Field of Pleasure Page 4

  “I’m not the one who’s canceled twice already,” Liani called over her shoulder as she rejoined the other squad members still milling about.

  Chyna swallowed the bitter pill of guilt. More often than not she was the one who had to back out when she and her best friend had plans. It wasn’t her fault there were only twenty-four hours in a day. With all the things crowding her plate, socializing was usually the first to take a backseat.

  She quickly packed up her gear, determined to make it to the Patisserie before the Sunday afternoon crowd descended on it. Ever since some food blogger featured it in an article about the best bakeries in each borough, Chyna’s favorite study place had been overrun by strangers.

  She waved goodbye to the girls that still remained as she left the field house and headed for the exit. At least she hoped she was heading for the exit. Although she had been working with the dance squad for several weeks now, she still felt as if she needed a GPS system to navigate her way through the Sabers’ massive state-of-the-art practice compound.

  Chyna’s heart engaged in a little pitter-patter action as she entered the hallway that led to the compound’s front lobby. Just the thought of running into a certain member of the team had tendrils of excitement skittering along her skin. She’d caught a few glimpses of Jared today, but he hadn’t spent much time on the indoor practice field.

  She had to keep reminding herself that she did not want to see him. Included in the social aspect of life that she just didn’t have time for were men in general, much to Liani’s discontent. Never mind the fact that her friend had begged off men after last season’s incident with that unnamed Saber, Liani still harped on Chyna’s assertion that, in the grand scheme of things, being in a relationship held little appeal these days. Relationships took time, something Chyna could not afford to give to someone else right now.

  Still, a nice dinner and some friendly conversation couldn’t hurt.

  Wait. Where had that come from?

  Chyna didn’t have to toil too long to remember. The idea of friendly conversation had been on her mind way too much since a certain someone had suggested it yesterday.

  She so could not allow Jared Dawson and all his yumminess to put ideas into her head. Getting involved with someone, even on a casual level, was not a part of her game plan. Finish school, get the job promotion and start saving for a down payment on her own dance studio. That was the plan. She didn’t have time for obsessing over Jared.

  If only those memories of the way that T-shirt had stretched across his ripped chest didn’t make her heart beat faster than a solid hour of dance practice.

  God, she was in such trouble.

  As she came upon an intersection in the facility’s main building, a door to her right opened and several people filed out. Apparently, fate was in a taunting mood today, because Jared emerged just as Chyna passed the door. She quickened her steps, power walking down the hallway toward the main exit doors.

  “Hey, Chyna. Wait a minute.”

  She ignored him as she moved swiftly across the lobby and charged through the double doors, feeling like a complete and utter fool. Had she actually run from the man?

  Yes. Hell, yes.

  As she made her way to the train station, Chyna revisited all the reasons that running from Jared and those butterflies he set off in her stomach was the absolute smartest thing she could do. She made it home with just enough time to feed and walk Summer before heading to the Patisserie. She decided to forgive fate for that run-in with Jared when she walked into the bakery and found her favorite chair unoccupied.

  Chyna settled in with an espresso, a flaky croissant and the journal articles she should have finished reading the night before. The parade of newcomers had started their invasion, but Chyna did her best to tune them out. Before she knew it, an hour had passed and she’d gotten through two of the five articles.

  She left the comfy confines of the well-worn leather chair just long enough to get another espresso. By sheer willpower she passed on a second pastry. Settling back into her chair, Chyna brought the demitasse to her lips just as the bell above the bakery’s entrance clanged a delicate chime. She looked up and nearly spit coffee all over herself.

  Standing in the doorway was Jared Dawson.

  Even before the mouthwatering aroma of the pastries hit him, Jared was smacked with an awareness of Chyna. His eyes zeroed in directly on the spot she occupied along the bakery’s rear wall. She stared back at him, the tiny cup in her hand arrested midair. Jared bypassed the food display and headed straight for her.

  She was fumbling with a stack of papers in her lap. She looked up at him and stole the breath from his lungs.

  She wore glasses. The thin wire frames were the same gray as her eyes, which were even more luminous behind the lenses. Jared knew he should say something, but words failed him. He was content to just stare at her.

  Apparently, she wasn’t.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, the question laced with puzzlement and a touch of annoyance.

  “Would you believe I just happened to be in the neighborhood?”

  “No,” she answered without hesitation.

  “Guilty as charged,” he admitted with a smirk. He looked around and spotted an empty chair at a table a few feet away. He asked the couple seated there if he could borrow it, signed a quick autograph for the guy who happened to be a Sabers fan—surprise, surprise—then sat the chair just to Chyna’s right.

  As he lowered onto the chair, his right knee brushed against her thigh and the jolt of sensation was the first indication that he was in trouble. The second was the tightening in his groin when she turned those amazing eyes on him again.

  “How did you know I would be here?” she asked, then answered her own question, growling her friend’s name. “Liani.”

  “She didn’t give you up easily. It cost me an autographed jersey for her nephew, but it was worth it.”

  “Why is that? Especially when I already told you I’m not interested?”

