RISK

by Deborah Bladon

  "What are you asking?" He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

  I tug on the hem of my skirt. "This isn't really about a good bottle of wine and a steak, is it?"

  "What do you think it's about?"

  I call him on his bluff because I doubt like hell he's expecting me to. "It's about us sleeping together. That's really what you want."

  "Yes, Ellie. I want to fuck you."

  ***

  Breathe, Ellie. Breathe.

  Bluff called. Nolan Black answered.

  "I don't believe I've misread anything between us." His eyes soften, the intensity gone. "The attraction is strong and it's mutual. If there's a reason, beyond your job, that you'd prefer not to act on it, I'm interested in hearing that."

  "Do I need a reason beyond that?"

  He takes a deep breath. "You're an asset to Matiz. I'm not going to do anything that jeopardizes that. We don't want to lose you."

  It's the beginning of a conversation I never had with Tad. We didn't consider what the end of our relationship would mean to my job at his company. Ultimately, he took that from me too.

  "Do you find me attractive, Ellie?"

  I scan his face. I can tell him honestly that he's the most attractive man I've ever met, but he's heard that before. He knows it. It's evident in the way he carries himself, in the way he's speaking to me now. "Yes, you know that you're attractive."

  "Does your reluctance to have dinner with me have anything to do with your date with Liam tomorrow?"

  "Why would it be because of Liam?" I shoot back quickly.

  His posture changes, his back stiffening. "I have no idea where you two stand. It's not uncommon for people in this city to devote their attention to one person after a first encounter."

  I wade through the verbiage to get to the message he's trying to convey. "You think I hooked up with Liam already and I'm now head-over-heels? I met him two days ago, Nolan. Technically, it was less than two days."

  His mouth quirks. "So you haven't slept with him?"

  My eyes fall to his hands. His right thumb is tracing tight circles over his left palm. I tilt my head to the side, contemplating not only what I'm seeing but what he just asked. "I don't think that's any of your business. I also don't think it's an appropriate conversation for us to be having during work hours."

  "Consider yourself off the clock." His fingers thrum over the face of his watch. "You officially have the rest of the day off."

  "No," I say with an exaggerated sigh. "Don't do that. Don't influence my job because of something personal between us."

  "You admit that there's something between us?"

  I can deny it. I should deny it, but I don't. "I'm attracted to you, Nolan. I'm sure most of the women who work for Matiz are, but that doesn't mean anything has to happen between us."

  "You're right." He crosses his arms over his chest. "It doesn't mean anything has to happen, but it will. How long do you think we can resist each other, Ellie? I'm a strong man, but you're the type of woman who can weaken a Herculean resolve."

  Words. They're all just words meant to seduce and tempt. They roll off his tongue as leisurely as the comments about the weather he directed toward a man in the elevator with us on the ride up to his office.

  I look down at the necklace I'm wearing. It's a cheap piece I picked up at a flea market in Las Vegas. It has no sentimental value. The significance of it is non-existent. Once it breaks, as thin silver chains often do, I'll toss it away without a second thought. It's just like his words, pretty in the moment, but once they've served their purpose, quickly forgotten.

  "I'll have dinner with you, Nolan."

  "Tonight," he says, not asks, in a tone that reeks of victory. "I'll pick you up at eight. There's a place in Hell's Kitchen that I know you'll enjoy."

  I rise to my feet at the quiet rap on his office door. "No, not tonight. Tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow?" He ignores the tapping as he stands. "You're canceling your date with Liam for me?"

  My stomach knots at his blatant arrogance. "No. I want you to come over for dinner tomorrow too. Around seven o'clock would be good."

  "With Liam?" He scowls.

  "Yes." I glance at his office door. "Are you going to get that?"

  "No, I'm not." Confusion etches his brow. "You want me to come to your place tomorrow to have dinner with Liam? With you and Liam?"

  "Liam will be there," I begin as I rub my forehead. "My roommate Adley and Randy, Liam's friend, will be there too."

  "I'll be the fifth wheel?"

  "Or sixth." I shrug. "Depending on how you view her."

