Putting It to the Test

by Lori Borrill

  “Problem is,” Brayton went on, “even if Matt insists on stepping down, you’re not getting his job.”

  “What?” Matt argued. “You told me weeks ago she was your toss-up.”

  Hall grabbed a pencil and began tapping it against the arm of his chair. “And since then I’ve decided she’s not right for the position.”

  Matt began to rise from his chair, that gratified expression quickly giving way to anger, but Brayton held up a hand. “Matt, you’re the best candidate to head up the new team. It’s as simple as that. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have plans for Carly.” The man huffed and shook his head. “Honestly, if I’d known promoting you first was going to cause all this commotion, I would have waited and handled you both together.”

  Matt slowly returned to his seat, but his eyes remained cautious and distrustful.

  “Carly,” Brayton said, turning his gaze to hers. “I want to organize a new training unit. I can’t think of a better person to head it up.”

  “Now, wait a minute—” Matt started.

  Carly slapped a hand to his thigh. “I’m listening.”

  “You’d start off taking Renee and Andrea, along with Human Resources and Payroll. I want it combined with a new unit to look after training and staff development. We can negotiate what we call the new department, but in short, you’ll be the person taking care of this place, handling pay and benefits, employee relations and continuing education.”

  She looked at Matt, then back to Mr. Hall. “I don’t have much training in employment law. That’s a very specialized field.”

  “Trust me, you’re a natural. We’ll get you the schooling you need, and your programming background will keep you in touch with the needs of the staff.”

  A smile began to form on her face. She had to admit the job sounded exciting. She loved working with people, which was why she’d been so anxious to head up the new development team. It had been more about wanting to build the team environment than actually developing Web sites, and as Mr. Hall’s ideas began to buzz through her mind, she got more and more excited.

  “What about pay?” Matt asked, not nearly as enthused as Carly.

  Hall gave them an exasperated look. “I’ll pay her exactly what I’m paying you and she can have the office next to yours. Will that make you two happy?”

  Matt turned his eyes to Carly, who responded by grinning widely.

  “I sort of like maple better than mahogany,” she said. Hall raised a brow. “And if I need to get an associate degree in Human Resources, I’ll want time off to study.”

  Matt eyed her proudly while Hall’s pencil tapping accelerated.

  “I can go along with all this if you accept Carly’s counteroffer,” Matt urged.

  “Under two conditions,” Hall said. “One, if there’s going to be any hanky-panky between you two, stay out of my lab.”

  Carly’s cheeks enflamed.

  “And two, if you have any more lover’s quarrels, they better be off my campus.”

  Matt beamed. “We can do that.”

  Hall tossed the pencil on his desk. “So is everyone happy?”

  They nodded.

  “No one’s quitting and no one’s stepping down?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Good. Then maybe everyone can get back to work.” He rose from his desk and shook both their hands. “Carly, your new job is effective immediately.” Then he winked. “I’ll see what I can do about your furniture.”

  “Thank you,” she grinned, and without a moment’s hesitation Matt pulled her out of the office.

  The two scampered down the hall and into Matt’s office, where he closed the door, pressed her against it and covered her mouth with his.

  “I love you, babe,” he whispered in her mouth, then he pressed a trail of eager kisses down her neck, and Carly’s heart swelled.

  “You were really going to step down for me?”

  He tugged the shoulder off her sleeveless tank and replaced it with his lips. “I needed to prove to you I’m not the jerk who filled out that survey.”

  “You chose me over your job.”

  He stopped kissing her shoulder and looked into her eyes without a shred of doubt in his gaze. “Baby, I’d choose you over my life. I’m in love with you. I’ll do whatever I have to do to prove it to you.”

  A lump lodged in her throat, leaving her speechless and teary. Instead of waiting for a response, he simply kissed her deeply, circling her tongue with his and pressing his stiff erection against her waist. She sank against him, her heart aching to drink him in and soak up every ounce of love and affection he was offering.

  “I’m sorry I doubted you,” she whispered. “Do you forgive me?”

  “Only if you love me back.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed him tightly. “I’ll love you forever with all my heart.”

  “Then, yes, I forgive you,” he said, slipping his hands up under her shirt.

  She kissed his chin, then nibbled a path to his ear. “Hall said no hanky-panky.”

  “He said to stay out of the lab.”

  She giggled. “I think that was just a figure of speech.”

