If she looked this good at twenty-eight, imagine thirty-eight or forty-eight.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked suspiciously.
“It’s eye strain. From the computer. You said you had a question?”
Eleesha folded her arms over her bosom—not overly large, but more than a handful. He could play with those nipples for hours. Wouldn’t it be something to tie her down completely, spread-eagle and truly have his way with her body, exploring its every intimacy and possibility?
“You said something about the conference table.”
He shook his head, missing the hint.
“You said you intended to fuck me on it,” she said rather more explicitly. “Does that sound familiar?”
“I may have alluded to something like that.”
“Well, it’s not going to happen,” she snapped. “I want that perfectly clear.”
He folded his hands, and leaned back in the chair. “No problem, Eleesha. I won’t fuck you on the conference table.”
Her gaze narrowed. “I won’t be trifled with,” she warned.
“How am I trifling with you? You said you didn’t want to be fucked, so I’m honoring your wishes.”
“Hmmph,” she snorted. “Well that would be a first, wouldn’t it?”
Ross exhaled heavily. “Look, Eleesha, I don’t know what you want me to say. I feel like I can’t win with you.”
“You feel like you can’t win? How do you think I feel?” She shook out her curls, her eyes wild, her nostrils flaring. “Did I come to your apartment to have sex with you and claim I wanted to ‘get it out of my system’? Did I try to turn your personal assistant against you so I could have some cheap thrills at your expense?”
Ross wanted her so fucking badly that it was killing him. Few women could actually manage to look more attractive in a snit, but this one did. “Your analogy doesn’t hold, Eleesha. For one thing, I don’t have a personal assistant.”
She made a noise of total exasperation. “You’re impossible, Ross Maclean.”
“You’re not so easy yourself, you know.”
“Just stay away from Martha. Stop poisoning her mind. And just wipe all those ideas about conference rooms straight out of your head.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She shot him a look that told him she was well aware that he was teasing her. “I mean it, Ross.”
“I mean it, too. Quarterback’s honor.”
Eleesha rolled her eyes. “Fat lot of good that will do me.”
He managed to keep a straight face as she tossed her pretty head and offered him a curt “good day”. With great interest, he watched her bouncing posterior. Talk about mixed messages. What was she really trying to tell him? Did she want to be fucked on the conference room table?
One thing was certain. This consultancy gig could not end fast enough as far as he was concerned. The faster he put this place behind him, the better. Then he’d be able to go on with his perfect bachelor life. Motorcycles, pretty women, and no strings attached. Any guy’s dream.
So why was the prospect making him so miserable all of a sudden?
“You busy?” Lyle poked his head through the door. Lyle was a decent guy. Maybe he’d be the one to lend a sympathetic male ear.
“Nah. Just ruminating about the meaning of life. Death. Taxes. Women. The usual.”
Lyle arched a brow. “The only three unavoidable things in life,” he mused. “Though at least death only kills you once. The taxes, the women, they bleed you dry your whole life.”
Ross grinned. “Buy you a drink?”
“It’s not quitting time,” he pointed out.
“Consider it part of the consulting. Let’s see how efficient you are at passing out.”
“You’re on,” Lyle nodded. “Though I warn you, I can drink any man under the table. Or is that drink any table under the man?”
The two went off to find the nearest bar, Ross feeling more animated than he had since his college days. Back when a certain female with curly hair and big eyes had caught his attention at a frat party.
* * * * *
She had done it again. Wiggled her ass for Ross Maclean. After telling him—no, more like lambasting him—to not think of her as a sex object. This was awful. She was acting like every woman she despised. Why did Ross keep bringing this out in her? It was a damned good thing they’d never had a relationship, because it was obvious that he was not good for her.
Stopping at the watercooler, she couldn’t help but overhear the conversation of the two young women behind her. She recognized the speaker as Kelly, one of those young new hires in accounting. The other was around the same age.
“I’m perfectly serious,” Kelly said. “I am going to marry him. Just you watch.”
“No way,” the other countered. “You’re delirious. There’s no way Ross Maclean would even give you the time of day.”
Eleesha stiffened. They might as well have touched a cattle prod to her still sore behind. Without making it obvious, she continued to hover in front of the large blue water dispenser.
“Shows what you know—we’ve already been lovers.”
This was more than Eleesha could bear. “What are you talking about?” She rotated at lightning speed, giving the two young women a deathly stare. “Out with it, are you making this up? Tell me now. Before I turn you in for fraternization with a corporate agent—a direct violation of the ethics code, section ten, paragraph three, punishable by summary termination.”
The two women turned a shade whiter.
“Please don’t report me, ma’am,” Kelly pleaded. “I’ve never touched Mr. Maclean. I was making it all up.”
“You never spoke to him then?”
“I did,” she said gravely. “I, um, offered and he refused.”
Eleesha was suspicious. “You weren’t led on?”
“No, ma’am.”
Eleesha gritted her teeth, not sure what to believe. “Get back to work,” she said. “And trust me, I will get to the bottom of this.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Kelly.
“Yes, ma’am,” echoed the second one.
