by Marilyn Lee
“Why?”
“Because that’s the only way this will work.”
He shook his head. “We’ve been very close for eight of the nine years we’ve known each other. We can make anything we want to work.”
“Right now you’re thinking with your cock and that always gets you in trouble, Jeff.”
“What the hell is that suppose to mean?”
She closed her eyes briefly. “I’m sorry. That comment was way out of line.”
“Damn right it was.”
“We’re both tired and saying and thinking things we shouldn’t. Let’s say good night while we’re still friends.”
“Friendship is overrated.” Annoyed that he’d be going to bed with blue balls, he turned to leave.
She touched his arm. “Jeff, please... don’t leave angry... not after we shared such a great weekend.”
“I’m more horny and frustrated than I am angry.”
“You set the rules.” She squeezed his arm. “Good night.”
“Good night, honey.”
He left and she closed the door. He stood waiting until he heard her locks sliding into place. Then feeling as if he’d been kicked to the curb, he left the building. He drove home, had a couple of hot dogs and several beers, took a shower, and went to bed. He lay awake for a long time thinking of Sharde before he finally drifted to sleep.
* * * * *
The next morning, after a restless night, Sharde sat in her office going over résumés for systems analysts with Darbi. Darbi had chosen twenty out of the hundred e-resumes for Sharde to give closer consideration.
She was tired and had trouble focusing. “Who did you say I should take closer looks at again?”
Darbi sat back in her chair. “You don’t seem very rested or very happy. How did the weekend go... or shouldn’t I ask?”
Sharde sighed and sipped her coffee. She could hardly admit that she and Jefferson had spent the majority of the weekend having sex. Nor could she confess that she had spent most of the previous night wishing she’d allowed Jefferson to stay with her.
She frowned. If she couldn’t tell Darbi, who could she tell? She shrugged. “There was no power and that made for chilly nights.” Not that she’d felt much chill wrapped in Jefferson’s arms. “Or it would have... if we hadn’t...”
“Wasn’t he worth... did he disappoint?”
“In bed?” Her cheeks burned. “No! But he’s only interested in sex... nothing more.”
“Are you sure you can’t make that enough?”
“Yes!” She shook her head. “I thought it might be enough... but making love with him just made me want his love.”
“And you don’t think that’s possible?”
She sighed. “I don’t know... I just don’t know. I’ll see what the coming weeks bring. But right now I feel as if I just need a mini vacation to recover from my mini vacation.”
“Do you regret spending the weekend with him?”
“No. I might find later that I do, but right now, no.”
“Then why are you sure sex won’t be enough?”
“Because I love him and while the sex was great, I need more than that.”
Darbi sighed. “I think when I’m ready for another relationship, I’m not going to look for or expect love.”
“I know you’ve been hurt, but surely you’re not giving up on love.”
“Love hurts and I have no desire to be hurt again. The next time I will be content with a man who’s interested enough to wait for marriage before the sex, who treats me well and excites me physically.”
Sharde blinked. “Where are you going to find a man willing to wait for marriage before he insists on sex?”
Darbi shrugged, a smile tugging at her lips. “I have no idea. Maybe that’s why I’m feeling lonely and soooo horny.”
Their gazes met and locked and they burst into peals of helpless laugher.
A knock on Sharde’s office door finally silenced their laughter. She wiped tears from her eyes and took a deep, calming breath. “Come in,” she called.
The door opened and Jefferson walked in. He paused when he saw Darbi. “Am I interrupting?”
“Ah... well actually Darbi and I are deciding on analysts to ask to come in for interviews. Was there something you needed from either one of us?”
“Actually, I was hoping for a word with you, Sharde.”
Darbi gathered her folders and cup and rose. She looked at Sharde. “I need to check on my plans for the trip to L.A. Call me when you’re ready to go over these again.”
She nodded. “Thanks, Darbi.”
Darbi nodded at Jefferson. He nodded back, holding the door open for her. He closed it after her, leaning back against it.
During the night Sharde had decided that the next phase in Operation Seduce Jefferson would be playing hard to get. He’d had a taste of her passion and now she was going to make him want more so badly he’d realize she had more to offer than just sex. She forced herself to meet his gaze. “What’s up?”
“How are you?”
“I’m fine. How are you?”
He raked a hand through his hair. “I’m tired. I didn’t sleep well last night as you might imagine. What about you?”
She shrugged, looked him in the eye, and lied. “I had a bath, a sandwich, a glass of wine, and slept all night.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“I wish I could say the same.”
She looked down at the printouts on her desk. “Was there something I could do for you?”
“I want to get the budget set. I thought maybe we could crunch figures over lunch.”
She glanced up at him, not quite meeting his gaze. “When?”
“Today. Are you free?”
“No. I have plans.”
He thrust his hands in his pant pockets. “Can you change them?”
“I’d rather not. They’re longstanding.”
“What about after lunch? Coffee?”
“I really need to decide who to ask in for interviews. We need to get people hired and up to speed as soon as possible if we’re not going to be outbid again by Fra-Tech.”
The muscles in his face tightened. “We are not going to come in second to them again!”
