by Inara Scott
“Because I keep leaving work early and coming in late. And I’m distracted when I’m there.”
“Oh really?” She fluttered her lashes. “Why are you so distracted?”
“You know exactly why I’m distracted. But Mason thinks I’m pining away for you. He wants me to get over it,” he said ruefully. “He called going to Sonoma exposure therapy. I have no idea how this is supposed to work, but apparently he thinks you’ll be celebrating and flirting with other guys and this is going to help me.”
“Huh.” Zoe tapped her lip. “An interesting theory. Now, tell me why, exactly, if you’ve had a thing for me for a while, you haven’t ever asked me out?”
He slid his hand to her cheek, then through the long hair at the nape of her neck. Her eyes fluttered closed. He placed a kiss on her jawline, then another behind her ear. “Because I knew it would be like this. I knew one night would never be enough.”
When he captured her lips, she melted into him. “Well,” she murmured. “I guess you were right.”
For a moment, he let himself forget about all the reasons they couldn’t be. He forgot about their jobs and their work, their mutual friends and the residual damage that would come when the whole thing went to shit. He forgot about logic and the future.
And he just felt.
Felt the way her body was like quicksilver, hot and liquid, a part of him and yet not. He felt her mouth move under his, the welcome of her, the depth of her response. They ended up on his bed, his hands under her shirt, her skin so soft it hardly seemed real. She panted, shifted, impatiently pulled his shirt over his head and ran her hands down his body.
They were so finely attuned to each other he knew the moment her body took over her brain. He could feel when she lost control of her own hands and let his mouth take over. He ran sweet fire across her nipples, traced the edges of her rib cage and the curve of her navel. He continued to lick and tug, moving lower to her core, to suck and stroke until she was wet and open, urging him on with her hips and her low moans of pleasure.
They were so connected he could run his tongue along her, feel her pull almost to a climax, and then release her just before she went over the edge. He didn’t know if she was speaking out loud or if he could just hear her in his mind, begging for more. It hardly mattered, because her hands were in his hair and her head moved from side to side on the pillow, and he was not going to stop until they’d both gone higher than ever before.
He kissed her mouth again, shed the rest of his clothes, and grabbed a condom. Then he urged her onto her stomach, ran his hands over her bottom and pulled her up to fit her against him.
“Oh yes,” she murmured, arching her back. “That’s it. Just like that.”
He ran his hand along her spine, cupped her buttocks and pressed against her. She moaned and thrust back against him, lowering to her elbows and looking back over her shoulder.
“This,” he said, slowly guiding his length into her. “This is why.”
He didn’t even know what he was saying. This is why he needed her? This is why he knew better than to admit it? This is why he could never really have her?
He paused to savor the feeling of her wet heat all around him, holding him tight. Then he moved his hands to her hips, guiding her as he thrust all the way in, and then pulling back just enough to bury himself again, even more deeply than before.
“More,” she begged, dropping her head onto the sheets and meeting his every thrust.
More pressure? More pleasure? His or hers? He couldn’t distinguish. He leaned forward and wrapped one arm around her, found the center of her need and teased it, matching the beat of his hands and the thrust of his hips. She cried out, begged for release, and he gave it, sent her spiraling over the edge, shuddering and shaking against his hand. She quaked and shook, tightening on his length, and the feeling of her climax was so intense he could no longer hold back. With a harsh cry, he let loose, came along with her, and released himself into her.
…
Zoe clutched the handle of her briefcase and told herself to relax. No reason to panic. She carefully examined the beautiful floor-to-ceiling three-story windows and their view of the golden-hued vineyard outside the retreat center and fought for calm.
This was simply a meeting with a potential client. Nothing she couldn’t handle. Nothing she hadn’t handled many times before.
She was the best at what she did.
She had this.
Right. Funny how mantras were much easier when you were reading them in a meme on Instagram than when you were actually trying to believe them.
