Who's on Top?

by Karen Kendall

  “Don’t you care that the neighbors might see you?”

  “Nope. If they’ve got nothing better to do than look into my windows, then my nudity is their problem.”

  Jane clutched the sheet to her breasts and wished she felt as free as he obviously did. “Give me that.”

  “I can’t have it as a keepsake? A blackmail tool?” He waggled his brows.

  “No!” She snatched it from him and balled it up in her hand.

  One of the ridiculous pink sandals she’d bought on the fly at Beckindale’s yesterday evening caught her eye.

  What had possessed her? Jane moved around collecting her clothes.

  “You’re different this morning, Jane. Regrets?”

  “No.” She tossed her hair behind her shoulders and retreated into the powder room with her clothes.

  Regret is not the word. She dropped the sheet and shimmied back into the thong, which seemed all wrong this morning. She eased into the tight silk pants. She snapped the bra and wrapped the blouse around her breasts.

  A few splashes of water and the rub of her index fingers under her eyes took care of last night’s smudged makeup, at least until she got home. As for her hair…hopeless. Her hair told the story of their activities last night, no doubt about it. She tried to calm it down but it stubbornly remained well and truly Kum Fu’d.

  She slid the hussy sandals onto her feet and wiggled her hot-pink toes. In the clear morning sunlight the color seemed obnoxious and more suited to a nineteen-year-old coed than a CEO in her thirties.

  When she emerged from the powder room, Dom handed her a steaming cup.

  Jane accepted it and took a sip. Mmm, perfect. How had he remembered that she liked a disgusting amount of both sweetener and cream? It unnerved her; almost alarmed her. Why couldn’t he be like every other man she’d known—thoughtless, self-absorbed and in need of guidance from a good woman?

  Dominic didn’t adhere to any of her personality predictions. Though he certainly had a combative, difficult streak, he possessed an unexpected sweetness that surprised her. For example, she’d never met any man so unselfish in bed….

  Drink your coffee, Jane. Okay, so you broke down and slept with the man. But that doesn’t mean you should stand around mooning about it all day. He is a work project! This was a one-time aberration. He is soooo not relationship material.

  Jane’s first basic psych rule came to mind: never date a man who hates his mother. He’ll hate women in general and take it out on you in particular.

  She took another gulp of his coffee and disregarded the fact that Dom didn’t seem to fit this profile at all, regardless of what Arianna DuBose had insinuated. Plus Jane had been doing her homework over the past few days, and the three other past supervisors of his whom she’d phoned didn’t seem to agree with Arianna.

  Dom came strolling out of his bedroom to interrupt her thoughts. He wore faded, snug 501s and an old sweatshirt and gym shoes.

  “Sure I can’t persuade you to shower with me before I take you to your car?”

  The idea appealed to her more than she cared to admit. “I’m sure,” she said, blushing at the memory of how he’d had a starring role in her shower at home.

  “You’re a lot more fun at night with a few beers in you.”

  She stiffened. “Well, I’m sorry that you don’t like my sober, professional side. I suppose that’s to be expected, though, given the circumstances.”

  He raised a brow. “I do hope I earned some extra credit points on my evaluation last night.” He flashed her a tight smile.

  “That’s not funny!”

  “No, I suppose it’s not.” He palmed his keys off the kitchen counter. “Well, at least I’ll have gone out with a bang—pun intended.” He strode to the door and opened it for her.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Jane felt fury ride up her throat just as more coffee went down.

  “You know exactly what it means.”

  She set her cup down, stalked over and poked him in the chest with her index finger. “You’re just so damned sure that I’m going to give you a negative report.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Especially now that you feel guilty for sleeping with me. Your outraged conscience will demand that you rank me down and not do me any favors.”

  She wanted badly to smack him. “You seem to forget that you’ve been the one not doing yourself any favors. Besides, it might just surprise you that I’ve done my homework! You’ve never had problems with a single other supervisor. There have never been complaints about you from other female employees. In fact, most women you’ve worked with seem to like you, God knows why. So you might just be surprised by what turns up in my report, Dominic Sayers.”

