by Lori Ryan
Jennie drew her spine up straight and laced her fingers together in her lap. It wasn’t easy to look dignified in the state she was in, but she could damn well try.
Chad stared at Jennie for a few more long seconds. The tick in his jaw continued as his eyes burned into her with an intensity that almost stole her breath. She raised her chin and resisted the very strong urge to squirm.
“Neither was your bra, apparently,” he said dryly as he reached for the keys and started the truck. He shoved the gear into place and pulled away from the curb as Jennie laughed, wrapping her arms firmly in place over her chest.
Chapter 2
Over lunch at their favorite café, Jennie told her best friends, Kelly and Jill, about her narrow escape that morning. She recounted the story of the dogs, the fence, losing her shoes and her long ride home with Chad lecturing her about dog bites and what could have happened if she’d been caught.
Kelly and Jill wiped tears from their eyes. The waitress probably thought they were all crazy. They’d been laughing for five minutes straight, with Jennie barely able to squeak out the details of her morning between impressions of Chad scowling.
Kelly and Jill were Jennie’s two closest friends, aside from a few high school friends back home that she didn’t see very often.
“I’ll bet you had him grinding his teeth the whole ride.” Kelly laughed, but then groaned and held her pregnant belly. “You have to stop making me laugh. The baby kicks more when I laugh and she’s tap dancing on vital organs right now.”
Jennie grinned as she sipped her iced tea. “Sorry, Kels. I’ll try to be more serious until you deliver. What’s that, five more weeks?”
Her friend grimaced. “Don’t remind me.”
“I think Chad thought it was funny, though. He likes to act all tough, but he’s just a big teddy bear.” Jennie nodded, as though trying to convince the others with body language when she knew her argument was falling flat.
Jill shook her head. “Quit poking the damn bear, Jennie. It’s not safe.”
Jennie grinned. “I just hope he doesn’t show up at my house tomorrow morning to escort me on my morning run.”
“He wouldn’t do that!” Jill said, then looked at Kelly for confirmation.
“Oh, he might. I told him I was thinking of bringing dog treats tomorrow. I’ll bet I can make friends with those dogs and get my morning swim back,” Jennie said.
That started the laughter again and left poor Kelly holding her stomach.
The three of them were like Charlie’s Angels in a way, each with a completely different look. Kelly was the brunette, with a curvy body even when she wasn’t pregnant, and a smile that was contagious.
Jill was the blonde in the group. She had gorgeous hazel eyes that Jennie was secretly a bit envious of and she was more willowy than Jennie and Kelly.
Jennie was a few inches shorter than her two friends, with strawberry-blond hair that hung in wild curls. She’d given up trying to tame it a long time ago. She’d always thought her brown eyes were plain looking, but Kelly said they were rich and deep so Jennie had decided to believe her.
Kelly was married to Jack Sutton, the Chief Executive Officer at Sutton Capital, where Jennie worked. Jill had just married Andrew Weston. Andrew was Jack’s best friend and the Chief Financial Officer at Sutton. They were a tight-knit group of friends who worked closely together and saw one another almost every weekend without fail.
Jennie knew that would change now that Jack and Kelly were having a baby and Jill and Andrew had just married. It hurt to think her life might be changing once again as her friends moved on to a life that couldn’t include her in the same way it always had.
Sure, she’d no doubt be Auntie Jen to all their children, but it wouldn’t be the same as having her own family and having kids alongside her best friends. Jill broke through Jennie’s thoughts.
“Hey, I keep forgetting to ask you. Where did you go on your last assignment? Anywhere fun and exciting?” Jill asked. She and Andrew had taken care of Jennie’s dog, Zeke, a few weeks ago when Jennie was traveling for Sutton.
She made a face. “To a biotech company in Wisconsin. The people were really nice but there wasn’t a whole lot to do. They were in the middle of nowhere.”
