Baby Steps. Karen Templeton

if ever there was one. But far easier to avoid the mess to begin with than suffer through cleaning it up later—

      The phone rang again; Val didn’t move. “What do you suppose is taking her so long to get out of her car?” she said, her voice knifing through his thoughts.

      Twenty feet away, the car door finally opened, and out swung a pair of beautifully arched feet in a pair of strappy high-heeled sandals. C.J. watched with almost academic interest as the woman attached to the feet pulled herself out of the car, the wind catching her soft, billowing white skirt, teasing the hem up to mid-thigh. Her little shriek of alarm carried clear across the parking lot.

      In spite of himself, C.J. smiled: he now knew she wore garterless stockings with white lace tops.

      “Val? Would you mind checking to be sure all those property printouts for Great Expectations are on my desk?”

      “Since I put them there, there’s no need to check. Cute little thing, isn’t she?”

      She was that.

      Assorted debris and crispy, yellowing cottonwood leaves whirlwinded through the parking lot, whipping at long, tea-colored hair swept up into a topknot, at long bangs softly framing a round face. He could see her grimace as she tried to yank the hair out of her eyes and mouth, hang on to her shoulder bag and hold down the recalcitrant skirt all at once. Huddled against the onslaught, she made a dash for the front door, the weightless fabric of her two-piece dress outlining a pleasant assortment of curves. She hit the sidewalk the precise moment the first fat raindrops splatted to earth; C.J. pushed open the door, only to have a gust of wind shove an armful of fragrant, soft female against his chest. His arms wrapped around her. So they wouldn’t fall over.

      “Oh!”

      Wide gray-green eyes met his, her skin flushed underneath that unruly mass of shiny hair, now adorned with several leaves and a Doublemint gum wrapper. Inexplicably, he thought of freshly laundered linens and gardens and cool evening breezes at the end of a hot, sultry day.

      And, because some habits are simply harder to break than others, he also thought of the pleasant things one could do on freshly laundered linens with a woman who smelled like sunshine and fresh breezes and exotic flowers—

      She shot backward as if stung, a full lower lip hanging slightly slack, glistening with some natural-colored lip goo that suited her fair skin to a tee.

      C.J. smiled. “Dana Malone, I presume?”

      “Oh!” she said a second time, then started madly plucking things out of her hair. Her hands full, she looked frantically around, as if trying to find someplace to stash the evidence before anyone noticed. Always the gracious hostess, Val brought her a small wastebasket. Dana gave a nervous little smile, wiggling her fingers for a second until the disintegrating leaves drifted into their plastic grave. “The wind…” she began as she dusted off her hands, tugged at the hem of her tunic. “A storm’s comin’…you were closer than I expected…oh.”

      Her blush heightened, as did her Southern drawl. Mississippi, he guessed. Maybe Alabama. Someplace that brought to mind verandas and Spanish moss and ladies who still wore white gloves to church during the summer. She wiped her hand on her hip, those glistening lips twitching around a nervous smile. “I don’t usually make such spectacular entrances.”

      “And it’s not every day lovely women throw themselves into my arms.”

      “Oh, brother,” Val muttered behind him as a slightly indignant, “I did not throw myself anywhere, I was blown,” popped out of Dana’s mouth.

      Val cackled. C.J. turned his gaze on his office manager.

      “Don’t you have someplace to be, Val?”

      “Probably,” the blonde said, her reply swallowed by a flash of lightning and a window-rattling clap of thunder, as the sky let loose with torrents of rain and marble-sized hail that bounced a foot off the ground.

      Dana whipped around to face outside, her palms skimming her upper arms. “Oh, my goodness,” she breathed, radiating what C.J. could only describe as pure delight. “I sometimes forget how much I miss the rain!”

      Don’t stare at the client, don’t stare at the— “So you’re not from New Mexico, either?”

      She shook her head, her attention fixed on the horizon. “Alabama. But I’ve lived here since I was fourteen.” Now her eyes cut to his. “Did you say ‘either’?”

      “South Carolina, here. Charleston.”

      “Oh, I love Charleston! I haven’t been back in a while, but I remember it being such a pretty city—”

      Val cleared her throat. They both turned to her.

      “Those printouts are right where I said they were,” she said. “On your desk. For your appointment.” She paused, looking from one to the other. “Today.”

      “Oh! Yes! I, um…” Dana lifted a hand to her hair, her face reddening again. “Do y’all have someplace I can pull myself back together?”

      “Ladies’ is right around the corner,” Val supplied.

      C.J. watched Dana glide away, her fanny twitching ever so slightly. Then he glanced over to catch Val squinting at him.

      “What?”

      “Nothing,” she said, her backless shoes slapping against her heels as she finally returned to her station. But when he passed her on the way back to his office to get the printouts, he thought he heard her mumble something about there being hope for him yet, and he almost laughed.

      But not because he found her comment amusing in the slightest.

      Dana squelched a yelp when she flipped on the light in the mushroom-colored restroom and caught a load of her reflection. Not that her heart rate could possibly go any higher than it already was after catching her first glance of C.J.

      Those eyes…

      That mouth…

      Wow.

      “Cass Carter,” Dana muttered, sinking onto a stool in front of the mirror, “you are so dead.” She shook her head, which sent the last few hairpins pinging off the marble countertop, her tangled hair whooshing to her shoulders. Then, with a small, pitiful moan, she dropped her head into her hands.

      The man went way beyond chocolate marble cheesecake. Heck, he went way beyond any dessert yet known to man. Or woman. He was…was…

      In a class all to himself, is what. Who knew people could actually look that good without airbrushing?

      Well, this musing was fun and all, but it wasn’t getting her fixed up. She plucked out another leaf and a crumpled straw wrapper, then dug her brush out of her purse to beat it all back into submission again. Dana stood and bent over at the waist, brushing the dust and grit out of her hair. Maybe the blood would rush back to her head, reestablish some semblance of intelligent thought processes. Grabbing the slippery mass with both hands, she twisted it into a rope, then coiled it on top of her head, standing back up so quickly she got dizzy.

      So she sat down again, clamping the coiled hair on top of her head while she rummaged through her bag for the loose hairpins she was forever finding and dropping into the leather abyss.

      Wow.

      So much for the blood to the head theory.

      After the kind of sigh she hadn’t let out since Davey Luken’s clumsy kiss in the seventh grade, she jammed a half-dozen pins into the base of the topknot, finger-fluffed her bangs. Yeah, well, Dana hadn’t dated as much she had, as long as she had, not to gain an insight or two along the way. Because for all C. J. Turner’s Southern charm and suaveness and brain-fritzing masculinity, he also positively buzzed with I-am-so-not-into-commitment vibes. Must’ve driven Trish right around the bend.

      Only then did Dana burst out laughing as she realized what she’d felt, on her hip, a split second before