Astonishment abruptly detonated in her mind, cracking that icy wall of distance. Her lungs hitched. Did she have any scruples left? Married or not, wasn’t it all the same thing? She was selling her body, for God’s sake.
She felt as though she had slammed into a brick wall. There was a ringing in her ears. She looked wildly around. The ordinariness of the day intruded. Other people sat at outside tables or walked past the café. The Texas sky was clear and bright blue. A light breeze offered momentary relief from the ninety-degree heat, but it did little to cool her suddenly heated cheeks. Oh God, what have I been thinking!
Cathy fumbled for her purse. She stood up abruptly. “Look, I can’t – I didn’t think…” She stopped, drew a breath and held it until she regained control of herself. “I’m sure you have others to interview. I’ve got to go. Thank you for the coffee.” She walked swiftly away, trying hard not to think about the conversation just past.
Michael Lambert could not stop thinking about her. The shift of transparent emotions on her expressive face, bits and pieces of their brief conversation, kept returning at odd moments. When she had jumped up and rushed away, he had shrugged and mentally marked her off. She had been right. There were others who had responded to his ad. He had no difficulty deleting most of them immediately. Others were as swiftly eliminated after an e-mail exchange or two. There were less than a handful that he actually followed up with meetings. He knew what he wanted, what he was looking for. Unfortunately, none of the remaining handful attracted him as much as the woman who called herself Winter.
She was not the most beautiful, by any means, nor the youngest. But there was something about the wariness in her wide hazel eyes and the sensual shape of her lips. She had a bow-shaped upper lip and a fuller bottom lip that looked made for kissing. He had watched how her teeth had kept worrying at that lush bottom lip, giving him the urge to bite it, too. Her fingers were slim, the pink oval nails well kept. No ring mark had marred the smooth skin of her left hand. Her figure was good, from what he had been able to discern of it through the conservative suit jacket and skirt she worn.
He thoughtfully swiveled from side to side, making his leather office chair squeak. She had seemed to be considering his offer before she leaped up and fled. A frown creased his brows. Maybe the long-term commitment had been too much all at once. Would she have agreed if he had offered a more fluid arrangement? Abruptly, he leaned forward to his laptop and clicked open the e-mail. He typed a brief message and hit send.
Now he would wait. He returned his focus to his work, able to put the woman out of his mind at last.
It had been three weeks since the disastrous, ill-judged meeting at the café. Cathy had had no difficulty in forgetting the aberrant incident. She had too much drama in her day-to-day life to allow something small, like nearly prostituting herself, to infringe on her struggle to survive.
Her job was fine. It was secure, partially due to the fact that her direct supervisor was an old graduate-school friend. Yet she was careful to do her work well because she didn’t want to jeopardize her only remaining source of income. She had enough tenure, and she was valuable enough that she wouldn’t ordinarily have worried about losing her position. However, these weren’t normal times. During the past two years, as details of her situation became better known, it was difficult to remain unaffected by her coworkers’ attitudes. The universal pity was crushing her. There were days when Cathy felt like she couldn’t breathe.