by Rie Warren
I’m married, I reminded myself, taking my eyes off Mr. Boone, winding the wedding bands around my finger.
Palmer didn’t want me anymore. When was the last time he’d kissed me, told me he loved me? It didn’t matter. This was a job interview, not a Pay Per View porno featuring a desperate MILF, because I definitely wasn’t one of those.
His arm slid around me and he opened a door. “After you, please.” A slip of his breath tingled on my neck.
We’d entered a small room of earthy colors and simple furnishings. No blinds to shade the wrap-around view I’d imagined earlier, sunlight suffused a desk barren but for a slim notebook, a sleek cell phone, and one stack of papers. Two leather chairs cuddled closer to the desk and a leather settee kitty-cornered the rear wall.
The warmth of his at-home office came from the photographs jigsawed together in mismatching frames. Their only similarity was the subject of the black and white pictures. All of them told the stories of lowcountry people, at work on the docks, selling their sweetgrass baskets, gathering oysters, enjoying a down-home barbeque.
Closing the door behind me, he held out his hand. “Reardon Dade Boone, Miss Greer.”
Hmm, the peacock wasn’t going to out walk this peahen, no siree.
Galvanized by his touch when our hands met and clasped, I returned, “Caroline Shay Motte Greer.”
Ha! Take that. I have more names than you, Rich Rat Bastard Reardon Boone, born with a mouthful of pretty, silver spoons.
“Would you care for a refreshment, Miss Greer?” He smirked with a singular lift of his eyebrow.
“No, thank you.”
“Have a seat.”
Yes, sir. Whatever you say, sir. My traitorous cha-cha had the floor, not my lip-curling conscience.
Gesturing toward one of the chairs, he leaned against the front of his desk. I perched on the edge of my seat, producing a pen and legal pad from my borrowed briefcase, and pretended I didn’t notice the way his package was pretty damn close to eye level.
“I’d like to explain the position.” His linked hands in front of his hips drew my eyes to his groin.
Ooh yes, Mr. Boone, do tell me all about the position.
“I’ve done my research and know Radaman-Slaughter is a family-run venture capitalist operation.” More like vulture capitalist, from the looks of him.
He pulled the loosened tie from his collar, draping it over the desk. “Indeed, but that won’t concern you.”
“Because?”
Both hands braced on the arms of my chair, Mr. Boone blotted out the sun at his back. “The job I’m interviewing you for is a rather unorthodox one.”
The torrid promise of his whisper tugged me closer. For a second. Inserting some space–and my lethal heels–between us, I asked, “You always conduct interviews in your home?”
“Business of this nature, yes.”
“Just what is the nature of this business?” My stiletto poised over his instep, I gripped my fingers around the pad of paper in my lap because those bitches were about two seconds away from grabbing his biceps and pulling him closer.
That’s when he came on hard and strong, making no excuses about his intentions. “I want a mistress.”
The sucker-punch hit my stomach. His hot look spread erotic tendrils to my pussy. My knees parted by his suggestion alone, and I clamped them together, a warm wash of wanting setting me on edge.
My voice high, I questioned his intentions and his sanity. “You want what?”
He retreated to his chair. “A mistress.”
Playing along, I patted my hair, shooting him a saccharine smile. “I thought this was an employment opportunity.”
“It’s a salaried position, Miss Greer.” His forefinger ran under his lip, back and forth, back and forth, and I tracked the hypnotic gesture.
Breaking the spell, I spluttered, “I knew it, I’m being Punk’d!”
“Punk’d?”
“C’mon, even people like y’all have heard of that show.”
His lips curved in a challenging smile. “People like me?”
Damn, he was going to make me say it. “You know, Richy Richelieu, glass penthouses, seersucker wearin’, Jim Lehrer News Hour devotees…”
“You calling me boring, Miss Greer? Because I assure you, I’m not.” The cuffs at his wrists were undone by deft fingers. My willpower unraveled. Sleeves were rolled up his forearms, and I wanted to press my hands to the firm muscle and light dusting of dark hair.
