He was at the end of his story, and it had taken a lot out of him. His shoulders slumped. But he had one more thing to say. “I hope this isn’t a problem for you.”
It was, but to say so would be petty. Besides, there were larger issues at stake here, and they were all insurmountable. Jenessa shook her head. Her voice was thick with regret. “It’s not about her.”
“Good.”
“But still . . . we can’t. I can’t do this.”
“Why not?”
“It won’t work,” she answered, stubbornly refusing to articulate her reasons, because even rattling around in her head they sounded weak.
“How do you know unless you’ve tried?” He slid down from his perch on the desk and stood above her.
From her point of view, she could see a mass of broad, denim-clad chest, a neat waist, and muscled hips and thighs. The way he was poised above her, he could have been about to give her a lap dance. She remembered how those thighs had felt pressing against her. She looked up at his face.
“Don’t do this to yourself,” he told her. “To us.”
“Do what?”
“Deprive us of something that could be so good. Something we both want.”
She opened her mouth to deny wanting anything he could have to offer, but didn’t have the heart to utter such a blatant lie. Besides, he cut off any opportunity for speech by gently slipping the tip of his finger between her lips. In surprise, her mouth closed over it, giving her the most erotic, nerve-jarring sensation. Her mouth flooded with wetness, and in response, his eyelids drooped. Her tongue flicked against his fingertip.
He inhaled sharply, bent forward, and brought his mouth to her ear, brushing aside a wisp of hair as he did so. “I’ve always wanted to do it on a desk. Haven’t you?”
She almost started coughing. He took his finger away with obvious regret. Surely he wasn’t suggesting . . . he didn’t think. . . . Jenessa looked around the office, a sudden paranoia over hidden cameras and microphones overtaking her. Wasn’t that how people got busted? She had a vision of Merlin, with his magical knack of turning up unannounced and at the most inappropriate times, barging through her door like Cosmo Kramer and getting the shock of his young life.
Mitchell laughed. “Oh, no, baby, I haven’t an exhibitionist bone in my body. But it’s a nice thought, isn’t it?” He brushed his lips against her earlobe, and she almost cried out. “Just something for you to mull over, make your workday a little brighter.”
Mull over? Now that he’d buried the suggestion inside her, she’d be lucky to get any work done. Scratch that; she’d be lucky she didn’t slide off her chair. She crossed her legs. Why didn’t he just go away so she could turn into a puddle in peace?
“Still have that book of poems in your drawer?” he wanted to know.
She could only nod.
The finger that had been in her mouth tripped lightly down her throat and across her collarbones. “Do you read it in here, when you’re alone?”
Again, a nod.
His smile was sensual, his voice loaded with suggestion. “Page 42. One of my favorites. Keep it in mind until next we meet—which’ll be sooner than you think.”
She hadn’t a clue what could be on page 42, but her mind whirled with a kaleidoscope of happy possibilities. She wondered if he intended to dramatize any of the delectable scenes she’d find there. If her nipples got any harder, they’d hurt like hell. “Shouldn’t . . . ” she choked, “doesn’t Sharona want to see you?”
“Mmm. She does.”
“Well, maybe you ought to—”
“Maybe I should give her a call and tell her I’m right on top of something.”
She cracked a smile. “Probably not a good idea.”
He sighed heavily. “Okay. You’ll be off the hook in a sec—soon as you answer me one question.”
She knew that to ask would be looking for trouble, but she did anyway. “What?”
“If I kissed you before I left, would you report me to HR?”
“I suspect,” she said slowly, “that would implicate me as well as you.”
“Code of silence, then,” he murmured, as his lips touched hers. Her mouth opened at first contact. The kiss was light, deliberately so, the kiss of a man who yearned to mine her depths for more, but who knew he had to be content with just the tiny flecks of gold to be found near the surface. It was short—too short—but she groaned, partly in response to sudden, sharp, stinging desire, and partly out of regret that it had to end.
