One-Click Buy: April Harlequin Blaze

by Kathleen O'Reilly

  He had almost a half hour before the meeting. Would that be enough time? Pushing away from the table, he decided to give it a shot.

  10

  CARLY AND BEV stepped into Lone Dog, one of the last independent coffee shops in the area that hadn’t been taken over by the big chains. It was busy this time of day between the tail end of the lunch rush and those dropping in for an early-afternoon coffee, and after ordering two double lattes, the women tucked themselves next to a partition while they waited for their order.

  “So, big meeting with Singles Inc. today?” Bev asked.

  Carly nodded. “We’re running our mock-ups by their marketing director to see if he likes the direction we’re going in.” She checked her watch. “In fact, I hope these coffees don’t take too long. The meeting’s in twenty minutes, and I should try to get there early to see if Matt needs any last-minute help.”

  Bev scoffed. “Matt needing help? Would he admit to it if he did?”

  “Probably not, though I have to say he’s been more cooperative than I’d expected. I thought I’d have to fight tooth and nail to get him to accept my ideas, but—shock—he’s actually liked some of them.”

  “Why wouldn’t he? You’ve got good ideas.”

  “I guess I always thought Matt wouldn’t like any idea that wasn’t his, good or bad. That’s the way guys like him usually are.” Although Carly had to admit this wasn’t the first time Matt had thrown a wrench in her definition of guys like him. Though she’d always seen him as cocky and flippant, more than once since they’d landed on this project together he’d surprised her with a gesture that came off very warm and considerate, as if inside that arrogant exterior a kind and thoughtful man existed.

  Still, her smarter side warned her not to let her guard down, remembering that Matt Jacobs served only Matt Jacobs and she’d best keep that in mind lest she turn a blind eye and end up burned.

  “I think you’re too hard on him. Sure, he’s not the warm, fuzzy type and he hasn’t gone out of his way to mingle with the crew, but you haven’t cut the guy a break since he knocked you off that first project.” Then Bev smiled. “Except for your detour in the lab, of course.”

  Carly took a deep breath and sighed. “I suppose I should try harder to get along.”

  “That or get him back in the lab.” Bev winked.

  Carly opened her mouth to tell Bev to drop her ideas about she and Matt ever having sex again when a comment from the other side of the partition caught her attention.

  “You should see the crack security around Singles Inc. It took me all of four minutes to break into the survey data, and most of that involved figuring out how they’d separated our survey results from their mainstream population.”

  It was Brian Shanahan, and Bev and Carly shared a silent glance wondering what the man was talking about—and, more importantly, to whom.

  “So you’ve really got everyone’s answers?”

  It was a woman’s voice. Carly suspected it was Suzie Novak, one of the summer interns they’d just hired.

  Though Brian lowered his voice, they both heard him reply, “Sure, how do you think Matt and Carly ended up with the project? By chance?”

  Their jaws dropped, and without waiting for another word, Carly stepped around the low wall to find Brian and Suzie sharing a late lunch, Brian nearly choking on his focaccia sandwich when he caught the look in Carly’s eyes.

  She put on a smile for the intern but stared at Brian in a way that would frighten small children and most adults. “May I have a word with you?”

  Brian swallowed his mouthful of sandwich. “Carly, I was just telling Suzie here—”

  “Outside,” she ordered, pointing toward the door.

  He didn’t miss the insistence in her tone. Setting down his sandwich, he excused himself while the two women escorted him out the door and down the sidewalk, away from the café tables and lingering crowd.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Carly asked.

  “That wasn’t how it sounded,” insisted Brian.

  Bev folded her arms across her chest. “It sounded to me like you were on the verge of blabbing about Carly cheating on the survey.” She eyed Carly. “I told you he had loose lips.”

  “What’s the big deal?” Brian asked. “The survey’s over and done with. Nobody cares how you two got assigned anymore.”

  “Oh, Mr. Hall would care all right,” Carly scolded. “And Matt! Do you have any idea what Matt would do if he knew?”

  Brian’s caged look left Carly with a sick feeling in her stomach.

  “You didn’t.”

  “No, I didn’t. He’d heard it somewhere else before he said anything to me about it.” Pointing a finger, he defended, “I assumed one of you told him.”

  Her sickness welled. “Matt knows?” She placed her fingers to her temples to keep her head from exploding. “I can’t believe this. He’ll go straight to Hall.”

  Brian shrugged. “He hasn’t yet. If he was going to run to Hall, he’d have done it ages ago.”

  Carly’s ache halted, replaced by something more dire. “What do you mean ages ago?”

  “Since he found out about the survey. He said he’d keep it to himself and he obviously has. I think you’re overreacting.”

