Start Me Up

by Maggie Riley

  “I bet your investors are excited about the launch of the Celero.” She followed me down the hallway, her heels clicking on the stone floor.

  “They’re excited about the projected profits,” I corrected her. “Well, some of them.”

  “Some of them?”

  “One of my biggest investors is one of my oldest friends.” That was common knowledge. “Have you heard of Mac Roberts?”

  Libby nodded eagerly. “I remember seeing his name when I did some digging on you.”

  I stiffened, even though I knew that doing that so-called “digging” was part of her job. The job I had assigned to her.

  “For the book,” Libby clarified, obviously noticing my reaction. Her words were not reassuring. “I saw that you two go way back.”

  I nodded, my shoulders still tense. “We grew up together. He lent me the money to start the company.”

  “Which I imagine you’ve repaid him a few times over.”

  More like a hundred times over. Not that Mac needed the money now. Back then, with the shop just taking off, it had been a bigger risk. For both of us. Anyone with any financial sense had warned us against the partnership. Money ruins friendships, we had been told. But it hadn’t ruined our. In fact, the reward for our risk had been more than either of us expected. Now we both had more money than we knew what to do with. Which wasn’t too bad for a couple of kids from Brooklyn who liked to dick around in an old motorcycle shop.

  “Is there a way I could reach out to Mac?” Libby was asking, nibbling on the end of her pen.

  For a moment, I was distracted by those lips of hers, by the enticing image of her and that pen. But then I realized that she was probably doing it on purpose. That she wanted to distract me. That she was using her body, her incredibly distracting and enticing body, to get what she wanted. I was annoyed that I kept almost falling for it.

  “He’s not that hard to find,” I told her gruffly. “Pretty sure anyone in New York could tell you where Tom’s Bike Shop is.”

  The coquettish smile faded from her lips.

  “I see,” she said, dropping her gaze.

  The air between us cooled significantly. I told myself that’s what I wanted – that it was for the best that we kept a professional distance. Best for the book, best for my business, and best for my libido.

  “Come on.” I knew I was being abrupt and kind of a dick, but it was better this way.

  Without a word, she followed me. We walked silently for a while, though I could practically hear her thinking. Glancing over at her, I saw that her lips were moving, as if she was having a discussion with herself. I told myself not to find it charming, but I did.

  We headed towards the factory floor.

  “Here,” I told her, handing over a hard hat and jacket.

  Libby took it silently, but her brow was furrowed.

  “I can show you how the engines get constructed.” I gestured for her to go ahead of me.

  She did, but after two steps, she whirled on her heel, facing me.

  “This book is going to be boring,” she told me.

  Her eyes flashed. With anger? Passion? It was hard to tell, but I did find the way her nostrils flared to be unbearably cute. I pushed that thought aside and tried to focus on what she had just said.

  “Boring?” No one had associated the word boring with me – or a product of mine – before. I didn’t like the way it sounded.

  “Yes,” she straightened. “Right now, your book is going to be very boring.”

  “I thought it was the job of the writer to ensure that doesn’t happen,” I told her, crossing my arms.

  A flush spread across her cheeks. “It’s the job of the writer to make the best of what she has.”

  “And you’re saying you don’t have anything good?” I demanded. “I’ve given you plenty to work with. You followed me around all day yesterday and now you’re getting a firsthand look at a car that could very well change the automobile industry. Are you saying that’s not enough?”

  The blush grew. “Not exactly.” She gestured at the factory. “All of this is great – the factory, the product – there’s plenty to write about.”

  “So what’s the problem?” I asked.

  “It’s not the amount of material that’s the problem,” she frowned. “It’s the type of material.”

  “You’re saying my car is boring.” I could feel a muscle in my jaw twitching. “The thing I’ve worked for years to perfect is boring to you. I think my investors would disagree.”

  “I’m sure they find it fascinating,” Libby said. “They’re probably going to make millions off of it. As, I imagine, will you.”

  “Once again, I don’t see the issue.” I gave her a look that would have scared some of my most seasoned employees. But she didn’t back down. Instead, she seemed to dig her feet in, her eyes narrowing.

  “People don’t want to read a book about cars!” Libby blurted out. “They don’t want to read about factories and engines and technological advances. Most people find that boring. They read a book because they want to know what’s behind all of it. The human aspect. They want to know about you.”

  “There’s plenty about me.” I glared at her. “Or haven’t you been listening?”

  “None of it is personal,” Libby told me. “And that’s why it’s boring.”

  “I told you, my personal life is off-limits.”

  “Well, then the book is going to be full of exactly what you want. And no one is going to read it.”

  We stood there for a moment, staring at each other. Neither of us said anything, but my eyes wandered over Libby’s face, over her flushed cheeks, pouting lips and heaving chest. She was annoyed at me. No one had the balls to be annoyed at me. At least not to my face.

  I found it unbearably hot.

