by Michele Hauf
Did she want him? For more than just a few hot and heavy hookups?
“I want you,” he singsonged as he stroked the hair spilling down her back, “I need you…”
Rachel sat up a little and met his heavy-lidded gaze. “I heard you humming that tune when you were under my desk. What is it?”
“Elvis.”
“Oh, yes, now I recognize it. Hmm, you’ve got a little Elvis in you.” She slicked her fingers through his hair to give him a bit of a ducktail coif in the front. His dark, harsh features smirked. “I want you.”
He responded with a thrust of his hips against her lusciously aching mons. “I need you,” he sang out boldly. “I love you.”
“Wait!” Rachel’s brain flashed like some kind of nuclear cloud going off. “That’s it!”
Tugging out of the man’s grasp, she toppled backward and almost fell over a stack of boxes, but managed to catch herself against the desk. Picking up her skirt, she swung around the side of the desk to land on her chair. Shirt open and breasts exposed, she grabbed a pen and paper and started sketching.
“Inspiration?” the sated man on the couch wondered.
She glanced up, and in those brief seconds, saw his perspiring chest strapped with gorgeous muscle, his satisfied grin that never grew too big, and that sneaky hard-on that was ready for round two. Oh, sex on a stick, how he served her creativity.
“He’s singing to her,” she announced with creative glee. “He’s seducing her. And she’s mirroring him.” She tapped the pen against her lips. “Singing back!”
“You’re leaving me high and dry here, Rachel.”
She swished the pen in the air before her in a conductor’s move. “Sing it again.”
“Sing? Really?”
“Please?”
He broke into the lines from the Elvis song, ending with a crooning, “I love you.”
“But you don’t really love me,” she felt the need to interject curtly. “That’s just lyrics, right?”
He nodded. But did he wince at the end?
“Good.” Some things a woman needed clarified. Love was not on the table. It couldn’t be. Could it? “He’s singing, and she is, too…” She drew an empty thought bubble above the sketch of the woman Amelie had drawn. “But she’s thinking about the shoes!”
She had it. The ad campaign. And she had Zac to thank for it.
Chapter 9
The hotel room felt a little less vacant this morning, despite the fact that Rachel was not lying in the bed all sex-tousled and content. She’d wanted to go home alone last night after their office tryst, and Zac hadn’t argued. Too much. She’d said something about keeping him at bay.
Really? Was she playing hard to get?
It was working.
Of course, she’d also mentioned the campaign and didn’t think she’d sleep a wink. He had been the one to spur her creative epiphany, and he patted himself on the back for that. His cock had never served a more useful purpose.
He leaned forward, inspecting his fresh shave job in the bathroom mirror. He always nicked his earlobe, but today not a speck of blood. Interesting. Must be due to how relaxed he was feeling. Almost as if the world had suddenly fallen into order.
But not completely.
He wanted to look good when he walked into Rachel’s office today. Because he intended to confess all. It had to be done.
“Just like ripping off a Band-Aid,” he muttered.
Hell, the smart move would be to break it off and let her stand tall and grant her the promotion she deserved. A promotion befitting her talents. He’d walk away. And when given all the necessary support, the Paris Haute Heels office would thrive under Rachel’s control.
But he didn’t like that version because it meant he’d have to walk away from the girl.
So, after his confession, he’d try to make it work. Because he was falling for the woman. Hell, he’d tripped and landed in her arms, and didn’t want to struggle free. He just had to cross his fingers she could hear him after he told her who he really was.
*
Amelie followed Rachel down the aisle toward the office with her usual armload of files and message slips. She kept starting to tell Rachel something, but Rachel continued to shush her. She needed to get to her coffee and then she could settle in and listen to the days’ forthcoming scheduled disasters.
“It’s urgent,” Amelie tried.
Rachel rounded her desk, wading through the shoeboxes she hadn’t cleaned up after last night’s planning session, and sat, placing the coffee cup before her. In a grand ritual, she placed both palms to the warm cup, closed her eyes, inhaled the roasted aroma, and allowed herself two seconds of bliss.