Taking stock of my untamed eye-fucking, he strode forward and struck out his hand once more. “Reardon Boone. I believe we’ve already met, but you seem to be under the wrong impression.”
My palms gathered in his, he pulled me to my feet. His breath rustled against my ear, his fingers stroking between mine in a firm in and out motion. “I can give you what you need, and you can give me what I want.”
A conference call with my conscience was in order, since we both concurred my hoo ha was a straight-up easy lay, already taking off her clothes and asking, ‘Where do I sign?’
He didn’t back down or back away from me.
Sweet Christ. He was serious.
“But the want-ad said–”
I was pulling the newspaper from my briefcase when he recited the advertisement point-for-point, “Seeking professional, witty assistant for long-term position. Full benefits package. Fully binding confidentiality agreement required.”
I heard his smirk in every emphasized word, his tempting offer holding me in place. But his smug look over quirked lips fired me up in a different way.
I dropped the Post and Courier and met him head on. “Actually, Mr. Boone, the ad requested a personal assistant to a well-to-do businessman, certainly not a paid-for paramour.”
He grinned, and against my better judgment, I wanted to kiss the grin right off his lush lips. “Have no doubt, you would be assisting me very personally.”
My thighs clamped together, tamping down spiraling need; my lips parted before I slammed them shut over the whimper trying to escape.
He gloated.
I gathered my briefcase. “I came here with honest intentions, and you–”
“I want you.” The sultry slink of his tone stopped me. “There are other qualities I’m looking for. I like a woman who speaks her mind.” His eyes were searing blue coals. “I enjoy a woman with a nice figure.” He held up his hands so I imagined them cupping my bottom, caressing my breasts.
I turned my head aside, trying to erase the sensuality he summoned.
A solitary finger eased down my neck. “You have the most beautiful eyes. Won’t you look at me?”
I shook my head.
Spinning a lock of my hair between his fingertips, he murmured, “Your hair is the color of the sunrise over the river. Mmm. I’d love to feel it all over my body. Is it the same color everywhere?”
I wanted to slap him, grab him, have at him. Desperate for space, I plunked back to my chair. I sat on my hands, fists tight beneath my legs, trying not to touch magnificent Mr. Boone. The stormy black clouds of his hair teased me with their wayward curls over his ears. Ears I’d like to tug until his wet mouth skittered against mine, sucking and tasting.
The last shreds of the smarts my momma gave me saved me when I was one inch away from turning my lips to his. I shuttled the chair back with an almighty screech. “I ain’t that hard up.” Liar. I hadn’t been caressed or kissed or made love to for so long.
“Really? Why haven’t you left yet, Miss Greer?”
A few steps and I’d be clear of him. I didn’t move. “A mistress?”
“Yes.”
I examined him, quickly working through his tough businessman terms. “And the return on my investment?”
“You’ll be fully compensated financially, and in kind.” His devastating smile was completely at odds with the company words.
My throat was parched as mud flats during a drought.
Savvy as hell, he came in for the kill, holding his lips
a hairsbreadth from mine. “I wouldn’t want you in it just for the money.”
Rat Bastard. Sexy Rat Bastard Reardon Boone with money coming out of his ears. He probably ejaculated thick streams of liquid gold.
Knocking over the chair, I shot up. “But...but...I’m married!”
“I know.” He prowled to me, playing two fingers along the skin of my inner arm.
I jerked away from the brush fire of his touch. “Are you screwin’ with me?”
“Not yet.” Behind the barricade of his desk, he reclined in his chair. He weighed one hand. “There’s business.” He held his other hand aloft. “There’s pleasure.” He clapped them together. “I prefer to conduct all my affairs in an orderly manner, on paper at least.” Being with him in the bedroom would be a whole different matter.
I pursed my mouth, looked at the door, and shook my head.
“I see. Well then, Miss Greer, you’re free to go.” The fire extinguished from his downcast eyes. He pulled a thumb along the thin chain that hung around his throat and disappeared inside his shirt.
