I really am in a pickle.

On a brief back country sojourn with a client last week ? and previous encounters of the first kind (first being passing conversation and fifth being sexual engagement in a non-public space) ? I have decided that I rather fancy this man-client.

After casual weekly interaction, of which at least 50 percent involves very important-looking fine-printed documents of which millions of rands are to be spent between us, I went and lost my mind.

It all started innocently enough. Emotion was the last thought on my mind.

Until a few weeks ago, that is. Then the threads started to loosen from around my oxytocin hormones. I started imagining this man pulling me over the boardroom table, eyes glazed, and embarking in another sort of collaborative interlocking with me ? one that didn't need paperwork.

I think the problem started when we started becoming friends. Getting to know a person before diving into any sort of skin-touching liaison is never a bad idea, and anyway I always like making new friends. And barely-sexual mitigation with a client isn't completely wrong ? especially if things only materialise from a moral standpoint and business is dealt with.

Becoming attached

My issue is none of these; penis-in-the-pay-packet occurs in offices all over the world. But he's a good looking hunk of spunk, and we have a fair bit in common outside of office affairs. We've had drinks together, we've socialised, and we've been well-behaved. But that's what bothers me.

Why? Well, because very knowingly, I realise that my gung-ho libido is gunning for a person that prefers to point his nethers elsewhere.

I get that he likes me as both a business partner and friend, that he respects my work and that we can also have a good time together, you know, both checking out tasty looking specimens of the opposite sex in unison.

That we both can do this in front of each other means that this situation isn't completely detrimental. I'm not so hung up over the guy that I feel a pang of jealousy or immediate deflation when he's with another woman. I'm usually quite happy for him.

Mutual feelings?

And in the same measure, I happily date and am with other men myself. However, I am not a woman to waste my time on someone who doesn't feel the same way about me as I do about them. It really is one of my hard and fast rules.

We've all undergone some sort of subjective pining in our lives (at least if you're human), but we usually remember how destructive that pining can be.

Unrequited love, lust, anything like that, isn't romantic.

Just look at Atonement. It's not all poetry and hopeless staring into the distance. It's destructive and taxing on the self-esteem, that's what it is. Leaving you questioning what is wrong with you, and starting to doubt your own very star-like qualities.

So, this sort of behaviour leaves me unbelievably frustrated.

The healthy and right way to look at unrequited feelings is to know that you're just not attractable to another person. It's not personal; it's not their fault they don't share your lust. And prodding at that person reeks of desperation. That's never been my style.

It also involves too much cognitive thought, overanalysing and wondering, and frankly, who has the time?

Spill the beans?

Not I. If I'm the strong, assertive and knowing woman I am, then I'd choose not to spend too much valuable time thinking about this person. But what do I do? Do I sign off the project to someone else so that I don't have to work with him anymore? Do I carry on as normal, trying not to look at how his chest hairs peek out of the top of his shirt, and focus on the writing on the paper? Or, heaven forbid, do I tell him?

The man would probably need some sort of explanation as to why I've decided not to attend his board meetings anymore, and perhaps brutal honesty is where it's at. However, any explanation, I feel would sound lame and ridiculous. I don't know if he knows. I don't know if he knows that I know that he maybe knows.

He probably knows.

And what would I say? "Sorry I can't work with you anymore because you make me feel hot. And I'm only saying this because self-preservation is my number one priority?"

Perhaps I just need to stop being a girl. And go on a date with a guy who asked me out last week.

Maybe I will?