She peeled open one eyelid. Amelie fairly vibrated, her ponytail swishing back and forth behind her skull.
Ripping off the plastic lid, Rachel conceded, “Give it to me. But please—” She put up a staying finger. “— let me enjoy one sip before the deluge.”
The coffee was hot, and she lingered on the creamy brew. Zac had converted her to the expensive stuff. Or was it that the coffee reminded her of him and anything lesser wouldn’t do? Her vision averted to the leather couch. A space was cleared of boxes and shoes where Zac and she had fucked. A broad smile grew behind the coffee cup.
“My contact in the home office emailed,” Amelie blurted out. “She was wondering how it was going with the visiting bigwig. When I replied that he hadn’t arrived yet, she told me his name.”
Amelie ceremoniously placed a pink message slip on the desk, face down, no pre-printed fill-in-the-blanks showing. On the back was written a name in bright red. Rachel leaned forward to read it.
She choked on the coffee. It burned the back of her throat. Amelie squealed and rushed out of the office. Rachel felt her lungs seal up and struggled to breathe.
Her secretary flew back in with a bottle of water and cracked the plastic seal, thrusting it toward Rachel like a pro emergency worker. Rachel drank half the water before sitting back and staring at her secretary in utter horror.
She read Rachel’s terror. “I know. What a sneak, eh? And I kind of thought you had your eye on him.”
Her eye? More like her hands, thighs, breasts—oh, bloody hell!
“Well, I’ve seen how you look at him,” Amelie continued, oblivious to Rachel’s inner breakdown. “Behind those nerd glasses lives sex on a stick.”
“They’re geek glasses,” Rachel whispered, feeling all her confidence slush out at her toes. “Big difference between a nerd and a geek.” Her shoulders hit the chair and she slumped down against the fake leather, feeling oh so used. “He lied to me.”
“It was a good cover, you have to admit. If anyone in the office would have known the big guy was coming to assess us with plans to shut us down?”
“Shut us down?” The initial memo hadn’t mentioned anything like that. Seriously? Amelie was just telling her that now? “Leave me, Amelie.”
“Do you want me to pick up the shoes lying on the floor first?”
Rachel shook her head. “Hold my calls, and when Monsieur Cosgrove arrives—”
A lush bouquet of deep red roses appeared in the doorway. Behind them popped up a pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses and that devastatingly sexy smirk that Rachel now wanted to crush with those flowers—and pray for thorns.
“Did someone say my name?”
Amelie popped upright from collecting a few pairs of shoes, her gaze flashing from Rachel to Zac, then back to Rachel. “I’ll hold your calls,” she said, and clutching the shoes to her chest as if they were life preservers, she slipped out as Zac stepped into the office. Amelie closed the door behind her.
The sensation of tears tugged at Rachel’s eyes. But no. She wasn’t a crybaby. Instead, she straightened her spine and channeled her inner…aggression. Yeah, she would now show the man the meaning of aggressive.
Shooting upright behind the desk, she strode around it, kicking aside empty shoeboxes. Crossing her arms over her chest, she
was surprised that Zac didn’t flinch from the death vibes shooting out from her pupils.
“I thought red would compliment your gorgeous skin,” he said. He offered the roses, bound with a black satin ribbon.
Just like the shoes that sat on the couch right now. Last night’s catalyst to an amazing evening of sex. And an ever more amazing campaign idea. And now Rachel realized it had all been a lie. He had been using her in the most horrible, underhanded way. He was going to shut down the office?
She grabbed the roses then shoved them back at him. Hard. The man toppled backward, tripped over a shoebox, and caught himself against the wall. “Rachel?”
He had the audacity to look shocked! “How dare you?”
He looked at the crushed bouquet. “You don’t like red? I’m sorry—”
“You’re the bloody bigwig!”
