The Real Deal

by Lucy Monroe

  “Yes.”

  That was promising. “When?”

  “I’ll be between timed experiments late this afternoon.”

  She took a second to go back over what she remembered of the ferry schedule. “I can be on the three o’clock ferry.”

  “I’ll see you about four then.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Simon . . .” What did she want to say? She had an inexplicable urge to keep him on the phone with meaningless chatter. “Thank you for calling.”

  “I woke you up.”

  “I don’t mind, really.”

  “I’m going to bed. If you call me in about fifteen minutes you can repay me in kind.”

  “You haven’t been to bed yet?” He must be exhausted.

  “No.”

  “I’m not into revenge.”

  “I’m glad. I can use some sleep.”

  “Sweet dreams.”

  “I believe they will be. Until later.”

  She was foolish to think the words had special meaning, particularly directed at her. She was dynamite in the boardroom, but more like a wet sparkler in the bedroom. No fizzle at all. She stifled a sigh. “Bye.” She listened for the click on his end before she hung up.

  She wished her dreams were sweet, but too often she had the Amanda-shrinks-to-nothing nightmare or one where she relived walking into Lance’s office while he had sex with two people. Only in her dream, they realized she was there and they all laughed at her.

  She snuggled down into the covers and thought about Simon. She liked his voice. It was deep and masculine, but smooth too, like well-aged scotch. He had very sexy lips. She recalled how they moved when he talked and wondered how they would feel moving on her own.

  She was still chastising herself for her totally inappropriate, not to mention incredibly unlikely, thoughts when she slipped back into sleep.

  This time when she arrived at Simon’s, she didn’t give Jacob a chance to harass her. She stopped her car, got out and pushed the button to call him. She barely refrained from a few choice expletives when he informed her that now they had met, a visual I.D. through the car window was sufficient.

  Jacob answered the door when she rang the bell and she was immediately concerned that Simon hadn’t come out of his lab after all.

  “Has he surfaced, Jacob?”

  “The boss is not a submarine, Ms. Zachary.”

  That was a matter of opinion. He certainly disappeared as easily as if he were one, and a stealthy one at that. “Is he available?”

  “Not strictly speaking, no.”

  “I knew it!” She dropped her briefcase and glared in disgust at Jacob. “He woke me up before dawn this morning and then he didn’t even bother to come out of his lab when he promised he would.” She dug through her purse looking for headache medicine. She came across an antacid tablet and popped it for good measure. “No wonder the man isn’t married. If he had a wife, she would have killed him by now.”

  “I did not say that my employer was still in his laboratory.”

  She stopped trying to get the stupid cap off the small white bottle of pain reliever she’d found and looked up at Jacob. He was looking down his nose at her in the best tradition of a snobbish English butler.

  “You play more parts than Jillian!”

  Jacob in his superior butler mode didn’t deign to answer.

  “If Simon’s not tied up with his experiments, where is he?” She managed to get the cap off and tossed back two small caplets without water.

  “Mr. Brant is on the level below.”

  Hadn’t Simon said something about having his gym down there? “Is he exercising?”

  “As I cannot see him at this moment in time, I cannot answer that question with any degree of accuracy.”

  “Jacob, I bet there’s a spear somewhere in Africa with your name on it.”

  The left corner of his mouth tilted up before he schooled his expression into somber regard. The old faker. “I will escort you below stairs if you would like.”

  She waved her hand in front of her. “By all means.”

  All humorous irritation with Jacob faded when Amanda found herself standing inside the open doorway to Simon’s gym. Everything faded except the sight of him, as his foot repeatedly connected with the kicking bag hanging from a ceiling beam.

  He was fast, faster even than her Tae Bo instructor. His ponytail flipped from side to side like a short black whip.

  And graceful. He moved with the lithe agility of a human panther.

  He was also almost naked.

  Wearing a pair of black karate pants and nothing else, sweat glistened on the smooth, tan skin of his body. His chest had a neat triangle-shape patch of black hair centered between his male nipples. The dark copper circles drew her eyes as did the rippling muscles below them.

  He had a six-pack of abs that most weight lifters would die for. The shoulders of his six-foot-two-inch frame were broad and well-developed, as were the bulging biceps of his arms.

  He was devastating.

  And she was standing there, ogling him like a star-struck teenager on her first visit to Universal Studios.

  “It appears he is exercising, Ms. Zachary.”

  “As shocking as you may find this to believe, I’d figured that out for myself.” She couldn’t make herself stop looking at Simon while she spoke to Jacob, which she had no doubt the old man noticed and found highly amusing.

  She might find her behavior amusing too, in someone else, but in herself, she found it both unexplainable and embarrassing. Nevertheless, she could not look away.

  Without warning, Simon whirled on his bare feet to face her. “Amanda. You came.”

  Had he doubted she would? “Hello, Simon. I can wait for you upstairs while you finish your workout.” Even as she said the words, she regretted them. What if he disappeared while she was waiting for him again?

  “There’s no need. You can talk while I exercise.”

  “You must have better concentration than me. I can’t even tell someone my name in my Tae Bo class, or I lose count of where I’m at.”