Jennie was sure she had one of the most unusual jobs on the planet. Sutton Capital was a venture capital firm that invested in startup companies and in companies looking to expand or to develop new technologies.
Although Jennie had started out as a temporary assistant, she now worked in the security and investigations division. She’d always thought Jack was crazy for promoting her, but Jack didn’t operate like a conventional CEO, and Jennie wasn’t about to question his decision.
She loved it more than she’d ever loved any job. She had floated from one temporary job to another after college, finding most of them dull and unchallenging. Her work at Sutton Capital was anything but dull. It just fit her, somehow.
When Jennie wasn’t out of the office on assignment, she worked as a floating assistant helping anyone around the company that needed her. When on assignment, she was sent into a company that was trying to get funding from Sutton or that Sutton was considering purchasing. Jennie would typically go in with someone from finance or occasionally someone from legal who was doing due diligence. She’d serve as their assistant, but in reality, she had a dual purpose.
She was tasked with quickly befriending people and getting them to talk to her. She usually acted like an airhead when she was on assignment, babbling on and on and laughing just a little too much at things. It reminded her of her days in drama club in high school. She’d played Audrey her senior year in Little Shop of Horrors and she always drew from the ditsy portrayal when she went on a new assignment.
When she took on that persona, people just opened right up to her. Then, it was just a matter of keeping her ears open for any information that might help Jack make decisions about the potential investment. Sometimes support staff she befriended would tell her juicy bits of gossip that might contain nuggets of information. Other times, executives in the company talked freely in front of her, assuming she was either too dumb to understand what they were talking about or too flighty to pay attention.
Jennie would never forget the time the two principals in a company sat in front of her and talked about the fact they had doctored the numbers they gave Jack – as if she weren’t even in the room. She sat collating papers at the conference table, keeping her head down while they met over lunch and spilled the whole story.
She would have been offended at the way the two men dismissed her so completely, if she hadn’t known how valuable the information she gathered would be. That information ended up saving Jack and his investors a lot of money.
“Never mind what the night life was like in Wisconsin, did you find out anything juicy?” Kelly asked. Jill and Kelly loved hearing what Jennie discovered during her assignments.
“No. Well, other than the fact two of the researchers like to play doctor after hours in the lab together.” Jennie shivered and laughed. “It wasn’t something I ever need to see again.”
Kelly and Jill laughed.
“It couldn’t have been that bad!” Jill said.
“Oh, but it was. They were not attractive people, to say the least, and I got a real eyeful! I had to go back to my hotel room and scrub my eyes with a pumice stone.”
The three women laughed as the waitress brought their meals and they dug into chips and sandwiches.
“I told Chad I want combat pay for that assignment, but he told me to take it up with Jack, so you need to back me on it, Kels.”
As they finished up their lunches, Jennie looked at her two best friends and silently hoped they’d be able to stay as close as they were today despite the changes that were coming. Her friends were moving toward a life that she’d already lost. Jennie’s happily-ever-after had ended years before, and there wasn’t any way she could get it back.
Chapter 3
> Chad suppressed a grin as he watched Jennie. At the moment, they were in the pool at Kelly and Jack’s house, where everyone had gathered for one last party before the baby arrived. Chad stood on one side of a pool volleyball net and Jennie stood on the other. Somewhere along the way, he’d forgotten what Jennie was arguing about, but he didn’t care.
It might be chauvinistic, but he loved seeing her fiery eyes sparkle as she fisted small hands on her hips and lit into him. She barely reached his chest, but she should get points for trying. Jennie tossed her head, flinging her strawberry-blond curls out behind her and kept right on going.
He loved this side of her. She was bold and brash and confident. She was feisty and fun loving and nothing seemed to frighten her. Not many women Jennie’s size – a mere 5’4” and 115 pounds if he was guessing right – would try the irreverent things she did with Chad.
At 6’4” and about 265 pounds of pure muscle, there weren’t many people who treated Chad the way Jennie did. She taunted and teased him at every turn, as if she was two or three feet taller.