“Oh.” He tossed the roses to the couch, where they landed on top of the shoes. A symbol of her disastrous love life, those untied shoes and crushed roses. “I don’t understand how you found out. There must be a mole in the home office?”
“Seriously? You intended to keep it a secret? Who are you? No.” She thrust up a palm to stop his explanation. “I know who you are. The CEO of Haute Heels. Or are you the IT guy from downstairs? Clever disguise. Do you even wear glasses?”
He pushed up the glasses on his nose but remained silent. Smart man.
“I can’t believe I let you use me like you did.”
“Rachel, I had no intention of using you. Do you think I did?”
“What do you call sleeping with the office manager? Because I’m really interested in those sneaky tactics. I don’t understand how fucking me was going to make closing the office—oh. Wait. Did you think to get me on your side, let me down gently? Sleep with the girl and send her off with a smile?”
“Rachel, please. What happened between you and me was not what I’d intended. The sex just happened. It has nothing to do with Haute Heels and my being here to assess the office.”
“Undercover! As some nerdy IT guy.”
“You mean geek.”
“You ass!”
He silently put up his palms to placate her. With a tilt of his head and a suppressed wince, he said, “I came here today with the intention of telling you all. When you mistook me for IT that first day, I thought to go with it. The Operations Director and I had agreed to keep this visit low-key. I didn’t want to upset any of the employees. Thought it would make my looking around easier and no one would have reason to be nervous around me or—”
“Or maybe the office manager would just fall into bed with you? I can’t believe you. I can’t believe myself. I’m smarter than this!”
Rachel pressed her knuckles to her forehead. What a way to go. Fucked by the boss, and then kicked to the curb. And she had been so close to perfecting the ad campaign for tomorrow’s meeting. Her creative mojo was top form. Things had been looking up since Zac’s arrival.
Or she had just been too blind to the truth. That the man standing before her intended to fire the employees and send them packing. Oh, how she had failed this office. She didn’t even deserve the paper sign on the door.
“Rachel, there’s no way to make this better. I considered breaking it off between us and stepping back but—”
“You don’t think lying to me is grounds for breaking things off?” She checked her volume, flashing a glance through the window. No one was looking toward the office. But she knew better. This old building had been solidly built, but the cubicle gophers could hear a high-pitched dog whistle if given the right impetus.
In a quiet but firm tone, she said. “We are through. I don’t ever want to see you again. In fact, I’ll make things easy for you. I know you’re going to shut down the office. You don’t have to worry about firing me because I quit.”
She grabbed the coffee on her desk and looked about for her purse. There it sat, on the couch next to the shoes and roses. Remnants of an affair she’d had just as much a hand in encouraging as Zac.
Heaving in a big inhale, Rachel suddenly had a switch in temperament. No. This wasn’t the way to do it. She had obligations to Haute Heels. Granted, they were ones she’d taken on in the wake of the former manager’s departure—she wasn’t even manager material. But she would not step down from what she had started.
Rachel Parker was not a quitter.
“Tomorrow,” she corrected. “After the meeting with Les Grands Chaussures. I’ll deliver the campaign, and then it’s all yours. Sweep the blade. Ax everyone in the office and strip the walls down to the ugly, flocked paper.”
“I’ll have you know my mother chose that wallpaper. I rather like it.”
“Your mother?” Right. She’d known an eccentric French woman with a passion for comfort and shoes had founded the company. So Zac was her son? Mercy, this just got better and better.
But not really.
And she wasn’t in the mood to deal with the fallout of her stupid mistake.
“Leave,” she stated firmly. “I have a lot of work to do before tomorrow.”
She had just told her boss to take a hike. And he was standing there like a wrinkle-browed puppy dog that had been denied a treat. She would not crumble. She wouldn’t allow herself to retract a single hateful thought at the sight of his thick black brows and his pouty brown eyes.
