She's Got Mail!: She's Got Mail! / Forget Me? Not

“I’m still helping Meredith!” she answered curtly from the other room.

With what? A stuck chopstick? Looking back at Rosie, he asked wearily, “Sugar? Cream?”

“Three teaspoons sugar. Plenty of milk.”

“That’s a milkshake, not a coffee,” Ben murmured as he headed to the coffee station in the reception area.

Rosie sat stiffly in the harp chair and checked out the inner sanctum of ILITIG8. She was already so late for work, what was another ten minutes? She hated disappointing Teresa, though, who was pretty cool when it came to bending rules. Unfortunately, Rosie had bent the tardy rule so far, she’d broken it, so Teresa had had to lay down the law: get into work on time or go on probation.

Although probation was not high on Rosie’s wish list, after stomping in a puddle, exchanging greetings with a trucker, and hiking six blocks into work, she needed a few extra minutes. And needed a few more to negotiate a parking space with a lawyer.

Considering what faced her, she also needed that free cup of coffee.

She scanned the room. Looked as though an interior decorator had had a breakdown in here. On one wall were several paintings of landscapes. Rosie fought a surge of homesickness as she scanned the images of rolling earth and sky, the type of world in which she’d spent most of her twenty-six years. She quickly shifted her gaze to another wall, where an arrangement of round brass thing-amajigs, covered with beads and feathers, hung. One of the round thingamajigs, on closer inspection, was a clock whose face was embedded in an old chrome steering wheel.

“Here’s your coffee,” Ben said pleasantly, handing her a steaming mug. He headed around the pine desk and sat in a high-backed swivel chair.

He had an ease about him, which surprised Rosie. And he wasn’t dressed in a stuffy suit—the way lawyers in the movies dressed—but in slacks and a light pullover. The sweater’s blue-and-smoke diamond pattern complemented his brown hair, a café au lait color, and his blue eyes. Maybe his office hadn’t settled on a style, but he definitely had one. And although she’d tried to ignore it, his style had a sexy edge. A slow, feverish heat tickled her insides.

“Thank you,” she croaked, wishing her voice would behave. Forget the voice—she wished her body would behave! She quickly diverted her attention to the graphic on the cup and stared at James Dean, a cigarette dangling from his lips, slouched in front of the marquee Rebel Without a Cause. Did Ben Taylor think the image of some studly movie star would mollify her? At the very least, he should have picked her a cup that didn’t have cars drag racing in the background. If she looked closely enough, she’d probably find one of the cars sneaking up on a parking space, too.

“My, uh, interior decorator got me these,” he explained, catching her reaction. “It’s a set of mugs called the Golden Age of Hollywood…from my, uh, decorator’s Tinseltown theme era. I prefer to use my china for guests, but it appears my receptionist took them home for a party….” His voice trailed off as he cast a tired gaze around the room, stopping on a framed poster of Jimmy Stewart under the title Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

He seemed preoccupied with Jimmy Stewart, so Rosie took a sip of James Dean, nearly groaning as the sweet hot liquid warmed her mouth. That was one of the problems of being perpetually late. She never had the time to savor something as toe-tinglingly delightful as a great cup of java. She closed her eyes, inhaling the roasted scent, savoring the moment. “This is delicious,” she murmured.

When she opened her eyes, Ben was staring at her with a twinkle in his. “Appreciate your enjoyment,” he said, his voice dropping to a husky register.

Their gazes locked for a long moment. Rosie’s heart hammered so hard, she swore the sound must be echoing off the walls. She gripped the cup, not wanting it to slip out of her suddenly moist palms. Minutes ago, he’d simply been ILITIG8. Now he was a powerful, exciting presence that unnerved her body and ignited her libido.

She wanted to kick herself. She wasn’t here to enjoy herself, but to be angry. To demand her rights! “Is that what you lawyers do?” she began, breaking the charged silence. At least her voice was behaving better—it wasn’t croaking anymore. “Do you wear people down with coffee and movie stars so they forget what they’re fighting for?”

“Movie stars?” He looked perplexed. “What are they fighting for?”

She casually wiped one moistened palm against her skirt. “You stole my parking space.”

“Stole it?” he repeated. He motioned in the general direction of north. “The space behind the stairs, next to the back entrance?”

She leveled him her sternest look. “Right.”

“Wrong.” Cocking an eyebrow, he took a swig from his mug, decorated with a sloe-eyed Marlene Dietrich in a top hat. Lowering his drink, she swore he flinched when he looked at the movie title over Marlene’s head, Blonde Venus. He plunked down the mug, too hard, and opened his desk drawer. “Yesterday I paid the monthly rental fee for the space my car is currently occupying.”