She watched the two young women scuttle away, terrorized. She’d put the fear of god into them, but it was Ross who was the real troublemaker. He’d had something to do with putting ideas in Kelly’s head, Eleesha was sure of it. The nerve of the man—using his position to seduce an innocent young woman like that.
Eleesha told herself there was no jealousy on her part. This was a matter of morals and ethics and corporate policy. The fact that Ross was obviously trying to put his quarterback’s hands all over such a young set of breasts was beside the point. She and Ross were through. He’d done his little “working things out” ploy followed up with the cold shoulder treatment just now, which was all well and good. Let them stay happily alienated from each other forever.
Eleesha shook her head. I’ve got to drop this obsession, she thought. I’m going to drive myself nuts. Who cares who Ross screws? He wasn’t a gentleman in college, why should he be one now?
Still, she had to consider his potential future victims. She owed it to Kelly and the others to put a stop to Ross’ predations in the building. He was dangerous, and she was the only one who knew it.
He sure was a sweet form of poison, though…taken in small doses. Too bad she couldn’t take a little pressure off of herself at Ross’ expense, as he had done to her. Hit him up for a meaningless screw to restore her professional equilibrium. Get her rocks off, as men put it.
Something quick and anonymous. Heck, maybe that conference table wasn’t a bad idea after all.
* * * * *
Lyle was the kind of guy Ross could relate to. Sure, life had taken them in different directions—Lyle had three kids, a mortgage and a steady career, while he had a suitcase full of spectacular memories and an empty six-room condo he visited maybe four times a year—they were fundamentally men of deep thought. Adventurers at heart.
“Ross,”
Lyle slurred, sometime between their fourth and fifth beer. “If you could live in any time in history, what would it be?”
“I’d be a gladiator,” Ross said, without hesitation. “Now there was a sport for real men.”
“Good call. Me—I’d be a pirate, sailing the seas, capturing maidens and ravishing the bejeezus out of them.”
“To ravished maidens,” Ross toasted.
The beer mugs sloshed, the spilled liquid joining the stains already left on the small wooden table they’d procured in the corner of Riley’s Pub. It was a largely vacant emporium featuring a baldheaded, green-shirted bartender and a pair of passed-out customers—bookends at either end of the impressively carved maple bar.
Lyle guzzled his beer and refilled both his and Ross’ from the half-full pitcher. “Ross, can I let you in on a secret?”
“Considering that I’m the one holding your job in the palm of my hand, and any slip-up could put you on the street…why not?” he quipped.
“It’s Eleesha,” he said.
“What about her?”
“I wanna fuck her in the worst way.”
“And what would be the worst way to fuck her?” Ross asked.
Lyle laughed, slapping Ross’ forearm. “Wouldn’t be a bad way, that’s for sure.”
“She’s a beautiful woman,” he agreed.
Lyle snorted. “What are you getting all uppity for? She’s a fine babe and everybody there wants in her panties. I’d try if I wasn’t married, though they say she doesn’t put out.”
“Oh?” Ross was relieved to hear this.
“Yep. They say she’s a lesbian, but I doubt that pretty highly.”
“And why do you doubt it?” he asked suspiciously.
Lyle licked his latest beer mustache. “Because, mon nuevo amigo,” he replied, mixing two languages into one. “I caught her once, sitting at her desk, crying her eyes out.”
He felt her pain, even across time. “You saw Eleesha crying?”
“Yup. She was looking at a man’s picture. In the newspaper.”
“Whose picture was it?”
Lyle smiled, the deep wise smile of a drunk. “It was yours, mon frere.”
Ross was stunned. He’d had no idea she’d given him the slightest thought all these years. “Are you sure?”
“I saw her crying. I left, of course, but later, I couldn’t help myself. I took a peek on her desk and there it was. The picture, along with the story of your early retirement.”
“I don’t know what to say,” he shook his head.
“If it were me, I’d be saying ‘thank you, God’ and running off to book the nearest wedding chapel, but hey, I’m just an old married fool. Going on twenty-five years of pain and suffering. And I wouldn’t trade a minute of it, truth be told.”
“You understand, Lyle, there are issues. Hell, I don’t even know what I feel for the woman.”
“I can’t help you there,” Lyle admitted. “And I don’t know the history. She never even let on to a soul that she knew you. But if you have anything closely resembling an emotion in that macho head of yours, I’d tell her, ‘cause it seems to me she’ll be open to about anything.”
“I doubt that. Eleesha hates me right now.”
“That’s because you’re butting heads with her. Trust me, all that will get you is a concussion.”
“I just don’t think I’m cut out for marriage.”
“None of us are, buddy. It’s the curse of our gender. Consider this my little way of spreading the virus.”
“Another pitcher.” Ross held up his hand to the bartender.
“Make it a double,” Lyle quipped.
“You know,” said Ross. “If I weren’t so drunk, I’d know if I should thank you or curse you for what you just told me.”
Lyle grinned. “If you’re on the same road as me, compadre, you’ll be doing plenty of both before it’s all over.”