“There, now,” he whispered as he straightened up and stepped back. “That’s what we both want. And we can have it if you’ll just—” His chest rose sharply, and then fell. He walked to the door and put his hand on the doorknob.
Jenessa sat in her chair, unable to get up, as if she’d been nailed there. The fantasy he’d planted in her mind had already taken root. She wanted to fling out her arms and sweep everything off her desk onto the floor; inbox, phone, documents. She wanted to plant her bottom down in the middle of the desk—since everyone seemed to think it was the place for sitting—and enjoy the incredulous look on Mitchell’s face as she inched her skirt up above her knees, past her thighs, and further. The hapless Merlin, and everyone else, be damned.
The smile that danced at the corners of his mouth told her he knew what she was thinking. His glance moved from the desk to her mouth, and then to the hint of cleavage that showed above her sensible, stylish blouse. “Soon,” he promised, and left.
9.
Mitch stood outside Sharona’s office and let the wall support him. Funny how life went. Half an hour before he was exiting Jenessa’s office, all warm and flushed from their encounter, his mind whirring with the promise of being with her again soon. Taking her down the path they both knew they were heading. Half an hour ago, his biggest worry was that his arousal would be evident to anyone he happened to bump into in the hallway. He’d had to slip into the men’s room to splash water on his face and give himself a few minutes to cool down. Now he was leaving another woman’s office, and the flush of warmth Jenessa had awakened within him was stone cold dead.
In its place were shock and anger. Worry and anxiety too, but not for himself. Bianchi’s was swinging its sword with the brutality of a samurai warrior, mowing victims down left and right. Among them were nine of his own people. Good people, he wasn’t ashamed to tell Sharona as he begged for their jobs. It was out of her hands, she’d said. The decision had been made well above her head. There was nothing she could do.
Like hell there wasn’t. Mitch could sniff out insincerity like a wild pig could scent truffles, and Sharona reeked of it. Like the rest of the senior executives, she saw the working men and women who made Bianchi’s run at the most fundamental level as resources, not people. And now he had to go and tell these “resources” that in a matter of weeks they’d be jobless.
He worked his way through the maze of hallways toward his office like a man walking the green mile to his execution. His legs felt heavy, his feet like rocks. After a brief hesitation, he shouldered open the door to the Maintenance department. The grimness in the air was palpable, the smell of despair so thick, it was as if a leak from the sewers had filled the room with noxious gas. He wasn’t going to have to break the bad news to his staff. They already knew. Bianchi’s grapevine was swifter than the most sophisticated communications network.
He kicked the door shut, one hand coming up instinctively to rub at a knot forming at the base of his skull. Off to the left, in a corner of the room, Antonia, one of his junior electricians, rubbed at her red eyes with the sleeve of her coveralls. She was just 23, but she already had two children. Coleman, a 48-year-old, scraggly-bearded CAD specialist in a washed-out Slayer T-shirt, threw his stylus down, stomped past Mitch and out the door without looking at him.
As always, Omari was seated at Mitch’s desk, but he exhibited none of his usual joviality. His dark eyes weren’t challenging Mitch to evict him from his space. His shoulders were hunched, his
elbows on the table and his fingers laced together, thumbs circling each other like agitated birds at a cockfight.
Mitchell approached the table and planted both hands palm down in front of his friend and right-hand man. “I’m sorry, man.”
“How many of us?”
“Nine.”
Omari stared down at the pile of paperclips he’d been straightening out. He picked one up and jabbed it into the thickest part of his palm, as if trying to prove to himself he was still alive. “Dog, I’m fifty-two. I’m too old for this. Too old to go looking for another—”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Mitch declared. “I’ll find a way. I’m keeping my people.”
“Not up to you. It’s up to . . .” He jerked his chin contemptuously in the direction of the Executive Wing “. . . them. And they already called it.”
“You’re my staff,” he said firmly. “I should have a say in what happens to you.”
