by Ashley Hall
Fucking Christ. I didn’t have time for this.
Dropping my bag, I made to move forward - a second before a city cop strolled into view. I swore to God, the motherfuckers could smell trouble. He made a beeline for me, his expression concerned. Half the law in this town could recognize me from a half mile away, and this one was no different. “Problem, Mr. Webb?”
One of the pitfalls of being famous was now everyone knew when I got in trouble. But if I fucked up there, I wouldn’t be able to meet Sadie that night – no doubt playing into her idea that I was nothing but trouble.
“Nothing at all, Officer.” I managed, casting Ivan a warning glare before I addressed the cop once more. “I was just leaving. Hot date.”
The older man’s eyes narrowed. “As long as it doesn’t end up like last night.”
Jesus Christ. Everyone was a judge. I said nothing, merely striding to my Jag and tossing my bag in before getting ready to make tracks. As I slipped into the luxury car, my gaze met Ivan’s once more, and I read the threat there clear as day.
He wasn’t ready to let this go - which meant I’d hear from him again before too long.
Sadie
“You’re doing what? With who?” At Stella’s shrill inquiry, I resisted the urge to cover my ears. If I had to call someone at work my best friend, she would be it. She and I had bitched for years that Alex was never going to give me a shot at a cover story.
Now that he had, Stella was excited for me – but for all the wrong reasons.
I sighed, rolling my eyes. “It’s just for the story,” I insisted, trying not to think about Griffin’s burning green eyes or his insisting that I wear something slinky. “I have no intention of doing anything with him.”
“Why the hell not!?” Stella’s violently red curls fell down around her face as she demanded an answer from me. She had bright blue eyes and wasn’t near as fond of her freckles as I was. What Stella was fond of was seeing how much cleavage she could get away with showing in the office – and she was infinitely more blessed than I was.
She was also a far better flirt.
“He’s nothing but a hare-brained bad boy.” I replied dryly. “Tries to screw anything that moves.”
“Have you taken a good look at him?” Stella insisted, her blue eye wide. “I mean a really good look? Sadie, the man’s got the body of a Greek god.”
The only way I could have gotten a closer look at Griffin would be if I had been on top of him, which was what I was sure Stella was aiming for.
“Yeah, and the IQ of a shrub.” I added with a sigh, taking a bite of my sandwich. After all that had happened that morning, I had decided to get out of the office for lunch. Luckily, I hadn’t run into Alex. If I did, I was going to have to admit why I hadn’t gotten the story yet.
And the less my boss knew, the better. Stella, on the other hand, was a different story. I trusted her – even if she did seem hell bent on finding out what Griffin Webb looked like naked. “I just want to get this info so I can have my cover.”
“And the fact that the man is absolutely gorgeous makes no never mind to you, right?” Stella arched a suspicious brow.
I repressed a groan. It shouldn’t matter. I was a reporter, a writer and a professional – not some idiot fan ready to fall at Griffin’s feet and worship him. Truth be told, the man was rude and arrogant. He all but told me my dress wasn’t appropriate for a date with him and blackmailed me into said date.
Taking a deep breath, I exhaled slowly. This was not a date. It was more like a…business meeting. I’d eat before I went and there would be no small talk. We’d get straight to the point and then that would be that.
“So, are you going in that?” My mouth fell open at Stella’s question. I glanced down at the navy dress I wore, pursing my lips.
“What’s wrong with this?”
Stella eyed me like she thought I might be a few French fries short of a happy meal. “Even if you’re going for professional, Sadie, that thing is awful.”
Awful!? “My mother bought this for my birthday!’
“Exactly.” Stella chuckled good-naturedly. “When’s the last time your mom got laid?”
I grimaced at the question. That was one of the last things I wanted to be thinking about at that particular moment. "Stella, give me a break. I don’t want to get laid.”
She exhaled impatiently. “So are you telling me you want to walk into a high-class restaurant dressed like a kindergarten teacher?”
Jesus, that was harsh. But I could always count on Stella to shoot straight from the hip. I glanced down at the dress once more and frowned. I’d worn it so much that it was a bit frayed on the edges, and the color had faded. It was my favorite because I could walk down the street in it without getting a ridiculous amount of catcalls. It hid what I wanted it to hide.
But it was also a size or two too big – wishful thinking on my mother’s part that I’d gain a little weight.
I scowled, touching the thin cotton. “If I were to change,” I huffed, knowing I was digging my own grave. “What would you expect me to wear?”
Stella grinned – a gesture I’d long learned was ridiculously dangerous. She only grinned if she was conspiring against someone, and I didn’t want it to be me. Though I had barely finished half of my sandwich, the redhead leaped up, tossing a handful of bills onto the table before she dragged me towards the restaurant’s exit. “Come on! We don’t have much time!”