A gray-haired woman wearing a name tag that identified her as staff of the retreat center met her in the hallway. “Ms. Riva? I can take you to meet with Mr. Aims now.”
They made their way down a long hallway, past several conference rooms to a small lounge that looked out over rolling hills crisscrossed with trellises. Thanks to a warm fall, some of the grapevines still had their leaves, painting the earth with brilliant yellow and deep crimson. It was hard not to fall in love with Sonoma on a day like today, with temperatures in the low seventies and a crisp breeze bringing the smell of fall to the air.
There was a bar on the side of the room with a variety of wineglasses displayed overhead. Sitting on a stool was the man Zoe had been working so hard to meet, a glass of red wine in front of him.
He turned as she approached, standing and extending his hand in greeting. He was shorter than she had realized, coming just a few inches above her full stiletto-augmented height, slender in the shoulders, with a round face and soft, pale skin that belied his age of forty-eight. “Zoe. Nice to meet you. Thanks for taking the time to travel all the way out here.”
“Mr. Aims.” She gave his hand a quick, professional shake. “I appreciate you giving me an excuse to come out to Sonoma for the night.”
He motioned for her to sit next to him at the bar. “Please. Call me Chuck. Can I get you a glass of wine? They’ve got a great cabernet from 2014.”
Zoe took at look at his glass. “What do you have there?”
“The cab.” He picked up his glass and swirled the wine, then held it up to look at the trails of liquid down the side of the glass. “I’m usually more of a whiskey drinker, but I figure if you’re in Sonoma, you might as well have a glass of wine.”
“You bought an interest in the Whiskey Brothers distillery, didn’t you?” Zoe asked.
“I did.” He looked at her with a hint of a challenge. “You a whiskey drinker?”
She smiled. “You know, if you’d asked me that a month ago, I would have said no. But recently I’ve developed a real appreciation for it.”
“That’s wise of you,” he drawled with just a bit of a challenging gleam in his eye. “What’s your favorite?”
“For sipping or mixing?” she countered.
He cocked his head to study her. “Either.”
“Jameson for sipping,” she said, “and it depends on the cocktail.”
“Huh.” He paused. “Ever tried Pappy Van Winkle?”
Pappy Van Winkle was an absurdly expensive brand of bourbon that, of course, Connor had insisted she try. Zoe shrugged. “Tried it, but I prefer the Four Roses Small Batch.”
Aims raised a brow. “People pay thousands of dollars for a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle.”
“People overpay for a lot of things,” Zoe said, hoping like hell that Aims himself wasn’t a true believer. “I prefer the scrappy underdog, myself. The one that flies under the radar and doesn’t rely on a big reputation to do the work for them.”
“Really.” She squirmed inside as he studied her, knowing she had just taken a huge risk. When he smiled and raised his wineglass in a silent toast, she knew the gamble had paid off. “You prefer to the do the work yourself, I expect?”
She inclined her head, acknowledging that the subject of the conversation had shifted. “Absolutely. And I don’t push off work to junior associates and then overbill for something I didn’t do.”
“T
hat would be nice. So, what do you think about electric motorcycles, Zoe?”
Showtime.
Zoe took a deep breath. “I have to admit that I haven’t ridden one myself.” She held up her casted wrist. “I got my hands on a Southcycle a couple of weeks ago, but the owner was smart enough not to let me try it out. Beautiful bike.”
He inclined his head. “We like to think so. How did you break your wrist, by the way?”
“Honestly?” She laughed. “Scooter accident.”
He shuddered. “And people think motorcycles are dangerous? I swear, those things should be illegal.”
Zoe had to admit, it had never occurred to her that her scooter injury might actually work in her favor. “Well, I know what I want my next ride to be, and it’s not a scooter.”
She reeled off the information she’d been studying for the past two weeks—the technology underlying the Southcycle bikes, their challenges and their areas of strength in the market. Aims only interrupted her twice, both times to try to draw her off track by offering a misleading statistic or partial truth about a competitor. She was polite but firm in rejecting his attempts to derail her, and each time she rebuffed him, he grinned.
