Page 4 of Opposites (Never) Attract
There was a thump in the hallway outside of the room. What sounded like a scuffle. Everyone turned to look through the glass walls of the conference room in the direction of reception. Voices got louder, and I heard my assistant, Matthew, say,“You can’t go in there, she’s in a very important meeting.”
We all watched the person, theman, who clearly wasn’t taking Matthews’s advice, walk through the reception area like he owned the building.
Oh. My. God.
There was no hope for it. I wasn’t getting the crowd’s attention back because this was not the type of man whowalked through the hallways on the 86thfloor of a building in downtown Manhattan.
He was six-foot four. Broad shoulders and lean hips, with an impossibly wide chest. He wore a black denim jacket with a dark beard that covered his face.
I could feel the reverberations under my feet from his beat-up cowboy boots hitting the hardwood floor. But the boots weren’t even the piece de resistance. Or the black Stetson he wore on top of his thick brown hair.
No, it was the mirrored aviator sunglasses he wore over his eyes. So cool. So…hot.
This man was a force of nature. A tornado sucking up all the oxygen in the room. Every ruthless money shark around that table, who - as a rule, were not impressed by anything - were utterly captivated by him.
He was the least New York thing that had ever dared to enter this building.
“Who is that?” Ellen, a twenty-year veteran with the firm, whispered to Bethany.
“My fantasy come true,” Bethany, a recent Wharton School of Business grad with a genius brain and killer instinct, replied in the same whisper.
“Should we be worried?” Jeffery looked up at me. “Should I call security?”
There was no point.
Security was no match against Taggert Durham.
The glass door to the conference room swung open to a collective gasp from those in the room with me.
There was no way he would recognize me. Last time he saw me, I was a tall, skinny fifteen-year-old. With hair in desperate need of a conditioning treatment and a blowout. Terrible skin. Braces. Glasses.
Your typical social outcast uniform.
Now, at thirty, that girl was nowhere to be seen.
My blond highlights and blunt bob haircut cost several hundred dollars every other month at a prestigious uptown salon. I’d filled out with curves in all the right places (mostly my boobs). My teeth were finally straight, and after years of acne treatment, my skin was so clear even my dermatologist couldn’t believe it.
So there was nowayhe would be able to pick me out in this crowd.
“Hey, Sunshine,” he said, taking off his sunglasses and looking directly at me. I was so shocked I had to place one hand against the table for balance. “Sorry for interrupting your work and all, but I’m here to bring you home.”
“I’m calling security,” Jeffery said, getting to his feet. “You’re not authorized to be here.”
Tag broke eye contact with me to stare at Jeffery, and I took a minute to catch my breath. Good lord. Tag Durham. Here? I hadn’t thought about him in years.
Except at…certain moments. Certain private moments.
Tag had been my earliest crush. My first sexual fantasy. That kind of thing tended to stick with a girl. Apparently, I had a weakness for the strong and silent type. A man with rough hands and broad shoulders. Thick thighs and a chest that had never been waxed. Who spoke in a growl more than words.
Who stood up for the ugly duckling in a classroom.
Tag was the original cowboy fantasy.
I shook my head, trying to gather myself from the hot internal place this man could send me.
Why was he here? It didn’t make any sense.
“I’ll be happy to leave. But Sunshine needs to come with me,” he said.
