She'd been standing there for two minutes. She knew because she'd nearly spilled her coffee each time on her white blouse both times she’d checked her watch. She pushed the door open with her hip.
He looked up before she'd cleared the threshold. "You left last night without saying goodbye."
She waited for the door to close behind her. "I said goodbye to your kitchen, your bathroom, and to everyone in my family." She set both coffees on the edge of his desk and dropped into one of the chairs across from him, doing her best to avoid his rich, dark eyes.
"You didn't say it to me."
"You were occupied." Sarcasm usually worked well for them, but since he didn’t chuckle, she figured she’d missed her mark. She shouldn’t be surprised.
“Right. Dealing with you and looking for you," he said. "And I've been looking for you all morning."
She opened her folder and clicked her pen because this was not happening at work. "Boots should be here in about half an hour. I want to go over what we know before she gets here so we're not fumbling around in front of her."
"We need to talk."
"I agree," she said. "About the card delivered to the station and the puck delivered to your home. We have to?—"
“We’ll get to that after we discuss last night.”
Her pulse lodged in her throat like a fat bug. She looked up and stared at him.
His elbows were on the desk with his hands loosely folded and that relaxed expression she'd watched him use on senators and network executives and one city councilman who'd deeply regretted agreeing to a live interview. This was the patient, immovable Noah—the man that was impossible to ignore.
"This is not the time or place."
He smiled that wicked smile of his—the one she'd spent years building an immunity to and failing. “Five years ago, we did some things in closets?—"
She glared at him with everything she had. “Do not try to humor me into this conversation.”
He raised his hands and leaned back in his chair as if he'd almost given up. "I bet you drove home last night and spent the whole evening figuring out how to walk in here this morning like nothing happened and how to avoid discussing what did." He folded his arms. "How'd that work out?"
“Great.” She picked her pen back up. “Now, let's get ready for Boots.”
"Fine. Have it your way." He pushed his chair forward and plopped his elbows back on the desk. "Since we do need to talk about a few work-related things. But we're having this conversation. Before we have dinner with Troy and Priela."
"I agreed to that under duress."
"You’re not backing out. That wouldn't be nice, and you'd rip my head off if I tried to do that because something made me uncomfortable." He tapped his finger on his desk. "Pirela's making some new recipe and she wants to use us as guinea pigs."
"Right, because it wasn't my parents who weren't supposed to go to that dinner and backed out. Now, thanks to my mother, my entire family knows we were alone in your bedroom for an undisclosed amount of time doing something potentially romantic.” Ziggy heaved in a breath and exhaled.
"I’m sorry I put us both in that position." He lifted his phone. "Two texts from Jag. One from Reid, who copied Troy, who sent a bunch of emojis that I'm not sure I understand. I even got one from your cousin, Zane." He dropped his cell back on his desk, screen up.
She couldn't help it. She looked and covered her mouth to stifle a laugh.
"What's so funny?"
"My family can be so childish sometimes." She pointed. "Those emojis mean suspicion, protective threat, monitoring, watching, irony, and that last one, I think, is ironic alliance plus maybe something sexual since it came from Zane.”
“I really appreciated Zane’s candor when he came on to speak about the misconceptions of sex clubs, but I think my cheeks were red the whole time.” He stared at her with those big chocolate eyes. The ones that often made her melt.
“Zane and his wife will do that to anyone,” Ziggy said, grateful that Noah could take the conversation down a level and even more thrilled that she could follow his lead. “How about you meet me at my place an hour before we need to be at Troy's?"
"Thank you."
She flipped to her first page of notes. "Now, can we talk about the fact that someone sent a hockey puck to your home address, and we have no idea who or why?"
"We're not telling Boots about that one."