  “Because I don’t believe you,” Jared said. “The look on your face when I walked through that door back there didn’t look like disinterest to me, Chyna. In fact, it was the complete opposite.” When she didn’t respond, he continued. “Tell me you’re not the slightest bit intrigued by this chemistry we seem to have.”

  “Chemistry?” She choked on a laugh. But it wasn’t a humorous laugh; it was a nervous one, which confirmed exactly what Jared had been thinking since the minute he’d spoken to her yesterday. She felt this. Damn right, she felt it.

  Recovering, she gestured to the space that separated them. “You think there’s chemistry here?”

  Jared closed the space even more, until he was only inches from her face. “Absolutely,” he murmured, his eyes zeroing in on her lips. They trembled slightly, and she pulled the bottom one between her teeth. That sliver of vulnerability hit him like a gut punch. “Tell me, Chyna,” Jared softly challenged. “Tell me you don’t feel this.”

  “Fine,” she said on a shaky breath. “I feel it.” Then she shook her head, seeming to have broken the spell that had wrapped around them both. Stiffening her spine, she picked up that tiny coffee cup and took an even tinier sip. “So, I admit that there’s something going on here. Whether it’s chemistry or the type of mushrooms Gianni’s used on my pizza last night, I can’t be sure.”

  “I didn’t have psychedelic mushrooms last night.” Jared grinned. “Try again.”

  “You know what? This chemistry thing doesn’t even matter because I’m still not interested.”

  “What if I am?” he threw back at her.

  “Why would you be?”

  Jared barked out a laugh. “Is that a real question?” he asked.

  Did he really have to explain why just the thought of her set his blood on high boil? He wasn’t sure he could put it into words, because he had yet to explain it to himself. Was it because she’d turned him down? His hate-to-lose attitude probably had something to do wit
h it, but this thing he was feeling went beyond the superficial.

  There was something about Chyna that fascinated him. The contradiction she presented sitting here with a pile of work in her lap made him question just who was hiding behind those studious glasses. Was the carefree professional choreographer masquerading as an intellectual, or was it the other way around?

  He couldn’t let go of what Randall had said about her. His teammate had called her boring, but Jared had a hard time accepting that description. A dull, boring woman wouldn’t make his blood pressure spike.

  No, Chyna wasn’t boring. Overwhelmed, maybe. Exhaustion was written all over her face. And from the mountain of paperwork surrounding her, it looked as if she was in for a long night.

  If he could help her forget, just for an hour, about whatever had those pretty gray eyes clouding with unease, Jared would feel as if he’d accomplished something. The force of this need to alleviate her troubles stunned him, but he couldn’t deny it. He was determined to put a smile on Chyna’s face.

  “I know how to solve this,” Chyna said, pushing her glasses higher on her nose and crossing her arms over her chest. “What if I told you there was not a chance that I would sleep with you?”

  A grin spread across Jared’s lips. Oh, yeah, she was definitely scared of what he made her feel. He hadn’t said a thing about them sleeping together. Yet. They hadn’t even had a first date. Though he would remedy that soon enough.

  He gave her a nonchalant shrug. “I’d say it’s no big deal. I’ve gotten pretty use to cold showers.”

  “Oh, please.” She looked at him with such disbelief, Jared couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “Do you really think the only reason I came here was to get you to sleep with me?” He bent forward, and in a staged whisper, said, “Believe it or not, if that’s all I was interested in, I had a lot of options, and none of them would have cost me a jersey or a drive to Brooklyn.”

  “So why did you come here?” she asked.

  Jared stared at that breathtaking face, completely mesmerized. “I’ve asked myself that about a hundred times since Liani told me where to find you. I thought maybe you could help me figure it out.”

  She didn’t speak, just continued to stare at him with those eyes he could easily drown in. Jared didn’t know how much time passed, but with every second he found himself sinking deeper and deeper.

  What was it about her that had reached in and grabbed hold of him? It was unnerving. Scary, even. The last woman who’d affected him this quickly had held his heart for ten years. And then she’d crushed it.

  He wouldn’t do that to himself again. Not this soon. Not ever.

  Yet as he gazed into the smoky depths of Chyna’s captivating stare, Jared feared it was already out of his control. Before she could say another word he leaned in closer and said in an almost desperate plea, “Have dinner with me. Please,” he added. His heart beat like a brass band within his chest as he awaited her answer.

  She shook her head. “That’s not a good idea.”

  “It’s just dinner, Chyna. That’s all I want.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Jared couldn’t help the rueful grin that hitched up a corner of his mouth. “Okay, so it’s not the only thing I want, but it’s all I’m asking for. A couple of hours of some conversation over a good meal. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”

  Say yes, Jared silently pleaded. He could see the indecision in her stormy eyes. She wanted to say yes, Jared felt it in his bones. But something was holding her back. “I can’t date Sabers players,” she maintained.

  “Forget that I’m a Saber. That’s my job, but it’s not who I am.” He took the risk of reaching for her hand. “It’s not number forty-two of the New York Sabers who wants to have dinner with you. It’s just me. Jared.”

  She stared at their joined hands for long moments, the silence stretching between them. When she titled her head up, her answer was there in her eyes. Jared’s shoulders slumped with relief before she even had the chance to reward him with her wry smile.