She wondered how much of the determination she saw in his gaze was based not only on having lost a big contract to Fra-Tech, but also on having lost Vanessa to the handsome owner, Clayton Frazier.
“Then we need to be ready.”
“I know that, but the budget is important too so we’ll know how much we can afford to offer in terms of salary and benefits.”
“I know. Tell you what. I’ll get together with Nelson in accounting and we’ll crunch the numbers, and I’ll get a report to you ASAP.”
He shrugged. “Fine.” He hesitated, his gaze sweeping over her face. “Or we could do dinner.”
She deliberately misunderstood him. “Fine. I’ll see if Nelson is free for dinner. If he is, we’ll burn the midnight oil and have the numbers for you sometime tomorrow. How’s that?”
His gaze narrowed and his lips tightened. “That’s not what I had in mind, Sharde.”
She went on misunderstanding him. “I don’t see how we can get it done any sooner.”
His gaze cooled. “Fine. Enjoy your dinner with Nelson.” He turned, pulled the door opened and left, closing it softly behind him.
She sat back in her seat, a small smile tugging at her lips. He’d looked ready to blow his stack. How long would it be before he came right out and asked to see her without the pretense of it being work related? Her smile vanished. That could take weeks unless she gave him another push.
But business first. She checked the office phone list on her computer and reached for the phone. “Accounting. Nelson,” a male voice announced in her ear.
“Hi, Nelson. This is Donovan in administration. Are you free to work late tonight with me?”
Chapter Five
“How long are you going to
keep pulling his chain?”
“Pulling his chain?” Seated next to Darbi in a sauna several nights later, Sharde frowned. “Jeff? What makes you think I’m pulling his chain?”
“He’s asked you out three times this week and you’ve refused each time.”
“So how is that pulling his chain?”
Darbi shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean... well, he just looks so tense and frustrated lately. And he’s taken to lying in wait for me.”
Sharde stiffened. “What do you mean?”
“I mean lately I’m nearly tripping over him. If I go into the coffee room, he’s right behind me. When I arrive at work in the morning, he’s hanging in the parking lot waiting to hold the door open for me. Today, he asked me to have lunch.”
Sharde swallowed. “Did you?”
“No. I had plans, but he implied he’d ask me again.”
“I didn’t know he was...”
“Interested in me? He’s not. He wants to pick my brain about information about you. I think maybe you need to give him a break before he explodes.”
She closed her eyes briefly. “Oh, girl, you scared me. For a moment, I thought you and he...”
“Me and him? Never!” She shook her head. “No offense, Sharde, but I prefer my men a lot darker.”
“None taken. I didn’t set out to fall in love with him. It just happened. When he hired me, he was struggling to get the company off the ground and we worked a lot of overtime together. More than one night, we worked so late we fell asleep in the office... me on the sofa and him in a chair. One night, while we were working, he asked if I’d mind if he put the radio on so he could listen to the World Series. Since I had set my VCR to tape it in case I missed it, I said no. That night we discovered we had a lot in common and we liked each other. At least he liked me and I fell in love with him. I don’t know when it happened. One night I went to sleep really liking him a lot. The next morning I woke up in love with him.
“Until that happened, I’d planned to get a few years’ experience in here and then head out to work in Atlanta. Instead, I’ve spent the last several years waiting for him to wake up and realize we should be more than friends.”
“I think he realizes that now, Sharde.”
“He realizes he wants to be my lover. I want more than that from him.”
“Isn’t part of getting to that point going out with him?”
“Yes... when he wants more than sex. Does that make me sound hard?”
She shook her head. “No. You have to do what you feel is right. Just don’t push him too hard too fast. It can’t be easy for him... after being betrayed by two women he loved in such a short time.”
“It’s his own fault for being so bloody stupid! I knew the moment I saw Vanessa she was a bitch! All he could see was her shaking her bony behind at him.”
“Likes bony asses, huh?”
Sharde arched a brow. “Not anymore.”
Darbi laughed. “I heard that, girl.”
“Tomorrow’s Friday. Any plans?”
“Jadan has this new male strip club she wants to check out,” she said of a mutual friend. “She’s heard about this hot dancer named Sarro. Do you want to come with us to ogle him?”
“Hmmm. Sounds like fun, but the only man I’m interested in ogling is Jefferson. We have a meeting tomorrow afternoon.”
“You going to cut him some slack?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” She sighed. “But how is Jadan? I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“You know Jadan.”
“What is Tom going to say about her ogling some gorgeous stripper?”
“I don’t think they’re an item anymore.”
“Oh. How’s she taking that?”
“Better than I thought.”
“Well, say hi for me. And while you two are ogling your gorgeous stripper, I’ll be plotting Jeff’s downfall.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Smiling, Sharde closed her eyes, forming a mental picture of Jefferson. One of these days he was going to be hers. “Oh, yeah.”
The next day, Sharde took a long lunch to go shopping for lingerie at Victoria’s Secret. Recalling Jefferson’s reaction to the teddy she’d worn at the cabin, she bought a skimpy red teddy with spaghetti straps. It was called a strappy-back baby doll. Without the matching thong, it left the sides of her breasts, thighs, and ass exposed. All he’d have to do was lift up the front, part her legs, and enter her.
