Her gaze flickered from his outstretched hand to his face before her warm fingers slid into his grip.
“I accept.”
Chapter Four
What had she agreed to?
Meredith pulled the pillow over her head, muting the sounds of the city beyond her window. Even at five o’clock in the morning, things happened in New York.
It was something she had never quite been able to adjust to. Fostered in Memphis, all three homes where she had lived after her parents died had been single-family houses with a backyard, in neighborhoods with quiet streets.
However, New York offered something that she simply couldn’t get elsewhere: anonymity. Not the kind that allowed famous people to walk the streets in a pair of dark sunglasses and only be recognized by a handful of paparazzi. The kind that allowed people who were the exact opposite of famous—people who hadn’t been recognized by anyone in decades—to feel like they finally found a place where they fit in.
And until last night, she thought she’d been happy to live out her inconspicuous life the way she always had. But now…
Not only was she attending the Myerberg function with Andrew, who was arguably the most eligible bachelor in New York, but she had also agreed to basically live with him for the short-term future. Sure, it was sharing an office and not an apartment, but given that she spent significantly more time at work than at home, it was more like living together than if they were sharing a residence.
And so help her, she wanted to be beautiful for him. Even if it was just a one-sided fantasy, she didn’t want to be Klutzy Klaus tonight. She didn’t want to be Little Orphan Annie for the next six days as she worked alongside him. Until the clock struck midnight on their bargain, so to speak, she wanted to be Meredith, seductively graceful CFO by day, sex kitten extraordinaire by night.
Even thinking those words had her blushing, though. She groaned and yanked the pillow away from her face. “You’re off to a great start,” she said aloud, and the empty room seemed to laugh at her.
Maybe she should have claimed a prior engagement for tonight. After all, on such short notice, it wasn’t unrealistic that she would have already made other plans. But she wasn’t a liar. There were never any plans in her calendar on Friday nights. Or any other night, for that matter, unless work counted as a “plan.”
On a sigh, she turned and fumbled on the nightstand for her glasses. Her fingers landed a bit short, and instead of closing around the frame, her knuckles knocked against one of the lenses, sending the glasses sliding off the nightstand onto the floor with a clatter.
“So much for seductively graceful,” she grumbled, untangling her legs from the sheets and rolling out of bed to search for her glasses on the floor. But she’d barely taken two steps when her right foot landed on something hard. She immediately jumped back, but not before a loud crack reached her ears.
She’d stepped on her glasses. Of course. Please don’t let them be broken.
But when she picked them up and slid them on, she groaned in defeat.
Leave it to Klutzy Klaus to crack one of the lenses. Right in the middle, too, fracturing everything in her vision. There was no way she could wear them now.
For a moment, she simply slumped against the nightstand, dropping her head between her knees. Forget about being beautiful. If she could simply make it until Christmas without seriously injuring herself or Andrew, it would be an accomplishment in and of itself.
At least she had another pair of glasses in a drawer in the bathroom. She’d bought them on a whim last year, adoring the way the style had made her look young and chic, but when she’d put them on again back home, standing in front of the mirror in her quiet, conservative bedroom, they’d looked too brash. Too bold. Not like her. She’d fallen back on using her old pair of glasses.
She sucked in a breath. Was it possible that some higher power had caused this? She started to shake her head, but stopped. Maybe it was possible that something beyond her comprehension had manipulated her fingers and made her break these glasses on purpose, just so that she would have to wear her more stylish pair…
Goodness. Even the thought sounded absurd.
“What’s next, a fairy godmother with a Saks card?” she scoffed, rolling her eyes at her own foolishness. There were a few evening gowns in her closet, but they were all sedate, innocuous things that helped her blend into the background. There simply wasn’t time to find something new. Even if fate had played a hand in this little incident, it wasn’t deft enough to finagle a new formal dress in the next few hours. The deficit in the Christmas Bonus Fund would demand all of her attention today. No time to duck out and go shopping.
She pffed. “Enough with this foolish daydreaming! Get your head out of the clouds and your butt on the elliptical,” she commanded herself, picking herself up off the floor to dress in her gym clothes before heading to the fifth-floor fitness center in her building for a quick workout.