  “Fine,” she said with a resigned sigh. “I’ll have dinner with you.”

  Chapter 5

  “Chyna, do you have the commodities report?”

  Chyna looked up from her computer screen to find Eric Steinberg peering over the top of her cubicle.

  “It’s still printing,” she answered. She snatched the papers from the bed of her printer and tapped them on the desk, straightening the thirty-plus-page report that would likely be skimmed then tossed aside. The printer spit out the last couple of pages, and Chyna added them to the stack and handed it to Eric across the top of the five feet high cubicle wall.

  “Hey,” Eric whispered. “Meet me in the copy room in five minutes.”

  “You’re a newlywed, Eric. You shouldn’t be inviting coworkers to the copy room,” Chyna said, tsking.

  He cut her with a dirty look. “Just meet me in the copy room.”

  Grinning, Chyna locked her computer screen and headed for the common area. She peeked into several of her coworkers’ workspaces as she traveled along the long corridor of cubicles.

  “Thanks for your help with the commodities report, Elaine. I just turned it in,” she said to one of the interns who shared a cubicle with two others.

  Chyna remembered those days. When she’d first started at Marlowe & Brown Hedge Fund eight years ago, not only did she share a cubicle with two other girls, they all shared the same computer. She’d graduated to a computer of her own several months later and over the course of the past eight years had moved to her own cubicle.

  But she had her eyes on a bigger prize. An office. With a door. And, be still her heart, possibly even a window.

  Okay, that was asking for a bit too much. She would be happy to work in a space where coworkers had to knock to enter instead of just poking their heads over the top of her cubicle. Chyna was so close she could taste the free lattes that were served in the Monday morning management meetings.

  She entered the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee—not a fancy latte, but a caffeine boost nonetheless. She was emptying a packet of sweetener into her cup when Eric’s voice jolted her.

  “I said the copy room,” he said.

  She jumped, sending sweetener everywhere. “Goodness, Eric!” Chyna dusted at the smattering of white powder that clung to the front of her sweater. “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer not to have a heart attack today.”

  Eric grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her out of the open kitchen area and into the adjacent copy room where he closed the door.

  “What’s so urgent?” Chyna asked, wringing her arm from his grip.

  “Guess who just accepted a job with the Cohen Group?” Eric asked with a smug grin.

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Not me,” Eric snorted. “Are you forgetting who my father-in-law is? I’m here for life.”

  “Then who?” Chyna asked.

  “Katie Parker.”

  Her heart started thumping like a Broadway ensemble within her chest. “Don’t you toy with me, Eric Steinberg.”

  “Being the son-in-law of one of the founding partners has its perks,” Eric said. “Melissa and I had dinner at her folks’ place last night. Tom spent the entire meal griping about the Cohen Group stealing away his employees. He said Katie turned in her resignation yesterday afternoon.”

  Chyna managed to quell the exhilaration that was on the verge of erupting out of her, but just barely. There were several candidates vying for the recently vacated junior management position in Marlowe & Brown’s Risk Assessment department, but Katie Parker was the only one with an edge over Chyna. Katie had recently earned a MBA in finance whereas Chyna was still working on her bachelor’s degree. They had both been at the hedge fund for eight years and were even when it came to practical work experience. And they were both light years ahead of the other candidates.

  If Katie was no longer in the running for the position…

  “E
ric, are you one hundred percent sure about this?” Chyna asked. “You’d better not be toying with me.”

  “I’d never joke about something like this. She’s leaving at the end of March,” Eric said. “That job is yours. Congratulations.” He gave her a thumbs-up before heading out of the copy room.

  Chyna sucked in a steadying breath, hoping to abate the excited, almost nauseated feeling stirring in the pit of her stomach.

  This was what she wanted. It was what she’d been working toward for the past eight years. When she’d applied for a job as the assistant to an assistant at Marlowe & Brown, she hadn’t even known what a hedge fund was. Three weeks out of high school, the only thing she’d known was that she wanted to work somewhere that required a business suit. She used to envy the women in suits who had always looked so important riding the subway on their way into the city. Her goal in life had been to become one of them.

  It hadn’t taken her long to discover that at a place like Marlowe & Brown, even the coffee fetchers were required to wear business suits, which was why she’d devised her five-year plan. It had taken Chyna longer than she’d first anticipated—she’d had to take off two semesters from school when her dad first fell ill. But it had all been worth it in the end. She was less than a semester away from earning her bachelor’s degree, the only requirement of the junior management position that she did not possess. If Katie Parker and her MBA were no longer a threat, that job was hers.

  Chyna told herself the burning in her chest was just a touch of indigestion from the overly strong coffee, and not uneasiness. She straightened the tiny boxes of paper clips and Post-it notes in the supply cabinet. Now that the prize was within her grasp, she needed a few moments to digest this new turn of events and think about how it would affect her life.

  She needed this promotion. The salary was nearly forty percent more than what she was currently making as an administrative assistant. Of course, it also meant she would no longer be a nonexempt employee, but that didn’t matter. She was hardly ever called on to work overtime.