Chad knew why she did it. They both felt the wild attraction that sizzled between them and they both worked hard to control it. With so many mutual friends, coupled with the fact that they worked together all day during the week, they couldn’t avoid seeing one another.
So Jennie seemed to deal with the attraction by throwing her saucy, cheeky attitude at him all the time. It was almost as if she tried to keep their interactions superficial, never going deeper than the surface. If she was busy yelling at him or taunting him, there wasn’t room for anything else.
Chad dealt with the attraction by staying in complete and utter control at all times around her. He didn’t allow himself to dwell on the curve of her tiny waist or the swell of her breasts in the bikini she wore as she fought with him now. He focused on her eyes, ignoring her body.
Then, he’d spend about five minutes telling himself that her eyes were nothing special. He’d tell himself her eyes weren’t warm and rich like melted caramel. That her eyes didn’t have a mysterious quality to them as if she held a world of secrets waiting for him to explore.
Shit. So much for control.
Chad wondered if Jennie would keep up her tirade if she knew just how sexy she was when she was angry. Or if she’d keep up the nicknames if she knew how much he liked to see what she’d call him next. Would it be ‘Tank’ today or ‘Little Bit?’ Or maybe “Mini Man.”
Jennie cupped her hand and splashed water across the net at Chad, pulling him from his thoughts.
Yeah, so much for maintaining control.
“Are you even listening to me, Chad?”
Nope. Chad’s grin broke through as he shook his head, willing it to clear. “Sorry, Jen. I tuned out five minutes ago.”
He knew that would really get her going and he’d get to watch her fume for a while longer. He could watch Jennie Evans storm at him forever and not get tired of it.
As the day wound down, Jennie wandered away from the pool and sat in one of the teak chairs that faced the back lawn of Jack and Kelly’s house on Long Island Sound in Connecticut. The sprawling house had become one of the main gathering places for their group in the summer. With a yard that sloped down to a small private beach and a pool with outdoor kitchen, it was perfect for barbeques and parties.
A welcome cool breeze brushed gently over Jennie’s bare arms. She curled her feet under her on the chaise lounge and listened to the noises of the party, letting them engulf her. The sounds of her friends laughing and talking soothed her.
Her black lab, Zeke, had given up playing with Zoe, the mixed breed puppy Jack and Kelly had rescued from the shelter, and Jill’s labradoodle, Rev. Zeke now lay, snoring loudly, but she was sure he’d open his eyes in a heartbeat if anyone dropped even a bite of food nearby. The six-year-old dog gave new meaning to the term ‘chowhound.’
Jennie’s eyes landed on Jill and Andrew walking hand in hand toward the beach. She smiled as she watched Jill lean into Andrew, who said something that made Jill laugh. After heartache neither one of them deserved, they had finally found each other. They’d been married in the spring and had just moved into a new home in New Haven. Jennie knew they were both eager to have children and Jill had mentioned that they wanted to start trying for a baby right away. She was happy for the new couple.
Today’s party was Kelly and Jack’s last chance to host a get together before their first baby came. Kelly was due in just three weeks, and even though she looked exhausted as she sat with Jack’s arms around her, she looked happier than Jennie had ever seen her. And that made Jennie happy.
Roark Walker, Jack’s lawyer and longtime family friend, was trying to help Jack’s housekeeper, Mrs. Poole, carry leftovers into the house. She was shooing him away with a scowl. The two were always fussing at one another for some reason, but even that made Jennie smile. It was comfortable and familiar. Like family, in a way.
Her eyes found Chad, who stood on the opposite side of the pool, beer in hand as he talked to friends. She felt the familiar quickening of her breath that always happened when she looked at him. Her eyes roamed over his strong chest and muscled arms, the broad shoulders of his imposing frame.
His dark looks—even with the smattering of scars that etched his skin from his time serving in the military overseas— rivaled those of the biggest and brightest stars of Hollywood. In spite of that, there wasn’t an arrogant bone in Chad’s body. This, of course, made him all the more attractive.