  He cupped her breasts and squeezed a gasp from her chest, devouring the tender flesh of her neck as he worked to get under her clothes. The man was ravenous, his hands licking flames with every deep caress, and as heat pooled at the apex of her thighs she quickly lost the will to fight it.

  “Then, as the new Training and Development Manager, you’ll have to give me a few lessons on how to interpret instructions,” he said. “I’m not very good at it.”

  And when he reached up under her skirt and got himself under her panties, he proved how very bad he was.

  Epilogue

  “HERE YOU GO, MRS. Jacobs. It’s the last remnant of pink on this house, and I think you deserve the honor of extinguishing it.”

  Matt handed Carly the brush and the can of gray-green paint the store had named “Suede.” They’d remodeled the entire house, bringing it twenty-five years into the present, the 1980s style finally sent to that decor graveyard along with brass trim, big hair and fat shoulder pads.

  Holding the brush in her hand, she walked up the path that was now spotted with creamy white kitty paws, Mr. Doodles having thought nothing of walking across a paint lid and leaving his tracks up the walk. Matt and Carly had decided not to wash it off, the prints good warning to visitors who dare come inside.

  He was such a bad cat.

  As Matt mocked a trumpet playing “Taps,” Carly covered over the pink paint, leaving her beautiful little bungalow fully restored and ready for the twenty-first century.

  She stepped back down the path and cloaked herself in Matt’s arms as they stood on the driveway and admired the view.

  The antique tea roses still lined the path, but they’d excavated and replaced the borders with a more earthy covering of shredded redwood. Now, walking up the path, the air was filled with the woodsy scent and the sweet fragrance of roses, the paw prints adding a touch of whimsy in the newly landscaped garden.

  Keeping in tune with the neighborhood, they’d mounted a decorative flag next to the garage door. This one appropriately displayed a merry Santa, now that Thanksgiving was over and they were heading toward Christmas.

  The flag across the street still honored the faded remnants of Halloween.

  The two stood and admired the view. “It’s gone. All the pink is really gone.”

  “Well, it took almost a year, but it was worth it. According to Josie down the street, you’ll make a hefty profit on this house.”

  “We’ll make a hefty profit,” she corrected, bending down to place the lid on the can and the brush on top of it. “Remember, this is our house now, and I’d like to enjoy it for a while before we look for something bigger.”

  He placed a hand over her belly, just barely beginning to swell with their first child. “I say we’ve got a year or two before the family outgrows it.”


  Carly smiled and kissed him, trying to remember a time in her life when she’d dared to dream she could be this happy. There was a time she feared she’d have to choose between a dull and steady man or a wild, sexy bad boy who kept the bed-sheets burning. In Matt she had both, and she’d forever be thankful for the precious gift she’d been given.

  While Carly’s mother was still content with her part-time husband, Carly had found love in all its perfection.

  A car horn sounded behind them.

  “I kinda miss the pink,” Adam yelled from the driver’s seat of his Ford Mustang.

  “You would,” Matt replied. “It fit your personality, sweetheart.”

  Adam laughed. “So are you ready or what?”

  Matt was heading for the batting cages, having decided to join Adam’s softball team in the spring, and no one was happier than Adam. Matt would be their ringer, the man who would win them a championship, he believed. Carly was glad he’d finally put the past behind him. His baseball days were no longer a sour source of resentment but held only fond memories of a chapter in his life he now looked back on with pride.

  He’d become a regular batting coach at the Dugout, offering free lessons to kids whose families couldn’t afford the standard fees, and Matt relished the gift of giving back, throwing attention at boys much like himself who often came from troubled homes and needed the sympathetic ear of someone who understood.

  Stu Callebrew had been dropping hints that he could use a partner for the Dugout, and Matt was considering it as an option if he chose to retire from Web design some day.

  First he needed to make enough money to buy Stu some new machines.

  Picking up the paint can and brush, Matt called over his shoulder, “Give me a second to grab my bag.”

  Carly followed him into the house, stopping him in her new wood-floored entryway to wrap her arms around him and give him a kiss.

  “I love you,” she said.

  He kissed her deep and slow. “I love you back.”

  Stu had said, Life has a way of fixing things. And it was true. They’d both been on a path in search of love and stability, each heading in the wrong direction until life slammed them together against their will. It had forced them to see what was right in front of them, what two stubborn and bullheaded Web designers had kept trying to ignore.

  Life has a way of fixing things.

  Matt and Carly Jacobs would forever be thankful for that.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-1489-1

  PUTTING IT TO THE TEST

  Copyright © 2008 by Lori Borrill.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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