by Jill Shalvis
“Reilly, I’m working for your father today. He’s behind, and—”
“What?”
“And I’ve got you all caught up, so—”
“But…” This was so far from what he expected, he couldn’t think. “You work for me.”
“Yes,” Cheri said with that calm reasonableness she had, that made his brain feel like she was scrambling it. “But he needs me.”
“But…”
“Reilly, honey, honestly. Tessa could do my job blindfolded. You’ll be fine.”
He nearly missed his turnoff. “But Tessa isn’t my office manager. You are.”
“And I need a day off.”
“To work for Eddie.”
“That’s right.”
This made no sense. “You want to work for the man who deserted you when you were a pregnant teenager.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Cheri said, making an annoyed sound. “Look, it’s time you knew this. I’m the one who jumped his bones when I was sixteen. And I’m the one who—”
“Jeez!” He nearly rear-ended the car in front of him. “Over-share!”
“I knew the chance I was taking,” she said calmly. “We’ve long ago established how naive I was, but if you think I have regrets you’re the naive one.”
“Mom.” She was certifiable. “He has a hundred other women he could use for today.”
“Yes, but he wants me. And let’s face it, I’m the best.”
“What about whoever he took to Cabo?”
“Well, I doubt whoever she was knew accounting.”
True.
“Stop acting like an old man, Reilly. I’ll be back in a few days. Live a little while I’m gone, okay?”
“You sound just like him when you say that,” he said, broodingly.
“Have a good day, honey.”
He stared down at his cell after she hung up on him, then tossed it onto the passenger seat. Live a little. He’d lived plenty. He’d lived long and hard, and frankly, was happy with how things were going. Nice and quiet and even-keeled. No surprises. No being konked over the head by idiotic burglars. No being kissed stupid by a little hottie who had somehow—and he was still dizzy over this one—ended up working for him.
By the time he got into his office, he was ready to bury himself in numbers. Lots of numbers.
Tessa sat behind the front desk on the phone, her brown hair swinging as she turned to watch him walk in. Her big, bright-green eyes gave away her every thought, as usual.
She was thinking she would have been happier if he hadn’t shown up.
Join the club, baby.
She recovered nicely, even gave him a little wave accompanied by what seemed like a very genuine smile. So genuine he nearly waved right back.
“I’ll be sure to note the changes to the payables,” she said sweetly into the phone. “Oh, why, yes, I’ll tell Mr. Ledger that you think I’m the very best temp he’s ever had,” she said, laughing. “Just so happens that I think so, too. Bye, now.” She hung up and sent him a saucy look that dared him to say otherwise.
“Maybe you should tell Eddie you need a raise,” he suggested.
“Then he’ll charge you more.”
“I can handle Eddie.”
She smiled. “So can I.”
“I don’t imagine there isn’t much you can’t handle,” he heard himself say.
“Nope. That comes from being the baby of the family,” she said proudly. “My sister and brother like to worry about me, but it’s their own fault I’m this way. They created me.”
“So you’re close to them.”
“Very.”
“They probably don’t try to run your life,” he muttered, thinking of his mother.
She laughed at that. “Are you kidding? They live to run my life. That’s what love’s all about, Reilly.”
Yeah. Love. He forced his eyes off her and the sunshine-yellow suit dress she wore and looked around the counter that just yesterday had held a bag of Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, reading his mind. “I’m fresh out of cash until payday.”
Ah, hell. He came back toward her. “Don’t buy me doughnuts with your own money. There’s no need. There’s petty cash in Cheri’s desk.”
“But then it’d be you buying you doughnuts.”
“Yes, and then no one owes anyone anything.”
She just looked at him.
Resisting the urge to squirm, he walked past her and headed down the hall toward his office.
“Good thing Cheri told me you weren’t a morning person,” she muttered.
Which stopped him in his tracks.
“She also said you’re not an afternoon or evening person,” she said. “In case you were wondering.”
He had to ask, even knowing he shouldn’t. “What else did she say about me?”
Her smile widened just a little bit wickedly.
He did squirm now.
“She said you’re egotistical, grumpy, stubborn and innately suspicious.”
Okay, that he could handle, as it was true.
But then she put a finger to her chin as she thought. “Oh, and that she felt none of those things were your fault.”
“Really? Why not?”
“Because she and your father screwed you up and what they didn’t screw up, working for the CIA finished off.”
10
“CHERI TOLD YOU all that,” Reilly said slowly.
“Yep.” Tess nodded. “But I already knew you weren’t just some ordinary accountant. You had big, tough, alpha male written all over you the moment I first laid eyes on you. Even half-naked and holding your bruised head, I knew.”
He really should have stopped for caffeine. In his present state, he wasn’t equipped to deal with this. He rubbed his temples. “What else?”
“She said you need kindness and compassion.”
Because, apparently, he was pretty damn pathetic. “You know, for future reference, when someone asks you a question like ‘what else did they say?’ and when that something else is so blatantly negative, you should probably just keep it to yourself.”
