Chris McCann crossed her mind again. One last thought of that perfect ass, then, she put her mind to her work.
On the way in to her cubicle, Nicki grabbed a handful of files off a metal service handcart. The folders were intended for someone else, of course, but if she walked over to her desk with them like this, then it would look like she had been off doing something for the last hour. No one would know the difference. She could always return the files later.
She made it to her desk, three over and two in, and sat down with the files next to her, without anyone stopping her. There. Now she could begin her day and dig into that Perrigon brief that she was supposed to be researching for Mister Donovan. It wasn't due until next week but Nicki figured if she could get it done early and impress him with her work, then maybe Mister Donovan would let her sit in on some of the meetings with the client. Maybe even let her sit in the third or fourth chair if it went to civil trial.
A girl had to dream big.
Not quite another hour of research gave her most of the facts she needed to start drafting the firm's response to the brief. She needed the wording of the second paragraph, subsection…what was it?
She sorted through the brown file folders on her desk and then opened one on top of everything else, flipping through the first few pages, looking for that one part she had seen earlier.
Wait.
This wasn't the Perrigon folder. This was…
Weird. That's what this was.
She pored through the documents quickly, sifting through the legal jargon to glean out the main details, knowing she was looking at something important but not knowing what it was. It finally struck her that this was one of the folders she had grabbed off the cart this morning. Nothing to do with her. Still, she couldn't stop reading it.
There was some kind of contract being offered here, some of it in very standard language, but the rest of it confused her. Nicki was pretty sure she was reading it correctly. It just didn't make sense.
Something called the Ursa Initiative. Work for hire agreements. Indemnity clauses and opt-out language. Other things she couldn't understand even with the finest legal education the American education system could offer. Whatever this involved, there was a lot of money changing hands. Building space was being purchased via several dummy corporations in a bad section of town, to be owned by Finnegan and Kellogg but without the company's name openly attached to the sale. There was information on what looked like a nuisance animal containment project. Whatever that meant.
Then a name jumped out at her from the page. Chris McCann, the detective from downstairs –the man who had rode up in the elevator with her. He’d smelled like warm cinnamon and made her wonder if dating two white guys at once would be too much for the spirit of Doctor Martin Luther King to bear. Why was McCann in this folder?
Her firm did hire out detective work from time to time when a case required investigations that went beyond what was strictly legal. Sneaking into competitor's offices, following people around to get incriminating photographs, that sort of thing. It wasn't all that suspicious, she supposed, that he would be mentioned in a Finnegan and Kellogg file folder.
His name was listed in connection with some strange codes, though. None of it made sense to Nicki. Except for one thing that she understood all too clearly. This folder was something she was not supposed to know about.
Looking around, craning her neck and pushing up on her toes until she could just see over the tops of the low cubicle walls, making sure no one was looking, she slid all of the paperwork back into the folder more or less in order. Then she put it with the others she had picked up on her way into the office and stood up as calmly as she could. This was not good.
She would just put the files back before anyone noticed. That's all. Just like how she had covered up being late this morning. No one needed to know that she had even looked at these folders, let alone thumbed through one at her desk.
Smoothing the back of her skirt as she stepped out of her square little space, Nicki walked as casually as she could back to where the handcart with all the other files had been not two hours before.
It was gone now. The hallway was clear of anything except the water cooler and that same dying fern that had been there since she had started with the firm. Oh, no. Oh no, oh no, oh no. This was not good. Not good.
Turning on her heel she decided she would dump the folders in the break room and let whoever found them next deal with the problem.
She didn't make it two steps.
"Miss Bryant."
Turning, she held her breath, knowing exactly whose stern voice it was. Sure enough, Mister Donovan himself stood at the far end of the hallway, in front of the door marked with his name across the frosted glass. His full head of gray hair was parted and coiffed just so, like it usually was, and his face was flushed, his usually pale cheeks red. He did not look happy. She always thought he looked a little like an undertaker. Today, he looked like he was ready to prepare her corpse for burial.
"Miss Bryant," he repeated, "I need to see you in my office. Now."
Nicki swallowed back a hard lump in her throat. She'd been wrong. This was worse than not good.
This was very, very bad.
Chapter 2
At least she wasn't fired.
Suspended wasn't fired, right? Nicki tried to put a positive spin on what had just happened to her, even though she was frowning so harshly that one poor guy who glanced her way on the sidewalk nearly tripped over his own two feet trying to get out of her way. She was furious. Furious with her company, with her boss and even though she hated to admit it, she was furious with herself, too.
And she was furious with that smug little white boy, Chris McCann.