  Carly stood and stared, trying to sort through the information.

  “You’re telling me Matt’s known about this for a while?”

  “Yeah, I guess. It was just a couple days after the results were announced. It’s like I said, if he was going to do something about it, he would have by now. It’s old news. You shouldn’t sweat it.”

  Carly’s eyes met Bev’s, the look on her face confirming every angry thought beginning to pool and boil.

  “He knew days after the results,” Bev said, as if Carly hadn’t heard it or might have missed the significance of that fact. But she hadn’t missed a thing. She knew exactly what that meant. It meant Matt had known they weren’t the least bit compatible when he’d seduced her in the project room. He’d known the whole thing was a farce when he’d whispered those suggestions in her ear, the idea that they were perfect for each other, that they should explore this thing between them, that they should rip their clothes off and see exactly how compatible they were.

  “Brian, I’m serious. Are you sure he knows we fudged the results?”

  “He came up and asked me about it. I thought one of you had told him.”

  “When exactly was that?”

  “Practically the day after they announced the results. Like, that following Monday. See? He’s known all along and you’ve been fine.” Brian quickly darted back inside the Lone Dog.

  Fine?

  She clenched her teeth as her throat closed up in a mixture of anger and humiliation. He’d known. He’d known all along. And instead of confronting her with the truth or turning her in to the boss, he’d used the information to get her out of her skirt, to take advantage of her in the most intimate way possible.

  The thought made her dizzy—or maybe it was because she’d begun to hyperventilate. “I can’t believe this,” she said. “I cannot believe this.”

  Closing her eyes and swallowing back tears, she wondered how she could be so naive. How could she have allowed herself to be used by him? A hot rush of embarrassment swept through her. She’d stood naked in front of him, offered herself to him after he’d gone on about the chemistry between them. How could she be so stupid? She’d seen his answers to the survey. She knew he was a self-serving, egomaniacal jerk. How could she have forgotten and gone along with him so willingly? She should have suspected something.

  “Carly,” Bev said, placing a hand on her shoulder and looking concerned. “You’re pale as a ghost. Are you okay?”

  Carly shot out a mock laugh. “I’m ten miles from okay. The only question now is, how quickly can I kill him?”

  “Okay, Carly, we need to think about this first,” Bev warned, but fury had already taken over Carly.

  “There’s nothing to think ab
out. Matt Jacobs is a scumbag and it’s about time everyone knew it.”

  “Don’t do anything rash. Let’s go back in, get our coffees and talk about this.”

  “I lost my taste for coffee,” she said, then turned toward the curb and began storming across the street. She heard Bev make one last pitch, but she was beyond logic and reason at that moment. All she cared about was dealing with this—all of this—right now, because the more she considered what she had to be angry over, the longer the list became.

  Starting with Brayton Hall and his foolish idea for the survey. If he’d just assigned the project to her as she’d deserved—as he’d done for Matt—she wouldn’t have had to cheat her way on it in the first place. In fact, she didn’t even consider what she’d done as cheating. She’d simply made restitution, righted a wrong, and she refused to look at it any other way.

  Stepping off the curb, she darted around a large stone planter filled with marigolds to avoid colliding with a group of workers from AutoTronics, a large component manufacturer that leased the building next to hers. She chose the detour over slowing down and nodding pleasantries, and as she rounded the corner at the Happy Lantern, another rush of tears threatened to spoil her anger.

  She couldn’t believe that she’d actually fought a crush over the man. Too many times over the last week she’d reflected on their lovemaking, wondering how she might be able to go back for seconds without getting her heart broken. He’d apologized for the things he’d said, and on more than one occasion she’d nearly apologized, too, her need for a second taste strong enough to make her compromise her ultimate needs.

  Thank God she hadn’t. The only thing worse than being manipulated by a shallow snake like Matt Jacobs would have been actually groveling to the man, offering a truce in the hope of getting him in the sack again.

  Just the thought angered her more, and as she pushed through the glass doors of Hall Technologies, she swallowed back the vise on her throat, took her anger and used it to feed her ire.

  Passing her desk, as well as Matt’s, she headed straight for the conference room, where she found him sitting at the table, alone.

  “How dare you!” she cried, slamming her hands down on the table in front of him.

  His eyes widened in shock. “What?”

  “Let’s explore this compatibility of ours? I think we might be perfect for each other?”

  He looked confused but backed from the table anyway, shaking his head and shrugging as his only response.

  She leaned in to take up the slack. “You knew about the survey. You knew my answers were bogus when you seduced me in the lab.”

  The confusion drained from his face.

  “Oh, yes. I found out about that,” she said.