The man was stunningly handsome, unquestionably kind and gentle, and he sent the bones in Jennie’s body into a puddle on the floor when he glanced her way.
She didn’t want to be attracted to him. But, she found she couldn’t ignore his effect on her no matter how she tried. And that, unfortunately, tore at her heart. Jennie wished with all her being that Chad Thompson didn’t have such a powerful effect on her.
When she had first met Chad, she tried to find his faults. If she could get herself to see him as an arrogant jerk, she might be able to ignore the physical attraction she felt for him. It would certainly make it easier to resist him, anyway.
Since Chad was born into the Sutton family, he could have sat back and reaped the benefits of the family business without actually doing any work. He only worked until three o’clock many days, making Jennie assume he was living off of trust fund money and not really contributing at all. That made it easier to resist the outward allure for a little while.
Sadly, her first impressions didn’t last and Jennie soon had to admit that Chad was just as attractive a person on the inside as he was on the outside. It turned out he left work early to volunteer at a nearby veteran’s hospital.
And the more Jennie got to know Chad, the more apparent it became that he was anything but a selfish, spoiled trust fund brat. That certainly didn’t make it easier for her to resist him. But, she knew in her heart, she didn’t want a relationship with him or anyone else. She didn’t want the chemistry between them to exist.
“Hey, sweetie,” Kelly said as she lowered herself into the chair next to Jennie. She wasn’t moving very gracefully. “I swear, this baby has an elbow in my lung right now. She somehow gets up under my ribs and digs in and won’t let go.”
Jennie grinned at Kelly. “I can’t wait for that baby to get here.”
Kelly snorted. “You and me both.”
Jennie nodded toward the other side of the pool where her coworker and friend, Samantha Page was talking to Kelly’s sister, Jesse. The two were opposites, physically. Samantha was tall with dark hair that hung down her back. Jesse was petite with honey blonde hair.
“I’m glad to see Sam,” Jennie said. “She looks like she’s doing a lot better.”
Samantha might work at Sutton Capital, but she was often included in lists of the country’s top hackers, sometimes even topping the list. She recently took time off to help the FBI track a group of women who had been sold into sexual slavery. It hit her hard and she’d had a rough
time dealing with the emotional toll of the work. They were all worried about her.
Kelly nodded. “She is. She’s back at work and she’s been working on her game again.”
Jennie grinned. “She let me try a beta version of the game. It freaking rocks.”
Samantha had been working on a multiplayer online fantasy game and they were all waiting for her to release it when it was ready.
“No fair!” Kelly said. She pouted in Samantha’s direction even though the other woman couldn’t hear her.
Jennie laughed at Kelly and raised her hands in the air. “Hey, don’t blame me.” She smirked. “Besides, she said she’s going to let you try it this weekend.”
Kelly scowled. “Hmmm, I guess that’s okay.” Kelly grinned then. “Did she tell you the name she’s picked out?”
Now it was Jennie’s turn to pout. “No! What do you know, woman?”
Kelly laughed and made a zipping gesture over her lips. “I’m sworn to secrecy.”
“Then why did you ask me?”
Kelly lifted a shoulder in a shrug as she grinned. “Because if you knew then we could talk about it.” She looked at Jennie then, growing serious. “How’re you holding up?”
Jennie tilted her head back and forth. “I’m good. Hangin’ in.”
Jennie sipped the last bit of lemonade from her glass before setting it on the table next to her. “Oh, Jeez, Zeke. Cut that out!” Jennie shooed Zeke down off the table where he’d been busy stealing the remnants of a hotdog off someone’s plate. She hadn’t even seen him get up.
Kelly laughed as the dog-slash-garbage-disposal swallowed down the hotdog in one bite, not looking the least bit chagrined at being caught stealing food. But when she looked back to Jennie, Jennie could see the concern in Kelly’s expression.