  They got into his car and drove in silence to the Dog, where he got out, same as before, and started her vehicle for her. She was both touched and irritated at his old-fashioned, protective manners. “Thank you,” she said gruffly as she teetered into the car in her ridiculous shoes.

  “Jane, I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I guess I’ve misjudged you all along. I’ve been defensive as hell.”

  She looked up at him. “That’s understandable.” She waited for him to close her door, but he didn’t. He leaned his arms on the top of it instead and gazed down at her, his expression inscrutable. “I’d like to see you again,” he said at last.

  Her body hummed at the thought. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “I scare you.”

  Her eyes flew to his, startled. Then she shrugged. “Yes.”

  “You’re used to analyzing. Keeping that superior professional distance. You can’t do that with me.”

  She pulled at the door.

  He wouldn’t let go. “May I have a kiss?”

  His dark eyes melted her resolve, among other things. Slowly she nodded.

  He ducked inside the door and tipped up her chin, caressed her cheek, cupped her jaw.

  She was trembling before his lips even touched hers. Not a good sign.

  “I’ll call you,” he told her. He didn’t ask. And then he closed her door and watched as she drove away.

  16

  DOMINIC DROVE BACK TO HIS apartment deep in thought. What he’d thought of as a way to get Jane out of his system had backfired. He had a feeling she was going to be in his system for a long damned time….

  He couldn’t get over the woman he’d discovered underneath both the severe pantsuits and the do-me-Dom getup. The suits indicated rigidity, reserve. The do-me duds suggested a woman who would throw a guy to the floor and climb right on top.Jane O’Toole was a big fake. She’d trembled in his arms like a virgin. She’d sensed that he saw through her act. She was vulnerable and soft as a kitten under all that don’t-mess-with-me CEO crap. And what was more, she hated that vulnerability.

  I’ve got you figured out, sweet Jane, and you don’t like it. She’d come apart in his arms; had lost her distance and control.

  He didn’t know it for sure, but he had a hunch: Jane had had sex before, but she’d never been truly intimate with a man. Not like last night.

  He wasn’t sure she…respected men enough.

  “That’s it!” he told Rusty while he threw off his clothes and got into the shower. As usual, Rusty eyed him as if he were insane. The cat would never understand why anyone would willingly get under a jetting stream of water.

  “Rusty,” Dom continued, “it’s almost as if she thinks men are second-class citizens, in need of coaching, advice and training! She feels…not hostile toward us but benevolent, in an annoying, superior kind of way. And cat, she lost that attitude last night. Along with her clothes and her dignity.”

  Rusty jerked his tail a couple of times, as if to say “so what?” But Dom was sure he’d figured Jane out. The question was what made her that way. It was time to find out a little about her past.

  Dom dried himself with a thick white towel and inspected the clear bite marks on his chest, grinning. “Damn, I’m good!”

  Rusty’s respo
nse was to drop into a hunch and hack up a hairball.

  After Dom had cleaned it up and thanked his pet for the commentary, he dressed and went to the kitchen to scrounge some breakfast. He rounded the center island, and his Italian shoe connected with a small, black, rectangular object, kicking it into the baseboard below his dishwasher.

  Upon further inspection he discovered that it was Jane’s cell phone.

  He looked up her address. Since it was on the way to Zantyne, he decided he’d drop it off to her before work.

  JANE GLARED AT HER OPEN washing machine and rolled up her sleeves. She had to do a load of whites today and didn’t relish the thought of going back to the Cash-Wash.

  Maybe she was feeling combative in preparation for dealing with Arianna DuBose. Maybe all that sex with Dom had turned her into a tigress. But she was going to get those red lace tap pants free from the washer this morning or die trying.Jane stuck her head into the dark maw of the machine and grasped a hunk of red lace. She braced her knees against the cold white metal and gave a mighty tug. Nothing. The fabric stretched a little but didn’t come free.