Omari snorted. “You tell that to Holmes?”
“Something to that effect.”
“What’d she say?”
He was forced to admit, “That she couldn’t do anything about it.”
“That’s crap, and you know it. She’s a freaking vice president. Tell me she don’t got a say in what happens to her staff. But you think management gives a rat’s ass ‘bout us? You think Sharona Holmes, or for that matter, that little blonde bit of skirt you been chasing—”
Mitch flinched.
“—give a shit what goes on down here? Who stays and who goes? ‘Bout what’s gonna happen to our families?”
“If they don’t care, I’ll make them. I’m going down to HR right now. If that doesn’t work, I’m taking it to Tony Goodman, and the Board—”
Omari shot up. “Mitch, whyn’t you get it through your thick skull? Talking to HR won’t do a lick of good.” He punctuated his words with a pudgy forefinger in the air. “You want to go to the Board, go ahead. Waste your breath. Ain’t nothing they gonna do ‘less they want to. You think it ain’t in their best interest to get rid of us? Oh, nothing dries up the milk of human kindness like a big fat check.”
He scowled, puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“Bonuses,” Omari spat. His heavy jowls waggled with the force of the utterance. “It’s Christmas. Don’t you know they all gone and paid themselves a nice fancy bonus?”
“But we all got Christmas bonuses,” he reminded him.
Omari snorted. “Chump change. We got a few weeks’ pay. Y’all department heads, y’all did all right. An extra month and a half? Two?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, lemme tell you. Your little manager friend? Her and all the others? Six months’ pay, my man. The VPs and up? Nine months.”
Mitch gaped. Staff was being cut and the executives had creamed off nine months’ pay as a bonus?
Omari pursed his lips grimly. “Yeah. Now you read me. Where you think that money’s coming from? Wages that shoulda come to us, that’s where. They let us fall, and then they step over us and keep on truckin’.” He slapped his hand on the desk, a hollow, angry sound. “Think ‘bout that next time you go sniffing ‘round them long, long legs—”
“Jenessa’s got nothing to do with this,” he cut in sharply. Omari was his friend, but there had to be a line, and that line ran right across anything that happened between him and her. “She’s not at the level to make those decisions.” Out of the corner of his eye, Mitch could see Antonia straightening up, her frown deepening, wet eyes focused on him. She was listening intently.
“Oh, but she pocketed the money, all right. Ain’t handed it back, did she? Question is: can’t you see what that means?”
“What’s it mean?” he asked, resigning himself to an answer he already knew was coming.
“Means you messin’ where you don’t belong. There’s two camps, my friend, one for people like us, and one for people like them. And you can crawl over to that camp on your belly like some damn Indian scout, thinkin’ to take yourself a scalp, but all you got is a hunting knife, and them, they got enough firepower to blow you way back to yesterday, they see fit.”
Mitch didn’t believe it. At least, not about Jenessa. The person he sensed, the person he wanted to know, wasn’t like that. But it was no use trying to explain that to Omari. The man was upset, and well he should be. He was going to lose his job. His instinct was to defend her, but out of respect for his friend’s pain, he said nothing.
Omari took his silence for permission to continue. Behind him, Antonia was glaring, making no secret of her interest in the conversation and her affront at what little she could glean from it. “What you got to ask yourself,” Omari went on, “what you need to decide, is where you wanna be? Who you with? You one of them, or you one of us?”
“I’ll do everything in my power to help you,” Mitchell promised, since Omari’s challenge didn’t bear a response.
But in Omari’s eyes, his non-sequitur was an answer in its own right. He turned away, spitting out the paper clip he’d been clenching between his teeth. “Don’t bother,” he said roughly. “We can fight our own fight. We can help ourselves.”
As he walked away, his sleeve caught on the edge of a pile of books, knocking them to the floor. He didn’t stop to help pick them up.
10.
