Free Something Wild by Toni Blake

find him looking amused by her discussion with Patti. "She's completely mistaken," she said. Then, mumbling a quick goodbye to Patti, she snatched up her purse and exited the restaurant before her sister could get any wiser that there was more to this story than met the eye.
    * * *
    Ryan took a deep breath as he approached Penny's front door. It felt dangerous, as if he were returning to the scene of a crime. He still couldn't believe he'd made such a lunkhead move yesterday. No wonder he kept losing jobs—he kept letting his wants get in the way of his responsibilities. What would it take before he learned his lesson? Another job loss? Another relocation? Maybe he'd never get it figured out and go broke in the process. As for whatever insane sense of relief he'd felt driving away from her house last night, he'd decided it only had to do with her decision about Martin easing his guilt a little, making him feel a bit less like a trespasser. Because he'd meant what he'd said, she was too intense for him. And he couldn't keep screwing up every job he got, every chance someone gave him to build a career. So that meant…
    You cannot think about her black bra. You cannot think about her slender curves. You can't even think about how soft her lips were yesterday or the pretty scent of her hair.
    "Hi," Penny said, opening the door just as he was about to knock. "How are you?" Her eyes sparkled with a surprisingly friendly welcome and her lips looked horribly silken and inviting, which made it difficult not to think about them. And, damn it, her hair still smelled that way. What was it, some kind of flower or fruit? He almost asked on impulse, when he jolted himself to a halt.
    "I think it would be smart," he said on an exhale, "for us to skip the small talk and get right to work."
    She looked surprised, perhaps irritated, even as her warm blue eyes took on that ridiculously innocent quality he'd noticed before. Yet she caught her breath and said, "Whatever you think is best."
    Heading for her desk, he took a seat and set up his laptop, staying focused on the hardware in front of him.
    "Something to drink?" she asked. "Not that I mean to make small talk. But it's hot outside and I thought you might be parched."
    He resisted the urge to glance up at her, instead watching his computer screen blink to life. Still, from his peripheral vision, he saw she wore her usual khaki shorts and a white sleeveless blouse, and her hair was knotted up on top of her head in some sort of clip. A glimpse down revealed that her feet were bare, which struck him as adorably sexy, although he had no idea why and absolutely refused to think about it. "No thanks," he said.
    Did she just roll her eyes at him? He couldn't tell for sure, since he wasn't looking directly at her, but he could've sworn… "Did you just roll your eyes at me?" he asked, swinging his gaze onto hers.
    Big mistake. When their eyes met, he felt it in his gut. "As a matter of fact—" she planted her fists on her hips "—I did."
    His heartbeat rose to his throat, but he merely lifted his eyebrows in question.
    "Look, I understand the need to keep this all about business, but don't you think you're being a little extreme?"
    "Nope, just ready to get to work," he claimed, forcing a smile, one of those professional ones that had come a little easier yesterday. He motioned to the laptop. "I want to show you the screens I put together last night."
    When she slid into the chair next to his, finally allowing them to get Day Two of the project under way, Ryan exhaled a sigh of relief, then pointed to the laptop with a pen. "Okay, you recall the start-up screen. Now, when you click on the Accounting box—" he demonstrated "—you'll be asked for a password."
    Together, they set up a password for Penny to use during the test phase, and she chose "prettypenny," explaining with a wistful smile that her grandpa had called her that when she was a little girl. "He and my grandmother had a farm down in