They had talked for close to an hour when an older man joined them at the bar. “Hey, Chuck, sorry to interrupt, but we’re heading into town for a drink before dinner. You want to come?”
“No, thanks, Al.” He indicated his head toward Zoe. “This is Zoe Riva. She’s an attorney, but don’t hold that against her.”
She stood and shook his hand. “I like to think of myself as a recovering engineer. I do patent law now.”
“Engineer?” He gave her a regretful look. “I hate to hear about one of our own going over to the dark side.”
“Ah, I’m still one of the good guys, I swear.”
They chatted for a few minutes and found a person or two in common that they knew, including one of Zoe’s old professors at Berkeley. When Al left, Zoe rejoined Aims at the bar. “Please don’t let me keep you from joining your folks,” she said.
“I’m not much for the bar scene,” he said. “Besides, I got to ask all my questions. Now it’s your turn. What do you want to know about Southcycle?”
It was time to take another risk. She drew in a breath. “Actually, I’d like to ask you a personal question, if I may.”
He looked surprised. “Personal? I suppose it depends on the question.”
“Why don’t you hire more women?” she asked bluntly.
“My engineering staff is fifteen percent female,” he replied, surprising her with the ease with which he responded to the question. “Which isn’t high, but it’s above average for the total number of practicing engineers.”
“You don’t have a single female executive at Southcycle,” she pointed out.
“Like fifty percent of Silicon Valley, you mean?”
Again, impressive that he knew the statistics. Either he actually did care about it, or someone had complained about it to him. Even if it was only the latter, she liked that it was on his radar. “And you’re content with that?”
He shrugged. “Not a big priority for me. I’m here to hire good people and make the fastest bikes in the world. That’s all I care about.”
“Did you know studies show diverse boards produce higher returns? And that companies with female executives report higher earnings? And teams with different perspectives produce more creative results?”
“I did not know that.” He tapped on his chin. “What about companies with female attorneys? How do they perform?”
She grinned, feeling the first hint of success. “Anecdotally, they report much higher customer satisfaction. And they beat the hell out of their opponents in court.”
“I think I like you, Zoe Riva. Enough of this bullshit wine. Let’s have a couple rounds of bourbon.” He waved to the bartender. “You have Four Roses?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
When Zoe got back to the small hotel they were staying at later that evening, her head was spinning, a smile kept threatening to break out across her face, and all she wanted to do was talk to Connor.
Her strategy had worked perfectly.
Before the meeting, she’d thought a lot about what Connor, the GPGs, and Cece had all said—that it was fine to try to get to know the subjects Aims was into, but that she had to be herself if she wanted to win the work and still feel good about it. So instead of talking only about his interests, she’d decided to push him a little on the things that were important to her—and important to his business.
To her surprise, Aims proved to have a complex perspective on the issue of women in Silicon Valley. He knew his company didn’t have a great reputation when it came to diversity, but he had always considered himself to be employee driven. If his employees wanted parties at bars, he gave them parties at bars. Even if he didn’t particularly enjoy that, and even if it furthered an atmosphere that worked for some but not others, he figured that was just the way it went. Not socially adept himself, he’d always yielded to the desires of those around him.
As a scientist, he was intrigued by the studies Zoe had mentioned that showed the benefits of diversity. He’d always found it unfortunate that his workforce was so male but assumed his hands were tied. Wouldn’t it be reverse discrimination, he reasoned, if he tried to hire more women?
She’d explained the value of recruiting outside his normal avenues to find different types of candidates, and the need to create more family-friendly policies that would help retain both men and women who were caretakers. He admitted he had a few engineers with young kids who had asked if they could create more flexible schedules, but he’d been concerned that he’d create an atmosphere of favoritism. Zoe explained that there was a lot he could do that would be neither favoritism nor discrimination, but would nevertheless change the culture at Southcycle.