  She tried pulling in another direction. Tried twisting. Tried working it sideways, up and down. Who knew Vicky’s Secret panties were made of such industrial-strength stuff? If she ever needed to climb out of her third-story apartment due to fire, she could make a rope of the darn things.

  She set her teeth and pulled again. Finally she kicked the washing machine, only succeeding in injuring her big toe. “Aaaaaarrrrggghhhh!”

  She’d had it. She’d joked with Shannon and Lilia about a repair guy having to use a pair of pliers and a blowtorch. Well, she might not have pliers, but she did have stainless-steel salad tongs! And while she was fresh out of blowtorches, she had a nice long-handled lighter for candles.

  Jane marched to the kitchen and got both items. Enough is enough is enough! She was not paying some repair guy eighty bucks to do something she could do herself.

  She peered into the washing machine again and grasped the red panties firmly with the salad tongs. Then she clicked the lighter until she produced flame. Here goes…I am a twenty-first century woman and I am taking matters into my own very capable hands.

  The nylon would melt, she was sure, and the tap pants would come free, and she could get on with her life and her laundry. Jane touched the flame to the panties. There. See? It’s working!

  Her doorbell rang. Fabulous. Somebody has perfect timing.

  The machine was all metal, so there was little risk if she just ran to open the door and sign the slip for the delivery of a package she was expecting.

  Jane set the lighter on the dryer along with the tongs.

  On the other side of her door was Dominic. “Uh, hi. What are you doing here?”

  “You left this at my apartment.” He held up her cell phone.

  “Oh! Thank you so much. I, um—”

  “What is that smell?” he asked, frowning.

  “Oh, God!”

  “There’s smoke coming from back there!” Dom pushed past her.

  “Uh, it’s nothing, really. I’ve got it under control—”

  “Your dryer—it’s gotta be a vent fire. Where’s your fire extinguisher? Jane, where?”

  She ran to the kitchen with him following and retrieved it from under the sink. She’d never used one before.

  Dominic grabbed it and hurtled toward the laundry closet. “It’s the washing machine, not the dryer!”

  “Yeah. I know…”

  Dom set off the extinguisher, dousing the flames with white foam. “Christ, that smell! What is it?”

  “Uh—”

  “How the hell did your washing machine catch on fire?” Dom looked at the salad tongs and the lighter on top of the dryer.

  Jane squinched her eyes closed. “It’s no big deal, really. Something got stuck in the wringer and I couldn’t get it out, so…” She coughed.

  He stared at her. Then he peered into the machine, holding his hand over his nose and mouth.

  “Are you insane?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t want to spend the money on a repair guy.”

  Dom grasped the salad tongs.

  “No, no—” She lunged forward but too late.

  He plucked what was left of the red lace panties out and stared at it. The tap pants were blackened, stringy, foam-covered goo, but the red lace was still visible in places.

  Her face literally throbbed with heat, she was so mortified.

  “Do you mean to tell me,” Dom said carefully, “that you deliberately set fire to your washing machine?”

  “No! I mean, yes. I mean, sort of—all I wanted to do was melt the place where the panties were stuck….” Her voice trailed off at his expression. “Give me those!”

  He continued to dangle them from the salad tongs. “Red lace, huh? And hot-pink. Crazy as you are, I’d really like to see the rest of your lingerie. Preferably with you modeling it, of course.” He shook his head. “Funny, but I’d figured you for a white-panty, white-bra kind of girl.”

  She hated that he was right. “Not at all. I have lots of interesting lingerie.” She pulled a towel out of the dryer to clean up the foamy mess.

  He took it from her and did the honors. “May I take you to dinner tonight in the hopes of seeing some more of it?” He leered at her.

  “No,” said Jane, alarmed because she didn’t have any more and another trip to Beckindale’s was not in her budget. She pulled the towel out of his grasp.

  “I’ll pick you up around seven. See, I’m afraid of my competition at the fire department. I’ve seen those beefcake calendars. I’m thinking you lit up your panties just to get a truck full of hunks and their, uh, hoses out here.”