She blinked, surprised. “Yesterday? So did I.”

“Perhaps you paid for another parking space,” he suggested, rummaging through the drawer.

“No, that’s my space.”

He held up a piece of paper. “Here’s my receipt. Do you have yours?”

“Somewhere. At home.” Probably in the pile of paper on the edge of her dresser. Or maybe in the pile of paper in the fruit basket that hung in her kitchen. “Yes,” she said. In some pile.

He handed her the piece of paper. “I believe this has all the pertinent information.”

Pertinent. Trust a lawyer to not simply say “information.” As though “pertinent information” gave it an extra distinction. She read the handwritten receipt, upon which was typed his name, yesterday’s date and the number C1001.

“C1001. Maybe that’s another pertinent space,” she said, handing back the paper.

He gave her an odd look before responding. “According to their chart, the Cs are the spaces behind the stairs.”

This was getting nowhere. She didn’t have her receipt. She didn’t know C spaces from Z ones. And she really didn’t want to do the six-block trek again tomorrow morning. She wanted back her space, free and clear, today. For that matter, she wanted back her common sense—to not let some Michael J. Fox look-alike with a killer Harrison Ford grin get the better of her. She cleared her throat. “The building office has copies of our receipts. I suggest we discuss this with them at lunchtime. Shall we meet there at…noon?”

He opened his appointment book. A few strands of his straight hair, parted neatly on the side, fell forward as he bent his head to scan a page. Looking up, he said pleasantly, “Noon’s fine.”

“Noon, then,” she said. He had a receipt, an appointment book, two secretaries it appeared, matching mugs, a BMW, and a sweater with the same cornsilk blue as his eyes. Rosie, the mud-sloshed misfit, felt as though she had nothing, not even the space she came in here to get. To make up for it she irrationally vowed to have the last word, before she left.

She downed another gulp of coffee, which she’d barely swallowed when she realized Ben was standing. She meant to set her cup on the carved coffee table next to her chair, but the bottom of the mug hit the table edge, causing the coffee to splatter onto her stockings and the carpet.

Ben lunged forward, grasping the cup the same time as she stabilized it. They hunched together in the center of the room, like two coffee cup worshipers, Ben’s hands encircling hers. Rosie tried not to notice the warmth of his fingers. Or the musky scent of his cologne. Or the rising heat within her that had nothing to do with the hot coffee.

“You spilled coffee on your tights,” Ben murmured, the tender roughness in his voice sending a delicious shiver down her spine.

Belatedly, she felt the warm liquid on her legs. Looking down, though, it was difficult to decipher which splotches were mud and which were coffee. She sure knew how to make an impression.

Ignoring her tights, she straightened. “See you at noon.”

Ben, dropping his hands, stood with her. He had to be six feet to her five-three. “That’s right. Noon.”

“Yes, noon.” She turned and headed toward the reception area.

“I’ll be in the building office at noon,” he called out.

Rosie stopped. He had to get in the last word, didn’t he? Looking over her shoulder, she said, “Yes. Noon.” There. He wouldn’t dare out-noon her again.

“I was talking to Heather.”

“Oh.” Rosie did a modified speed-walk through the reception area, passed the two women who were staring at the couch, and went out the door. Only when Rosie was in the hallway did she realize she was still clutching James Dean.

2

“MR. REAL RAN OFF with a woman named Boom Boom?” asked an incredulous Rosie, who had barely sat down before her best pal, Pam, rushed into the editorial department to tell her the office gossip.

As Pam leaned closer, Rosie caught the familiar scent of her friend’s patchouli perfume. “Hold on,” Pam whispered, “it gets better. Boom Boom is a bongo-playing stripper.” Pam mimed playing bongos, a mischievous twinkle in her chocolate-brown eyes. At the end of her impromptu performance, she said, “I was dying to tell you the moment I heard, but you were awfully late….” She raised her eyebrows expectantly.

“Had to park six blocks away. Has Teresa been looking for me?”

“Nope. She got pulled into a powwow. Bigwigs are brainstorming how to replace Mr. Real overnight.”

Rosie’s mind reeled as the facts fully sank in. She didn’t know what was more shocking—that the graying, habit-driven Real Men magazine columnist known as Mr. Real had thrown his career into the air, or that Boom Boom could bongo while boom-booming. Back in Colby, the most scandalous occurrence of the past ten years was when Bobby-Joe Reed mooned ol’ Mrs. Ferguson, who hadn’t been able to talk for weeks afterward—a condition her doctor called post-traumatic stress.