  "Who?"

  "The woman who wrote on your palm. I assume she drew the cute heart too." I turn back as I reach the door. "Bring her with you. I'd love to meet the artist behind that masterpiece."

  He mumbles something under his breath, but I don't stop to ask him to repeat it. I swing open the door and almost knock the file folder from his assistant's hand as I breeze past her on my way to the elevator.

  Chapter 15

  Nolan

  "There's no way in hell this is happening." Crew looks right past the woman who opened Ellie's apartment door just as I was about to knock. "Talk about a roleplay. Are you seeing what I'm seeing, Nolan?"

  Unfortunately, I am. I see all of it. It's being imprinted on my retinas so every time I close my goddamn eyes from this point forward, I'm going to see this in front of me.

  Ellie is wearing a bikini top. The most perfect bikini top ever to grace a female body. Two small triangles of black fabric and some thin black string are all that cover her breasts. The black very short shorts she's wearing sit well below her belly button. Her hair is pulled back and high in a ponytail. She's standing near an open window with her hands on her hips, her skin glowing with a mist of perspiration.

  She turns to the side, and I swallow back a moan born from somewhere deep inside me when the profile of her gorgeous ass comes into my view. The thin material of her shorts leaves nothing to the imagination, and suddenly my cock is hard as steel.

  The bastard standing next to her is hard too. I'm clear across the room from him but the outline of his dick through the faded jeans he's wearing is obvious to anyone within a mile radius. The tool belt he has on does nothing to hide his arousal.

  He flexes then, drawing his arms up over his head. His biceps tense, his abs ripple, and Ellie's eyes are glued to everything but the T-shirt, that I assume is his, bunched in a pile at his bare feet. She's practically naked. He's half-way there and I'm staring at it all with a bottle of wine and a gallon of melting cookie dough ice cream in my hands.

  "What the hell is going on here?" I snap.

  "The air conditioning stopped working," Ellie's friend says. I remember her from Las Vegas, but apparently not well enough to recall her name. "The building manager told us the repair guy wouldn't be here until tomorrow afternoon, but he showed up fifteen minutes ago."

  I glance at her. She's clothed. She's wearing a short yellow dress and a huge smile.

  "You're Ellie's bosses, aren't you?" She steps toward us. "I'm Adley York. I'm Ellie's roommate."

  Crew pushes past me to grab the woman's hand. "I'm Crew. Nolan didn't tell me where we were headed, but I'm glad I tagged along."

  She laughs. "You'll regret saying that. It's like three hundred degrees in here."

  "Nolan?" Ellie approaches tentatively, her hands clenched together in front of her. "Crew? What are you two doing here?"

  I tuck the bottle of wine next to my elbow before I run my fingers over my brow. I'm burning up, but I can't tell if it's the temperature in here or how Ellie looks. I thought that black dress in Vegas was hot. Now, I can't even remember what it looks like. "You invited me for dinner, Ellie. I brought wine and your favorite ice cream."

  "You thought I was serious?" she asks tightly. "I didn't think you'd actually show up."

  She doesn't know me very well. I never back down from a challenge. There was a trace of amusement in
her eyes yesterday afternoon when she invited me for dinner. I decided by the time she pressed the elevator call button that I'd be at her apartment promptly at seven with a bottle of crisp chardonnay, along with a container of the ice cream I saw her friend give to her at Cremza.

  "I'd never turn down an invitation from you." I glance back at the repair guy. His eyes are focused squarely on Ellie's ass. "I would have worn my board shorts if I knew the evening was beach themed."

  She looks me over from head to toe. Her gaze lingers appreciatively on the gray dress shirt and black pants I'm wearing. "There isn't a theme. We're not having dinner. We postponed."

  "We canceled," Adley interjects. "Bean decided we should cancel after the air conditioner died. I was just on my way out to have dinner with one of the guys who planned on being here."

  "Bean?" Crew chuckles. "What's that nickname about, Ellie?"

