Caroselli's Baby Chase Page 5

  Damn her.

  When she’d made it up to his knee, and clearly had no intention of stopping, he grabbed her stocking foot and removed it from his leg with a warning look, thankful for his long wool coat to hide anything that had sprung up. “You’re taking cheap shots.”

  “Am I?”

  “You don’t really believe that I’m your subordinate.”

  The head cocked again. “When did I say that?”

  “Just a minute ago. You said it was especially bad to get involved with a subordinate.”

  “So, from that you assumed I meant you? Had you considered that I was talking to you about me? Or that maybe I was speaking in general terms, and not about anyone specific.”

  Actually no, he hadn’t considered that.

  “Are you always so hyperdefensive?” she asked.

  “Never.” Only when he was with her.

  “Like I said, this will be as easy or as hard as you decide to make it.” Her brow lifted slightly, but by the time he recognized the devilish look on her face, it was too late. He sucked in a surprised breath when he felt her still shoeless foot slide into his lap. “Hard, it is,” she said with a smile.

  “Would you stop that,” he hissed, shoving her foot away from his crotch, hoping no one sitting nearby noticed. Did the woman have no shame? And why could he not think of anything but getting her back to her hotel room, out of her clothes and into bed? “Is this your idea of acting like a professional?”

  “I’m simply trying to illustrate a point.”

  “What point? You’re certifiable?”

  “That when it comes to our relationship, work or otherwise, you do not always call the shots. Because, Robby, you have some serious control issues.”

  “I have control issues? This from the woman who can’t keep her foot out of my crotch?”

  She just smiled, as if she found the entire situation thoroughly amusing. “I’m going to go. I’ll see you bright and early Monday.”

  “Unfortunately, yes, you will.”

  She pulled on her suit jacket and coat, and he watched her as she grabbed her bag, slid out of the booth and walked to the door. She stepped outside, her loose hair flying wildly in the brisk wind. She hailed a cab, and only after she climbed inside could he drag his gaze away from the window.

  Unpredictable. That’s what she was. And while he was nowhere close to the control freak she’d painted him to be, he did prefer a modicum of consistency.

  And if today’s behavior was a preview of what he had to look forward to, maintaining control of the situation was his only option.

  Five

  Carrie sat at the hotel bar, having a celebratory margarita, which at 12:04 p.m. was completely acceptable, even though her internal clock still thought it was two hours earlier.

  Even though there had been a few kinks in the process, all in all, she considered this morning’s meeting a success. And though she had the tendency—in her stepfather’s opinion—to be “mouthy,” she felt that under the circumstances, she’d been impressively diplomatic. If she’d left out the part where they attacked each other in Rob’s office.

  The memory made her cringe. But she had regrouped, damn it, then gone back into that conference room and kicked some major Caroselli ass.

  She’d found that in business, her impulsive nature could either be an asset or a liability, with very little gray area. This assignment could be a raging success, or a knock-down, drag-out disaster. So far so good, but honestly, it could still go either way. She had broken the cardinal rule of not sleeping with a coworker. And even though she had done it unknowingly, that didn’t make the situation any less complicated.

  As much as she hated to admit it, that stunt she’d pulled in the diner could have easily backfired. If he hadn’t pulled her foot from his crotch, if he’d instead smiled and suggested they go back to her hotel room, she probably would have dragged him there by his tie. And though the cab ride there would have given them both time to come to their senses, the damage would have been done, and the ball would be in his court now.

  Fortunately, the next serve was hers, and she was going for the point.

  She licked salt off the rim of her glass and took a sip of her margarita, letting the tangy combination of sweet and salty roll around on her tongue. She glanced over at the businessman three barstools away, who she suspected had been working up the nerve to talk to her.

  “Buy you a drink?” he said the instant they made eye contact.

  Not only was he twice her age with thinning hair and a belly that sagged over his belt, but he also wore a chunky gold wedding band on his left hand.

  Seriously? Did she really look that desperate?

  She shook her head and gave him her not-in-this-lifetime look.

  Her phone rang and, happy for the interruption, she dug around in her briefcase to find it, smiling when she saw her best friend Alice’s number on the screen.

  “So how did the meeting go?” Alice asked, and Carrie could picture her stretched out on the sofa in the trendy SoHo loft she shared with her sister, her glossy black hair smooth and sleek and tucked behind her ears. She never sat on a piece of furniture so much as draped herself across it.

  At five feet eleven inches, and no more than one hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, to say that Alice was wispy was an understatement. Hence her very lucrative career as a runway model. In college, where they’d been thrown together by chance as roommates, they had been like Mutt and Jeff. Two women could not have been more different in looks or personality, but with their similar backgrounds involving alcoholic parents, they had instantly bonded and despite living on completely opposite ends of the country, had remained the best of friends. Alice was her only real friend.

  Normally Alice would be calling her from Milan or Paris or some other fashionably hip location, but a healing broken foot would be keeping her off the runway until the fall.

  “They signed the contracts,” Carrie told her. “So I’m in Chicago for the next three months.”

  “That’s fabulous!”

