Plum Girl (Romance) Read Free

those sweats and palpitations coming on. It's just going to be a quick drink, she thought to herself, and rested her elbows on the desk to support the weight of her forehead in her hands. So what if this would be the first time they'd been out together when one of them didn't have to rush back to the office? So what if it included alcohol? So what if it didn't take even one drop of any mind-altering substance to make Dominick look damn good?
    Then again, for all she knew, Dominick might have someone in his life already. Although she had a strong feeling that he didn't considering what he'd told her last month about spending his thirtieth birthday playing poker with his brothers. Surely if he had a girlfriend, he'd have had better plans than that.
    For probably the millionth time that month, she mentally replayed the day she'd run into Dominick. She had just narrowly escaped Beauregard Twit, grabbing her long, furry ice-blue coat and heading to lunch before he could thrust another task on her. Once safely inside the elevator, she'd pressed L and contemplated what to get. Should she go across the street to the new salad place and waste a perfectly good Wendy's that was six blocks out of her way? When the elevator jerked to a stop on twenty, the heavy brown doors opened, and a tall, dark-haired man entered.
    He gave her a small smile as soon as his eyes met hers, and she offered the requisite phony smile in return, inwardly cursing the affected standards of elevator etiquette. She stared straight ahead, as if there really were something fascinating about those heavy brown doors, until his voice broke her forced gaze. "Lonnie?" She turned to him, her green-honey eyes searching. "Lonnie Kelley."
    That time it was more of a statement than a question. She searched his face for about three seconds before it clicked. "Dominick!"
    He smiled widely and nodded. "Yeah, how are you?"
    Once Lonnie brightened and kicked herself out of zombie mode, she said, "Good, good. What about you? I haven't seen you since college!"
    "Yeah, back in college when you"—he hesitated before picking the most tactful verb—"dated my friend, Eric." Dated? Lonnie thought incredulously. More like made a raving fool out of myself on a daily basis for him. Sure, I remember Eric.
    "Eric?" Lonnie repeated, deliberately vacant. Then she waved her hand and threw in casually, "Oh right, now I remember." The elevator dinged and the doors opened to the airy, pink-marbled lobby. Dominick held out his hand, waiting for her to step out first. She did, and asked, "So how is Eric?"
    Dominick just shrugged. "Actually, we sort of lost touch after college." They walked toward the front doors of the building and then paused for an awkward moment, both not knowing how to end a conversation with someone they hadn't seen in eight years when the reunion had barely progressed to banal small talk. Just then Lonnie's stomach growled audibly, prompting Dominick to ask her to lunch.
    And he'd certainly been charming. He'd told her about his experience working as director of Web site development at GraphNet, an Internet company three floors down from Twit & Bell—the whole time punctuating his stories with self-deprecating humor. He'd described his plan of starting his own company that would design corporate software, and told her all about his brownnosing protégé, Harold. And the whole time Dominick had been talking—despite her best intentions—Lonnie had been checking him out. It wasn't like her to feel a sexual attraction for a man so quickly, but that day with Dominick it hit her suddenly and profoundly.
    Probably six feet tall, dark eyes, hair almost as black as her own. Not handsome exactly, but the sexiest grin she'd seen since...
    Then she'd caught herself, feeling embarrassed, afraid that Dominick had somehow read her mind and knew what she'd been thinking. And, speaking of that, what the hell had she been thinking to check Dominick out when she already had a perfectly