  "I came up with it, "Adley says, pride evident in her smile. "Ellie is my jelly bean. I call her that because she used to sneak jelly beans from a jar in my mom's kitchen. Eventually, my mom just gave her the entire jar."

  "You've known each other since you were kids?" I step forward. "Tell me about her back then."

  Crew and both women turn to me. It's not my words that draw their attention. It's my tone. Firm and demanding, it's a command for information about a woman who just started working for me. It's obvious to all three of them that I'm not trying to lure playful memories about Ellie's childhood from her best friend. I'm hunting.

  "We should take off." Crew shoots me a sharp glance that's spiked with the anger he's barely containing. I was intentionally sparse with the details when I told him we were meeting two beautiful women for dinner.

  I accessed Ellie's payroll record to find her address, unsure if Crew had taken note of it when he handed her file to human resources the day she started working for us. He didn't clue in when I asked my driver to drop us a block up from Ellie's building. I told him to call the store in Midtown to check on the shipment of lipstick that arrived earlier today. I did that to keep his focus away from the direction we were headed.

  His call ended just as Adley opened the door. The timing couldn't have been more perfect.

  "I'm staying," I announce because there's no way in fucking hell I'm leaving Ellie alone with the repairman. If I weren't losing a pound a minute in sweat because of the sweltering heat in this apartment, I would have thought the scene that greeted me when I walked in the door was the beginnings of a poorly lit porn shoot.

  The air conditioning unit is definitely not working, and the blond haired guy who is now absentmindedly rubbing his dick through his jeans is focused on only one thing. It's not the screwdriver in his hand. It's Ellie's body which, when covered with a sheen of sweat, looks incredibly fuckable.

  "You're not staying." Ellie points to the apartment door. "You and Crew can go."

  I brush past her and head directly to the kitchen area that consists of little more than a few worn cabinets, out-of-date appliances and a peninsula that oversees the main living space. I open the freezer door, pushing packages of frozen berries and a bag of cubed ice to the side. I shove the container of ice cream in before I slam the door shut. "I'm going to open this wine, have a drink and then I'll fix that air conditioner myself."

  "River is going to fix it." Ellie sighs heavily.

  River? Naturally, his goddamn name would be River.

  Ellie's eyes target me before she turns to River. "How long before you'll have it working?"

  "I need parts, babe," he drawls through a grin. "One of the guys from the supplier will try to bring them over in a couple of hours. We can hang until then. You got any beers?"

  I start to unbutton my shirt. "Find someone else to hang with, River. I can handle this."

  He shakes his head. "No can do, mister. This unit belongs to the building. I can't just let any Tom, Dick or Harry touch it. The owner will fucking freak at me if he finds out I let you touch the AC."

  "It's Nolan," I say dryly. "The owner will not fucking freak if I touch the air conditioner."

  He laughs. "Dude, seriously, you don't know him. I talked to the guy on the phone when the boiler blew last winter. He skipped right over the building manager and went straight for my jugular. Shit will get real if you try and fix it."

  I crane my neck so I can look at Crew. "You're welcome to step in anytime."

  Crew walks across the room and slaps River on the shoulder. "The only shit that's going to get real is the conversation we're going to have tomorrow about that uncontrollable boner you're rocking. Seriously, River. You're on the job. Dial it back."

  "What?" River's eyes dart from Crew's face to mine and then back again. "I know your voice. There's no way you're Benton."

  "In the flesh." Crew flashes a smile. "I own this place, and unless you're out of here in the next thirty seconds, I'm going to contract out repairs for all my buildings to another company."

  Chapter 16

  Ellie

  "I trust you, pal." Crew claps Nolan on the back. "I don't know if you know what the hell you're doing, but I trust you. Don't fuck this up like you did with the others."

  "Did you fuck up someone else's air conditioner?" Adley asks Nolan as she closes the door behind River. It took him less than thirty seconds to scoop up his T-shirt and leave. I was just as surprised as he was when Crew said he owns the building.

  "He's fucked up a few," Crew grumbles. "He promised me, this time, it would be different."

  "It will be different." Nolan scrubs his hand over the back of his neck. "You have my word."