  “They didn’t haggle over money either, which you know I hate. As far as business goes, the meeting itself couldn’t have gone more smoothly.”

  “But?”

  “What makes you think there’s a but?”

  “Gut feeling. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  She sighed. “I broke my cardinal rule. But it was an accident.”

  “I must be thinking of a different cardinal rule, because I fail to see how it’s possible to accidentally sleep with someone.”

  “Nope, that’s the rule. And I’m living proof that it is possible.”

  “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this,” Alice said, and Carrie could just picture her catlike grin, the spark of amusement in her violet eyes—colored contacts of course, although she would deny it if asked.

  “It’s a little hard to believe,” Carrie told her.

  “Honey,” she said with a laugh, “coming from you, I’d believe just about anything.”

  “That guy I told you about—Ron.”

  “Mr. Steamy Sex from the bar?”

  “Yeah, well, apparently I heard him wrong. His name was actually Rob.”

  “Oh. And that’s a problem because?”

  “His name is Rob Caroselli. And he’s the director of marketing at Caroselli Chocolate.”

  Alice was a tough person to shock, so her gasp was almost worth the mess Carrie was in.

  Okay, maybe not, but it was at least a slight consolation.

  Carrie told her the whole story, from the minute Rob walked into the conference room until lunch when she had her foot in his lap.

  “Well, you were right about one thing,” Alice said. “If anyone but you had told me that story, I doubt I would have believed them. But as impulsive as you are—”

  “I’m not that impulsive,” she argued, signaling the bartender for another drink.

  “Your first night in a new city you picked up a total stranger in a bar and invite
d him back to your room.”

  Carrie cringed. “Yeah, there was that.”

  “Not that I’m saying you could have or should have anticipated this happening. That part was just dumb luck. Really, really bad dumb luck.”

  “But on the bright side, I think that now I’ve got him right where I want him.”

  “Until you wind up in bed with him again,” Alice said.

  “I can’t sleep with him again.”

  “You mean you shouldn’t sleep with him. Yet you almost went for it in his office this morning. Correct?”

  “A moment of weakness. I was still getting over the shock of seeing him again.”

  “And in the diner?”

  “I was making a point.”

  “And did you make your point?”

  “I sure did.” Below the waist anyway. “Why do I get the feeling I’m going to regret telling you any of this?”

  “Because you know that if I think you’re acting like an irresponsible moron, I’m going to tell you.”

  “And you think I am?”

  “I think that you might be backsliding a little. Just remind yourself, you are no longer that lonely little girl who pulls fire alarms and stays out past curfew to get attention. You are a strong, mature woman who is in control of her own destiny.”

  “I know.” But that little girl was still in there, and occasionally she persuaded the confident, mature woman to do some not-so-mature things. “The weird part is that I don’t even like him very much. But then I get close to him and I just want to rip his clothes off and touch him all over.”

  “Probably not a good idea. You know, Rex and I used to have chemistry like that.”

  Alice’s boyfriend, Rex, was an up-and-coming fashion designer whose rising star seemed to be keeping him out of the country more than he was in it lately. And even when he was in town, she didn’t seem truly happy.

  “When will he be back in New York?” Carrie asked.

  “Two weeks. This time he promised.”

  He had promised her lots of things, and so far he hadn’t exactly come through. Alice was beautiful and sophisticated and smart, but had miserably low self-esteem. Because of that, she let the men in her life walk all over her. All types of men clamored for her attention, yet she always picked the aloof, distant ones whose attention she had to beg for. A fact she was quite aware of. But as Carrie had told Rob, a person could recognize the problem and still not know how to fix it.

  “How’s the foot healing?” Carrie asked her.

  “Slowly. The physical therapy is helping. My doctor assured me that I’ll be back on my feet before the shows next fall. It’s crazy how you can be walking down the sidewalk, minding your own business, then pow, out of nowhere everything changes.”

  The pow in that scenario being the bike messenger who knocked her off the curb into the path of a moving taxi. She was lucky to be alive.

  “And speaking of therapy,” Alice said, “I have an appointment in an hour, so I should let you go. But I want you to make me a promise. If you get even the slightest urge to jump Mr. Steamy Sex again, I want you to call me immediately so I can talk some sense into you. Anytime, day or night.”

  “Okay.”

  “You promise?”

  She sighed.

  “Carrie?”

  “Okay, okay, I promise,” she said, hoping it wasn’t one of those promises that came back to bite her in the butt.

  * * *

  Two days later Carrie hopped in a cab to meet Nick’s wife, Terri, at the condo she hoped would be her new temporary home.

  She was pleasantly surprised when the cab pulled up in front of a row of attached, newish-looking, charming brick homes with two-car garages. So far so good.

  The homes were still decorated for the holidays. All but the one the driver stopped at. Which wasn’t so unusual considering no one was living there. Still, it looked so forlorn and neglected. But thankfully very well-maintained. At least on the outside.

  She paid the driver, realizing that if she didn’t want to blow her entire earnings on cab fare, it might be more cost effective to lease a car while she was there. She didn’t exactly relish the thought of taking public transportation in the dead of winter either.

