Stress and The City. Stephanie Rowe

      An endearing smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I’m not stressed.”

      And what about the second part of my question? As if she’d ask. He’d ignored it and so would she.

      “And the sight of you doesn’t turn my stomach,” he added, as if he could read her mind.

      “Oh. Well. That’s good.…I mean, it’s good because it would be hard for us to work together if I made you nauseous.” Brilliant. She was simply dazzling with her manipulation of the English language and her ability to turn a romantic phrase.

      He grinned, no doubt amused by her ongoing effort to prove she was a complete dolt.

      “The kiss has nothing to do with the fact I don’t want your help,” Ty said.

      The kiss. The magical, earth-shattering, devastating kiss.

      “I don’t want your help because I don’t need it. I thought I sent you another e-mail canceling the contract.”

      “Stress again. You think one thing, you do another, and all the while your subconscious knows you need help. It’s typical.” She flipped open the cover to her PDA again. “You don’t mind if I take notes, do you?”

      Ty grabbed the unit out of her hand. “I said I don’t need help.”

      Excellent. A recalcitrant client. She was so not up for this. Recalcitrant, hot and a good kisser. Just what she needed.

      Ty snapped the cover down. “For your information, I have a demanding job. That’s it. I was busy, hadn’t returned a couple calls to my fiancée and she got annoyed. So I sent the e-mail.”

      Ah-hah. He’d done a weird jerky thing with his eyes when he’d mentioned his job. Something wasn’t right at the office. Cassie carved the note in her brain for recall after they’d parted ways and she could jot it down in her handheld device. Look at her: gifted with an attentive and sharp mind that honed in on stress-related signals even while she was in the throes of an emotional breakdown. Was she good or what? She’d always suspected there was a reason she hadn’t tried to knock herself out with a coconut when she was in the Bahamas.

      “So what if my job requires long hours? That doesn’t mean I’m stressed,” Ty added.

      As if she was that brain-dead. The man was too transparent to escape her sleuthing and suspicious mind. Before Drew, she’d been naive and trusting. Today, she was a bitter, perceptive woman…or harlot, depending on one’s point of view. Maybe having her world shattered by a cheating fiancé would make her a better stress management consultant. No longer would she be so willing to believe the good side her clients projected. A jaded realist, she would dig deeper than ever to find the true misery in her clients’ lives. “And your fiancée? No worries about what might happen when she comes to town and finds you working such long hours?”

      “Nope.”

      He didn’t flinch there. Definitely no concerns about what his fiancée would think about his work schedule. But something was amiss. It was apparent from the way he shifted on the doorstep and looked at his watch.…

      Or maybe Cassie was making him late for a meeting.

      Yikes. Why couldn’t she tell the difference between his being late and his being deceptive? What had happened to her instincts? Left on the floor of Drew’s bedroom on the night before their wedding, when she’d walked in…

      Ahem.

      Hadn’t she banned herself from thinking about that night? Focus on the present. “So, I’ll see you Friday night?”

      He blinked. “Friday night?”

      “Eight o’clock? Your place. I assume you don’t get home early enough during the week to meet.”

      “I told you. I don’t need your help.”

      Cassie shrugged, trying not to look into the depths of his dark eyes, wondering what it would feel like to have them roaming her body.…Hello. This was business. And he was engaged. Shut down the hormones.

      Besides, hadn’t she already decided she couldn’t take him on as a client? There was simply too much baggage. And if she refused him as a client, then she wouldn’t have to be near him. And that would be good because she certainly felt the same urge to attack him that had overwhelmed her on New Year’s Eve, only this time she didn’t have the excuse of wanting to destroy Drew’s cockiness. Cassie was definitely going into post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of canceling the wedding. From conservative fiancée to sex-crazed fiend in a matter of weeks.

      Not an entirely convenient transformation, given that the only two men in her life were a cheating exfiancé and a stressed-out hunk engaged to another woman. Not exactly appropriate outlets for her newly aroused fantasies. The solution? Retreat. “Fine. I won’t help you.”

      He lifted an eyebrow. “Fine? Just like that?”

      “Sure. Why not?”

      “But…”

      “But what?”

      “Shouldn’t you be more…”

      “Tenacious?” she offered.

      “Yes.”

      “Usually. Not today.”

      “Why not?”

      “Not in the mood.” To be more precise, she wasn’t in the mood to work with him, and she was taking any excuse to turn down the project. Not that she was too emotionally distraught to cope. It was a tactical ploy designed to lay the foundation for her future career. She held out her hand. “My PDA, please.”

      He passed it to her, his fingers brushing against her palm. Dammit! Why were her hormones going all weird every time he touched her? Unprofessional, inappropriate and pathetic. It was time to shape up. “Have a nice day.”

      She made it only to the curb before she started doubting her decision.

      BY THE TIME CASSIE arrived at Blissful Heaven at nine o’clock that evening, Leo had already laid out a bountiful supply of lush strawberries. A pot of thick, gooey and sinfully delicious chocolate was heating on a burner. The smell of warm cocoa hit Cassie the moment she pushed open the door to the little shop.

      Nirvana at last.

      She inhaled deeply, waiting for the tension to leave her body.

      It didn’t.

      She sniffed again, letting the divine scent spread through her being, seep into her lungs.…

      Again, no loosening of the tight tendons in her shoulders. What was up with that? Chocolate never failed her. She saved these emergency sessions for the moments of greatest need, and they always worked.

      Of course, at the present moment, she was a wee bit more strung out than she’d been in the past. Like when she’d driven into a police car at a stoplight, or the time she’d accidentally set Drew’s house on fire when he was on his way home with clients.…Hah! She’d forgotten about that. Must have been her prophetic subconscious knowing that someday he’d be deserving of having his kitchen turned into a pile of ashes on a very important day.

      All well and good now, but at the time she had been more than a little distraught. A quick session at Leo’s with the chocolate and Cassie had recovered enough to call Drew and admit she hadn’t actually been killed in the fire. The jerk hadn’t even been worried about her, a fact she probably should have paid more attention to.

      Ah, the beauty of hindsight.

      So, anyway, if the chocolate had worked for that very traumatic event, why wasn’t it helping now, when things weren’t nearly that bad? So she’d sucked face with some stranger who was engaged to another woman. So what if he was also her new client and she couldn’t stop fantasizing about him? Those really weren’t big deals, even if you threw in the minor issue of the wedding that never happened. Really. It wasn’t any