Whatever the Ursa Initiative was, McCann was definitely tied up into it in a big way. When Mister Donovan brought her into his private office, the smug little private dick had already been sitting there cross-legged in an overstuffed suede chair. The tassels of his one shoe bounced as he tapped his foot on the floor. The look he'd given her with his smoky eyes was very calculating and she knew that he and Mister Donovan were already aware of her mistake.
She had the folders in her hands, after all.
After scolding her like a little child, Mister Donovan advised her that she was on a two-week suspension. She was to pass off whatever important work she was doing for reassignment and then leave the building. So, all of her hard work on the Perrigon file was for nothing, now. Not only that, but there would now be a black mark against her in her file for God alone knew how long.
Wait. Had she just called Chris McCann's eyes "smoky?"
"Get a grip, girl." Nicki told herself as she stalked her way through mid-morning crowds and tourists and street performers. She was not going to be attracted to that man. Not after he'd sat there through her whole ass-chewing with Mister Donovan. And silently watched her with those eyes, reading her private thoughts, undressing her with a look…
She scowled at herself and tried to put Chris McCann out of her mind. Fine, he was a beautiful man, but that did not mean she would forgive him for seeing her practically in tears in front of Mister Donovan. He could have said something instead of just sitting there like eye candy in a GQ magazine.
Nicki was so caught up in her thoughts that she never saw the guy she ran into until she was down on the ground ass and looking up at a tall mountain of a man.
He was at least six feet and something tall. A deep tan had turned his white self into a bronzed Adonis of muscled arms and broad chest and closely shaven bald head. His clothes were simple, blue jeans and a purple V-neck shirt, although the hiking boots he wore seemed really out of place in the middle of a city. He seemed more like the outdoors type. Nicki hated the outdoors.
She was starting to hate white guys, too.
His brown eyes laughed at her as he held out a big hand, offering to help her up.
"Sorry about that," he rumbled. "One of us should watch where they're going."
"I could see the pretty woman in her fine red dress, sure enough." He said to her. "You mean to say you couldn't see this big guy right in front of you?"
Nicki blinked up at him. He called her pretty. Obviously, he wasn't stupid. She looked him up and down again and this time let herself really enjoy what she saw: broad shoulders, muscled chest; the way his jeans were tight in all the right places. He was a fine looking man, and his voice was definitely soft on her ears. There was something else about him, too. There was a something that made her feel a tingling on her skin, a warm shiver that ran down the length of her spine.
There was like, this instant attraction that she couldn't fight against. Like gravity. She jumped when his fingers touched the line of her jaw. Electricity sparked and stole her breath.
"Why'd you do that?" she asked, pulling away. Was her heart racing because she was afraid of him, or because his touch had been so smooth and soft?
This was getting weird. She wanted to move closer to him, to let him touch her again, but her smart city girl instincts told her that she was getting in too deep with someone she’d just met. You walk away from strangers, her mom always said. You don't run off with them
She wanted to take this man back to her apartment and see what might happen.
"Okay," she said, taking hold of her senses again, "look, I'm sorry for bumping into you and letting you push me down on my tiny little behind—"
He tried to peek around to look at her ass when she said it.
"—so I'm just going to go now." Self-consciously, she smoothed her hand down the back of her dress again. She smiled as she did it, though, and allowed herself to admit that she enjoyed the way his eyes following her as she walked past him.
"Max." He said, before she was too far away to hear. "In case you wanted to know my name."
She turned her head to look back over her shoulder, posing for him with her shoulder back and her body just so. She lifted one eyebrow. "Max? That a first or a last name?"
He chuckled and took a step closer to her. "Maximus Orronnell. It's kind of a mouthful. Just call me Max."
In the space of a breath, they were standing close enough for her breasts to rub against his body. He filled her senses. It thrilled her, and scared her, and fascinated her all at once. His fingers were on her cheek again but she liked it and she let him do it to her and lost herself in his deep eyes. "Nicki," she told him in a near whisper. "My name is Nicki Bryant."
He leaned into her, and kissed her lips so firmly and completely that the world blurred around them until it was gone and it was only them. Just them.
It startled her how into it she was, kissing this white man right out here on the city street, how electricity popped and tickled at her brain and made her chest swell and ache to be closer to him. He broke away from her with a smile and a look in his eyes that promised her more if she was very, very lucky.
"See you around, Nicki Bryant," he said. "Be careful not to bump into any more strangers."
He turned and walked into the crowds and disappeared all too quickly. She blinked and searched for him. Where did he go? He couldn't just disappear, could he? In another moment, she was left to wonder if she had imagined it all. Only the feel of his lips on hers convinced her otherwise, and the way she ached to touch him again. There was something so surreal about it, so odd, so weird.
