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awaiting her signature in her in-box. Then he gazed past her at the window overlooking the city, one of the best views in the high-rise building. Whistling, he murmured, “I guess you do have a real job.”
    “What made you think I didn’t?”
    He met her stare, saying nothing.
    “Okay,” she acknowledged with a grudging smile. “I don’t suppose many of the bidders from the auction work on much more than their tans.”
    “But you don’t have one. Meaning you obviously work too much.”
    “It could be that I’m naturally pale-skinned and prone to burning.” And that she hadn’t had one of those lazy summer days on her father’s boat since last summer. She was going to have to remedy that.
    “I somehow suspect you spend twelve hours a day in here and just wave at the sun from your window as it goes by.”
    Smart man. And one who was right now making himself at home, sitting in a chair opposite her desk without being asked. Her office almost seemed to shrink around him, as if his big body had sucked up all the spare particles of air, leaving the two of them cloaked tightly in intimacy.
    Thank God for the desk. If it hadn’t been between them, Maddy might have been tempted to slide her chair closer, until their knees touched. Or their thighs. Or their mouths.
    Stop it.
    “Why’d you ditch me?”
    “Why did you pursue me?”
    “Ha. I asked you a complicated question and you asked me a very simple one.” He grinned. “I tracked you down because I owe you a date and I am not a welsher.”
    That was all. He wasn’t a welsher. Well, didn’t she just feel special, like an average everyday poker player waiting for a five-dollar payoff.
    “Now, your turn.”
    “It isn’t necessarily complicated.” She arched a brow and managed a bored tone. “Maybe I ditched you because I wasn’t interested.”
    His grin still confident, he immediately dispelled that possibility. “Twenty-five thousand bucks is a whole lot of disinterest.”
    “It’s for a worthy cause.”
    “So why didn’t you bid on somebody else early in the evening and get out right away?”
    “What makes you think I didn’t? Maybe you were my second-to-the-last chance to make a difference, so I made an outrageous bid.”
    “You didn’t bid on anybody else.” He leaned toward her desk, dropping his elbows on its surface. “Admit it.” The position sent muscle surging against cotton as his casual, washed-out T-shirt hugged his arms. The flexing of his tanned skin against the black fabric was almost impossible to tear her gaze away from. She honestly didn’t think she’d ever seen a more powerfully built man in person.
    She knew she’d never slept with one.
    Most of the men Maddy had had sex with had been wiry young college guys who wanted any female they could get—especially wealthy, heiress females—or pale, soft businessmen she met in her usual circle. Those men—men like Oliver, her ex-lover, whom she’d kicked out of her life a year and a half ago—were generally toned from their weekend tennis game or occasional golf tournaments. Or, in Oliver’s case, from his frequent ski trips with his “best friend” Roddy.
    That Roddy had been a nickname for Rhonda, a twenty-year-old ski bunny, had been something he’d failed to mention. Maddy had found out the hard way when she’d decided to surprise him one weekend. She’d found Oliver in his room, engaging in some serious downhill action with the snow ho.
    There were no skis involved, but his pole had been getting quite a workout.
    She thrust away the memory, acknowledging that in the several months she’d dated the man, she’d never looked at him and immediately lusted the way she did with the guy sitting on the other side of her desk. Jake Wallace had the kind of massive, rock-solid body women dreamed existed but never expected to see in real life.
    And she coveted it. As he’d been coveting the other night.
    “I don’t think you bid on anyone else,” he murmured, speaking