Uninhibited

“Alicia? We’re ready for your report.”

I feel a sharp jab in my ribs and snap back to reality to find the whole boardroom staring at me like I’ve lost my mind.

And maybe I have. Because it’s been two months since that night a mysterious stranger pushed me up against the wall and kissed my heartache away. Two months since that night we spent together, a night that was so intense and far from my ordinary life, it feels like a dream.

A dream that’s rapidly threatening my career, I realize, looking around at the smirks and puzzled expressions. I’m usually the last one to drift off in the middle of an important meeting—if anything, I’m always the one keeping us on track.

“The report,” my assistant, Lily, whispers to me. She’s my right-hand around the office—and the owner of that elbow that just left an indent on my ribs.

“Right!” I bolt to my feet. “Sorry about that,” I apologize to everyone, moving to the front of the conference room. I smooth down my blouse and pencil skirt, thinking fast for an excuse. “I was just thinking about the Spring schedule.”

I don’t know if they buy it, but as I launch into my analysis of costs and revenue for the coming season, my minor lapse in sanity is soon the last thing on everyone’s minds. As business affairs manager for a hot new fashion label, it’s my job to make sure the temperamental genius of the designer doesn’t wipe out any profits the company might hope to make.

“This is outrageous!”

Sure enough, the moment I finish breaking down my projections and cost-saving plans, Jacob Main leaps to his feet.

“If you’ll just look at the balance sheet—” I try to interrupt him, but it’s no use. He launches into an impassioned rant about artistic integrity, and how he can’t possibly work under these conditions.

I sit back down and let him ramble until the end of the meeting. He’s always like this: he likes to make a big scene about his precious designs, but once I’ve explained for the millionth time that if he uses pure imported silk for his basic T-shirts, we’d have to retail them at $300 each, and he could wave goodbye to his department store orders, then he’ll settle down. He drives me crazy, but in the two years I’ve been working here, we’ve found a dysfunctional kind of balance to our dynamic. He’s the dreamer, I’m the voice of reason, and it’s my job to keep the lights turned on, and orders rolling in from around the country.

Which is why it was so out of character for me to find myself making out with a devastatingly sexy stranger in a dark alley back in Sspring.

I stifle a sigh of longing, trying to block the memories from flooding my mind again. It wasn’t just the one kiss, either. After the party was over, I needed to escape my secret heartbreak, and my mystery man, Dex, just happened to be standing outside with his motorcycle, offering me…

Well, he was offering me whatever I wanted to take, and at that moment, I needed to get out of there.

So, I went with him. In what had to be the most reckless, impulsive decision of my twenty-three years, I climbed on the back of that motorcycle with a handsome stranger, and I let him take me wherever he wanted to go. We wound up back at his place, watching the city lights from his rooftop and talking all night long.

And doing more than talk…The voice in my head reminds me, and I feel my cheeks flush with guilt just at the memory. Luckily, Jacob finally runs out of steam, and I use the chance to end the meeting for lunch.

“Remember, expense reports are due to accounting by the end of the day,” I remind everyone as they file out of the room in a chorus of sighs and grumbles.

Lily stays to help me gather my papers. “Was it him again?” she asks knowingly, trailing me back to my office. I already regret confiding in her, even if I only told her half of the story. My face must give it away, because she claps her hands together in glee. “It was! I don’t understand why you don’t call him, it doesn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t have his number,” I lie, even though the slip of paper with his cellphone details is folded neatly in the back of a drawer at home.

“Yes, but you know where he lives,” Lily points out, playing with the frayed ends of her blonde braid. “You could show up on his doorstep wearing nothing but a trench coat,” she suggests, starry-eyed. “Or plaster the neighborhood with posters. ‘Wanted: the mystery man who rocked my world!’ Trust me, he’d love it. It works in all the movies!”

“Time for lunch.” I cut her harebrained schemes short.

She gives me a look, but doesn’t push it. “What do you want? No, wait, I know already. Caesar salad, hold the dressing, hold the cheese.”

I pause. “Am I really that predictable?”

Lily bites her lip. “It’s not a bad thing,” she says brightly. “Nobody likes change!”

“I’ll come down with you,” I decide. “I need to take a break from this place. Jacob is looking like he wants to strangle me with next season’s paisley print scarves.”

I nod through the glass partition to where the designer is prowling. Lily gives a wistful sigh. “Why is it that creative geniuses have to be such high-strung prima donnas?” she asks, as we head for the elevator. “Just once, I’d like to meet an artist who isn’t a raging insomniac, or like, pays his taxes on time.”

I laugh. “Their brains are wired differently, that’s all.”