by Audra North
Too late. He’d heard her. “Meredith?” his voice came through the door, quiet but urgent. “Meredith, are you there?”
Quit using your temper as an excuse. Quit cowering. Answer the door and tell him what you want. All those things on your list. You deserve them. He deserves to hear them.
She pulled the door open, scowling at him, ready to give him a piece of her mind, but before she could say a word, he held up a bag. “I know. I’m really sorry that it took such a long time. The closest twenty-four-hour Duane Reade is several blocks away. But I got it, and I swear I’m going to make this up to you if it takes all weekend.”
What was he talking about? It was so unexpected that it threw her anger off, replacing it instead with confusion. She stood in the doorway, staring at him and trying to figure out if he’d been knocked on the head, or abducted by aliens, or some other weird mind-changing experience, in the past half hour.
“Is—is everything okay?” he asked then, realizing that she was still blocking him from entering. He was still whispering. “I really am sorry. I only realized how late it was when I got there. I should have stayed a while longer and helped you, um, recover.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Shit, I’m so bad at this. Is it that I’m being too presumptuous about this? Of course. You don’t have to use any of this stuff. I just couldn’t stand the idea that I had hurt you.”
Stuff? What stuff? She shook her head in confusion, but gestured him in. No use trying to get an explanation with him standing in the hall.
As soon as she closed the door behind him, she crossed her arms and glared at him. “I don’t understand. You said you were leaving. Where did you go just now and why did you come back?”
His brow furrowed. “I went to the convenience store to get some things to help you with the, um, soreness.” He gestured toward her awkwardly, as though it were just then dawning on him that he might have overreacted. “But, as I suspected, most of the places around here aren’t open late. Did you—did you not hear me before, when I told you?”
Oh, dear. So that’s what he’d been stammering about as he’d jammed his feet into those shiny black shoes and scooped his coat up in such a hurry. He’d been speaking so fast, and she’d still been so dazed, that her mind had interpreted it as a hurried good-bye.
“So, you weren’t just trying to get out and go home?” She suddenly felt foolish.
“God, no!” The horror in his voice was real, and she felt herself relaxing even while feeling more embarrassed than ever. “I admit that I didn’t handle it as well as I could have, but I was so worked up, wanting to make up for how catastrophically I failed that—”
His words were cut short when Meredith wrapped her arms around him and kissed him, a hard, happy kiss that was just as much relief as it was joy. “You didn’t fail. Neither of us did. I appreciate the sentiment, but you shouldn’t have left. Because there’s nothing to ‘make up for,’ as you put it.”
“But you deserve—”
“I deserve for you to believe me when I say that you didn’t fail. Did it really scare you that much? I thought you’d left because you didn’t want to see me again. I thought I’d failed somehow. I didn’t even think my virginity—God, I feel too old for that word—would be an issue. It certainly wasn’t one for me.”
After a moment, he nodded. “You’re right. You do deserve that. God, Meredith. I’m sorry. I just—” He took a deep breath and hugged her close.
She closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the rush of relief, excitement, and hope. He hadn’t abandoned her.
“I’ve found you attractive from the very start. I made all kinds of excuses for why I shouldn’t want you, because I knew I would stop at nothing to have you if I ever admitted how much I admired you. How smart and strong you are. How I feel about you. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. Not now. Not ever. I—I fucked up and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left, even for a minute. I won’t do that to you again, I swear it. I was just so desperate to be the kind of man that you might want in return.”
Oh. He wanted her. And he wanted her to want him back. “Shhh,” she whispered, kissing him again, feeling all the frantic words inside him slipping away. I want you, she told him with her lips, her tongue, and he slipped his hands inside her robe, stroking over her body, skimming over her cotton-clad bottom—
“Oh!” She jumped back, suddenly remembering her tattered robe and ratty panties and grabbing both sides of her now-open robe to yank it tightly closed. “I look like such a slob,” she moaned.
He smiled. “Absolutely not. You look beautiful. You don’t have to wear a nice gown to make me think so. I only regret that I didn’t admit I thought that way before today. We could have been doing this months ago.”
“Months ago, you had a girlfriend and there was no six-thousand-dollar dress hanging in your closet.”
He stiffened. “That dress was six thousand dollars?”
Her jaw dropped. “You didn’t know? How could you not know? I thought you said you’d already paid Lily back for it!”
At least he had the grace to look sheepish about getting caught in the lie. “I might have stretched the truth a bit about that. But the way you looked at it…even then, I couldn’t resist the desire to give you what you so clearly wanted. And I will pay Lily back for it, because it was worth it.” He nibbled at her ear. Meredith shivered, but forced herself to pull away.
She almost insisted on paying for it herself, but when she saw the look in his eyes, the offer died. Just as she’d asked him to believe her when she told him that he hadn’t failed, she would respect him enough to believe that he felt that giving her the dress had been worth the price.
“Thank you. It’s the most amazing dress I’ve ever worn. And you’re right. I did want it, badly. But I don’t need it. At least, not anymore. You’re the one who showed me that. You’re what I wanted all along.”