She cocked her head and said, “I didn’t realize you weren’t looking for the truth. You seem like a guy who appreciates the truth.”
He moved toward her yet again, because apparently he hadn’t tortured himself enough when it came to her. “I know I’m going to regret asking this, but why were you two talking about me in the first place?”
“Cheri said I should forgive you for being such a jerky boss, that you didn’t mean to be so short and abrupt all the time.”
“And she said this because…?”
“Because you’d just reminded me that you needed the Morrow file, when you’d already told me three times, and I was still on the phone with another client. You didn’t appear very happy with me, even though I was doing my best.”
He stared at her. Had he done that? Obviously he had, but coming out of her mouth he sure sounded like an ass….
“She also said that despite your impatience, your rudeness and your temper, you have a heart of gold and, if I stayed long enough, I’d see it for myself. She told me not to let you scare me off.”
Suddenly, he was glad his mother wasn’t there because he had the urge to wrap his hands around her meddling neck.
“And then I said that not much could scare me off—” She broke off and looked away for a moment, as both of them clearly remembered what exactly did scare her.
Armed burglars.
“And then I told her,” she whispered, “that I already knew you had a heart of gold and I wasn’t going anywhere until the job was done, which it will be in two more days.”
He stopped fantasizing about strangling Cheri and took a closer look at the woman in front of him. She was small, almost deceptively fragile and yet, he knew damn well how much inner strength she had. More than any woman he’d ever met. “I don’t have a heart of gold. Not even close.”
“We met under unusual circumstanc
es,” she said, still very quietly. “It accelerated everything. Don’t say that isn’t true.”
“Tess—”
“You saved me that night.”
“Anyone would have done the same.”
“No.”
He let out a disparaging breath, and she got up out of her chair and came around the desk to stand right in front of him. “You saved me and I’ve never even thanked you.”
“Don’t.” God. He couldn’t take that. Without even knowing why, he reached for her hand. “And don’t make me out to be someone I’m not.”
“I just want to know more about you.” She lifted her face. “Cheri told me something bad happened to you on your last job. That you’ve been messed up because of it.”
“Cheri talks too much.”
Her other hand came up and sandwiched his, then she brought it up between her breasts, against her heart, which he could feel beating strong and steadily.
“I promised myself I wasn’t going to touch you,” she said. “But then you touched my hand and…” She smiled a little. “And I can’t seem to resist.”
“I shouldn’t have touched you at all. Ever.”
“It’s too late. Did you know…?”
“What?”
“That I’ve been the one to kiss you, every time?”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her mouth. “Have you?”
“Yes. And next time…if there is a next time, you’ll have to kiss me.”
He absolutely was not going to do that. Her lips were naked and parted, and now he had to close his eyes. Probably. He probably wasn’t going to kiss her.
“Tell me what makes you so…stoic,” she said softly.
“Just because I don’t talk every moment of the day doesn’t mean I’m stoic.”
She let out a little laugh and said, “Okay, maybe stoic isn’t the right word. But distant isn’t either, or cold.” She tilted her head and dropped her gaze to his lips, which reminded him of how they felt on hers.
“Definitely not distant,” she whispered. “Or cold.”
He groaned; he couldn’t help it. His hands dropped down to her hips and dragged her closer. “You drive me crazy.”
“Why?”
“You make me want.” He dropped his forehead to hers. “I don’t want to want, damn it.”
“Because of what happened to you?” She cupped his face. “Oh, Reilly. Did you get your heart broken?”
Broken, tromped on and destroyed, but that was another story. “She shouldn’t have told you I was in the CIA. She shouldn’t have told you that my last job went bad, that I was betrayed by a double agent who just happened to be sleeping with me at the time.”
Her eyes softened even more and she slid her arms around his neck. “She didn’t tell me that part, she never said… How badly were you hurt?”
“I don’t want—”
“Please, Reilly. Please tell me.”
It was the last thing he wanted to do, but he had to tell her something so it might as well be the truth. “Look, I was stuffed in a trunk for a few days and left to die,” he said, shrugging. “I’m over it.”
Now those eyes went suspiciously bright. Wet, shiny moss. “My God,” she whispered on a wavering breath as she hugged him so tightly he could barely breathe. “No wonder.”
“No wonder what?”
“No wonder you don’t like people close. You were hurt by someone you let in.”
“Not that hurt.”
“And no wonder you’re an accountant. You get to work alone. With numbers instead of people, for the most part.”
He didn’t know what to do with the fact she saw him so clearly. “I was an accountant for the CIA, too, before the field stuff. I was an analyst.”
“Everything makes so much sense now. Like why you’re afraid of the dark.”
He wasn’t afraid of the dark.
He wasn’t afraid of anything.
She skimmed her mouth over his jaw, leaving soft, short sweet little kisses as she worked her way over his flesh.
In reaction, his stomach tightened. Other parts did, too.
And as it turned out, he was afraid of something.
