He was still tapping his eraser on his notepad, his expression unreadable. “So you want to forget what we did.”
She would never forget what they’d done. “The situation looks bad.” She was his direct report. It was the appearance of impropriety. The controller and the CFO both have signature authority. They could approve each other’s wire transfers and commit a host of other collusive activities. Not that they would, but...
“That’s correct.” He paused long enough to give her hand a slight tremor. “Unless the candidate we choose as controller is Greg Spencer or someone from outside.”
Her heart lurched. “Is that what you’re going to do?”
“No.” He paused, holding her gaze. “I’m giving the job to you.”
A week ago she would have given a polite trite phrase. Thank you for the opportunity. You won’t be disappointed, blah, blah, blah. Then she’d have run back to her office, closed the door, and done a happy dance. Now, she ached. He didn’t want her. She didn’t play the game the way he wanted so he’d gone back to Ruby. Making her controller was the consolation prize. It was crazy, she’d wanted the job badly, worked hard for it. Yet all it meant was that he didn’t want her.
He gazed at her, his scrutiny intense. “Don’t you want it?”
She couldn’t see him day in and day out, remembering what they’d done together. That she wanted it to happen again and again. She didn’t want him to go back to Ruby. She wanted everything Ruby had.
But he hadn’t offered her Ruby’s position. He’d offered only the controllership.
“Holt’s already approved it,” he said.
That was probably why he’d called her up to his office. It had nothing to do with Friday. He’d already forgotten it. She embarrassed herself for nothing.
He made a note on his legal pad, God only knew why. “Maybe you want to know what the salary is first.”
She didn’t care. “Yes. Of course.”
He named a number that was reasonable but not extravagant.
“You said I was worth three thousand dollars a night.” She didn’t know where it came from, because she hadn’t thought about the price he’d given Mitch until this moment.
The room began to heat. His eyes darkened. “That’s a different job.”
God, she wanted to touch him, to taste his mouth. To climb onto his lap, take out his cock, suck him.
Jessica swallowed. “As it happens, you’re too late. I’ve applied at another company. In fact”—she flipped her wrist to look at her watch—“I’ve got an interview after work.”
For the first time, emotion crossed his face, a sudden tension along his jaw. “You’re leaving?”
“It’s impossible to stay after what we’ve done.”
He shook his head. “It’s not impossible.”
She wanted to smack him for being so obtuse. “We had sex. Now you decide that we have to stop. You decide that I should be controller instead. You didn’t even ask what I wanted.”
“But you’ve always wanted to be controller,” he said, mystified.
She leaned down in his face, breathed him in, wanted to cry. “That was before. You never asked if I’d changed my mind.”
“Did you?” he murmured softly.
Goddamn him. She didn’t want to beg. She was afraid he was going to make her. Then he was going back to Ruby anyway. “What I did was make up my mind that I’m not getting anywhere at West Coast. So I’m looking elsewhere.”
She marched to the door, yanked it open, and left him.
Back in her office, before she could talk herself out of it, she dashed off a reply to the earlier email, accepting the five-thirty interview.
* * * * *
Five minutes later, Clay finally laid his notepad on the table. He’d done a lot of thinking since Friday night. About the reasons that he found himself so much more wrapped up in Jessica over the span of two weeks than he’d been with Ruby in two years. He’d found answers. Yet Jessica had stunned him with her announcement.
Of course, it was inevitable. She’d left him in every way she could, professionally, sexually, emotionally.
It would never be possible to wipe his mind of everything that had happened between them. He wanted her too much. He couldn’t sit at the damn conference table without remembering what he’d done to her on it. He’d had to hold the legal pad on his lap so she wouldn’t see his erection.
She was worth far more than three thousand dollars. Right now, he’d pay anything for one more night with her.
But he had no choice. He couldn’t deny her the job when she’d worked so hard and was the most qualified. That lacked all semblance of fair play. He couldn’t ask her to quit so he could have her. He couldn’t walk out on Holt and West Coast because he wanted her.
Yet she’d quit on him; not outright, true, but she put him on notice that she was going no matter what he offered her. And while she’d been pissed, accusing him of making all the decisions—which he had—she’d opened another door.
He intended to walk right through it.
Chapter Eighteen
This was all Bradley’s fault. No, Little Miss Muffet was to blame. Damn that woman. If she hadn’t opened her big mouth to Clay, none of this would have happened, which made it so satisfying to accuse her of spreading all the horrible rumors. Not that she expected Clay to buy it. It just felt good in the moment.
Okay, dammit, Ruby knew she’d made the first wrong move. But how could Clay run to Little Miss Muffet? Ruby shuddered behind the wheel of her blue BMW as she drove to Bradley’s apartment. She was going to murder that boy.
Saturday, after Clay kicked her out, she’d gotten a hotel room—a very nice one at the very same Marriott he was staying at and he could pay the damn bill—then she’d gone to cry on Bradley’s shoulder. She must say she’d done a very good poor-poor-pitiful-me; Bradley had been willing to do anything for her.