“Really?” His voice grew husky.
She nodded. “Yes. You’re even on my list.”
He was beautiful when he laughed. “You made a list?”
She blushed. “Just now, in fact. When I—when I thought that you’d left for good. I might have been a little, um, keyed up, and that somehow resulted in my making a list of the things I want. That I was planning to ask for quite strongly.” She gave him a mischievous smile and led him into the living room, where she picked up the pad of paper that she’d left on the coffee table and handed it to him.
“You might want to get comfortable.” She grinned and indicated the nearly full page.
He laughed again and took off his coat and tux jacket, draped them over the back of one of her chairs, toed off his shoes, and settled on the couch. “Will you join me?” he asked, reaching a hand out to her. She settled herself on his lap and he held out the pad of paper in front of both of them.
“What I Want Enough to Ask For,” he read the title of the list aloud, but then was silent for a moment. “I’m number one?”
She nodded, but instead of letting him continue, she twisted in his arms. “At first, when you left, I was—well, I was a little angry. It’s possible that there might have been another list initially that didn’t have your name on it…”
He laughed, and she dropped a quick kiss on his curving lips. “But then I wondered whether I’d spent my life just accepting what was given to me and not realizing that I might have been able to have more all along. I just had to ask. It was you who made me realize that I’ve done myself a disservice by not asking for what I want. You taught me, in a mere day, that telling myself and others what I want is the only way I’ll ever find happiness in my life. I decided to at least find out if there was a chance at something more, so I made a new list. With your name at the top. I want you, Andrew. I’m asking for you. Maybe not in a question but, oh, heck. May I please have you?”
“You already do,” he whispered, and it was a long moment before he turned his attention back to her list.
“I see you have ‘Executive Director
of North Star’ on this list,” he remarked.
She nodded. “But I only want it if I can figure out where that missing money went and recoup our losses in time to deliver the Christmas Bonus Fund in just a few days, as promised.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I do have to. I need to do it for myself.”
He dropped a kiss on her hair. “Fair enough. Let’s hope the bank will have the answers we’re looking for. But as to the executive director position, you’ve put it at number four.” He paused briefly, and his finger tapped another item on the list. “As to number two, I can understand why you would wish for such a thing. I have a family and I love them more than anything. I just didn’t realize you might not have one of your own,” he said softly. “But for number three, I have to admit that I’m curious—why is ‘a Christmas tree’ ranked higher than the job at North Star?”
He said it lightly, but his eyes were soft and understanding. Nestled in his arms, enveloped by the very thing she wanted the most in the world, she felt her confidence soar to impossible heights.
She could share her pain, and then she could move past it. She could tell him about her past, her fears, and why it had taken so long for her to learn to ask for what she wanted. And then she would have the power to reach for dreams and magic.
She took a deep breath. “When I was nine years old,” she began, “my parents and I were driving home from a party on Christmas Eve…”
Chapter Ten
Meredith wrapped her hands around her coffee mug and sighed in contentment. She hadn’t stopped smiling since she woke up half an hour ago and tiptoed out of the bedroom, not wanting to disturb Andrew, who was still sleeping in her bed. Last night had been incredible. They had nestled together on the couch and talked into the wee hours of the morning, and then he had taken her back to bed, where she’d had the courage to tell him what she wanted and he’d more than made up for his earlier “failure.” Twice.
She pulled her laptop across the table where she was sitting and logged on to her corporate e-mail, figuring she could at least get some work done as she waited for Andrew to wake up. But when she clicked into her inbox, her jaw nearly dropped to the floor.
“Three hundred new messages?” The number of unread e-mails, all since yesterday evening, was staggering. Usually, if she received thirty in that period of time, she considered it inbox overload. But as she scrolled through the list, she could see that nearly all of them were from the bank that Harbor used for corporate accounts and investments. Her heart sped up with a combination of trepidation and excitement. This must be about the missing money from the Christmas Bonus Fund.
She located the first one—from their corporate account manager—and read through the message, finishing on a sigh.
“Okay, Klaus. This is where you prove that you’ve got what it takes,” she muttered, pouring herself another cup of coffee and settling deeper into the chair to sift through three hundred transaction statements.
…
By the time Andrew opened his eyes, the sun was high overhead.
“Meredith?” He turned and reached his arm across the bed, but she wasn’t there. Lifting his head, he looked around the quiet room, sweeping his gaze over the antique-looking bureau against the far wall. No knickknacks sat on top of the polished wood. No photos of fun vacations or memorable events.
I’m going to change that. Working with her every day, admiring her competence and her drive and, in the past couple of days, watching her grow even more capable and feeling so damned proud, had helped him to realize how much he cared about her. He wanted to make those moments with her.
He continued his study of the room. It was oddly devoid of clutter. Even his clothes had been neatly folded atop the cherry-print upholstered seat of the armchair in the corner. And yet—there were patterns and colors everywhere. On the white sheets with red pinstriping, the bright-yellow drapes with flowers and vines embroidered all over them.