  “You practice Tae Bo?”

  She laughed self-consciously. “Not exactly. I’m taking a class in it, strictly for the exercise. My form is terrible.”

  “I can help you with that.” He eyed her as if already determining how best to work with her.

  Just the thought of being in her Lycra leggings and sports bra in the same room with Simon in his loose fitting karate pants was enough to send her temperature spiking. “Well, uh, thanks for the offer, but I doubt I’ll have the opportunity to take you up on it.”

  One black brow rose. “What’s wrong with right now?”

  She gave him an incredulous look. “I’m not dressed for it.” Her smart ice-yellow suit had not been designed with strenuous exercise in mind.

  “Take off your shoes.”

  What? “No.”

  “Come on. You can be my dummy. Watch my form and later you can work on emulating it.”

  “I don’t need to watch your form.” Watching him stand there doing nothing was bad enough on her equilibrium. “I’ve got an instructor back home.”

  “He can’t be very good if your form is still choppy. You’re too supple not to excel at it.”

  He was a she, as was the entire class, but Simon didn’t need to know that.

  “You’re mistaken.” She’d fought the blasted treadmill for supremacy, how in the world could Simon believe she was supple?

  “She moves with innate limberness, doesn’t she, Jacob?”

  She’d forgotten the eccentric housekeeper.

  “Yes, sir. She does.”

  “Oh, please. This is ridiculous. You’re not going to talk me into being your Tae Kwon Do dummy by complimenting me on the way I move.”

  “You said you wanted to talk to me. I’m offering you the opportunity to do so while I exercise.” His gaze shifted to the left of her shoulder. “I’ll take care of
Ms. Zachary, Jacob.”

  The other man must have left because Simon’s gray gaze returned to her. “Take off your shoes,” he repeated.

  She stared down at her sensible pumps. She couldn’t exactly wear them on Simon’s exercise mats, even if she didn’t act as his dummy.

  She slipped the shoes from her feet and lined them up neatly beside the doorway.

  “I think you’d better lose the jacket too.”

  Simon had several panels of glass open in the wall of windows and there was a nice early summer breeze. “I’m sure it won’t be necessary. I’m not going to work up a sweat talking to you.”

  “That’s true, but you’ll have more mobility without it.” Then he stepped forward and started to help her out of her short-waisted blazer.

  It was halfway down her arms before she got enough wits to voice a protest. “I don’t need mobility to talk.”

  “But it will make playing my dummy easier.”

  She was about to tell him what he could do with the idea of her playing his dummy, when the conversation she’d had with her manager the day before came back to her. This was for her job. She could and would do a lot to clinch this deal.

  Playing dummy for Simon’s Tae Kwon Do workout was neither immoral, nor demeaning. No matter how stressful she found it personally, she couldn’t justify saying “no” simply because she was attracted to him.

  She had to drop her briefcase before she could let him pull the jacket the rest of the way off.

  Goose bumps broke out on her bare arms. From the breeze, she told herself, not because his fingers had brushed against her skin while pulling off the ice-yellow blazer.

  He folded her jacket and laid it on top of her shoes, placing her briefcase neatly beside the pile.

  Then he looked at her feet. “Those nylons will make you slide on the mats. You could fall.”

  “They’re not nylons,” she said before thinking.

  “You wear stockings?” For some reason his voice sounded quite strange when he asked that.

  Her gaze flew to his face, but his expression gave nothing away.

  “I wear thigh-highs. They’re more comfortable than either nylons or a garter and stockings.” Shut up. Stop blabbering on. He doesn’t want to know about the comfort level of your stay-up stockings.

  “Thigh-highs?” There went that quizzical brow again.

  “They stay up with a lacy elastic band around your thigh.”

  “Not my thigh.” His deep rich chuckle and flashing white teeth made her insides curl.

  “You know what I meant.”

  He smiled. “Yes.”

  “Why are we talking about my thigh-highs anyway?”

  “You need to take them off.”

  If he’d looked even the least intrigued by the idea, she would have refused, but he spoke completely dispassionately. It was as if the thought of her taking off her semi-intimate apparel was no more interesting to him than the latest stock figures. In fact, those might have excited him. She’d seen that the market was up just a bit today.

  She’d look a fool playing the outraged Victorian maiden when he so clearly saw her as the perfect sparring dummy, not as a woman.

  There was nothing new about that.

  The knowledge should not have the power to hurt her anymore, but it did.

  While not surprising, it was still lowering to admit that the first man she’d been attracted to in years saw her as nothing more than a nuisance he had to spend time with in order to keep his promise to his cousin.

  She turned away from him and reaching up under her skirt, she removed first one stocking and then the other. Air brushed her naked legs like a touch and she shivered again.

  Schooling her expression into impassivity, she turned back to Simon.

  He wasn’t even looking at her. He was drinking out of a water bottle she hadn’t noticed earlier.

  “I’m ready.”

  He took another pull off the bottle and then put it down. “Okay. Come stand over here.”

  He maneuvered her into position with his hands on her shoulders. He was so close, she could smell his body’s unique fragrance enhanced by sweat from his workout. Would he smell like that after making love?