He was afraid of her. “Tess, I thought you weren’t going to kiss me—”
“I haven’t, not really. It doesn’t count unless I touch your lips with mine, which if you’ll notice, I didn’t do.”
He’d noticed. It was just that his body didn’t seem to be able to comprehend the difference, not one little bit. “Tess—”
“I like the way you shorten my name,” she whispered, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “I like that a lot. Reilly—”
Whatever it was, he didn’t want to hear it right now. He was a fraction of an inch from caving in, from giving in to her warm, giving body. He was so close to kissing her, all because she had eyes that sucked him in and a voice that he’d follow anywhere.
Because he had to, he set her away from him, this woman who seemed to personify temptation. “We have work,” he said. “Lots and lots of work.”
“Right.”
Her eyes told him that he could put this off for however long he wanted, but it wasn’t over.
And he found he was afraid of one more thing.
He was afraid she was right.
11
TESSA WORKED HARD for the rest of the day. She had no problems without Cheri, just double the work. That was okay with her, she loved being busy, loved being needed.
In her life there weren’t a lot of people who depended on her or needed her for anything. She and her friends were more casual than close. Then there were her siblings, who’d always taken on the authority role, or at least they thought they had. They’d laugh if Tessa tried to get them to need her in any way. As frustrating as it sometimes was, she felt quite certain they still thought of her as a little, snotty-nosed kid.
Not as a woman.
But she was. She was a woman who loved responsibility and tethers on her heart. She craved them.
And yet she couldn’t seem to get them.
But this job…it was good. It made her feel important. She sat surrounded by numbers and ledgers and accounts, thoroughly engrossed, so engrossed she nearly fell out of her chair when a Taco Bell bag suddenly appeared in front of her face.
“Just me.” Reilly dropped it onto the accounts receivable report she’d been lost in. “You’re getting better. You didn’t jump all the way out of your skin that time.”
She had no idea why she liked that he noticed she still felt a little jumpy. She had no idea why watching him watch her made her feel a little…soft. Feminine. “I didn’t even hear you leave.”
“I know. You get pretty into your work.”
“I’m single-minded,” she agreed. “My family doesn’t think that’s a virtue.”
“There’s nothing wrong with single-mindedness when you’re in accounting. Now, maybe if you were an air traffic controller or something…”
She laughed, though emotion backed up in her throat a little when he smiled. Good Lord, he should do that more often.
“Anyway…” he said, plowing his free hand through his hair, as if it wasn’t standing straight up already. “My stomach’s growling. It’s lunchtime.”
She glanced at the wall clock. One o’clock. No wonder she felt light-headed. “So, did you take the money from petty cash? Because the boss doesn’t like it when you spend money on another employee here.”
“Consider it payback for the doughnuts.”
“I didn’t buy you the doughnuts so you’d buy me lunch,” she said, opening the bag and the heavenly scent of a steak quesadilla wafted up. “But I’m so glad you did.” She took a large bite. “Where’s yours?”
Looking amused, he watched her stuff her face, then lifted another bag and a drink-holder with two large sodas in it. “I thought we’d actually eat at a table. Like in the staff room—”
“Oh.” Embarrassed, she licked the cheese off her lips and laughed. “Right.” She s
tood up and grabbed the quesadilla. She followed him down the hall and into the small room designated as the staff room. There was a refrigerator, a well-stocked little pantry she suspected Cheri took care of and a small wooden table with four chairs around it.
He pulled out a chair for her, waiting for her to sit and she suddenly felt a little off-kilter. A little nervous.
They were on a lunch date. Sort of.
“What’s the matter?” he said, handing her a drink.
“It’s our first date. It feels a little weird,” she admitted. “Given that we’ve already slept together.”
“Eating at work does not constitute a date. And we didn’t exactly sleep together.” That said, he took a large bite out of his chicken soft taco.
She tried not to name the emotion that went through her at his words, but it felt an awful lot like disappointment. “So what would constitute a date?”
In the act of adding hot sauce to his taco, he paused, then said, “I don’t even know. I haven’t actually dated in a long time. Not since…”
Not since he’d been betrayed while at the CIA. He didn’t say it; he didn’t have to. She hated that he’d been hurt and was shocked at the thoughts of violence that flowed through her for the woman who’d done it. “What was her name?”
“Her real one? Or her alias? I knew her as Loralee. And we didn’t date in the traditional sense. We were always out of the country, on various missions. Dating was impossible.”
“What about before her?”
He took a bite and chewed while he thought about that. “I hate to admit this, but I can’t remember.”
“That’s just sad, Reilly.”
“Really?” he said, smiling as he took another bite. Chewed some more. Eyed her just a little knowingly. “So, what have you done in the dating department lately?”
The big zip, not that she wanted to admit it, so she busied herself pulling apart her quesadilla.
“Well?”
She met his gaze and then laughed sheepishly. “Okay, so we’re tied. We both are equally pathetic when it comes to the opposite sex.”
“Oh, no,” he said silkily and brushed off his hands. His gaze ran over her features. “I never said I was pathetic with the opposite sex.”