Jenessa stuck a crystal-tipped bobby pin into her elegantly upswept hair with a little too much force, grazing her scalp. She muttered a few unladylike words and repositioned the pin. She surveyed herself critically in the mirror. Her long hair was piled on the crown of her head with a few wispy curls framing her face from temple to nape. She had her party face on: glowing makeup with shimmering eyes and lips, lashes thick and dark, eyebrows freshly shaped. Tiny Swarovski crystals adorned her earlobes, complementing the half-dozen pins sparkling in her hair.
Going to a party, dateless and frustrated, was the last thing she wanted to do right now. Exasperated, she stopped fussing with her hair and threw down her comb. What was wrong with her? It was New Year’s Eve. The whole world was in a party mood. Even with many hours yet ‘till midnight, the kids in the neighborhood were setting off firecrackers. The Grangers were expecting her in thirty minutes, and though she didn’t anticipate having a wild and crazy time, at least she’d be with friends.
So what was the problem?
The answer to that question was wrapped around her wrist: small jade stones that burned into her skin, reminding her of their presence and the man behind them. Since he’d gifted her with the bracelet at the office party, she’d hardly removed it. In her mind, it had become almost a talisman, a tangible projection of the man himself. A reminder that she didn’t need to be alone if she didn’t want to. A promise.
Which went to show you how irrational a woman could become once she’d been gathering dust on the shelf awhile. Yesterday, Mitchell had come to her office specifically to ask her out tonight, and what had she done? Turned him down. She had all the best reasons in the world; they both knew this was going nowhere. But instead of enjoying the satisfaction of a decision well made, she felt nothing but regret and a yawning ache inside. She could have been out with Mitchell tonight.
Dammit.
She huffed, turned, and went to her spacious walk-in closet, where she’d separated two equally dazzling dresses from the rest of the herd. One was a slinky silver number that made the gold in her hair shine brighter by contrast. The other was turquoise silk. Both opened down the front; she just needed to slip them around her shoulders, pop her feet into her shoes, and grab her purse. She folded her arms and studied them, still trying to make up her mind. She was on the brink of going eeny-meeny-miney-mo when her buzzer rang.
She looked around, puzzled, knowing it came from someone at her door but so thrown by the unexpected sound that her mind tried to find other sources for it. Had her bedside alarm gone off? Her cell phone hadn’t spontaneously changed its ringtone, had it? Because paper boys and delivery men aside, no one had rung that bell in a long time
.
The sound came again. She looked down at herself. Her white, flower-patterned cheongsam-styled dressing gown had seen better days, and it was a little . . . well . .. brief. Not suited for greeting people—whoever they were—at the front door. More irritated than puzzled, she snatched up a blanket from her bed, wrapped it hastily around her, and opened the French doors leading from bedroom to balcony just enough for her to slip out onto the bracing night in her slippered feet, so she could look down at her intruder from above.
Below, Mitchell responded instinctively to the sound of the opening door, and turned in her direction, looking up. His grin at the sight of her was so wide, he practically glowed in the moonlight. “Hey, Pocahontas.”
She made a fuss of pulling her blanket closer to win herself a few extra seconds to get over the shock of seeing him—and to disguise the unexpected delight. “Ha, ha.” Then, she added, “How’d you find me?”
“Miracle of modern science. They’re thinking of calling it a phone book.”
“Oh. Right.” She looked down at him in wonder. He was wearing his navy pea coat, but it was unbuttoned. Underneath, a light-colored turtleneck topped dark slacks. He held something heavy in one hand, some sort of shiny box tied together with red string. He wasn’t wearing a hat. What kind of lunatic stood around outdoors in this temperature without a hat, she wondered. For that matter, what kind of lunatic stood on her balcony wrapped in a blanket?
He seemed to be thinking the same thing. “Does your front door work?”
“Huh?”
“I could try to make it up the balcony. Don’t see a trellis, though. I’d slither up that column, if I thought it’d hold my weight.”
The Irresistible Mr Cooper Page 9
