She hadn’t meant to put him on edge, but when she looked up, it was impossible to keep the apology out of her eyes. “You remember I asked you about that favor in the kitchen yesterday?”
“Oh,” he said. Exhaling a laugh, his hand went to his chest. He tossed the towel to her. “Shit, yeah.” Coming over, he sat on the end of the bed. “Before we get into that, I’ve gotta ask something.”
“Ok,” she said, and as he became more serious, her suspicion grew. Those wary feelings intensified when he picked up her hand to kiss her knuckles. “Max?”
“Did he tell you to fuck me?”
Wow, he knew how to slap a woman in the face. “No!” she said, pulling her hand away. “Jesus, Max!”
Shoving out of the bed, Tally took the towel with her and wrapped it around her nude body because she didn’t feel like being vulnerable, or exposed, right now.
“What?” he asked. “You said he tells you who to date.”
How could he think this? How could he believe that what they’d had was orchestrated and fake? She’d opened herself up to him last night, talked to him, trusted him, and here he was asking if she was a hooker!
“What we’ve been doing goes way beyond dating,” she said, her heart pounding and her cheeks burning. “I have never sold sex! I think you’d have got that I wasn’t a pro just from…” She gestured at the sheets.
Bounding to the corner of the bed, he prompted her. “From what?”
“How much I suck at it,” she snapped, resenting him for making her say it. “God, Max, thanks for…”
Why was she so angry about this? It was irrational, and his question was reasonable. Except she was more than offended, she was hurt.
“You don’t suck at it,” he said, leaping up to snatch her hands again and he took both to his mouth this time. “Geez, baby, you don’t even see how you’ve got me by the balls and we’ve only known each other for like a week. I said you were my favorite and I meant it. I want this. I want you.”
Oh no!
Warning bells made her step back, but Max wouldn’t release her hand. “You want to know how you can be sure I wasn’t sent here to seduce you?” she asked, though didn’t let him answer. “I don’t even feature. If your father wanted you pussy-whipped, he’d have sent someone far more adept than me. He wants you single, you know how I know that? There are at least three women lined up for you already.”
“Three—what?”
This was truth beyond what she’d meant to share. “Women, for you, dates. He won’t know for sure who he wants you with until he finds out what you want. Do you want the trophy wife who’ll spend your money, and charm other wives, or the supermodel who’ll make other men drool, but be high maintenance? Or it could be that a business alliance will be more beneficial to everyone. Trouble with the last one is you’ll have to get a good balance. You don’t have boardroom experience, so if you get the wrong woman she’ll take over and make you look ineffectual. Teddy will hate that. But if you get the right one, she’ll guide you and let you lead.”
Shock opened his mouth and widened his eyes. “What the fuck is this?” he asked and as he retreated he dropped her hands to let his go into his hair. “Wife? I don’t want to get married.”
“That’s ok,” she said and smiled to reassure him because the last thing she wanted to do was deter him from going to the meeting. “You’re a guy, you’ll have plenty of time to play the field. You can wait ten years, hell, you can wait twenty, as long as you produce a boy eventually.”
“Produce a…” She’d never seen him so pale or stunned. “What the fuck? You said there was a sister, does she work at his company?”
“Kimmy? No,” Tally said. “She shows up at the company sometimes, she likes to float around and chat it up, but she doesn’t have an official role. She does a lot of charity stuff, and… She helped her mother with the Stretton social functions. That’s kind of… on the backburner now. Though there’s a gala at the end of the month and that’s… Well, you don’t care about that.”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know if I can…”
The shock was understandable, but she’d never had so much faith in a person in her life. “Sure you can,” she said, going to him on impulse. “It’s one day at a time, that’s all, and everything will be done for you…” Tally looked at his jeans. “Do you want me to get you a suit?”
“A… what the fuck? Babe!”
Now that Max was beginning to panic, she could see him sliding into anger like it was his defense. “No? Ok, that’s fine,” she said, doing her unthreatening thing. “I just… if you wanted me to help I could, that’s all I was saying. No one expects you to be anything you’re not.”
“No one except the fucker who dumped my mother,” he said. “He wants me in a fucking office, in a goddamn suit, screwing models and corporate sluts.”
Ok, yeah, that was kind of what she’d said. “Look, I’m an assistant,” she said, trying to backtrack. “I don’t know anything about anything. I’m a nobody. All I was told was to come here and get you to the mansion, that’s it. If you want to know more about what your future’s going to be, get close to Heath or Blair.”
“They’re like his boys?”
“Blair is a woman,” she said and smiled. “And she has slept with Teddy, but she’s slept with everyone. She’ll get to you eventually.”
“I don’t fucking think so,” he said. “Hos ain’t my thing.”
Had she put her foot in it again? Time to backtrack some more. “Oh no, she’s the classiest thing you’ll ever lay eyes on. She’s beautiful, and smart and—”
“You want me to sleep with her?” he asked and tilted his head. “Are threesomes your thing?”
