Izzy shook her head. “That doesn’t put him in the same category as your parents, it just makes him a smart businessman.”
“I know that, but I don’t want to be rich, or have Egyptian cotton sheets and heated bathroom floors, and I refuse to take anything for granted.”
Izzy shrugged. “Then don’t.”
“But he also moves in the same circles my parents did,” Sam argued. “People would realize who I was, eventually, and rip him apart for being associated with my family.”
“If he’s willing to take that risk, let him.”
“I can’t say whether he is or not, since he doesn’t know anything about my past.” Sam took a sip of coffee. Izzy was the only one who knew the full story about her life and what she’d been through. She’d never told another soul and probably never would.
Even though they were out of jail and had been for three years now, she had no intention of seeing them. Ever.
“But—” Izzy started.
“No,” Sam cut in. “No buts. He’s fun, and I like him, and he’s good in bed, but we have an agreement to keep things as-is, and I intend to hold him to it.”
“If you say so,” Izzy said, holding her hands up in surrender. “But if you ask me, it sounds like he wants more than that.”
Sam avoided her eyes. “He was just saying nice things because we got in a fight.”
“Or because he cares and wants more,” Izzy argued. “And judging by the fact that you’re continuing to hang with him against your better judgment, I’m going to guess that you do, too.”
“No, I don’t, because that would be stupid, and I’m not dumb.”
Izzy snorted. “Keep telling yourself that.”
She sipped her coffee, actively avoiding her friend’s gaze, and stumbled upon something she couldn’t believe. It was as if she’d magically conjured him by speaking about him. She blinked, doubting her vision, but sure enough, he stood outside the coffee shop, holding a briefcase and wearing the same long gray wool coat he’d left the apartment in this morning. The collar was upturned to protect him from Chicago’s biting wind, and his hair was mussed.
“That’s him,” she hissed, kicking Izzy under the table. “Out there.”
Izzy’s eyes widened. When she gasped, Sam grinned. “The guy in the Sherlock-esque jacket?”
“Mmhm.”
“I didn’t think anyone else could rock an upturned collar besides Benedict Cumberbatch, but damn.” She turned back to Sam, snapping her fingers. “If you’re not willing to risk it all for a guy who looks like that, you don’t deserve amazing sex. I take my gift back.”
Sam laughed. “You can’t do that.”
“Sure, I can. I’m magic, bitch.”
He had his back to her, so he hadn’t seen her. Watching him without his knowledge was wrong, but she was way too curious about what he was up to outside of the office to care too much.
“I wonder who he’s meeting,” Izzy said.
Sam stiffened, her mind going in a million different directions all at once. “What makes you think he’s meeting someone?”
“Why else would he hang outside in the cold when he could be in here where the coffee and heat is?” she asked. “Are you going to say hi to him or lower your head, wait to see if he sees you, and act surprised when he does, as if you didn’t see him coming from a mile away?”
Sam pursed her lips. “I’m gonna go with option B.”
“Then lower your head. He’s coming in with a girl—oh, she’s pretty.”
“What?” Sam snapped, lifting her head.
Sure enough, a gorgeous woman stood beside him, talking animatedly. He offered her an indulgent smile, and his eyes held a warmth that she thought had been reserved for her.
How silly of her.
“Maybe she’s a work colleague? Or a client?” Sam whispered.
Izzy nodded. “I’m sure.”
“It doesn’t mean anything—” Sam broke off.
Why?
Because the woman reached out and picked a fuzzy off his jacket, and he didn’t react at all. It was as if she did it all the time and had every right to touch him like that.
Who was she?
“That’s…SAM. She picked lint off him.”
Sam lowered her head, her heart twisting painfully. “I saw.”
“No one does that, except…”
Except people who were close. Like boyfriend/girlfriend close.
Why was this girl touching him like that?
“I know.” Jealousy and a deeper, sharper emotion which could only be called pain struck her heart. She stood, grabbing her coat with a trembling hand. “Let’s go, quick, before he sees me.”
Izzy grabbed her stuff, shooting a scowl at Taylor’s unknowing back. “Asshole.”
Sam swallowed, not bothering to defend him. As they made their way to the door, Sam’s heart sped up at the deep timbre of his voice. She was close to him. Too close.
“—and I told him to close the deal as soon as possible. The quicker we liquidate the assets and hit that bottom line, the quicker the pain will be over. I’m in line to make a lot of money off this one.”
The woman grinned. “Good job.”
Sam rolled her hands into fists.
Taylor and the mystery woman moved another step forward, still talking about the money about to hit his account. The woman laughed, patting him on the back as she spoke.
Green. Pure green.
That was her back. Her man.
Izzy tugged her sleeve. “Come on.”
“Yeah, okay.” She tore her eyes off them, heading for the door. “Let’s go.”
They almost made it when:
“Sam?” his voice called.
She stiffened, torn between pretending not to hear him and turning around.
“Hey, Sam!” he called even louder.
Izzy mouthed, “Oh, shit.”
Plastering a smile on her face, she spun. “Taylor. Hey.”
