What?! Another Mistake
“You kissed her?” Matthew’s eyes were ready to pop out with exasperation. “You weren’t supposed to kiss her! That wasn’t part of the plan.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
Tyler groaned his annoyance. Damn Matthew and his incessant questioning.
His friend knew him too well. He’d managed to hide it all weekend, but Matt took one look at him yesterday and immediately noticed his awkwardness.
The questions had not stopped since then.
After another interrogation this morning, Tyler couldn’t take it anymore and finally admitted the true reason why he felt so tense around Jordan.
He couldn’t even look at her now and every time she was in the same room, memories of her body against his made their way to the fore.
Not that that was hard to do. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her since Thursday night.
It had been easy enough to think of a plan to get Trisha back, but Jordan made executing the plan so damn complicated.
She had thrown a spanner in the works, which made continuing the plan impossible.
“So how was it? Was it weird?” Matthew asked, looking a little repulsed.
“What?”
“Kissing Jordan?”
Awesome. Out-of-this-world awesome. “It was like…taking a bite of malva pudding,” he answered softly.
There was actually no better way to describe it.
Malva pudding was just malva pudding. Malva pudding wasn’t cake.
It wasn’t overly decorated. There were no chocolate sprinkles, no cherries, no extravagant toppings.
It’s just plain and you assume that’s how it tastes.
Just plain. But then you take that first bite and it’s soft and warm and its sweetness explodes in your mouth and sends shock waves to the brain because you simply were not expecting it. That’s what kissing Jordan was like.
“I’ll pretend I know what you mean,” Matthew said.
Tyler had not expected him to understand and he was glad he didn’t, because he wanted to keep that feeling to himself.
“So I get that she kissed you,” Matt continued. “And I get why you’re weird about it and I get that you’re upset now because this has just completely destroyed your elaborate plan of getting Trisha back.”
“Your elaborate plan,” Tyler corrected.
“Whatever. But what I don’t get is why you were there in the first place.”
Tyler made no attempt to hide his irritation. “I told you I went over there to thank her. She was great in that meeting and I wanted to let her know that I was grateful. She saved us thirty million dollars.”
“And that would make perfect sense if you had gone over there at like…two in the afternoon but it was eleven at night.”
“Don’t you have work to do?”
“I’m just curious. You could have thanked her right after the meeting but I guess…she was too busy exchanging numbers with Timothy Coldwell.”
He sneered his irritation. “Yeah, well…she didn’t call him.”
An arrogant smile twisted his lips. “I knew it. You were jealous.”
“That’s absurd! I have no interest in Jordan Shepard.”
“You mean…apart from making out with her face?”
“Get out,” Tyler said, shaking his head. “Just get out.”
Matthew laughed and stood up. As he opened the door, Jordan stepped in and Tyler’s entire body immediately tensed.
Matthew strolled out, but before he closed the door, he gave Tyler a goofy grin. “Hey, Ty. Margo’s here. You want me to ask her if she has some…malva pudding?”
He was chuckling behind Jordan’s back like a stupid kid.
“Out!”
Matthew shut his office door and Tyler stared at his computer screen, typing gibberish instead of looking at her.
“What was that about?” she asked.
“Just Matthew being a jerk again,” he responded, still awkwardly avoiding her gaze. “What can I do for you, Jordan?”
“You can look at me for a start.”
He ignored the comment and continued typing.
“Are you serious, Tyler? You’re just gonna avoid me forever?”
“That was the plan.”
He flipped through the final contract for the acquisition of Hampton Homes. He had already read it three times, but rummaging through the stack of paper was the better alternative at the moment.
“This is ridiculous!” she scoffed. “Just get over it. It was one stupid kiss.”
Stupid was not exactly the word he would associate with that kiss. However, thinking about it made him want to do something stupid like…kiss her again.
She leaned over the desk and her cinnamon-vanilla scent floated to his nostrils. His body stiffened. Clearly his olfactory organs were equally affected by Jordan. He shifted in his chair, trying to ease the sudden discomfort that had arisen in his…general pants area.
“Let’s make a deal,” she said, leaning closer. “I will pretend nothing happened on Thursday night. I will forget that we accidentally toed the line of the boss-accountant relationship and everything will go back to the way it was if…”
His expectant eyes immediately met hers.