“What? No! I’ve never… I mean I haven’t…” Tally cleared her throat and scratched the back of her neck. “Taking me to bed with Blair would be an insult… to Blair. And I’d just get in the way, if you had a figure like hers to play with—”
“You mean, if I had your figure to play with,” he said, moseying closer to grasp her waist. “She’d be left getting coffee.”
Well, that was sweet, but she took it at face value, given that she was naked in his bedroom, and he’d never laid eyes on Blair. His tune would change after he did.
“Heath is Teddy’s number two,” Tally said, picking up his hand to kiss his palm. “Don’t be surprised if he’s hostile, I think he wanted to take over the company. What he doesn’t know is that Teddy doesn’t really like him. He trusts him, and Heath is good. Very good. He’s the best. But he’s also…”
“He’s what?”
Describing Heath to someone who’d never met him was tough. “He thinks a lot of himself,” she said. “Sometimes Teddy feels disrespected.”
“Poor Teddy,” he mocked without any sympathy.
“Your father would never say it,” she said. “But, yeah, Heath can be quite snooty, and he is obsessed with boobs.”
That was shocking enough to make Max’s head duck forward. But it was meant to be a light-hearted fact about the man who’d hate Max on sight. “He has a… what?”
“Yes, I doubt he knows what any of the assistants’ faces look like, but he’d recognize us by cleavage.” His half-smile was understanding, and she nodded. “He hates Blair with a burning passion. They’ve slept together, course they have, but she doesn’t give him the time of day, and the guys at the corporation chase their tails for her. I guess Heath resents how good she is at using sex to get what she wants… he has a little less… finesse.”
“He doesn’t get dates?”
“Not willing ones,” she said and then thought she was being too harsh. “That’s unfair, I guess… I mean, he’s rich, and he works a lot, he’d probably be a good guy to marry. But wouldn’t be a guy who’d burn up your sheets. Once a year, we assistants draw straws to, you know…”
She shrugged and lowered her eyes, which made him grab her arm. “Sleep with him?”
“No! Flirt with him, make him f
eel good around Blair’s birthday when she’s inundated with attention… She sends out a memo to make sure everyone remembers to buy her a gift. One of the assistants, Gemma, she did sleep with him, and she said—” Coming to her senses, Tally blinked and shook her head. “God, I’m sorry. What am I doing?”
“Giving me a lay of the land,” he said. “I like it.”
She shook her head again. “No, I’m influencing you unfairly. These people are your peers. I shouldn’t be…” Backing away, she took a deep breath. Heath and Blair were his peers and her superiors, just like he was. It was time to get real. “I’m going to leave you my number, ok? If you need to know anything, give me a call and I’ll answer your questions.”
“Wait a minute,” he said.
But that had been the problem, her procrastinating. Tally shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t have spent the night. The fantasy was over, and it was time to face reality.
Deciding to shower at home, she dropped her towel while picking up her bra and skirt from beside the door. She couldn’t stay here anymore. This was getting too hard.
“When can I see you again?” Max asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll be buzzing around at the house, and I’m at the office some days… I run a lot of errands between the two… you’ll see me around.”
Max was shaking his head as he approached. She dipped to pick up her shirt. “Not good enough,” he said. Grabbing her arms as soon as she was upright, he pinned her to the door with a thud and pressed himself close. “I’m going to this damn dinner because of you, for you, and now you’re telling me we’re through?”
If there could be another way, she’d love to embrace it. If he was any other guy, she’d be crawling back into his bed. But he wasn’t, and she’d always known this was going to have to end.
“Not through,” she said. “I just… I think you should wait to see what he can offer you before you make me any promises.”
His eyes got heavy. Already she’d learned that as his eyes grew drowsy, his dick woke up. “Is that what you want?” he asked, tracing a line back and forth over the swell of her breast to her cleavage. “Promises?”
Yes, and she wanted to make them too. Being impulsive was so unlike her, somehow this man brought it out in her. It was so unfair that he was the worst man in her life that she could fall for. Tally had to be the level-headed one and that meant saying it plain.
“No,” she said, catching his finger. “I want you to go there and give this a chance. Think about your friends. I know it will be uncomfortable and you’ll want to walk away from the trouble, but think about all those guys out there who would kill for a chance like this. You’re having money, family, and security, thrust upon you and yeah, sometimes it will be a nightmare, but people who grew up dirt poor, with nothing, they’d kill for this. Walking away from it is an insult to all your buddies, all those guys who would love even half a chance to make a go of this.”
“Hmm,” he muttered. “Guilt. That’s a low tactic.”
“No, not guilt, inspiration,” she said. “Push through the difficult part and you’ll come out the other side in a dream. Enduring the pain will be worth it.”
As tough as it would be for her to lose him, he was about to wake up in a full color, 3D fantasy. He’d see that she was right, she knew he would.
“And you?” he asked. “If I decide you’re what I want?”
The woman in her was screaming with joy, but the employee was screaming in terror. The truth was, it would never happen. He’d be seduced by the glamour of the life; she’d seen it happen and could understand the allure… to a point.
“Then we’ll cross that bridge,” she said and winced because she had to move on to another difficult subject. “But that favor I wanted to ask…”
“You don’t want me to tell them about us.”