Her gaze slid past him to the woman who held a cup of coffee in her left hand. She had an engagement ring on her finger—a huge frigging diamond.
Oh God, she was going to be sick.
All over his shiny leather shoes.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
He didn’t introduce her to his friend. “Having coffee with Izzy.” She gestured to Izzy, who waved but didn’t smile. “You?”
“Having coffee, too,” he said, watching as his companion sat at the table they’d just left.
She forced the smile to remain. “I guess Monday is coffee day, huh?”
“Yeah.” He cocked a brow. “You okay?”
She nodded.
“Okay…” He glanced over his shoulder to the awaiting brunette. “Well, I should go. See you tonight at eight?”
She held her smile in place. “We’re still on?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t we be?” he asked slowly, running his fingers through his hair.
She shrugged.
He smiled at Izzy. “It was nice meeting you.”
Izzy tipped her head, still not smiling.
He walked off and sat with his companion. He was close enough for Sam to hear his date ask, “Who is she?”
Taylor shrugged. “A…friend. Hey, are we still going to that fundraiser at the museum Friday night?”
The brunette nodded.
“Okay, I’ll make arrangements for a car to pick us up,” he said, pulling his phone out.
Sam didn’t stick around to hear another word. She pushed through the doors, the lump in her throat threatening to cut off her oxygen. He’d secured a night out with another woman, right after making sure she was coming to his place later that night?
This didn’t seem like something Taylor would do.
There had to be a logical explanation to this.
Taylor might not be the relationship type of guy, but she hadn’t taken him for a more-than-one-woman-at-a-time kind of guy. So that woman…who was she?
And why did Sa
m have an invisible spike lodged in her chest?
Chapter Seventeen
Later that night, Taylor paced the length of his living room, checking the clock impatiently. It was half past eight, and Sam had been scheduled to show up at his place at eight.
Where the hell was she?
He hated tardiness and veering off schedule.
To be honest, though, she’d acted weird when they ran into one another at Starbucks, but he’d written it off as her just being surprised to see him outside of their prearranged times and had told himself that maybe she hadn’t liked him saying hello to her in front of her friend. Or maybe it was something else altogether, and he was reading too much into that one encounter.
But if so, what?
“Sir?” his secretary said through the phone.
He tightened his grip on his iPhone. “Yeah?”
“Should we go ahead with pressing Mr. Harper for an answer? We’ve given him the allotted waiting period.”
He hesitated, thinking of Sam.
There was no doubt that she was determined to save Harper Enterprises, but the thing was, they were too out of touch with current technological advances. The most they could hope for was a peaceful death of the company and a generous buyout—something Taylor could give them.
But with Sam trying to work the case from the other angle, not knowing he was the buyer she was fighting, there was no denying his reluctance to pull the trigger. If he closed the company she was working so hard to save, it might be the end of them. But if he didn’t close the deal, hundreds of jobs would be lost.
At least with his offer, some of those jobs would be saved.
It was his duty to push for acceptance, after the appropriate waiting period passed. That time had come and gone, so he had to follow up with Mr. Harper and show him why closing the business was his best option, no matter how painful that realization might be. In the end, Mr. Harper would agree, he just needed help getting there. That was where Taylor came in.
Still, he hesitated.
“Schedule a dinner for Monday of next week. Give him some more time to think over all his options,” he said. Even as the words left his mouth, they were the wrong ones.
The longer he waited, the less likely they would be to reach an optimum solution. If he didn’t save the company, and if Sam didn’t come up with a solution, a lot of people might suffer because of his reluctance to piss off his lover.
But what if she was right?
What if she could save Mr. Harper?
“All right,” his secretary said. “I’ll write it down…if I can find a pen. I swear I had one on my desk earlier. Where do they keep going?”
Taylor winced. “I may have grabbed it off your desk earlier. I’m sorry.” The elevator door opened behind him. His heart leapt because it could only be one person. Sam was the only person who had the clearance from security to come directly up without a phone call. “I have to go.”
“Wait. About the benefit Friday night—”
“I have it covered. I’m going with Julie.” He hung up, turning on Sam. “You’re late.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, not removing her coat or purse. “That’s because I almost didn’t come.”
So. Something was up.
His stomach fisted, and he moved toward her, examining her for a hint of what was going on in her mind. Had she found out about his direct role in the dissolution of Harper Enterprises? “Why not?”
“Because…” She bit her lip, adjusting her weight. She was clearly struggling to find the words to say what she needed to say. Well, shit, this was it. She was going to end it with him. “Who is Julie?”
He blinked. Out of all the things he expected her to say, that was not it. “Julie?”
“Yeah. Is she the woman you were with today?”
Just like that, her behavior made perfect sense. It hadn’t even occurred to him that she might be uncertain about his companion, because he never had anyone who gave a damn who he was with or why. But to Sam, it had probably looked a hell of a lot like a date. “Sam—”
“At first, I thought she might be a girlfriend, but she had a ring on her finger, and unless you lied about not being the relationship type, you definitely didn’t put it there.”
He wasn’t sure what to say. Apparently, she didn’t put it past him to cheat on a girlfriend with her, but the ring on her finger was out of the question.