Chapter Five
Eleesha woke up drained, as always, worn out from her nightly dreams about Ross. In this particular version, she’d been in the mailroom, trying to run away from him. Ross kept laughing at her, nipping at her heels. Every few feet or so, someone would grab at her, tearing her clothes.
The people tearing her clothes were department heads and various other company employees. Ted ripped her blouse off while Lyle managed to unwind her skirt. Her breasts were falling out of her bra and workers from the mailroom were running alongside her to lick at her nipples. The licks stung, as though she was being whipped.
Behind her a motorcycle revved. It was Ross on his red bike. He was holding her reserved parking sign, swatting her with it. Ahead of her, Kelly and the other young woman were urging her on, trying to get her to jump into a large canvas mail cart. They were wearing heavy makeup and short skirts, like they would wear out to a club.
They were calling her bitch, telling her to get her groove on.
She was naked now, except for her panties. Running straight toward the mail cart, she dove headfirst. She’d expected to be hidden in a huge pile of shredded paper, but instead the paper began rustling ominously around her, pressing against her body and making her sexually hot. The people were gathered around and she couldn’t believe that she was actually going to come from the pressure of rustling paper.
She awoke, in the midst of the laughter, with Ross just looking at her smugly.
Fortunately the rustling papers had given her an idea. It was something she should have thought of yesterday—the one thing that could get a man removed from the company faster, even than embezzling.
A charge of sexual harassment.
Really, she wouldn’t need to turn in the form. She’d just fill it out and give a copy to Ross, letting him know, just between the two of them, that his fraternization with Kelly was not okay. If that didn’t put a damper on things, she didn’t know what would.
* * * * *
Ross sincerely wished that everyone would quiet down in the conference room. Not that anyone was actually yelling—it was just that with his hangover, even the tiniest little sounds were like explosions up and down his nerves. Drinking that much with Lyle on a Thursday night, considering that he had to work the next day, was one of his dumber moves of the last couple of months.
His only consolation as he prepared to begin his latest meeting with the sales department was that Lyle was sitting across from him looking just as miserable. Served him right for instigating. Not that anyone had held a gun to Ross’ head. The two of them had drunk each other silly until finally being escorted out of the bar a half hour after last call. The bartender had helped to spill them into a cab, which took them home to sleep it off.
Ross had had to wake up at six to catch another cab back to the bar to pick up his stranded motorcycle. Not until he saw the small, pink stucco structure did their full conversation come back to him.
According to Lyle, Eleesha had been in love with him all along. Enough so that she had cried over his retirement picture in the newspaper. Even he hadn’t gotten around to mourning the loss of his time on the gridiron. No wonder Eleesha had reacted so strongly when he’d gotten here. He wasn’t just a distant blip on her radar screen—he was…an event. Maybe the event if Lyle was right.
He felt that stab of anguish again as he remembered how he’d hurt her that morning in the frat house. Guilt, he thought scornfully, the gift that keeps on giving.
The next time he saw Eleesha, he was going to make a point to really look at her, close up, to see what emotions he’d missed behind her eyes. Feelings had never been his thing. He was like most guys that way. Bonds were based of what you did together, on how you were connected, not on anything sappy.
“Excuse me, Mr. Maclean.”
Ross looked up, trying to keep the room from spinning. A delivery boy was standing there, holding out an interoffice envelope.
“You have to sign for it.” He held out a register book.
Talk about archaic. Ross grabbed a pen off the table and scratched his initi
als.
“Don’t you people use e-mail?” Ross asked Lyle as he accepted the envelope marked “Confidential—Eyes Only”.
Confidential? This was like thirties spy stuff, straight out of Dick Tracy.
Lyle cast a quick glance and shrugged painfully, indicating that he had his hands full running the meeting.
“If we could get started,” he announced, not sounding any happier with the volume of his voice than Ross was.
Ross opened the clasp and pulled the single sheet of paper out halfway. The title of the form read Sexual Harassment—Grievance Report. It was already filled out, with his name next to the space left for “Accused”.
What in blazes? He skimmed the rest of it, catching the gist.
The accused Ross Maclean did harass employee Kelly Young, soliciting sexual favors…
This was crazy. Who in the world was responsible? A little further down it listed “Reporting party: Eleesha Green”.
For crying out loud. Would this woman ever give it a rest?
A note lay on the desk. It had been in the envelope.
The original goes to HR unless you’re gone by end of day.
Ross clenched his fist, crumpling the small piece of paper embossed with Eleesha’s name. She’d gone too far this time.
“Ross, where are you going?” The exasperated Lyle watched him get up from the table.
“I have business, Lyle. It can’t wait.”
Lyle looked at him meaningfully. “It’s about her, isn’t it?”
“Let’s just say next time we go out, you owe me big time, ‘cause that little curse of yours is already hitting me like a ton of bricks.”
Lyle grinned. “Jeezuz, I can’t believe it, but you’ve actually made my day. Someone around here is more fucked than I am.”
Lyle was referring to his wife’s refusal to let him in this morning. Among his other problems he was now facing relocation to the spare bedroom above his own garage.
Come and Get Me Page 6