It was a relief that he’d figured it out, so she didn’t have to say it aloud. “And the guys, if you take them to meet anyone, can you make sure they don’t say anything to anyone either? I doubt they’ll think to mention it, but just in case I’m around….”
Another scowl made her nervous. “You don’t want them to talk to you?”
But there was no reason for him to be offended, she liked his friends. “Oh no, they can talk to me,” she said. “Everyone knows I came here to proposition you, so it’s reasonable to assume that I’d have met your friends. But the us… together part…”
He wasn’t happy, but more resigned than angry. “I don’t get it, you say I’ll live in this dream world where I can have anything I want, then I say I want you and you… say I can’t have you.”
Touching his face, Tally wanted to kiss him. “You’ll get it soon,” she said. “I’m not saying you can’t have me, I’m saying your options are about to increase and I’m…”
“You’re what?” he asked because he never let her get away with anything. “What are you, Boss?”
There was no way to be subtle about it, so she lifted a shoulder. “I’m the girl who blows you at your desk over lunch… not the girl you bring home to your bed.”
This was the morning for surprising him. “Wow,” he said, and his grip loosened. “Just… wow.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Like I said, all kinds of options for you now.” Linking her fingers at the back of his neck, she pulled him down for a quick kiss. “I’ll leave my number, call me if you change your mind about the suit.”
His nod of acknowledgement was absent, so she took the opportunity presented by his distraction and eased him back to open the door. He probably had too much on his mind to realize this was the first and last time they’d ever wake up together, but she was aware of it, and it was making her heart break.
But Tally had known all along that this would be harder on her than on him. The relationship part, not the adjustment to Stretton-life part; she didn’t envy him that.
His life was going to be turned upside down, but she believed what she’d said, if he pushed through the early difficulties, his life would get so much better.
SEVEN
A suit.
A fucking suit.
Why the fuck would she think he wanted to wear a fucking suit?
Just the suggestion of it made Max make less of an effort. He didn’t even bother changing his clothes after work; he left the garage and went back to his place to have a beer without even thinking about cleaning himself up. A fucking suit. Propping himself against the kitchen counter, he gulped down half the bottle.
This was important to his girl, but he couldn’t figure out why. Maybe she just cared about this Stretton guy more than she was telling him.
Max didn’t know what it was about her that got him going. But from the first minute he’d seen her standing outside his apartment, he’d been intrigued. What kind of woman stood outside a stranger’s apartment all night in a neighborhood like this? She could’ve been there for hours for all he knew… He’d have to ask her how long she waited and make it up to her.
Memories of their night in his bed made him scrub his hand over his eyes and down more beer. When he’d met her in Fitzpatrick’s he’d meant to mess with her head, thought it might be fun to ruffle that sweet little demure personality, figuring she could stand to be wrinkled a bit.
Boy, had that backfired on him.
He’d told her to make the world believe that they belonged to each other and she’d ended up convincing him that they did. His casual interest in her neat body had become an inferno of need.
If it wasn’t for her impressive performance, he’d have kept his hands to himself, maybe not his lips, but his hands for sure, if she hadn’t made it so clear that she wanted him bad. Not in a million years had he expected her to pull him into the alley. Max would’ve put serious amounts of money on her being more modest than that.
But, if what she’d told him later was true, he hadn’t been wrong. It was just that he brought it out in her, and he wasn’t sorry that he did.
Something about
their connection made her crazy and he liked that. He wasn’t immune either. Seeing how she got a boost of confidence around him, and the way her eyes started to sparkle any time he touched her, drove him nuts.
Except, he was hyperaware of her vulnerability. She was so small, petite, and clueless.
It was tough to believe that she grew up in crappy neighborhoods because she didn’t have a lot of street smarts. But he’d known kids like that, the socially awkward ones who didn’t make friends and just locked themselves up inside. The guys ended up as forty-year-old virgins and the women usually found themselves trapped in the first bad relationship that found them, or as crazy cat ladies.
His girl shirked that stereotype. Her dad kicking it had given her an out. One she deserved.
She’d done good.
And now he was trying to drag her back down to his level.
A car horn blared outside. He took his time about finishing his beer before he bothered going to the window. Using the neck of the empty beer bottle to push the curtain aside, he looked down to the street.
What the fuck?
This was crazy.
He couldn’t go down there and get in to that dumbass fucking limo; he wasn’t a limo guy, never had been.
Taking a step backwards, he glanced over the breakfast bar at the coffee table in the living room. Tally’s card was there. If he bailed on dinner, he could call her instead. It wouldn’t take much to convince her to come over and once she was here he’d make it up to her, she’d forgive him… He knew how to work his girl.
Stretton might not be so understanding. Max didn’t care about that bastard, but in the same breath, he didn’t want to be responsible for her losing her job. If she did, he’d take care of her. Damn right he would. He thought it might be fun to have her around more, but Tally wouldn’t go for that and she shouldn’t, her career meant something to her… as did the family she worked for.
Her education gave her opportunities, but for some reason, she’d decided Stretton was the only one she wanted to work for. Max couldn’t fuck that up for her just because he didn’t want to sit in a limo or eat a fucking plate of food.
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