  She would never know, and with that acknowledgment, she slammed the lid on that particular line of thought.

  “You stand like this.” He grabbed the wrist and elbow of her right hand and put it in a blocking position. “Switch arms when I switch sides of attack. Can you do that?”

  “Sure.” Just stop touching me before I do something we’ll both regret.

  He looked at her strangely. “Are you okay? I’m not going to hit you. I just want a target to aim for. The sparring routine will be completely noncontact.”

  She nodded. “You can start.”

  He did and true to his word, though he came within a breath of touching her with each blow, he never made contact. They’d been working out for about five minutes when he reminded her she was supposed to be talking.

  “Right. First, I think you need to consider the merger in terms of future growth rather than the minimal cost to the current pool of employees.”

  Simon didn’t respond, he just let her talk. Not by the flicker of an eyelash did he indicate if he was even listening.

  Every once in a while, he would change her position to facilitate his workout. He did it silently, but regardless, each time she lost her train of thought and had to search her mind for the point she’d been making.

  “You need to change your blocking arm faster.”

  She stopped in mid-spate of telling him about the projected increase in market share the combined companies would have. “What?”

  “I need you to be faster in changing your blocking arm.”

  So, she increased her speed and found herself moving into basic Tae Bo blocking positions. Pretty soon she was panting between words and sweat was trickling down her back, making the silk of her white tank top stick to her.

  “Okay, now let’s work on your form.”

  Without knowing how it happened, she was surrounded completely by Simon with her back brushing against his chest. He took hold of each of her arms and put her into position. “Relax, Amanda. Let your body move with mine.”

  She was really glad her back was to him and they were facing the windows with a view of the water, not the mirrored wall that would have reflected their tableau with entirely too much realism. Because the thought of her body moving with his had her nipples puckering painfully. Both layers of her silk top and bra were not adequate to hide the evidence and she prayed he would stay behind her.

  She tried to concentrate on doing as he’d said and following his movements with the same fluidity his limbs enjoyed.

  “This isn’t necessary, you know.”

  He didn’t answer, but one big hand landed on her thigh, the fingers exerting pressure for her leg to move into position.

  She’d wanted fluidity of movement, but she was in danger of losing control over her muscles as her bones literally turned to water. Her body wanted to melt into a puddle of sexual need on the floor mat below her feet. Only sheer force of will kept her knees from buckling as his fingers moved against her thigh.

  Oh, mother! She’d never been this excited, not even in the act of copulation with Lance. And Simon wasn’t even trying to turn her on. He was teaching her form, for Heaven’s sake.

  She stumbled on her stance and Simon’s hand slid toward her inner thigh. Only the fact she was wearing a straight skirt that had been stretched taut by her current position stopped his fingers from going between her legs. Nevertheless, his fingertips brushed the very top of her mound and three layers of fabric did not dull the impact on her senses.

  She yelped and twisted out of his arms, almost running in her desire to put some distance between them.

  “What’s the matter? Do you have a cramp?”

  Crossing her arms over the telling evidence prominent on her overgenerous breasts, she shook her head. He didn�
��t even know what was bothering her. That knowledge, more than any other had her crossing the room and yanking her jacket on. “You’re done with your workout, right?”

  He nodded. “But we still need to work on your form.”

  She slid into her shoes without putting on her stockings. “I’d rather finish giving you my presentation on the merger.”

  “All right, but I had planned to take a short swim. Would you like to join me?”

  Not in this lifetime. How did he expect her to swim? Naked? As her body exhibited further evidence of increasing arousal, she chastised herself. Bad thought, Amanda, bad, bad, thought. “No, but I wouldn’t mind taking a shower.” She wished she had some clean clothes with her. She could feel her perspiration not yet dry on her body.

  Simon walked to a small speaking unit on the wall and pressed a button. “Jacob?”

  “Yes, sir,” came the disembodied voice of Simon’s housekeeper.

  “Amanda got a little sweaty playing my dummy and she wants to take a shower. I think you two might be similar in size. Could you dig up some clean clothes for her to put on when she’s done?”

  If Simon had asked, she would have refused the offer of clothing, but he hadn’t asked. Hearing that he considered her five-foot-four-inch curvy frame on par in size with his housekeeper’s masculine, but wiry five-foot-nine, did nothing for her sense of self-confidence.

  She could almost feel the sting of one of Lance’s love pats on her thigh and hear the words that invariably accompanied it. “Did you get your exercise in this morning, hon?” He’d always managed to make it seem like he doubted the possibility.

  When she’d called him on it, he’d told her she was reading things into his words and gone into psychobabble about how damaging that was to the communication of free ideas in a marriage. He’d had the gall to tell her that her reactions made him feel intimidated about being open with her.

  She allowed herself a small smirk, remembering she’d told him the same thing about his reaction after she destroyed the big screen television.

  “Amanda?”

  She looked up and realized that Simon had been saying something to her that she hadn’t caught. “I’m sorry. I missed that.”

  He looked at her quizzically, but she blanked her expression.