  Her passion was appealing. So, so appealing. It made me wonder what she’d be like in bed. If the red spreading across her cheeks and down her chest, went all the way down. If her whole gorgeous body would be covered in that same pink flush. I imagined kissing all the way down her body, following the blush, my tongue lavishing attention on every inch of what I imagined was incredibly soft skin.

  I realized that I was staring. And that certain parts of my anatomy were getting more blood than my brain. I shook my head.

  “Come on,” I told her. “I’ll show you the rest of the factory.”

  Chapter 7

  LIBBY

  So he was just going to ignore it. I watched Jack walk away, trying to calm my racing heart. What had I been thinking, arguing with him like that? This was his book, his company, his world. I didn’t belong here. I was here to do a job and he was right – if I couldn’t do it, that was my fault, not his.

  But I was right too. This book was shaping up to be one incredibly detailed and exceptionally boring profile of a man and company. It could be a great book. Clearly there were things that Jack wanted to keep out of the press, but a complete reluctance to talk about anything personal meant that there was going to be absolutely nothing for readers to connect to. Ok, sure, women would still buy the book to drool over whatever photo they put on the cover, but would they care to read it?

  What did he want? It was impossible to tell. One minute I was pretty sure he wanted to kill me, and then the next moment…

  I wanted to excuse my racing heart for getting all worked up about the book, but if I were honest with myself, I’d admit that I was worked up about something completely different. Namely the way that Jack had looked at me as if I was a melting ice cream cone that he wanted to lick clean.

  I was pretty sure I’d let him.

  Which was a colossally bad idea. Not only was he technically my boss, but he was also kind of a jerk. A really, really hot jerk, but a jerk nonetheless.

  Not that my body really cared that he was distant and aloof. Or that he could be downright rude and stubborn. No, my body was completely focused on the hot parts of Jack. And there were lots and lots of hot parts to focus on. His e
yes, which seemed to go from uninterested to blazing hot in an instant. His body – those broad shoulders and strong arms, both straining against his jacket, especially when he stood over me, clearly trying to intimidate me.

  Instead, he just made me hot.

  I didn’t like intimidating men. I didn’t like aloof men. So why did I feel so drawn to him? Why did I want to strip off that perfectly made suit, fling his matching tie across the room and tear off his shirt, buttons be damned? Because I wanted to do that. Desperately.

  Instead, I kept my mouth closed and my hands to myself, following Jack around for the rest of the day getting a tour of a very impressive factory. I learned plenty about the Celero and what made it special. I learned how particular Jack was about how things were done, but I also learned that his engineers and workers clearly worshipped him. Just like in his office, he was generous with praise, but not afraid to withhold criticism.

  But even though all of that information was good to know, it wasn’t going to help make the book any more interesting. One could only say that Jack was a good boss so many times before people were yawning and putting the book down. There was no meat to the story right now. It was all impersonal details and would probably be as informative – and as interesting – as Jack’s Wikipedia page.

  We drove back into Manhattan in strained silence. There was none of the fun from that morning, with Jack keeping his car at a consistent and respectable speed for the duration of the trip. It was hard for me to reconcile the guy from that morning – the one who had stopped to get me a special hangover remedy and who had sped down the highway as if he didn’t have a care in the world – to the buttoned up, tight lipped guy who had shut down any and all discussions about topics he wasn’t interested in discussing.

  The irony was that the more he kept insisting his personal life wasn’t relevant to the book, the more I was certain it was. It just made me more and more curious about what he was hiding. Because obviously he was hiding something. It was as if he was standing over a freshly covered patch of dirt with muddy boots and a shovel in his hand telling me that he most definitely had not buried something there.

  And when I got home, and sat down to write, it became immediately evident that what I had told Jack at the factory was right – there was plenty to write about, but none of it was that exciting or interesting. After several hours of trying to inject some fun into a dry manuscript about engines and other car parts that I knew even less about, I took a break and poured myself a glass of wine.

  My Skype beeped and I saw that I was getting a call from Georgia. I accepted, and sat back at my desk, wine in hand.

  “You got me drunk last night,” I accused when her face popped up on my screen.

  “Me?” Georgia put on her most innocent face. “I was hardly forcing drinks down you.”

  The feed was a little blurry and there was a slight lag, but that was because my internet was horrible and my computer was on its last leg. At least I would be able upgrade one of them when I got the final payment for this job.

  The twenty thousand dollar check – my advance – was still in my wallet. I was afraid to cash it, afraid that something would happen and Jack would demand it back. After I had spent it all on wine and non-ramen-type food. So I was waiting until I actually had written something good that would indicate that the book wouldn’t be a total disaster. Unfortunately, if today had been any indication of the material I would be getting, I didn’t think I would be cashing that check any time soon.

  “Were you hungover this morning?” Georgia asked.

  “You have no idea,” I told her, groaning at the memory.

  She winced. “Yikes. Did you have to reschedule your meeting?”

  “No,” I sighed. “I still went.”

  “Oh,” she gave me a sympathetic look. “How did it go?”