  She climbed out of the cab and paused on the sidewalk to look up and down the street. All the residences were well-maintained, and a large group of children of various ages played in the snow several doors down, which led her to assume the neighborhood was family-oriented and safe.

  She headed up the walk and as she stepped up onto the porch, the front door opened and a woman appeared to greet her.

  “Hi. Caroline?”

  “Carrie,” she said, shaking her hand.

  “I’m Terri. Come on in.” Like her husband, Terri was tall and dark. She was also very attractive in an athletic, tomboyish way, and not at all the sort of woman she would have pictured Nick with. “Drop your coat anywhere and I’ll give you a tour.”

  Carrie’s first impression, as she stepped inside and shrugged out of her coat, was beige. Beige walls, beige carpet, beige leather furniture. Even the lamps were beige. And the air smelled like pine cleaner.

  “As you can see, I left almost everything here when I moved into Nick’s place,” she said. “It’s nothing fancy.”

  Carrie draped her coat over the back of the sofa beside Terri’s and set her purse on top. “It’s nice.”

  “According to Nick, to say I have the decorating sense of a brick is an insult to bricks.”

  “I’m no decorating genius either. I paid someone to do my place in Los Angeles. This is simple. Elegant.”

  “It’s boring,” Terri said. “And if you don’t like it, don’t be afraid to say so. You won’t hurt my feelings.”

  She wasn’t looking for anything fancy. Just something functional and low-maintenance that wouldn’t break the bank. “So far so good.”

  Terri looked surprised. “You want to see more?”

  “Absolutely.” She could hate the rest of the condo and she would probably rent it anyway rather than hurt Terri’s feelings.

  Carrie had a way of reading people, and her first impression of Terri was that she had a tough outer shell but was soft and vulnerable on the inside.

  The master suite had slightly more color. A queen-size bed with a pale rose duvet, a chest of drawers in a warm honey pine and a roomy walk-in closet that led to a very clean—and yes, beige—en suite bathroom that smelled of bleach and glass cleaner. The only color was pale pink towels and a pink bath mat. The countertops and walls were bare.

  “There are towels, sheets…everything you’ll need in the linen closet. I just changed the sheets on the bed and scrubbed the bathroom.” Terri smiled sheepishly. “I’m slightly fanatical about keeping things clean and tidy.”

  “Linen closet?” Carrie asked, gesturing to a pair of louvered doors.

  “Laundry.” She pulled the doors open to show Carrie a stacked washer and dryer.

  “Nice.” She didn’t miss the days before she had money, when she had to haul her dirty laundry down three flights of stairs and either sit in a dingy little laundry room down below the building in the parking structure, or drive two miles to the nearest Laundromat.

  The second bedroom was set up as an office, with a desk, bookcase, file cabinet and printer stand. Again, nothing fancy, but very functional, and the window overlooked a postage-stamp-sized backyard.

  “This is perfect,” she told Terri.

  “This room, you mean?”

  “No, the whole place. It’s exactly what I need.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I do. Can I see the kitchen?”

  “Of course. Right this way.”

  The kitchen, which was—surprise—also on the pale side, was as clean and organized as the rest of the house, and separated by a wall from the living space. She preferred a more open concept, but how much time would she be spending there really?

  “I don’t cook, so it’s not very impres
sive,” Terri said. “Just your basic pots and pans, dishes and utensils.”

  “I don’t cook very often either,” Carrie told her. “I like to, but I never have the time. I typically work eighty-hour weeks.”

  “I used to be like that, too, but my ob-gyn thinks all the stress is screwing with my cycle, and we’re trying to get pregnant. So, I cut my hours way back. Used to be, when you opened the freezer it was full of frozen dinners. Thank goodness for husbands who love to cook. Although I’ve gained about ten pounds since the wedding.”

  “How long have you been married?”

  “Less than two months.”

  “Oh, so you’re still newlyweds.”

  “Technically. But we’ve been best friends since we were nine years old. And I don’t want to be one of those moms in her fifties carting her kids to grade school, or pushing seventy when they graduate high school. For a process that’s supposed to be so natural, you would not believe how complicated it can be.”

  It wasn’t something Carrie had ever thought about. She didn’t know much about pregnancy, or even babies. She just assumed that when you were ready, you had sex at the right time and poof, you got pregnant. That was the way it seemed to work for her college friends who had gotten married and started families. Hell, there were even a handful of girls in high school who seemed to have no problems getting themselves knocked up. A few of them multiple times.

  “So what do you think of the condo?” Terri asked. “Again, I won’t be insulted if you don’t like it, or if you’d like to look at other places before making a decision.”

  “I think,” Carrie said with a smile, “I’ll take it.”

  Six

  “You’re sure?” Terri asked.

  Carrie laughed. “Yes, I’m very sure. Did you bring a lease agreement?”

  “It’s in my coat. I’ll get it.”

  They took a seat at the kitchen table and went over the paperwork. When it came to filling in the price of rent, Terri looked over at her. “So we’re talking rent plus utilities, including cable TV and internet.”