Just To Be With You

CHAPTER SEVEN

The following afternoon, Tatiana dropped onto the couch in Ian’s office to make the most of the rare, and extremely precious, fifteen-minute window in his schedule. If she had been alone, she would have closed her eyes and taken a speed-nap. Then again, if she hadn’t been shadowing Ian, she would have been moving at a reasonable pace all day like everyone else on the planet.

Ian, she had decided, was superhuman. He didn’t just deal with his crazy schedule...he thrived on it!

It didn’t particularly help that she hadn’t gotten anywhere near enough sleep the night before. After he’d dropped her off at her condo, she’d been dying to strip off her clothes and sink into her bathtub. But she’d known that once she got into the hot water, she might never be able to drag her exhausted bones out again, so she’d forced herself to pull out her script and study it one more time.

Surely, she’d hoped, something she’d learned from shadowing Ian all day would be what she needed to get a handle on her upcoming role so that the director wouldn’t fire her on the first day of filming. But by the time she’d finally crawled beneath the covers, she was no further along with her script than she’d been before. And, of course, once she was in bed, her brain refused to shut off, taunting her as she tossed and turned with images of how good Ian had looked in his suit, how sweet he was with his old college professor, how kind he was with his employees.

And how utterly, completely untouchable he remained.

Ian stepped into the office just then and went to sit down behind his desk. “You seemed really interested in that last presentation, Tatiana.”

She peered at him from beneath lids that felt really, really heavy. Barely holding back yet another yawn, she nodded. “It was great.” The truth was, however, that she hadn’t taken in a word of it after the opening slide. The presenters’ monotones had lulled her straight into dreamland.

“I’m glad you thought so, because I was hoping you could help me make a decision on one of the three approaches they presented.”

Her lids lifted a little higher. “Decision?” She licked her suddenly dry lips. “You want my help?”

When he nodded, her brain did a quick scan of the forty-five-minute presentation. Maybe if she tried really hard, she’d remember something the presenters had said. Anything they’d said. But after a few seconds of concentrating hard enough to give herself a migraine, she still drew a blank.

A very sleepy blank.

Clearing her throat, she said, “I should probably review the slides and corresponding documents again before offering my opinion.”

“Surely you can just review your notes.”

In only a day and a half, she’d nearly filled up her notebook with her thoughts and impressions of what it took to be a successful CEO of a big company. But while her notebook had been open on her lap this afternoon, all she’d managed was a jagged blue line as her pen skidded across—and off—the page.

“I really just wanted to listen this afternoon.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding again, “that explains why you had your face resting on your hands and your eyes closed. So that you could listen better.”

“Okay,” she finally admitted, “I might have lost the thread of the meeting at some point—” Like the beginning one. “—but I’m sure no one but you noticed.”

“Lost the thread,” he echoed, a small smile playing on his lips. “That’s an interesting way of talking about falling asleep in a meeting.”

“Falling asleep?” She felt her face flush and wished, for the first time, that she was as good an actor in real life as she was in front of the cameras. But unfortunately, her brain was sleepy enough that it continued to let her mouth run amok. “That’s crazy.”

He shrugged as if he were going to let it go, but just as relief came over her, he sneakily hit her with, “You were snoring.”

“I don’t snore.” Ian had to be joking, right?

The small grin he gave her was so surprisingly intimate that it almost felt as if he’d reached out to caress her skin. “You sounded just like a sleepy little tiger.”

The goose bumps she got from the caress of his voice were no match for her chagrin as she dropped her face into her hands. “How embarrassing.” She felt horrible that the presenter must have known how bored she’d been, because if Ian had noticed her snoring, surely everyone else in the room had, too. “I feel like I should apologize to—” Ugh, what were their names?

“Bill and Francesca?”

“Right, Bill and Francesca.” God, she was so tired her brain felt like it was folding in on itself. “I’d hate for them to think I thought their presentation was boring.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Can you ask me that again after I’ve had a good night’s sleep? Because by the time you dropped me off last night, it was all I could do just to take off my clothes before falling into bed.”

Just that quickly, with one teeny-tiny little mention of stripping off her clothes, the air in the room shifted from teasing to desire.

Again, it occurred to her that if she’d had more experience with men—any experience at all, really—she would have known how to capitalize on a moment like this. Surely, other women must know how to turn a heated moment into an equally heated kiss. Or more. Because, as he stared so hungrily at her mouth that her lips began to tingle from nothing more than the intensity of his gaze, she could have sworn that Ian wanted her just as much as she wanted him.

Unfortunately, it was just as clear that he was not going to be the one to make the first move.

In the day and a half that Tatiana had spent shadowing Ian, she’d seen just how well he treated his employees and the companies he worked with. She’d witnessed time and again his focus, his determination, his intense drive to win. She’d seen him soften around his family at the wedding in Napa, especially the little ones. No question about it, Ian Sullivan was a good, strong man with a great family behind him.

Which was why she still didn’t understand why he was so careful not to let anyone in too close. Especially her.

He was so careful around her, in fact, that apart from the attraction he didn’t always manage to hide, she didn’t have any idea what he really thought of her. And now she’d gone and fallen asleep in the middle of one of his meetings.

Way to impress, Tatiana.

“Tatiana, it’s okay.”

“No,” she said with a morose shake of her head, “it’s not. I came here to shadow you and stay in the background, not to embarrass you in front of your employees.”

He pushed away from his desk, moving toward her instead of away for what felt like the very first time. “I fell asleep in a meeting once.”

She couldn’t stop her mouth from falling open. “No way.”

“Way,” he said with a full-fledged grin that was so sudden, and so beautiful, that it snuck up on her and pretty much stole away the last part of her heart that he hadn’t already claimed. “And I’m afraid I snore a heck of a lot louder than you do.”

She couldn’t help but laugh then, not just at the image of the perfect and unflappable Ian Sullivan falling asleep in a meeting, but because he’d obviously told her the story to make her feel better about her own gaffe. Why would he do something like that if he didn’t care about her, at least a little bit?

And when his laughter joined with hers, it was the sweetest sound Tatiana had ever heard.

She’d seen him smile several times during each workday, usually when one of his family members called. Clearly, they were all thrilled that he was back home. And though she knew firsthand just how crowded his schedule was, she’d also heard for herself how patient he’d been on the phone with his cousin Gabe’s eight-year-old daughter when she’d asked him some questions for a project she was doing about the Sullivan family tree.

Maybe it was the lack of sleep that had her suddenly throwing her inhibitions to the wind, or maybe it was just how good it felt to laugh with him, but she suddenly needed him to know, “You have the most wonderful smile, the most infectious laugh. I could listen to it all day.”

For a moment, she could have sworn he was going to close the rest of the distance between them and give in to what had been growing more inevitable with every second they were together. But instead, he abruptly looked away from her and frowned. Taking one step back, and then another and another, until he was nearly at his desk, she thought it looked like he was smelling something that bothered him.

By the time the unmistakable scent of Chanel No. 5 hit Tatiana, she realized Ian’s ex-wife was standing in the doorway.