But he’d screwed it all up. He wasn’t supposed to start a rumor about Clay and her. His job was to trash Little Miss Muffet. She should have taken care of the rumor-mongering herself.
So she had to fix his mess, which was why she was rushing off to his apartment right now.
Holt was great. He didn’t get all worked up about business being only business. If a girl had to take off a couple of hours to whack some sense into a nimrod male brain, he was fine. He wasn’t some soulless workaholic executive type. He realized people had lives.
Still, she’d let things get out of hand. How foolish she’d been. Because of that nasty little rumor, she hadn’t gotten any satisfaction out of telling Jessica Clay had come home to her Saturday morning. Of course, she hadn’t mentioned that he’d dumped her.
Bradley had stolen her thunder, put her in the one-down position, so that she had to apologize to Clay, instead of the other way round.
Oh God, she could lose him. She really could. Ruby didn’t cry—well, not for real—but the memory of Clay booting her out brought her the closest to tears she’d been since high school. He’d been so calm, so unfeeling. She knew the truth in the very pit of her stomach, no matter how much she didn’t want to admit it; she’d already lost him, no could, might or maybe about it.
Bradley had better be home. She grimaced when she remembered the expression on Clay’s face as he’d asked if she knew Bradley’s address. She’d been there twice. Or maybe it was three times. And dammit, Clay had enjoyed the fruits of her labor each and every time.
Bradley’s apartment complex was rundown, the paint faded on the siding, weeds growing out of the cracks in the parking lot pavement. The pathways were uneven where tree roots had pushed up the concrete, and she got a splinter in her finger when she put her hand on the railing as she climbed the stairs.
She hadn’t cared before. But her relationship with Bradley was like his apartment, on the seamier side of things. His doorbell no longer worked, so she knocked.
He opened almost immediately, wearing a Ralph Lauren shirt and Tommy Hilfiger jeans. She d
idn’t mind that his designers didn’t match. That’s where Bradley’s money went, into his clothes, his Corvette, and his toys. The 65-inch HDTV with surround sound was tuned to the Bloomberg network. Sadly, the market was down. Again.
“Oh baby, I’m so glad to see you.”
He closed the door behind her. Fast food wrappers littered his coffee table, and he was already one beer down for the day.
“Don’t baby me.” She spread her hands. “What were you thinking?”
“What?” He attempted to look innocent, but he couldn’t maintain eye contact long enough to carry it off.
“You know what I’m talking about. All those lies about Clay.”
“I didn’t lie. I was just talking to the guys. And you told me you wanted to make him pay.”
She glared at him. She was very proud of her glare. It made most men cower. Not Clay, of course. Or Holt. But Bradley was definitely cowering, if the hand wringing meant anything. Really, what had she seen in him?
“You weren’t talking. You were lying.”
“No, no,” he pleaded, pacing the small room, which was completely dominated by the oversize TV. “I was so upset and I had to get it off my chest.”
“You said Clay was impotent and he paid you to have sex with me.”
He gasped, wide-eyed, and mouthed, “Noooo,” his lips rounded in that O for a very long time.
“Close your mouth. You look like a fish.” She jammed her hands on her hips. He was taller, but she was so much mightier. “Now, who did you tell?”
He shrugged. “Just the softball team. We went out for a few beers after the practice yesterday.”
“What?” She slapped her hand to her forehead. West Coast sponsored a community team, and several employees played. From the warehouse, manufacturing, machine maintenance, customer service. “Oh. My. God.” He’d told everyone. “I have never been so angry in all my life. Why on earth would you do that?”
He screwed the toe of his shoe into the carpet. Like a little boy. “I wanted humiliate him so you’d realize I was the better choice.”
She breathed deeply to keep from screeching at him. “You are twenty-nine, not ten. You’ve messed up your job, you’ve messed up any chance of getting a decent recommendation”—she pointed a finger right in his face—“and you’ve screwed any chance of ever getting back in my panties.”
“But Ruby.” There was a distinct whine in his voice.
God, yes, she had been a complete idiot. She’d had such a good thing with Clay, and for the sake of a little boredom and the need to shake things up a bit, she was totally screwed.
“If you don’t retract this,” she said, “I will tell everyone that you have a teeny tiny penis, and you’re a premature ejaculator.”
He hung his head. “Will you give me another chance if I do?”
“Do not try to bargain with me. Just fix it.”
“I’m sorry,” he muttered.
He looked so forlorn that for some inexplicable reason, she took pity on him. “Bradley, you have some very good qualities that I’m sure some lovely girl your own age is going to completely appreciate. But I’m far too old for you.”
“What about Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore?”
“Newsflash: they’re getting a divorce! For God’s sake, grow up. You don’t love me. I don’t love you. We had sex. It was pleasant, but we’re both moving on.”
He sighed. “I might have been rash in quitting my job.”
“Yes, you were.” She patted his cheek. “But you know you can’t come back now.”
“I was thinking about moving back home. My dad’s a CPA. He always wanted me to come into the business. I just wanted to make my fortune in California.”