“And I thought maybe she’s your sister, but she didn’t act like a sister. She was too touchy-feely, and to be honest, the way she touched you…it made me jealous. Was she your sister? Am I wrong?”
The fact that she was jealous…he wasn’t going to lie. He liked that she cared enough to succumb to the little green monster. She might not have said the actual words last night, like he had, but if she’d gotten jealous over him, clearly there was something there, right? “She’s not my sister.”
She stopped unbuttoning her jacket. “Oh.”
“But she’s not my fiancée, either.” After a second, he added, “Or my girlfriend. She’s just a friend, a good one.”
She stared.
“Her fiancé is a Marine, and he’s on tour overseas, so we go to social events together. We have a ball Friday night, and if I remember correctly, I’m not allowed to ask you to go to society events with me due to some mysterious reason.”
She swallowed, her hands still frozen on her third button.
He closed the distance between them, gently pushing her hands away to finish the task. She let him, still not speaking. “We’re just friends, Sam. I’m all yours until you don’t want me anymore.”
Cupping his cheeks, she rose on tiptoe, locking eyes with him. He held on to her jacket, his heart thumping against his ribs in a quick staccato. “I…I don’t know what we are, what to call us, because we can never be together, not for real. But the idea of you being with someone else? I don’t like it.”
“Why can’t we ever be together, Sam?” he asked quietly, knowing he was pushing his luck but too damn curious to really care. She kept saying that they couldn’t be together, and he needed to know why. Had she killed someone? Gone to jail? Escaped?
Why couldn’t they be together?
“You don’t want to be with me,” she argued, going paler than the vampires in that movie where instead of being killers, they sparkled in the sun.
He shrugged. “But if I did? Why would that be so horrible?”
He wasn’t saying he wanted that or anything, but why?
“Because I can’t.” She bit her lip. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
He blinked. “I don’t under—”
“What I’m trying to say is that being with you is special to me. When this is all said and done and our date is over, I’d like to remain friends, because I don’t want to lose you, Taylor.”
What did she mean when she said she wouldn’t do that to him? He opened his mouth to ask, but then her mouth was on his and she was undoing his shirt. There weren’t supposed to be any long-term feelings, but damn it, he wanted more. She needed to be his, and he wouldn’t accept anything less.
She dropped to her knees, and his heart choked him as she undid his pants. Usually he was the one to drive his lovers insane with his mouth, his tongue, his touch. “Sam—”
“Shh.” His pants hit the floor. “Let me do this. I want to do it.”
Red lips moved closer to his cock, and his fingers buried themselves in her soft hair. She spun her tongue in circles as she sucked, locking his gaze on her as his lids lowered in pleasure. This blowjob was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. Every stroke of her tongue, every caress of her fingertips across his bare skin, took part of him away that he’d never given to anyone else, and probably never would again. Sam took him…and gave him nothing in return.
He wasn’t so sure he liked that…
But he sure as hell liked her mouth on him.
Moaning, she moved closer, cupping his shaft as she moved her mouth over him, d
riving him to ecstasy. When she deepened the strokes, sucking harder, he stiffened, his entire body straining toward release. His balls pulled tight, his stomach clenched, and her mouth worked some kind of magic on him—the kind he hadn’t really believed existed until her.
“Sam, I’m—”
She nodded, sucking harder, and pushed closer to him, refusing to budge.
He groaned, the sight of her on her knees fucking him with her mouth killing any tiny hold he had on himself. With a thrust of his hips, he came, seeing stars.
That’s right. Motherfucking stars.
She sat back, swiping her hand over her lips.
“Jesus,” he growled.
“Nope, just me,” she said, repeating his phrase from their first date. She stood, wobbling on her feet a little. “I like—agh.”
He flattened her on the couch, crawling on top of her, effectively cutting her off with a kiss. After tasting himself on her tongue, he pulled back, locking eyes with her. “I’ve given you so much of me, shit I’ve never given anyone else, so I’m breaking my word. I’m demanding more of you than you’re willing to give. I want you—no, I need you to be mine.” His hand slid between her legs, touching her core. “If you can’t give that to me, if I can’t call you mine even for a short time, I don’t want to do this anymore.”
She sucked in a breath. “Taylor…”
“I’m serious. I want to be your boyfriend.”
Her increased breathing rate was the only sign of life she gave. She remained perfectly still otherwise.
“Let’s give this thing a name. Let’s call it what it is: a fucking relationship. And no matter how short or long it is, you’re mine, and I’m yours, and when we introduce each other to other people, that’s what we say, instead of avoiding it since we don’t know what to call each other without insulting each other.”
She choked on a laugh. “You were confused today, too?”
“Yes, why do you think I didn’t introduce you to Julie?”
She stopped laughing. “Because you didn’t want to.”
“I want to shout it from the rooftops—tell everyone you’re mine. Let me, even if only for a little while.”
She fell silent, debating her answer. He could see the wheels turning in her head. Whatever it was that held her back from him, clearly it was huge.
An Accidental Date with a Billionaire Page 11
