Having no idea what campaign types wore, Rebecca chose a demure white Chanel suit trimmed in black after watching a Lifetime TV movie in which the female lawyer lead wore very austere business suits. Rebecca thought she looked neither conservative nor liberal, but middle of the road. Fair. Objective. And then she remembered that she wasn’t running for office, Tom Masters was, and spruced it up with her favorite black pearl jewelry, and decided that she was perfectly attired for a Campaign Strategy Meeting.
How cool! How Uranus!
She found Tom’s office at the state capitol easy enough, but there wasn’t anyone there, just a little hand-lettered sign that said: Back at 4:00. Rebecca tried the door; it was open, so she stepped inside. She quietly took in the ornate marble and oak decor, and as she was admiring a painting of Ft. Worth, she heard a faint rustle of noise from the back offices, and decided to walk back and announce herself, lest she startle anyone with her presence.
Moving down a corridor crowded with stacks of paper and state budgets, she peeked in each office until she finally came upon the source of the noise—at which point, her heart just stopped. Cold. No beat, no pulse, nothing but instant and potentially permanent paralysis. Common sense told her that this was impossible—it had to be some sort of setup, one of those hidden camera gags, because it was impossible for that man to be sitting in Tom’s office now—except that it was him, seated at a computer, staring intently at the screen as he absently bounced a Nerf basketball against the wall.
Fortunately, he hadn’t yet noticed her, thank you, God. Rebecca, recovered from her paralysis, was slowly and quietly backing out of that doorway—but not without noticing the lock of sienna brown hair that had fallen across his forehead, slipped from a wavy crop streaked gold by the sun. He had carelessly tossed aside his suit coat and was wearing a crisp white shirt, a very hip tie flipped over one broad shoulder, and shoes polished to a high sheen. And, she noticed, as he lifted his arm to bounce the Nerf ball, he was also very trim. Funny, she hadn’t remembered the pompous ass being quite so . . . fine—
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come in,” he said suddenly, twisting when her purse inadvertently hit the doorjamb.
Rebecca froze as he came to his feet, a charming smile on his face and in his expressive gray eyes. How had she missed such a square, clean-shaven chin? Or that smile, for God’s sake, a gorgeous white smile that ended with a perfect dimple on either end . . . a smile that was rapidly fading as recognition and then just plain horror swept over him.
Actually, it wasn’t horror but confusion, as Matt’s first thought was that she had to be some sort of weird stalker—what else would bring her here? Nevertheless, if that’s what she was, then she had to be the most drop-dead gorgeous stalker ever—his memory of her was right on about that. She was, like he’d recalled (several times), tall and thin, with silky long black hair, and silky long legs, and clear blue eyes that glimmered, demonlike, as she stared at him beneath two perfectly sculpted brows dipped in a dark vee.
“Well hello, Looney Tunes,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. “What’s the matter, lose your quesadilla again?”
“Hardly,” she said, likewise folding her arms beneath her bosom, squaring off.
“So . . . you’re just stalking me?”
Her demon blue eyes narrowed. “You know, you are in serious need of an ego deflation, Mr. ah . . . I’m sorry, what was it again? Popinjay?”
Ah yes, this was the Little Miss Perfect who had crept, uninvited, into his thoughts so many times over the last couple of weeks or so, and he grinned. “It’s Parrish, thanks. So if you aren’t looking for a quesadilla, and you aren’t stalking me, then why are you tracking me down?”
“You should really see someone, you know, because your imagination seems to border on the delusional quite often. Now really, why would I be tracking you down?”
“Why wouldn’t you?” Matt asked, just to see what she’d say.
“Here we go again,” she said, sighing impatiently, “the old, ‘I’m-a-stud-so-you—must-be-following-me’ routine. That really must get so tiresome for you.”
Actually, her following him wouldn’t be so bad, really, because she was beautiful, really beautiful, and Matt knew from beautiful. “Can you blame me?” he asked cheerfully, taking a step forward, wanting his suit coat. “You have a habit of popping up around the capitol wherever I happen to be.”
That earned him a soft laugh of disbelief. “You really are delusional.” She shifted her weight to one hip, which put her just inside the little cracker box office and directly in the way of his suit coat.