Aims was intrigued, though skeptical. It had been years since anyone had challenged the way he did business, and he said he liked Zoe’s guts, even if he thought some of the things she said were nonsense. Zoe wasn’t naive enough to believe change would be easy, or that Aims—or Southcycle—was going to transform overnight.
And yet, he was open to outside ideas, which at least made change possible. Zoe couldn’t help but think that what he needed was a disrupter. Someone who could shake up the team and provide an outside perspective. She didn’t know if she’d have the opportunity to be that person, but she knew she’d do a hell of a job at it.
When five o’clock rolled around, Aims had said that he needed to get ready for his banquet that evening. He said he’d contact her next week to let her know about the work. She didn’t know if she’d gotten the job, but she did know that she’d made the best effort she could.
Rafe and Luke had missed the meeting entirely. An accident on the 101 had closed the highway, and they’d texted her a little before five to say they weren’t going to make it. Zoe figured Connor and the other guys were caught in the same mess. Tess and Cecilia, on the other hand, had come up earlier that morning and were already at their hotel. They had texted to let her know they’d be waiting in the bar for her when she was done.
When she walked into the hotel, she saw the two women sitting in the bar. Cecilia waved her over. She looked as relaxed as Zoe had ever seen her, wearing a pair of faded jeans and a fluffy gray cardigan that both swamped her delicate frame and softened all her edges. “Complimentary wine hour,” she called. “Come join us!”
Tess, who was sitting next to her, raised her glass of wine with a smile. “Hey, Zoe, how was your meeting?” She pushed her enormous glasses higher on her nose. As usual, her thick brown hair was in the process of escaping a messy ponytail, and her army jacket looked like it had seen better days. Mason’s fiancée juggled multiple jobs as veterinary assistant, dog walker, and student, and her outfits usually showed it.
Zoe joined them at the bar. “It was great, actually. I won’t know for sure until next week, but I gave it my best shot.”
“Aims wasn’t too bad?” Cecilia asked.
“Not at all,” Zoe said. “I took your advice and tried to be myself, and I think it worked.” She explained how she’d managed to bring up a few serious issues in between discussing the merits of single malt versus blended whiskeys—and asking Aims about his dog.
“I told him my mom had a Chihuahua and I was thinking of getting her goggles and leathers to dress it in, and I asked if he knew where I could get some.”
Cece looked horrified. “You didn’t.”
Zoe giggled. “I did. But only because I saw a picture of a dog like that posted on the Southcycle homepage. I figured there was a chance it was Aims’s pooch, and I was right. He admitted he’s been dressing up his dog for years.”
“Well, that’s incredible,” Cece said, holding out her glass in a gesture of respect. “You’ve got serious guts, Zoe. Get yourself a glass of this chardonnay so we can officially toast your victory.”
Zoe was already sporting a healthy buzz from her meeting with Aims, but she figured this was one of those nights that called for celebration. “Sounds great.”
Cece motioned to the bartender. “Can we get another glass of the chardonnay? And maybe another round of cheese?”
“So what did the two of you do all day?” Zoe asked.
Tess moaned and dropped her head against the bar. “Looked at three gorgeous places where we could have the wedding, and added them to the list of five we’ve already seen around the Bay Area and another five in Marin. It’s been less than two months since we got engaged, and I swear I’m already way behind.”
“All you have to do is make some decisions, Tessie,” Cece said, ruffling her hair fondly. “You’ve got plenty of great options.”
“But I have no idea how,” the dark-haired woman cried, then softly knocked her head again on the polished wood. “Can’t we just elope?”
“If you want,” Cece said. “But I don’t think that’s really what you want.”
Tess picked up her head and turned to Zoe. “You know Mason. What do you think he’d like best? Rustic or contemporary? And how formal do you think we should make the reception? Plated dinner, I assume? I swear, I cannot believe how much they want to charge for a simple dinner. You’d think we were serving gold-plated food!”