So…magical.
***
At her apartment again, Nicki kicked off her shoes and let them fly wherever they wanted to. She stripped off her pantyhose as she went to the kitchen, and draped them over one of the three dining table chairs on her way to the refrigerator. It was sometime around noon, which made it late enough for a beer. Especially after the day she'd been having. There was two long-neck bottles near the front, next to the milk, and she grabbed the first one. Unscrewing the top she took a long swallow. There. That was better.
It was German beer, dark and heavy, just like she liked her men. Maximus. He certainly didn't fit that bill at all, did he? He came into her mind again for the millionth time, his broad shoulders and his movie star looks and that voice that rumbled right into her. She made a sound in her throat. Illusion or mirage or whatever he had been, if God had any favors to throw her way she'd see Maximus what's-his-name again.
She wondered at how a white man could turn her on so. Guess skin color really didn't matter all that much if everything else…fit so well.
Well. That was only part of it, after all.
Her fourth floor apartment cost her more than she really could afford, but she was looking forward to a time when she climbed the corporate ladder and would be earning a decent salary at Finnegan and Kellogg. Wasn't going to happen if she kept getting on the boss's bad side. That was for sure. She looked around her place now, at the neat and tidy shelves with their books and photos of her parents and brothers and the furniture arranged just so. She sighed. It could all be lost in an instant if she couldn't afford to keep it, and what would she do then?
Taking another drink straight from her bottle of beer, she realized she had no idea what she would do then. There was no plan past working hard at the firm and advancing. No plan B. No idea at all what she would do if she ever wanted to have kids. Nothing like that. Nicki had always been a live-for-the-now kind of girl. In that instant, suspended from work and alone in her apartment, that just seemed sad.
She decided she needed a shower. She could change into some pajamas and order take-out Chinese for dinner and watch old movies on television. All in that very specific order.
The zipper to her dress slid down easily along her spine and she tugged the shoulders down over her arms to let it fall away to the floor in a heap around her ankles. Naked except for her panties, she stretched, her firm breasts much happier to be free instead of artificially lifted and separated. She'd done sports in college, track and women's baseball, and her body was still tight and athletic. She liked showing off her body. The guys she had dated always appreciated it, too.
"No date tonight Nicki." she reminded herself. "You got yourself suspended. Have to call Larry and cancel on him."
Or did she? It was just a date. It wasn't work related. Plus, she owed him for trying to cover for her. Her denying that she had read anything in the Ursa Initiative files—a lie—had still gotten her suspended. If Mister Donovan had known she'd snuck into the place as well, then that might have been the end to her very short career right there.
Screw it. She'd keep her date with Larry. She didn't have to stay out for long, just long enough to make him feel like she'd made it worth his while. Of course, she might end up wanting to stay out late. Maybe Larry wasn't as much of a stuffed fish as he appeared to be at work. Wasn't it always the quiet guys who were so wild in bed?
That thought finally brought a smile to her face as she stepped into her tiny bathroom with its stand-up shower and single vanity and little rectangle mirror over the sink. The place might not be much, but it was hers. And tonight, if he played his cards right, Larry might be hers, too.
She turned the shower faucet on almost full hot. She needed to melt a few worries away. Heat was always good for that.
Humming to herself, she got into the spray, closing the glass door behind her. With generous amounts of strawberry-scented body wash, she lathered up her skin until suds dripped away from her upper arms and slid over her belly and down her long legs to the shower's tiled floor. The hard spray from the pulsing massage shower-head felt really good where it hit against her shoulders.
She stood there like that, letting the heat and the pressure of it wash away the tension that had built up in her back and neck for so long
that she lost all track of time. She didn't care. It just felt nice to be able to pamper herself like this in the middle of the day.
Actually, it was starting to turn her on.
Living alone like she did had a lot of advantages. There was a lot of downside too, but at least she could feel free to leave her things all over the apartment and not worry about who would see them. Pantyhose on the kitchen table. Bras hanging off the bedpost.
Vibrator on the shower shelf next to the shampoo.
Biting down on her lip, she reached up for the purple shaft of the waterproof toy. It had a little rabbit on its handle that vibrated at just the right spot. When his full length of it had been slid up into her, the little bunny's ears played into the tip of her crease…
Oh. Yes.
Nicki turned in the shower and now the spray was beating against the front of her and she gasped at the way it prickled against her breasts, her belly and her hips. She was definitely into this. If she felt like this when she went out with Larry later, the poor white boy might find out just how hot Nicki's kind of chocolate could get.
Simply Bears: A Ten Book Paranormal Bear Shifter Romance Collection Page 27