She was offering him a way out of this mess and he would be a fool not to take it.
Things had become very complicated and he was interested in any method that would de-complicate it.
The kiss was a mistake. An awesome, incredible mistake.
He was trying to get Trisha back and the last thing he wanted was for Jordan to get the wrong impression and think that there was something more going on between them.
And maybe if they pretended for long enough, he too would be able to forget about what happened on Thursday night.
“If what?” he asked.
“If you try something new from Margo’s tray. Every week for two months. You do that and I’ll never bring up kissing you again. It never happened. What do you say?”
Well, that’s sort of a dumb deal. And also pointless.
He didn’t need to try anything new because he already had a favorite. “Think of something else. I don’t agree with your terms.”
She placed her elbows on the desk and lowered herself to his eye-level. She ran her finger over her full lips and moaned sensuously, causing more discomfort in his general pants area. “Tyler, do you know you have the sexiest bottom lip? Kissing you was absolutely mind-blowing.”
His body tightened and his breathing became a little shallow. “Jordan, this is…highly inappropriate.”
She leaned closer and moaned again. “I can’t stop thinking about it. I just wanna talk about it all the time. I just wanna tell you how amazing it was over and over again. It felt so good to have your hot mouth on mine, your hands on my body.”
Her tongue traced over her lips and it took an insane amount of restraint to not grab her and press his mouth against hers.
Thoughts raced through his mind. Thoughts of flipping her onto her back on his table.
Sliding his hips between her legs. Ravishing her until she was as messy as she was on Thursday night.
Those thoughts were making his pants grow even tighter.
“I wanna shout it out to the whole world, tell everyone about what an amazing kisser Tyler Evans is.”
He didn’t like being toyed with and that’s exactly what she was doing. She was intentionally messing with his head. Great job, Jordan. It worked. “Get Margo in here,” he ordered.
The sexy vixen disappeared and was replaced by his accountant again. “I knew we’d reach an understanding,” she said with a smug smile. “She’s right outside. Let’s go.”
He couldn’t very well stand up now, not with his general pants area virtually bursting at the seams. “I’m busy. Just get her in here.”
Jordan left and returned with Margo and her tray of baked goods.
“Good morning, Tyler. Jordan says you’re feeling a little adventurous today.”
She placed the tray on his desk but before he could pick one, Jordan walked behind his chair and covered his eyes with her hands.
She lowered her lips to his ear and he could feel her soft hair tickling the side of his face. “Now pick one.”
“This isn’t really necessary,” he muttered impatiently.
“Yes, it is. Random selection is better than Tyler’s selection because Tyler’s selection will never include chocolate.”
“What happens if I don’t like it?”
“Then you can spit it out, but at least you can say you tried it.”
He sighed his submission and blindly moved his hand over the tray. His fingers landed on something and he felt tiny granules under his tips.
Jordan dropped her hands from his face as he lifted it from the tray.
“Thanks, Margo,” Jordan said.
“I hope you enjoy it.”
Margo lifted the tray and walked out of his office, leaving him alone with Jordan and this odd looking thing covered in sugar. He tilted it from side to side, trying to assess exactly what he was up against.
She half-sat on the edge of his desk and waited. “You just gonna look at it all day, or are you actually gonna try it?”
Tyler lifted it to his mouth and felt his throat close up with anticipated disgust. “Maybe we need to rethink—”
“Shall I tell you again about how hot my Thursday night was?”
He huffed out short breaths like he was about to run naked through snow and took a bite.
His eyes shut involuntarily and his body convulsed as the revolting taste of sugar and the unexpected apricot-flavored filling lined his tongue.
“I hate it!” he said through a mouthful of pastry.
His esophagus snapped shut, not allowing the goop to travel past his mouth.
“I hate it! I hate it! I hate it!” A thickening tongue muffled his words.
Sweat seeped through his pores at the back of his neck and he gagged, his body preventing any smidgen of the apricot abomination from sliding down his throat.
Jordan was giggling hysterically now. He grabbed his handkerchief from the pocket of his suit jacket. It was there purely for decorative purposes, but right now it came in handy. He placed it over his mouth, spitting out the sludge before it could do more damage.
“That was vile,” he said when his body stopped shuddering.
“And yet so much fun,” she added with a smirk.
“It actually counts as a suicide attempt. There must be an easier way.”