  It's obvious that they're not talking about air conditioners, but Adley hasn't clued in yet. "It doesn't matter to me if you fuck it up because if you do, you have to replace it. That's in my rental agreement. If something breaks and isn't repairable, it has to be replaced within a reasonable amount of time."

  "I have doubts that this one is replaceable." Crew's gaze volleys between Nolan and me. "Do what you need to do, Nolan. Bear in mind, that if this goes badly, you owe me."

  "Understood," Nolan replies curtly.

  "I'm late for my date." Adley leans forward to kiss my cheek. "Do you want me to relay a message to Wolf through Randy?"

  "If I want to talk to Wolf I can text him myself," I murmur even though the only reason I took Liam's number when I was leaving Cremza is that he insisted. He thinks he can help me further my career, but I'm not convinced. "Go have fun, Ad."

  "You too." A sly grin slides over her lips. "I'll call you later."

  "Are you headed uptown?" Crew turns to Adley. "I'm getting an Uber. We can ride together if that works for you."

  "It works for me." Adley nods. "What's the name of that nail polish you're wearing? I've been looking for a shade just like that."

  All eyes drop to Crew's hands and the bright pink polish messily painted onto his right thumbnail. He wags it in the air. "This is our Pink Twist. It just came in today. It looks like my niece needs to keep her day job. She's not going to cut it as a manicurist."

  "I'm buying a bottle." Adley reaches for his hand to bring it in for a closer look. "I think this would look good on me."

  "It suits you." Crew cups her hand in his. "Ellie can bring a bottle home from work for you. No charge."

  "Seriously?" She holds his hand to her chest. "Thank you."

  "No thanks necessary." His smile widens as he stares at her. "You ready to head out?"

  "Absolutely." She abruptly lets go of his hand. "I'm going to Axel NY."

  "Good choice." Crew gestures toward the door. "I've been. Great food."

  Adley launches into a story about the last time she was at Axel. I hear her say something about her ex, Leo, as the door shuts behind them.

  "Time for me to get to work." Nolan slides his shirt from his shoulders. "There's a gallon of your favorite ice cream in the freezer if you're hungry."

  I smile in spite of my resolve not to. I didn't expect him to show up tonight. I was shocked when I turned to
see him and Crew standing in the entryway of my apartment. "Cookie dough?"

  "That's what your friend got for you at Cremza. I assumed it was your favorite."

  "It is." I draw in a breath. "What flavor were you buying the other night?"

  He hesitates briefly before a grin pulls at the corner of his lips. "Blue bubble gum."

  I cover my mouth with my hand to shield my broad smile. "I would have pegged you for more of a vanilla or strawberry type."

  "Oh really?" A bead of sweat rolls down his muscular chest. My gaze follows.

  "Yes, but I was wrong. The secret is out. The owner of Matiz Cosmetics likes blue bubble gum ice cream."

  His hands drop to his pants. He loosens the belt and then unfastens his slacks. "The owner of Matiz Cosmetics likes many things. Bubble gum ice cream is right up there with a certain blue-eyed redhead."

  "Are you taking your pants off?"

  "If that's a request, the answer is yes." He draws in a deep breath. "It's so damn hot in here. I'm just trying to get comfortable so I can fix your air conditioner before I pass the fuck out."

  I bite back a giggle. "The only tools we have are in a drawer in the kitchen."

  Cocking his head to the side, he looks directly at me. "Show me what you've got, Ellie."

  ***

  "There's an empty furnished apartment on the second floor with a working air conditioner." He pushes his phone back into the front pocket of his pants. "It's a two bedroom. You can stay there tonight and the new unit will be installed here first thing tomorrow."

  "So that strange smell that was coming from it was a fried motor?"

  "That's the culprit." He looks over at the dismantled air conditioner on the floor near the window. He had the problem diagnosed within minutes, and it took even less time for him to call someone to arrange the delivery and installation of the new unit as well as accommodations for Adley and me for the night. "It's not worth trying to fix it. Someone from the repair crew will have the new one installed in no time."