively slammed the lid on Finn’s coffin.
The spicy aroma of oregano and garlic assaulted Laurie’s nose. Though she’d been starving before, she’d totally lost her appetite in the presence of Finn Anderson. Now the pungent smell of Italian food was nauseating. She’d been ready to argue and fight and stand up for women all over the globe, but Finn had done something that caught her completely off guard… He’d been nice.
This was a completely different Finn Anderson—polite, respectful, encouraging—and she had no idea how to deal with him. Groping for the anger she needed to clear her head, she glanced up at him.
Big mistake.
Those piercing blue eyes. That strong jaw, covered with stubble that begged to be touched. His stern, but full lips.
What would it feel like to kiss those lips?
She reprimanded herself. Why would she even dream about kissing a man like Finn? He was a Neanderthal, for starters, and he’d demonstrated repeatedly how much he disliked her. She knew from experience what it was like when a relationship was based solely on physical attraction. It was something she had no desire to repeat.
“Yes, Mr. Anderson,” she responded to something he said, pushing her uneaten lettuce around on her salad plate. As she studied a piece of cucumber, she wished she’d recorded the entire meeting to play back at a later time when she wasn’t so distracted.
“You can call me Finn.”
“I prefer Mr. Anderson,” she said tersely.
He jammed a large piece of meat into his mouth and chewed, his eyes narrowing. “Ms. Fields, I believe I’ve been nothing but courteous today, yet you remain sullen.”
A bit of her frustration leaked out. “I’m not sullen, Mr. Anderson—I’m confused. You haven’t hurled a single insult toward the female race since we got here. I’m waiting for the real you to jump out from under a nearby table and yell, ‘Boo!’”
“Hmm…” He nodded his head, patting his lips with his napkin, his expression grim. “But that’s where you’re wrong. You see, the real me would never get down on this nasty floor. I would hide somewhere much cleaner.”
“So I should be keeping my eye on that potted fern?” Laurie jerked her chin to her left as she tried to keep the corners of her lips from curling upwards.
He squinted at the huge plant. “For sure. I expect, any second, Finn’s face will appear between the fronds.”
She coughed to stifle a chuckle. “Since right now I have you, instead of Finn, perhaps I could list a few pointers about not being a chauvinistic pig. You could share with him later.”
“Plenty of women have tried to tell me how I ought to behave, but none have succeeded.”
“Are you saying you only listen to advice from men?” Rising to the occasion, Laurie’s once-skittish nerves now hummed from the challenge. She forked a cucumber and chewed with vigor.