“Where are we going?” I yanked my arm out of her grip the moment we emerged into daylight and she laughed in anticipation.
“Shopping.”
Oh, hell.
I never really liked to shop. For me it was just exhausting, nothing ever fit, and I felt that trying to look good always backfired. When I wore a dress to work, all the guys started sniffing around me like dogs in heat and it made me desperately uncomfortable.
So why, I asked myself as Stella dragged me into a department store, had my knees taken on the consistency of putty when Griffin looked at me with interest? He was the last man on the planet that I should be attracted to.
But I was…that I had to, at least, admit to myself. When his eyes had roamed over me in the gym, I felt more woman in that instant than I had in my entire life. I’d had boyfriends tell me I was pretty, my parents told me I was beautiful at every opportunity, but Griffin didn’t seem like the type to pay a woman frivolous compliments. Sure, he probably tossed around the words beautiful and gorgeous, but it was probably while he was tossing women around hotel rooms.
Subjugating them. Fucking them.
I shuddered at the prospect.
“What about this one?” Stella held up a dress that looked as though it might be made of floss and tissue paper and I merely stared at her. Was she out of her mind?
Though we only had about twenty minutes left in out lunch break, Stella called in and got us an extra twenty – which meant she had plenty of time to drag me around the store and insist I try on everything. When I suggested that I might just go home and change into something, she glared at me as if I’d just insulted her mother.
Despite her best efforts, I wasn’t going to let the redhead dress me like a skank. When we did leave the store, I had a two-piece suit in hand. Something that even Stella had to admit complimented my curves without revealing too much. Beneath it’ I’d wear a modest white shirt, and that would be that.
I stowed the bag under my desk at work and spent the rest of the afternoon trying concertedly not to think about Griffin Webb. I worked on the article I’d submitted when I came in that morning – which had been returned to me all but gutted. I e-mailed my parents, texted my landlord about the rent and read articles on writing until I thought my eyes would fall out of my head.
And all the while, my gaze kept dropping to the minimized window at the bottom of my screen. Why, exactly, hadn’t I closed it yet? It was the search window I used to look for information on Griffin before I went to the gym.
And at that point, with
nothing else to do, I made sure no one was watching me as I guiltily maximized it.
Immediately, heat rushed to my face.
It was just as I thought – the images didn’t do him justice. Thanks to my encounter that afternoon I now had a very vivid image in my mind of exactly what Griffin looked like.
And he was even more mouthwatering than his fans could imagine. In my mind’s eye, I saw him again – standing in the center of the practice ring, his bare torso covered in sweat as he threw punch after punch. He moved almost like a man possessed, and the glint in his eyes was at once frightening and more arousing than anything I’d ever come across.
Swallowing thickly, I let my eyes move over image after image. In some, it was obvious that he’d just finished a match while, in others, he took on a more casual persona – but in all of them, Griffin clearly radiated an aura of untouchability.
Unless you wanted to get your arm broken.
My eyes widened at a particular picture where he was all but naked, the only thing covering he more delicate parts of him a well-placed towel.
He had a tattoo…. well, he had several, but the others I had had just chalked up as contributions to his bad boy allure. This one in particular…well, it was a full-blown, intimately inked dragon that covered his hip and upper thigh. Hard to pull off for most women, if your body wasn’t ridiculously perfect. But on Griffin, with his finely muscled thighs and decadent, long legs…
I forced myself to tear my eyes away as I forcibly closed the window. Glancing at the clock on the wall above my cubicle, I frowned. I’d be done in just a few hours – which meant that, in that time, I was going to have to find some way to keep my head around Griffin Webb
Though I might have wanted them to pass more slowly and give me time to calm down, the hours seemed to fly by. It didn’t help that every hour, on the hour, Stella came by my cubicle to give me a thumbs up and a raunchy wink.
By the time five rolled around, my nerves were shot with a mixture of anxiety and anticipation. I went to the bathroom to change into my suit and had a crisis where I almost convinced myself that the skirt was too short and scrapped the whole thing.
But then I thought of my cover – and did what I had to get my career off the ground in the first place: I swallowed my fears and revved myself up.
After an entire afternoon of self-doubt, in thirty minutes, I managed to use the prospect of my cover as the ultimate inspiration. I would get in, get out, and get the goods – damn Griffin and his killer body.
I was a career woman. I was immune.
And I continued to hold steadfast until I stepped outside to see the sun starting to sink below the horizon.
And Griffin waiting for me.
For a moment, I forgot how to speak. The man had parked dead center in the lot – where there wasn’t even a space. He leaned against his car as if it were the most casual thing in the world, and he managed, somehow, to be even more gorgeous than the ostentatious vehicle he drove.
The car was pretty ridiculous. Yet, there I stood, admiring both him and it, feeling somewhat like the fawning idiot I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t be.
