She looked up at him from under the brim of her beat-up cap and grinned. “Mr. Lindstrom?”
“Lars, yeah.”
“Well, Lars-Yeah, thanks for picking me up.”
Her voice. Oh man, her voice. It was distinctly low and gravelly, like Demi Moore or Kathleen Turner, and he wondered if she was recovering from a cold or if she always sounded that way. The way she said picking me up made him do a double take, though her body language read friendly, not flirtatious.
“Just Lars,” he clarified.
“Okay. Over this way, Just-Lars?” She gestured to the baggage claim area where the battered carousel had just started to make its first lazy rotation.
“Lars.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m just—” She half-smiled, about to say something, then turned and walked over to the conveyor belt, speaking over her shoulder. “Did you bring a big car, Lars? This could be ugly.”
Lars stared after her, trying to figure her out. She dressed like a hobo-teenager, but she was low-talking, playful and dry. She was throwing him, and women never threw Lars.
“U-ugly?” he asked.
“Ms. Amaya doesn’t travel light.”
“Ms. Amaya didn’t travel.”
“Touché, Just-Lars. Nicely done.” Her green eyes twinkled as she shoved her hands in her back pockets. “What I mean to say is that Ms. Amaya’s luggage generally precedes her. It all came with me so that I could unpack for her. I think it was eight bags. Maybe nine. Maybe eighty-six thousand and twenty-four. I can’t remember.”
Remember. The low rumble of her voice made the word sound unaccountably sexy, which was momentarily distracting. For a second, just a second, he stared at her, trying to reconcile the voice with the woman. A millisecond later he shook his head, focusing on her words instead of the way she was saying them, and rolled his eyes inwardly at this news. Another spoiled famous person who couldn’t make do with a duffel and a backpack like a normal person. Great.
Though he couldn’t fault Jane for the habits of her boss. Jane didn’t look like trouble at all, in fact. She looked boyish and spare. Physically, she wasn’t Lars’s type at all.
She was several inches shorter than he was, maybe five-foot-five, and not much to look at. A fan of big breasts and a small waist on full display, Lars couldn’t make out Jane’s figure from under her oversized Boston College sweatshirt. The worn-out, loose, faded jeans that pooled around her expensive loafers didn’t do much for her either. Her face was partially hidden under her cap, and she wore tortoiseshell-framed glasses that concealed her eyes. Her hair escaped from under the cap in little waves over her ears that looked soft and inviting, but her face was unremarkable…well, wait, mostly unremarkable.
There was something about her eyes when she grinned at him—the way they crinkled a little around the edges when she asked if he brought a big car—and the way her lips had tilted up tentatively, like she was giggling on the inside, but not letting him in on the joke. He sensed a bit of mischief in that smile, and it appealed to him.
“Ready to go to work, Just-Lars?”
Just-Lars.
And that voice.
It was—by far—the most distracting thing about her.
Silky and low, it belonged to a woman much taller, more voluptuous, with heavy-lidded eyes, and oozing sex appeal. He didn’t believe she was a smoker; he didn’t smell a whiff of tobacco while standing beside her. But, her voice was low and raspy like a smoker’s, like Jessica Rabbit’s, like the voice of a lounge singer or the femme fatale from a black-and-white movie. Like Lauren Bacall telling Humphrey Bogart to put his lips together and blow. And she had that smart-ass sort of confidence going for her too. He sensed that she wasn’t purposely suggestive, but he couldn’t help wondering about the subtext he’d add to a voice like that. Something like: Yeah, I’m wearing a baggy sweatshirt, but I’ll bet you’re wondering what’s under it, aren’t you, you bad, bad boy? And he didn’t really want to wonder, so it confused him that that’s where his mind headed every time she uttered a word. Man, her voice was something. Honestly, it made the hairs on his arm stand up; it was so sexy and so damn unexpected.
“Voila. Numero uno,” she said, gesturing to a large Gucci suitcase, black with a distinctive red and green decorative stripe.
Lars stepped forward and grabbed the bag off the belt with ease just as Jane reached out to grab the one after.
“Hey, let me do that.”
“I don’t mind helping,” she said.
“It’s my job.” Plus, he just wasn’t comfortable watching a smallish woman heft heavy luggage. “You stay with the bags and I’ll bring them over. Do they all look like this?”
Jane nodded, sitting down gingerly on numero uno, and watching as Lars went back to the belt again and again until she was surrounded by eleven almost-identical Gucci suitcases and four black garment bags.
“Is this it?” he asked Jane, who was counting the bags, and comparing the claim numbers against the collection she had stapled to her boarding pass.
“Uh—,” she replied, “One more…”
She jumped up and hurried to the belt, picking up a simple leather duffel bag. The most unassuming bag circling the belt, it had clearly done its fair share of traveling and had the scars to prove it. She hefted it onto her shoulder and smiled at Lars.
“Mine.”
The way she purred mine while she grinned at him made his throat go dry.
He swallowed and tried to smile back at her but couldn’t help staring at her lips. Flustered, he dropped his eyes quickly, where they rested, inadvertently, on the words Boston College. Suddenly recognizing that he was essentially staring at her breasts, he snapped his eyes back up to her face.
She raised an eyebrow at him, conveying surprise and amusement with the clean, elegant gesture.
He cleared his throat nervously and made himself useful, reaching out to loosen the beat-up leather bag from her shoulder and toss it on the mountain of Samara’s luggage.
He wasn’t the sort to get flustered around women in general, let alone someone as average looking as Jane.
That damn voice of hers was making him crazy.
He rubbed his forehead, staring at the pile of luggage, suddenly noting the contrast of Jane’s simple duffel on top of her boss’s fifteen pieces of luggage.
She’s just a normal person with a duffel and a backpack. Then…That pile of black Gucci bags must have cost a small fortune.
As if reading his mind, Jane piped up beside him. “Each one costs thirty-eight hundred. Don’t add it up. It’ll hurt your heart. All those starving people in India…” He looked at her and she shrugged. “What can I say? Ms. Amaya likes her comforts.”
Comforts.
The way she said it reminded him of warm honey.
He needed some air. Stat.
Putting up his palms as if to say: Hey, none of my business, Lars backed away from Miss Sexy Pipes.
“You wait here,” he said. “I’ll get the car.”
***
Jane didn’t know what to make of Lars.
Or rather, Jane didn’t know what to make of what Lars was making of Jane.
She couldn’t remember the last time someone tried so hard to conceal a quick glance at her chest. Come to think of it, she couldn’t actually remember the last time someone had glanced at her chest at all.