When she returned to the office, she took her hair down and shook it out, running her fingers through it. Looking in the mirror in her private bathroom, she decided she’d managed to achieve the look she wanted, as if a lover had been stroking his fingers through her hair.
She freshened her lipstick, unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse, revealing her cleavage, and waited. Right on time for their two o’clock meeting, a knock sounded on her door.
She rose, walked over to the next to lowest file cabinet in her office, bent over so that the short black skirt rose up the back of her thighs and called out, “Come in.”
The door opened. She heard a quick inhalation. Still bending, she looked over her shoulder. “Be with you in a second, Jeff. Just need a few files.”
He stood by the closed door staring at the backs of her thighs. Pretending not to notice, she turned back to the file cabinet, pulled two files out, and straightened. “Got them.”
She sat down and motioned to the chair in front of her desk. “Have a seat.”
He sat, his gaze going to her hair.
She opened the folders on her desk and glanced up at him. “We’ll start interviewing for the system analysts positions on Monday.” She tapped the top folder on her desk. “I have the monthly reports here and–”
He held up a hand, shaking his head. “I have the headache from hell.”
She opened her top left desk drawer. “I have some aspirins.”
“Aspirins aren’t going to help, Sharde.”
“No?”
“No. What I need is...” He raked a hand through his hair. “Could we discuss this over dinner?”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight?” She widened her eyes. “I’d like to Jefferson, but–”
His gaze narrowed and he rose to lean over her desk. He stared into her eyes. “Why are you avoiding me?”
“Avoiding you? I’m not. I–”
“The hell you’re not. If I walk into the coffee room, you walk out. If we arrive in the private parking area at the same time, you always manage to linger in your car until I’m inside. If I ask you out for a simple damned meal, you always have other plans!”
Resting his weight on one hand, he curled the fingers of the other hand in her hair, giving it a painful tug. “Don’t jerk my chain, Sharde. You’re avoiding me and I want to know why.”
He was so close she could see the anger in his gray gaze and feel his breath on her lips. She longed to lean forward and kiss the color off his lips. She swallowed instead. “It’s the first Friday of the month. I volunteer at the shelter. Remember? You should. We chose it together as a way for company employees to celebrate Martin Luther King Service Day.”
“Don’t hand me that, Sharde. You’re avoiding me.” His gaze settled on her cleavage. “And flaunting yourself at the same time.”
“Let go of my hair, Jefferson.”
He released her hair.
She lifted her chin. “What is it that you want from me?”
He stroked his fingers through her hair and moved closer until his lips were but a breath away. He leaned his body against the desk and stroked the forefinger of his free hand down her chest to come to rest between her cleavage. “I am tired of being teased and denied, Sharde.”
His finger seemed to burn into the insides of her breasts. She wet her lips. “We agreed when we left the cabin we’d go back to normal. It was your idea, Jeff. You’d rather have me as a friend than a lover. Remember?”
“I want you.”
The muscles in her stomach tightened. “As what?”
He touched his mouth to hers. “I want to sleep with you.” He nibbled at her lips, sliding his hand into her blouse to cup her breasts.
She resisted the temptation to lean into him. Instead, she leaned as far back as his fingers in her hair would allow. “And what would happen on Monday? You’d want us to go back to normal?”
He released her hair and cupped his hand on the back of her neck. “We can be friends and lovers,” he murmured against her lips.
She drew back, ignoring the ache for his kiss. “We want different things, Jefferson. I’m not interested in a casual relationship that’s based solely on sex.”
“What do you want it based on?”
“I’m thirty-two and you’re thirty-eight. Sex alone doesn’t interest me.”
“So you’re saying... what? What it is that you want out of a relationship, Sharde?”
“One of these days I’m going to want to get married and have a couple of kids.”
He released his grip on her neck and recoiled as if she’d attempted to strike him. “Marriage? To who?”
She leaned back in her chair, her face flushing. “Clearly not to you.”
He stared at her. “Are you seeing anyone?”
She pushed her chair back and rose. “If you’re not interested in the meeting, I need some air. It’s kind of stuffy in here.”
He swung around and turned her to face him. “What do you want me to do, Sharde? Beg? I know the desire isn’t all on my side.”
She tossed her hair and stared at him. “I’m not interested in casual, meaningless sex, Jefferson. If I were, I wouldn’t seek it from you. Is that clear enough for you?”
He released her, his eyes narrowing. “It’s very clear, Sharde.”
“So what’s it going to be?”
“I’m not in the mood for any shit from you, Sharde.” He walked across her office and out the door.
So her wanting anything more than sex from him was shit? Shaking, she went back to her desk and sank down into her seat. Her attempt to force him into something more had backfired. She buttoned her blouse and put her hair back up.
She spent the rest of the day trying without success to concentrate on work. Two hours later, she decided she’d had enough. She picked up her briefcase, the decorative bag containing her new teddy, and walked out her office.