“I know that.” My anger flared, but I didn’t move.
Eyes clashing with mine, his cheeks flushed. His lips parted, but he didn’t speak, he didn’t move.
Everything was on the line: my marriage, my future. Something new.
Something borrowed, something blue? My conscience niggled to no avail.
I wanted him. Business transaction or not.
Slowly, he approached. His thumb swiped across my mouth, a mere whisper. “I want to be your lover.”
It’d been so long since I’d been touched. I sought his fingertips with my lips.
Pulling away before I made contact, he inspected me like the tycoon he was, his smile shading into something more proprietary. “Why are you seeking employment, Shay?”
I’d married at the age of nineteen. Palmer had been my first and only. Now I was thirty-three, and he treated me like an unwelcome stranger barging in on his life.
I faltered, fingering my wedding band. “So I can leave my husband.”
His grip on the edge of the desk tightened. “Why?”
“Y’all are not privy to my personal details, Mr. Boone.”
Swiping a hand over his face, he grunted something unintelligible. His next look was clean of all emotion except for toe-curling carnality. “It appears we have something in common, Miss Greer. I want a lover with no strings attached, and you need…” His heated stare detoured over every curve of my body, pausing at my lips before settling on my startled eyes. “A sugar daddy.”
Chapter 2
Aiding and Abetting
Sugar Daddy? What I needed was some bankable greenbacks with a side of sex. I was in full grumble mode while I gardened the next day. Huh, I guess that translated to the all-inclusive package deal Mr. Boone offered.
I yanked another handful of weeds. In my haste, I pulled out a neighboring clump of plumbago. Crooning to the seedlings, I took care with their roots, patting the soil around the stems as I re-planted them.
In my Blue Garden, I scrambled around the woodsy plot on my hands and knees overlooked by live oaks and southern pines sheltering salvia and monkshood and agapanthus. Blue jays and cardinals and Carolina wrens chirruped and chattered away, keeping me company. The squirrels were especially vociferous as they hung like trapeze artists from the birdfeeders, snatching at seeds.
Yesterday I’d been propositioned for pay by the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen.
And I wanted to curse him more than the kudzu suffocating my salvia.
He wanted me. Was it enough? It was a start. Enough to disregard my marriage vows? I was leaving Palmer anyway…
Taking several deep breaths, I placed my hands on my thighs, leaving filthy handprints in accusation of all that was wrong with me and my marriage, me and Palmer.
Sitting back, I wiped my brow, slaking off the perspiration gathered at my hairline. I shook my head and chuckled. If Reardon could see me now, he might think twice about takin’ me to his bed.
Tarnished with flakes of dirt, grass, and probably a few undaunted fire ants, I slumped.
Fourteen years ago, my momma Letha had told me, “Don’t settle, Shay.”
I was nineteen when Palmer proposed. By then, we’d been on our own without Daddy for three years. She was my role model, my confidante, yet I hadn’t told her word one about this job prospect.
Palmer Greer had been everything to me. I’d had an innocent’s faith in love back then, when he’d become my beau.
Running round with every crowd from the potheads to the school newspaper’s squinty-eyed squad, I was friends with near about everyone. Not him, though. I’d known of him since I was a freshman and he a sophomore. I was gawky–my curves playing catch-up with my long legs–and Palmer was legendary among the high school girls. Beautiful as only a teenager could be, he wasn’t the proverbial captain of the football team, but the pitcher for the baseball team, the head honcho of the Wando Warriors. My stomach had tightened, my legs weakened, my eyelashes fluttered of their own feminine wile whenever we’d crossed paths.
Did he ever have an arm on him. His muscles rippled under his jersey, the sun hitting each hill and valley. Palmer had been a good-looking boy with long, wheat colored hair straight as a sheaf, and Lord Almighty I’d loved watching him at a game. His arm swinging, the crowd roaring from the bleachers, his wide smile aimed at me alone.
