Free Her Favorite Rival by Sarah Mayberry Page B

country.” And she didn’t have the time or the energy to go there.
    Not today, anyway.

CHAPTER FIVE
    S HE WAS WEARING perfume. Something light, with sweet vanilla undertones.
    Zach looked up from the page he was proofreading and glanced at Audrey’s profile, trying to gauge her mindset. They’d been going over the finished analysis for the past hour, correcting typos, adding information, finessing the layout. Not by the flicker of an eyelid had she indicated that tonight was any different from last night or any of the other times they’d met to work on the report—except she didn’t usually wear perfume.
    Maybe he was a deluded optimist, but he couldn’t help hoping she’d worn it for him.
    She typed something into her laptop. “Typo, page twenty,” she said without looking up.
    “Mine or yours?” he asked.
    “Mine.”
    “So that makes us even at four all, right?”
    “You still trying to count that outdated pie chart as one mistake?” she said, shooting him a dry look. “I don’t think so.”
    “Technically, it was only one mistake.”
    “Sure, in the same way that the guy steering the Titanic only made one mistake.”
    He propped his elbow on the table, work forgotten for the moment. More than anything, he liked matching wits with her.
    “So you’re suggesting a slightly inaccurate pie chart is on a par with the one of the greatest maritime disasters of all time?”
    “Yes. Yes, I am.” She tried to keep a poker face but her mouth kept curling up at the corners.
    “You’re full of it, Mathews,” he said, returning to the page he was proofing.
    What he really wanted to do was ask if she’d like to grab a drink together after they’d finished tonight. He wasn’t going to do that, though. The whole point of this analysis was to impress Whitman and get on the man’s radar—in a good way. Given Zach’s track record with women, using the fact that he and Audrey were working together as a springboard into starting something else would be a very bad idea.
    Tina, for example, had not walked away a happy woman. She’d been angry and hurt that he’d repeatedly put his work ahead of her. She hadn’t understood about his mother, or how important it was for him to put as much distance, time and money between himself and the past as he possibly could. Probably because he’d never told her, but that was a whole other ball of wax.
    The point was, he couldn’t afford to indulge himself where Audrey was concerned and then risk having a pissed-off woman glaring at him across the meeting room table every week. Only an idiot would open himself up to that kind of potential disaster, and he’d like to think he wasn’t an idiot.
    “Do we need pizza yet?” Audrey asked.
    She was toeing off her shoes again, wiggling her stockinged feet into the carpet. He watched avidly, like a teenage boy getting a glimpse through the bathroom window.
    She had great feet. He’d never really noticed a woman’s feet before, but hers were delicately arched, the toes straight and neat. He had the sudden, incredibly inappropriate urge to offer her a foot rub, so he had an excuse to get his hands on them.
    You sick, horny, pathetic bastard .
    “I don’t know if I can face pizza again. Isn’t there a Malaysian place up the road?” he asked.
    “Let me see.” She stretched and flexed her fingers like a virtuoso pianist preparing to play a complicated concerto, then started typing. “Okay, yes, there is. And I have a takeaway menu.”
    “Oh, you’re good.”
    “Thank you. Come take a look so we can order.”
    He moved to stand behind her chair. She shifted the laptop so he could see the screen. He rested a hand on the back of her chair and leaned forward over her shoulder so he could read the small text.
    Big mistake. He could smell her perfume and what he suspected was her shampoo, and he could see down her top enough to know she was wearing a lacy chocolate-colored bra beneath her shirt.
    He straightened. “I’ll