  I told her about showing up feeling like the bottom of a shoe. And how it had only gotten worse when we got in Jack’s extremely expensive, custom car.

  “Please tell me you didn’t throw up in Jack Willis’s car,” Georgia begged.

  “I did not throw up in Jack Willis’s car,” I confirmed, grateful for that at least. Then I told her about the coconut and speeding down the highway.

  “That sounds kind of nice,” she said after a moment.

  “It was,” I admitted.

  “So why do you look so glum?”

  “Because of what happened later.”

  “Oh.” She frowned when I told her about the rest of the day. About how brusque Jack had been with me. I didn’t mention the brief moment of eye-fucking that might or might not have happened. “He really doesn’t like to talk about his personal life, does he?”

  “He really, really doesn’t like it.” I sighed. “And that makes my job really difficult.” I explained how much trouble I was having trying to write the book.

  “Yikes. That does sound really boring,” Georgia said bluntly when I tried to summarize what I had written so far.

  “Right? And he’s not boring. He’s really interesting and clearly passionate about his work and obviously wants to make a difference with his tech. You should see the way he looks at his car and the way he looks when he drives it, when he really lets go, you can just tell that there’s something really special–”

  “Oh.” Georgia giggled.

  “What?” I realized I had been rambling. Which wasn’t unusual, but usually Georgia just let me talk until I wore myself out.

  “You like him,” she said.

  “Well, sure,” I told her.

  “No,” she smiled. “You like him, like him.”

  “I do not!” I objected, probably a little too loudly.

  Georgia laughed. “You totally do! Not that I blame you, because damn, that is one fine, hunk of man.” She winked at me. “I’d be all over that if I had the opportunity.”

  “Georgia!”

  “Come on,” she teased. “You know you want him.”

  “That is beside the point,” I argued.

  “So you do admit it!”

  I put my face in my hands. “I’m not having this conversation with you.”

  Georgia stuck her tongue out at me. “It would make the book more interesting.”

  “I’m hanging up,” I told her.

  “You’re no fun,” she pouted. “Where’s my best friend who has no fear?”

  “It’s not an issue of fear,” I contradicted her. “It’s unprofessional.”

  Georgia sobered. “I guess you’re right about that.”

  “You know I’m right.”

  My best friend sighed. “Yeah, I know, but still. I was really hoping I could live vicariously through you. It’s been so long since I’ve been on a date, let alone had a hot, sweaty sexy encounter. Especially one with the sexiest man in Manhattan.”

  “Well, trying to live vicariously through me won’t do any good in that regard,” I told her. “Because I bet I’ve been without a hot sweaty sexy encounter of my own for far longer than you have.”

  “We need men,” Georgia said sadly.

  “We don’t need men!” I argued. “We need…”

  “Sex?”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Sex.”

  “But we need men for sex,” Georgia reminded me.

  Dammit, she was right.

  “That’s beside the point,” I told her.

  “What is the point?” she tilted her head like a puppy.

  “The point is that I was hired to write a book and it’s going to read like a boring business book if I can’t get Jack to tell me anything personal about his life,” I reminded her.

  She paused. “I don’t have any solutions for you, Lib.”

  I sighed. “I know,” I told her. “I’ll just have to figure something out.”

  “You will,” Georgia sounded more confident than I felt. “You always do.”

  Chapter 8

  LIBBY

  But after a night of pouring over bestselling books written about business men like Jack,
I concluded that I was pretty much screwed – and not in the good satisfying way that Georgia would want to live vicariously through – unless I could get Jack to open up.

  Unfortunately, the moment I walked into his office that morning, it became abundantly clear that I was not going to have that opportunity. Because the man who gestured for me to sit had a face like stone. Gone was any hint of the playfulness I had encountered yesterday. This man was all business. Serious and staid. Not a very compelling topic for a book that he was expecting to be interesting and informative.

  “We need to get one thing clear,” Jack told me once I had taken a seat.

  I crossed my legs, and watched his eyes follow the movement. And for a second, there was a glimmer of something else there – of the same thing I had seen in his eyes when we had been fighting, the same thing that had made me want to tear his clothes off and have my wicked way with him. There was desire. And interest.

  But he quickly looked away and the heat was gone. Even if he was interested, he wasn’t going to do anything about it. Which was good. Because I had a feeling that if Jack Willis kissed with the same passion he had while describing a car engine, I would be down to my heels and lucky thong in five seconds flat. I told myself to be grateful that he found me so annoying.

  “I don’t talk about my personal life,” he told me.

  “Yes,” I nodded. “I gathered that.”

  “I’m a very private person,” he said. “But even if I were to tell you things about my life, I’m certain you would find it incredibly boring.”

  “I’d prefer you to let me be the judge of that,” I offered, trying to tease him just a little.

  But his face remained impassive. “I’ve decided that your time today would be best used interviewing some of my staff,” he said, surprising me a little. He handed me a piece of paper with names. “Perhaps they’ll give you some of the personal touch you say you need for the book.”