As though she’d described herself through the vibrancy that surrounded her while still managing to leave no trace of actual living. She’d cut herself out of her own life.
I’m going to change that, too. It’s what he wanted.
She was what he wanted, in every way. The way she’d responded to him last night, when they’d gone back to bed. He’d made her slick and hot, eliciting deep moans of pleasure from her before she’d come against his mouth, holding his head against her body in a demonstration of unabashed desire. He’d held her until the tremors subsided before pushing in, slow and deep, stroking her into another orgasm from the inside this time. He’d come, too, with a climax that had been nothing short of earth-shattering.
Just thinking about it made his cock rise, tenting the sheet that covered him. He stifled a groan of pleasure. Now was not the time for pleasurable reminiscing. First, he needed to get up and find Meredith. He’d been in bed for far too long already.
He took a deep breath and stretched, rolling off the mattress before pulling the covers up and smoothing them in his best attempt at bed-making, then pulled on his tuxedo trousers and the white undershirt he’d worn to the gala before opening the bedroom door and padding barefoot into the living room.
He found Meredith at the dining table, papers strewn all around her, a half-eaten bagel on a plate just next to her elbow. She was wearing her glasses and the same faded robe she’d had on last night, and her sexy red hair was sticking up in a few places, as though she’d been tugging at it.
She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
“Good morning.” He nearly laughed when she startled, whipping her head up to blink at him in surprise, but his amusement died as soon as he saw the bewildered look in her eyes. He stepped forward immediately, putting his hands on her shoulders and leaning down to kiss her hair. “Is everything okay?”
She gave a slow nod, then stood up, turning to pull him into a strong hug. “It’s better than okay.” Her voice was full of wonder, nearly dazed.
Andrew frowned. What was going on? He reached down and slid a finger under her chin, tipping her face up to look into her eyes. She was grinning now, a megawatt smile that reminded him of a giddy child on Christmas morning when faced with the sight of so many glittering presents under the tree.
“What happened?”
“I checked my work e-mail when I got up this morning and found that our accounts manager had sent over every transaction report associated with our accounts over the past four months, from the time the Christmas Bonus Fund lost all that money. Every stock purchase and sale, every withdrawal and deposit. Since we have such a diversified portfolio, it amounted to hundreds of documents. So I’ve been combing through all of them …”
All of them? “How long have you been at this?”
She shrugged. “Five hours or so.”
He tried to protest that she shouldn’t have been working so hard on something that there was still plenty of time for. Especially something that he knew he could still take care of when his financial manager transferred the proceeds from his personal stock sale into his bank account. But she stopped him, putting a finger to his lips. “That’s not the important part. What matters is that I figured out what happened to the money!”
Given that she was smiling, Andrew was willing to guess that she’d not only figured out what happened to it; she’d also found out how to make up the missing two hundred thousand dollars. This time, he simply smiled back and waited for her to continue, wanting to hear how she had solved the mystery.
“Four months ago, Bob opened up two new accounts. One was a conditional trust into which he deposited half a million dollars of his own money—he transferred it from his personal account with the instructions that the money should be put into the Christmas Bonus Fund if there was any deficit by the day before the disbursement. If there was no deficit, the money reverts to him. But since it was a trust under his name, they didn’t link the accounts, and when Bob left the company, it got lost in the shuffle.”
“I don’t understand. Why would Bob have done that?”
“Maybe he felt he’d had enough success with responsible fiscal practice and wanted to try something risky that could really grow the fund to a new level. Or maybe he was just bored.” She shrugged. “I don’t know, but it would appear that his risk paid off. Because the other account he opened was for that missing half million dollars. Money that got put solely into extremely high-risk investments…and paid off to the tune of an extra fifty thousand dollars! It took me all morning, but I finally pulled all the different transactions together and just finished double-checking my numbers when you woke up! The Christmas Bonus Fund…it’s actually much bigger than what we need now!”
At that, she finally let loose a little of the excitement that he could see on her face, squealing and laughing and hugging him tightly.
Holy shit. She’d figured it out. No doubt someone at the bank dropped the ball and didn’t link the accounts appropriately, but that they could take care of pretty easily. In the meantime, she’d done it. Meredith had saved the Christmas Bonus Fund.
“Meredith,” he said, lifting her against him in a strong hug. Her body molded to his, the soft curves of her breasts pushing into his chest, and he rubbed one hand slowly down her back to caress her sweet ass. He felt her breath hitch, and she leaned in to kiss him then, tangling her tongue with his and making soft noises of appreciation into his mouth.
He pulled away long enough to whisper “You’re incredible” against her lips, before opening her robe and pulling her legs up around his hips, then carrying her back to the bedroom to show her just how much he appreciated every last inch of her.
Chapter Eleven
“Are you nervous?”
It was Christmas Day. They were in a cab, heading toward his sister Lily’s apartment in Brooklyn. His mother, brother, and sisters were all gathering there together to celebrate a holiday that, for her, had for so long been filled with sadness and regret.