  “Get out!” Jane snapped the towel at him, laughing in spite of herself. “I’m humiliated enough. I’m not even going to respond to that.”

  He shook his head and clicked his tongue. “Get out? Now is that any way to thank the tall, dark, handsome hero who just rescued you from certain disaster?”

  “I had it under control.”

  “Uh-huh. Say thank you, Jane. It won’t kill you.”

  “Thank you. Now go away! I have to get to work.”

  He chucked her under the chin. “You are indeed a woman of finesse.”

  “Damn right.” And she slammed the door in his face.

  JANE SPENT HALF THE DAY trying to figure out what to say in her evaluation of Dominic M. Sayers and how to phrase it. She struggled with her own sense of shame as well as her self-interest. Just because Dom had brought her repeatedly to bliss did not mean she owed him good comments. Yet if she wanted Arianna’s continued business, she understood that she needed to make negative ones. Either way, she felt sleazy and she had nobody to blame but herself. Could she be objective and professional in this situation? Somehow she had to find her missing integrity.

  She wanted Dominic. But at what cost? She also wanted money and success. But at what cost?Jane turned off her computer around two o’clock, fleeing to the mall and Beckindale’s for some uncharacteristic retail therapy. She was feeling sleazy, so why not invest in some more sleazy underwear?

  She returned to her apartment with several sets of bras and panties: electric-blue with yellow daisies; see-through leopard with neon-green trim; hot-orange lace; and bodacious black. She was two hundred dollars more in the hole, which scandalized her interest-avoiding soul, but at least she had come to a resolution.

  A few sentences typed into her computer would guarantee that Finesse made a profit this year and would truly put them on the map. She owed Shannon and Lilia this contract with Zantyne. They’d put their résumés and savings on the line along with hers to start the business.

  She owed them a receptionist. A cleaning service. The possibility of salaries next year. She thought about having to go back to her employee-assistance drudgery and the endless stacks of paperwork.

  Just a few words—that’s all it would take—to ensure that she never had to go ba
ck there.

  But Dominic’s face appeared in her mind, and every instinct she had fought a negative evaluation.

  An insidious voice told her that if she didn’t write it, Arianna would find someone else to bribe and get the results she wanted anyway. So what was the difference?

  Bribe. Her mind returned to the word, the concept. The difference lay with her conscience. No, she didn’t owe Dom anything just because they’d slept together. But she did owe her New England Yankee self the ability to look into a mirror without flinching. And she couldn’t do that if she destroyed Dom’s career simply to further her own.

  JANE TYPED THE LAST SENTENCE of her behavioral analysis of Dominic M. Sayers and pushed back her chair, staring at the blinking cursor on her computer screen. Are you sure you want to send this? the cursor seemed to ask. You’re kissing off a whole lot of money.

  Money that wouldn’t just go to her but to Shannon and Lilia and Finesse. Money that could go back to the bank and pay off some of their sizable debt.Was she truly being objective? Had sleeping with Dom changed anything for her?

  Again, she had no problem reading between Arianna’s lines. Her business dealings with Zantyne would be over as soon as she signed off on this report.

  The cursor continued to mock her. You don’t owe Dominic Sayers a thing. He’ll meet you for a few more dinners, a little more sex, and then he’ll move on. It’s not as if he’ll want a forever-after fairy tale because you took off your clothes for him.

  Could she honestly say that her perspective of Dom hadn’t changed since last night? No.

  But neither could she claim that Arianna’s job offer helped her objectivity where Dom was concerned.

  More than ever she was reminded of the subjective nature of her job. Could she stack certain facts against Dom, such as his rudeness to her, his combativeness and his troubled background with his mother? Absolutely. She could make all of those things work against him and write up a report that justified firing him.

  On the other hand, she had his former supervisors’ words of praise, his protective, old-fashioned, gentlemanly manners and all the indications that he’d triumphed over his upbringing. She knew Dominic didn’t hate women. No man with such an attitude could have made love to her so tenderly.