Right. Like there were a whole lot of fortunes still to be made. Bradley was no Mark Zuckerberg. “When’s the next softball practice?”
“After work today.”
Boy, they practiced a lot, though probably they were more into the beer afterward than the practice itself. “I want you to tell them you made it all up.”
“They’re not going to believe me now.”
“They will if you tell them you wanted to see how gullible they were. The joke’s on them.”
He pulled his head back. “But then they’ll be pissed at me.”
“That’s the price you pay, sweetie.”
She walked out his door and sighed. Men were jerks. No, some men were boys and they acted like jerks. She was certainly old enough to have learned the difference. So why had she been such an idiot?
* * * * *
Clay knew where Jessica lived, a cocktail party she’d held for the department a couple of Christmases ago. Funny that he’d never forgotten his way to her.
Having given her an extra two hours to get through her interview, he now stood on her doorstep. Her condo was in a small tree-lined complex. Pots of early spring flowers bloomed on her stoop. He hadn’t thought of her as a flowerpot kind of woman—too career-oriented—but he’d come to learn so much more about her in the past week. Some details were intimate, some were momentous, some were small, like the fact that she loved flowers.
By the time she opened the front door, his palms were damp with nerves. A woman had never made his palms sweat before. But he’d never waited three years to figure out how badly he wanted her.
She was nothing like his ex-wife, who would never in a million years consider having a fuck buddy. She was the opposite of Ruby, too, who had too many friends-with-benefits. Jessica was gorgeous in faded sweats and a tight T-shirt.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?” The only trace of her emotions was the tightening of her fingers on the front door.
He enumerated his mistakes. “I asked Ruby to move out on Saturday. I should have told you. I decided that I couldn’t ask you to quit your job so that we could be together. I should asked how you felt, told you what I felt. We should have made any decisions together.”
Her eyes darkened. It could have been an edge of moisture pooling in them or a storm building. “It wasn’t like you owed me anything. All we did was have sex.”
He wanted her to invite him inside, yet he’d given up the right to ask. He’d allowed her to believe what they’d shared was merely physical. “It was so much more. I should have told you that, too.”
She breathed deeply, said nothing.
His next words came from the hollow pit of his stomach. “Please don’t leave.”
She expelled her breath in a sharp puff. “I can’t be your controller. Not after everything.”
Christ, he wanted to touch her so badly, his hands shook, but he was still on the outside looking in. “I’m not talking about West Coast. I’m talking about me. Please don’t leave me.”
She was silent and unmoving so long, he thought she might end up slamming the door in his face. Until finally she stepped back. “It would probably be better if you came inside so we can talk.”
* * * * *
Her heart was pounding so hard she was terrified she’d misheard him. But Clay stepped inside her home. He dwarfed her small living room. It was a one-woman place, with only a loveseat instead of sofa, a small coffee table, one extra chair. Even the table in the dining area was made for one, unless she pulled it apart to put a leaf in it.
Jessica didn’t want to be just one anymore. But she had to know exactly what he wanted. Don’t leave me. She was terrified to think it meant everything only to find out he merely wanted the same kind of relationship he’d had with Ruby. Transitory. Until she broke his rules. She couldn’t stand it if he threw her aside.
Yet she wanted to throw herself into his arms, take whatever she could get for as long as he offered it.
“I never loved Ruby,” he said.
She swallowed, tried to hide her emotions when inside she was screaming for him to say those words to her. “Then I guess it didn’t hurt you when I told you what she was doing with Bradley.”
He held her gaze. “It didn’t hurt. It only pis
sed me off. If it had been you doing what she did, then it would have crushed me.”
“Why?” she whispered. Honestly, she didn’t know. He’d touched her for the first time only ten days ago. Before that, she’d been his employee.
“Sometimes you want someone but put it out of your mind because you know you can never have her. Until suddenly you realize that maybe you can have everything you want. That’s how I felt, and now I can’t stop wanting you, thinking about you, needing you. It was there all along, only now I know what it is.”
“What is it?” She couldn’t tell whether she’d said it aloud or merely mouthed the words.
“Lust, love, need, desire, admiration, respect.” He held her gaze for long moments. “Everything.”
Love. She couldn’t believe it, had to keep questioning. “What about other men? Like what you had with Ruby?”
“I still love that. I wanted it with my ex-wife, I liked it with Ruby. With you, it makes me crazy.”
“I know,” she said. Some men were wired differently, and having another man want what they had made their desire even greater. Yeah, she’d read that in all the blogs she’d poured over on the Internet. That wasn’t enough; why did Clay want it with her? God, she could have everything if she could just shut up. But she couldn’t; eventually it would come back to bite her ass. “It still makes me feel like you don’t really want me, just me, only me.”
He stepped so close she could feel the heat of his body, smell that indefinable male something that was so him. He touched her hair without actually touching her. “I’d never really defined it for myself.”
Revenge Sex: A West Coast Hotwifing Novel, Book 1 Page 12