He’d been sweet on me, courting me properly. Showing up at my momma and daddy’s house, he had a posy of wild camellias for me and an introduction for Momma–telling way back when his pop-pop had been friends with my own granddaddy as they’d spent boyhood days along the creek’s edge throwing out their shrimp nets for a light haul. After meeting her approval, he was sent out back to Daddy. I heard later he was won over by Palmer’s knowledge of boats, Bud, and night-gigging.
Did he give me his class ring?
Yes.
Did he put his Varsity jacket over my shoulders?
Yeah.
Were we a steady item?
Inseparable.
Every one of my firsts was with him. His kisses to my lips, urging them open. My thighs splayed by his fingers, which curled inside me one October night just after my eighteenth birthday.
He tickled my throat with raspy moans. “Can I?” His cheeks flushed. “Can I make love to you?”
“I’m ready, Palmer,” I’d whispered, clutching his shoulders.
He was hard, rearing against me. Into me once he’d covered his length in a condom with such shaky hands he broke the first one.
The pain of his entry made me gasp. “Who else have you been with?”
“Shay.” Holding still, he’d eased me with kisses and strokes of his fingertips. “It don’t matter.”
I wouldn’t let him go further. “Who? Was it that Arden-Lee?”
His arms trembling, he moaned, “Shoulda been you.”
“It was her, wasn’t it?” Arden-Lee was his girlfriend before me, in his year, blond, willowy, gracious, and a cheerleader to boot.
Miserably, he’d nodded.
I’d decided right then he would be mine for life and no one else’s. Pulling on his hips, I cried out with his first full thrust.
My bottom in his hands, he withdrew, throwing his head back in blissful agony.
There was the suction of our lips, our hips, our kisses making the windows of his pickup steam with condensation.
Palmer was my first, my only. Palmer used to do me right.
Rat Bastard was another first, first class pain in the ass so far. He’d requested I bring a complete Curriculum Vitae for his files when I returned to go over the contract. This he’d asked as he stood next to me outside the elevator, seeing me off.
I’d wanted to get off, with him. An instinct so strong it took root inside my body, leaving me luxuriously aroused.
“But you already have my application.” Come to think of it, the questions on the four-pager should’ve tipped me off in t
he first place. Chock full of Myers Briggs type one-liners, it’d read like a probing getting-to-know-you more than a test of professional know-how.
“Designed to provide insight into your personality and the likelihood of accepting my proposition. I also need your professional details.”
He straddled a fine line between boudoir and business. “You’re not gonna demand a trial run, are you?”
Turning me to him, he’d swept his fingers along my cheek, “No need, Shay.” My heart walloped, my lips opened in anticipation of his next stroke, but he’d only hummed against my ear. “I’ve no doubt you’ll live up to my very high expectations.”
“Dammit!” Into the muddy slop of the garden plot, I knelt once more, squaring away the plants I desperately wanted to nurture.
A looming shadow provided sudden relief from the harsh sun. Augie. He was about to become the other, other man in my life, not that I was going to tell him any such thing. I’d hardly admitted it to myself.
Dapper as hell, he glared at me, his silver foppish coif jutting over his brow. He didn’t deign to speak, merely lifting an eyebrow in his very remonstrative way while he tapped the face of his enormous gold watch.
I smiled and patted the ground next to me.
He heaved a grave sigh. “Angry gardenin’ again?” Careful of the soil I flung left and right, he pinched the creases of his seersucker trousers to take his turn-ups off the ground, simpering, “Hmm, you might be onto somethin’, honey. Maybe we could get you a show along the lines of Hell’s Kitchen? What about The Gardening Angel?”
I threatened him with an interloping wildflower.
Sitting further away, he suggested, “The Hothouse Hellion?”
“Now you’re talkin’, Augie.” The warmth of laughter bubbled inside me.
We went way back, Augie and me. I’d met him as the twenty-five-year-old harried personal assistant to Ginger Wentworth. My second month on the job, she’d decided to redecorate her sprawling downtown mansion, and I was to vet all potential designers before presenting my finds to her.
