Jake laughed, strolled into the dining room and replaced the phone. “You have to pay your respects. That’s something you’re going to have to learn.”
Now he was just showing off. “Pay my respects to who, exactly? I can’t even get Ms. Wirt on the phone, and neither could you!”
“To Carol. Carol is the one running the outfit, just like Lucy runs your office—”
“Lucy does not run my office—”
“You can’t deny Lucy keeps things humming,” he said. “Those girls are the front line. You have to get past them to get to the decision-makers. They’re busy, and they don’t have time for a lot of crap, and they are going to be the one to decide if a cold call goes on up the chain. If Carol can’t tell Eldagirt Wirt what you want, then Eldagirt Wirt isn’t going to waste her time with you. And if Carol doesn’t like you, then it’s a pretty sure thing Eldagirt isn’t going to be overly fond of you, either. See what I mean?”
“Sort of,” she begrudgingly admitted.
“Everyone has a role. You just have to understand what it is.”
That actually made a lot of sense. It was true that Lucy never passed someone along to her without telling her what the person wanted so Robin could decide what to do with the call. It was also true that if Lucy got a bad feeling about someone, Robin tended to trust her instincts. And it was painfully true that she had treated Carol abominably, attempting to pass over her like a doormat.
“Now the bad news is,” Jake said, wincing slightly, “Carol’s not real fond of you. You might need to . . . well, you know . . . eat a little crow.”
“Ugh,” she said, frowning. “I hate crow.” Man, she had a lot to learn. Maybe Dad was right. Maybe she was arrogant. Robin groaned, shoved her hands through her hair. “How do you know so much?”
Jake shrugged. “Been around, I guess.”
Robin nodded, considered the easy set of his mouth and imagined that he was probably a good friend to those lucky enough to know him. “Thanks,” she murmured. “I think I needed that.” She extended her hand to him. “Really.”
Jake looked at her hand as if didn’t quite know what to do with it. Thinking she might have somehow offended him, Robin started to withdraw it. But Jake suddenly took her hand in his, holding it gently, like a feather, turning it over slowly to look at the back of her hand. His hand dwarfed hers, made hers look like a delicate thing.
His rough, callused palm skimmed the surface of her skin, creating a burning friction. The effect was absolutely electrifying; Robin drew a breath and held it as he very carefully turned her hand over, so that her palm was facing up, and with one blunt finger, wordlessly traced the path of her lifeline to her wrist, scoring her with his touch, sparking a river of fire that ran down her arm and straight into her heart.
Jake looked up, his liquid brown gaze meeting hers, and she felt it seep into her, past the carefully constructed wall, down into the very pit of her. His hand closed tightly around her fingers, and Robin took a step forward, drawn like a magnet to the circle of his arms, attached by a powerful, physical current running between them.
“Well now, what’s going on here?”
Hello, Grandpa.
Chapter Thirteen
Yep, Jake liked Old Man Stanton—he cackled upon catching them doing the hand thing, pointed out Robin’s furious blush, and thereby flustered his granddaughter so bad that she fled into the dining room and plopped down to stare at her computer.
She tried her best to pretend it didn’t happen, but couldn’t do it, not with a blush like that, hot and fierce, just like the one Jake felt under his own skin.
Damn.
Whatever had just happened between them, he couldn’t really say. Maybe it was her genuine, innocent surprise at hearing someone might not like her, a glimpse of a secreted purity in her that went racing through him like fire. Something he had said had softened her in a way that was totally incongruent with the fast-moving, hardened rest of her. Robin was tough, she was arrogant. She was the proverbial material girl, collecting more things in her quest for the better deal. But at the same time, there was an innocence about her, an untouched part of her that so very much appealed to the man in him.
And when she had offered her hand, that delicate, nail-bitten hand sparkling with a sapphire that matched the color of her eyes, desire had surged through Jake on a tsunami wave, crashing through him and pushing him down to the bottom of it. The lure of forbidden territory had compelled him to take her hand in his; he had been only a moment away from taking her in his arms.