Page 27 of A Little Moore Action
Chase Moore and I are alone.
My palms grip my knees under the table while I dream about assigning my two young employees the next female hygiene company to market in retaliation for abandoning me. Oblivious to my turmoil, Chase simply watches Ben and Chris leave before turning his attention to me.
“Your employees admire and respect you.”
“Oh.” Not what I’d been expecting him to say. “Thank you.”
“You sound surprised.”
I shrug. “I wasn’t sure what you wanted to talk about, so I hadn’t been expecting a compliment.”
“You should always expect compliments.”
I roll my eyes, but I’m smiling.
“I mean it.” He pauses, as if unsure, before continuing. “You look beautiful tonight.” Smoothly he moves from his seat across the table to the chair next to me that Chris vacated.
At first, I’m relieved. He’s been across from me all night, and his eyes, when taken straight on, are hypnotic. They make you forget things that you should very much remember. But when he angles the chair next to me, so I’m once again the only thing in his line of sight, only much closer, I feel the pulse at my neck jump.
“Thank you.” I drag my gaze from his eyes and look down at the blue dress Susan talked me into. It really is lovely. “Moore’s does only sell the best.”
“It isn’t the dress.” A quick glance shows him smirking. “Though I might give Susan a raise for getting you into it.” His smile turns softer, his eyes heavier. “You’d be beautiful in anything.”
I don’t know what to say to this, so I say nothing. But that doesn’t stop my body fromfeeling. I haven’t felt this kind of attraction in… well, never. In the words of the immortal King, I’m all shook up. I haven’t been able to get my footing where Chase is involved. All day yesterday and all through dinner, with each charming smile and audacious wink, I’ve felt myself forgetting the reasons why professionalism is so important to me.
“So, um. Your father. He’s… interesting.”
Chase lets loose a short bark of laughter. “I don’t think anyone would call my father interesting. He is as boring and stereotypical as every other silver-spooned white guy from his generation.”
His eyes become distant, and I feel like an ass for bringing Stan up, but I have to know.
“Will he be inserting himself into the new overhaul at Moore’s?”
Chase gives me a questioning look.
“I just want to prepare my team if we need to be on the lookout for more of Stan’s, um, input.”
Smirk in place, Chase shakes his head. “No, Stan-the-man doesn’tdoproductive work. The only input he likes is what you heard the other day. Rude comments, judgments, and your basic chauvinist attitude.”
“Oh.” I shift in my seat. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no. I’m sorry. I really should’ve apologized for his behavior before now. I just didn’t want to spoil the evening by talking about my father.”
“Oops.”
We both chuckle. Our laughter dies out slowly as we stare at each other in the candlelight. The shadows flickering in his eyes only highlight the warmth and smolder already natural to him. It would be so easy to lift my palm to his jaw, feel the light five o’clock shadow with the pads of my fingertips. Trace my fingers down to that damn hollow at the base of his neck.
I blink, breaking my train of thought. What am Idoing? I need to go.
As if sensing my imminent retreat, Chase launches into a new subject. “So are you and your boys ready for me to set up a meeting with Warren and Baron?”
The tension eases at his playful, friendly tone, and I settle back in my chair, not realizing my legs had already been braced to stand. “My boys? You mean my highly qualified, top-notch educated, award-winning marketing team?” I throw my own smirk in his direction. “Yes, we’re ready. Or we will be. You didn’t really have a lot in place, marketing-wise.”
He chuckles, the sound sending a warm buzz through my body. “In the past few months, I’ve been able to get rid of or change most of the antiquated inefficiency that’s plagued Moore’s. But the previous managers contracted our marketing to Warren and Baron, and there’s still a year left on the contract. I could break it and pay a penalty, but as Moore’s is already trying to come back from a decline in revenue, and we don’t have an in-house marketing department set upyet”—he gives me one of his seductive winks—“I thought workingwiththem, instead of firing them, would be best.”
I nod once. “That makes sound business sense.”
“Why do I feel like you want to add a ‘but’ to that statement?” The man has a million types of smiles, and the one he gives me now is playful.