“Haute Heels needs Rachel Parker,” Zac said softly. “That’s why I’ve put in a requisition for your official promotion to office manager. I intend to keep the Paris branch open. This office was my mother’s brainchild. But the only way that dream can succeed is if you are heading operations. With an excellent staff to support you. We’ll be pushing funds through for more hires and updated equipment. I hope you’ll accept the promotion.”
Rachel inhaled and breathed through her nose, seeking calm. A promotion? To the job she’d already been filling? Would he also give her the pay raise she deserved?
Hell, what was she thinking? It was all tainted now. And she had had a hand in making it wrong. Inside, she was shaking, raging. But outside, she pulled on calm. “I don’t sleep my way to the top, Monsieur Cosgrove.”
“You did not do that.”
“Are you sure about that? Because I’ll never really know if I did or did not get that promotion because we shared a bed. And I can’t live with that. My resignation remains. I’ll take my marketing skills elsewhere. Somewhere they don’t use underhanded tactics to spy on their employees.”
Zac bowed his headed and nodded. “Whoever is fortunate enough to gain your talents will be a very lucky company indeed. You will excel no matter where you go, Rachel. I wish you luck. It’s my fault we’re losing you. I’ll have to go back to corporate and tell them the truth.”
“That you tricked me.”
“It wasn’t intentional. Just a really stupid decision on my part. Rachel…” He sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets. “All right. Resignation accepted. Business discussion complete. But can we have the us discussion now?”
“Are you—” The word crazy wouldn’t rattle off her tongue. But her heartbeats raced so quickly she wanted to push against her chest to still them. And it took all her courage not to let her voice shake when she said, “There is no us.”
“For a few amazing days there was an us. Admit it. You were into me.”
“I was into the geek beneath my desk who I mistakenly trusted was telling me the truth.”
“Yeah, about that geek.” He rubbed a hand at the back of his neck. “That really was me about a decade ago. I started out in IT at Haute Heels. Never thought I’d follow in my mother’s footsteps as head of the company, that’s for sure. Being an executive is…well, it’s weird. It still doesn’t feel right to me some days. Hell, you mistaking me for the geek was refreshing. I admit, you made me want to be that guy again. The regular guy. The one no one makes demands of. Everyone always wants something from the CEO. And I’m expected to be some kind of ruthless raider. That’s not me. You, Rachel, demanded nothing
but my presence, and a little computer magic.”
Rachel swallowed. She would not succumb to the guy’s feel-good rising-through-the-ranks story. Everyone had one of those. And besides, he was the company founder’s son. How hard had he really had to struggle to become the owner?
“I got to enjoy the remarkable experience of learning you.” He smiled to himself and glanced at the flowers. “I like what we have going, Rachel.”
“Had going,” she corrected.
“We can make this work. I want to make this work. Don’t you, even a tiny part of you? Don’t you want that, too?”
She crossed her arms tighter, resisting the mutinous scream that wanted to leap from her mouth and agree with the man. It was her heart, vying to be heard, wanting to rise up from the mundane of the nine-to-five (but really nine-to-eight) and grasp on to something wonderful. Something she hadn’t realized she’d needed until she’d met Zachary Cosgrove.
She had enjoyed the us.
Even now, knowing it had been a lie.
If she could believe Zac, the us part hadn’t been a lie. And he had only been using the cover she’d mistakenly given him that morning when she’d assessed him as the office geek. But seriously, what CEO wears a pocket protector?
A glance over Zac’s impressive Italian suit revealed a peek of white vinyl beneath the jacket. He did. Guess you could promote the guy to head of the company, but you couldn’t erase all the geek from the CEO.
“Rachel?”
But she couldn’t concede. Such floundering after she’d announced her resignation was unacceptable. And he had accepted her resignation. Just like that. Not even a lackluster argument over him wanting her to stay.
“I’m sorry.” She picked up a random manila folder from the glass desktop and walked around Zac to the door. “I have work to do. If you could find a way to stay out of my office, I’d appreciate it. As I’ve said, I’ll finish what I started before officially leaving. I’ll see you tomorrow morning at the client meeting.”