The only reason I even knew the car was a Jaguar was because of all the car talk the guys spouted in the office. They brought in new car magazines for the break room every week, and for their reliability, I recognized the gleaming, black vehicle Griffin leaned against as a Jaguar F-Type – both flashy and at the same time understated. If my coworkers caught sight of it, they would no doubt drool all over their very fragile senses of masculinity.
I tried to remind myself that the car was upwards of seventy thousand dollars and that Griffin had earned that money beating the hell out of other men…but at that moment, all I could think was that car and driver suited each other very well.
Griffin cleaned up very nicely. It was the first time I’d seen him with a shirt on and said shirt hugged his broad shoulders and narrow waist as if it had been tailored to fit. The dark-gray color set off his green eyes, and a pair of slacks hugged long legs I knew to be powerful and muscular. His shoes were expensive – some name brand or the other, but I didn’t linger on them for long.
I was too taken by the way he was looking at me – staring, actually. Those eyes of his were like molten emeralds, his bulky arms crossed over his chest as he took me in from head to foot. The suit I’d thought was more than modest enough half an hour ago was suddenly the most scandalous thing in the entire cosmos, and I wanted to run back to my desk.
But that would have shown a cowardice that was completely beneath me. Griffin Webb was just a man. A man that made my heart pound and my thighs clench, but a man nonetheless. I could handle him.
“Oh. My. God.” I looked over my shoulder to see that Stella had followed me out of the building – probably for some last minute pep talk or something like that. However, whatever she meant to do was completely forgotten when she laid eyes on the column of muscle and sinew that was Griffin. She licked her lips and I suppressed a groan.
Here we went.
Stella’s eyes darted to mine a moment before she mouthed the words ‘He’s delicious’. If she wanted him, she was welcome to him. The only reason that I didn’t foist this particular assignment off on her was that it was a cover.
My cover.
And I was willing to do anything for it.
I decided that I’d better move along before the rest of the office had a chance to come out and gawk at me too. “Thanks for this afternoon, Stella.” I gave her a brief hug that I wasn’t sure she felt – her eyes were still fixed on Griffin like he was a damn Thanksgiving turkey – before I quickly descended the front steps and hurried over to the man.
The moment I came within three feet of him, the spicy scent of his cologne enveloped me and my knees almost buckled. It wasn’t right that one man should be so goddamn male. I was pretty sure teddy bears and balloons internally combusted right before his eyes. He was a singular force of nature – and it was apparent why so many women were dying to get their hands on him.
I stopped before him, struggling to keep my expression neutral as I clutched my bag to me like a lifeline. If my libido decided to manifest itself in physical form and shove me at him, at least, I could fend her off. The man’s eyes gave me a slow once over, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, and I might have been wearing nothing at all.
“You look nice.” His rough words rolled over me and I swallowed thickly. I could do this. I could.
“Well, someone agreed that my dress was kind of ratty.”
He smirked – a small quirking of his lips that was simultaneously infuriating and devilish. “It was hideous.”
I arched a brow, my hackles rising at his commentary. “Hideous. That’s a big word, isn’t it, Griffin?”
“I have a shit ton of hidden talents, Sadie.” His expression still smug, the man straightened to open the passenger side door for me. “Just get to know me.”
Ever eloquent.
Rolling my eyes, I slid into the car – and immediately but silently marveled at its luxury. The most buttery, softest leather seats I’d ever encountered, tinted windows, a touch screen navigational system…and the entire space smelled like he did. By the time he slipped into the driver’s seat, I was thoroughly – secretly – impressed.
Even as the rational part of me jibed that if he were really a good man, the seventy thousand could have gone towards a worthier cause.
“Jessica here was one of my first purchases when I started winning title matches.” I looked over at him, my eyes widening in disbelief.
“Jessica?” I inquired. “You named your car?”
Griffin patted the dashboard lovingly. “Most reliable woman in my life.” Well, he couldn’t screw the car. That probably helped a good amount. When he revved the vehicle, it thrummed beneath me loud enough for me to feel it in my innards. It was the kind of showy, idiotic sound that always annoyed me when I was in traffic trying to get to work in the morning.
; So why did I suddenly find it so exhilarating?
“Have you ever gone from one to two hundred in under four seconds?” I stared at the man in absolute horror. We were in a parking lot in the middle of the city. Where on earth was he proposing to be able to hit two hundred miles per hour?
“Griffin,” I managed, my heart pounding, “You said you were taking me to dinner, not that you were going to kill me.”
He chuckled – an absurd sound considering what he was contemplating. “Trust me, Sadie. I’m not going to harm a hair on that pretty head of yours.” Somehow, I wasn’t comforted. When the man switched gears and the tires squealed, my heart leaped into my throat and it took everything I had not to show my apprehension. Griffin executed a U-turn that left black tire tracks in the center of the parking lot before flooring the gas petal – out into a busy intersection.