  He held up two hands as if she were holding a gun to his chest. “Look, Carly,” he started. “I don’t know what you’re thinking—”

  “I’m thinking you’re a low-down, dirty degenerate who took advantage of the information you had to get me out of my panties.”

  Looking him in the eye and saying it out loud brought that clench back to her throat. The one that usually preceded a flood of tears. But she willed them away, wanting to make certain he didn’t see an ounce of the hurt and disappointment vying inside her.

  “Now wait a minute—”

  “No, you wait. As of this instant, I’m off this project. And if Mr. Hall wants to know why, I’m highly tempted to blurt out the whole story.” Matt’s eyes filled with fear and Carly couldn’t hold back her laugh. “Oh, yes. You think I won’t hang myself over what I did? You’re wrong. I’ll accept every consequence that’s coming to me before I spend another second working next to you.”

  He flicked his eyes to the door, then looked back at her. “Don’t be rash. We need to talk this over. Later. When you can be calm.”

  “Calm? You want me to be calm? You tricked me into having sex with you!”

  He eyed the open door once more, then had the nerve to shush her. “Carly, you seriously need to keep your voice down.”

  “And you seriously need to get a clue that I’m pretty pissed off right now and don’t give a squat who knows about it or who finds out why.”

  He lowered his voice. “We could both get in trouble here. You aren’t exactly innocent yourself, you know.”

  She gasped. “I think tricking a coworker into taking her clothes off is a little more serious than faking a few answers on a survey. And you know what?” she asked, leaning so far over the table she nearly lost her footing. “If they fire me, I don’t care! At least that means I won’t have to look at your slimy face ever again.”

  “I didn’t trick you.”

  “You knew about the survey before I walked into that lab.”

  “Yes, but I had every intention of telling you what I knew.”

  She choked on a laugh. “Really? Before or after you had your hands up my skirt?”

  “What the hell is going on in here!”

  Carly spun around to find Mr. Hall standing in the doorway, his expression not nearly as amused as Andy McGee’s, who was standing squarely behind him.

  Matt shot to his feet. “There’s been a little misunderstanding between Carly and me. If we could have a few moments alone, I’m sure we could square things away.”

  “I wouldn’t come within ten feet of you again, much less ever get caught alone,” Carly spat. “Go ahead and tell them why,” she threw in.

  “If you’ll just—” Matt said, but Mr. Hall cut him off.

  “Enough,” he said, his mouth pressed into a firm line. “Andy, I think we’ll need to reschedule this meeting. Carly, take the afternoon off and go calm yourself down. And you,” he said, pointing a firm finger at Matt, “I want to see you in my office immediately.”

  Matt looked as though he’d just been sucker punched, and though Carly was almost certain she was soon to be fired, she felt a slight flutter of glee over the thought that at least Matt might end up out the door with her.

  “Me?”

  “Now, Jacobs.”

  Clearly it was Matt’s turn to show a little rage, and Carly stood entirely smug as she watched him gather his papers and storm out the door, daggers shooting from his eyes as he gave her one last glance.

  But as the three men filtered out the doorway, leaving her in the quiet of the aftermath, a deep breath brought with it a question she hadn’t stopped to consider.

  What exactly had she just done?

  11

  “I’M NOT GOING TO ask what that was all about,” Brayton Hall said from behind his sleek glass-top desk. “The only salvation is that Andy McGee has found this entertaining. I’m not nearly as amused.”

  Brayton’s face had taken on the exact shade of pink to match his shirt, and Matt feared what that meant. He’d never seen Hall angry before. Usually jovial bordering on goofy, the worst Matt had ever witnessed was a serious tone in the man’s voice. This red-faced look of disgust was entirely new, and Matt wished like hell it wasn’t being directed at him.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know what—” he attempted.

  “Let me bottom-line this for you, Matt. I pride myself in finding jewels in this industry and I happen to think you’re one of them. You’ve got the talent, creativity and salesmanship to do better than most.” He picked up a pen and began clicking the top. Click open. Click closed. Click open. Click closed. Hall rarely held a conversation of any length without fiddling with something, and at this particular moment Matt didn’t need the distraction.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors about this new design team I’ve been considering,” Brayton added.

  Matt nodded.

  “You’re my first choice to head it up. I need someone with charisma who can think outside the box and get clients excited about the job we’ll do for them, and you’ve got that in the bag.”

  Okay, this was good, and Matt might have allowed his mood to brighten if Brayton’s expression wasn’t hinting that a big but was coming up.

  “The
only problem is I need a team environment with a leader who can inspire and motivate staff.”

  There it was. The big but.

  “I assure you I can do that,” Matt replied. “This thing with Carly—”

  “Funny thing about Carly,” Brayton interrupted. “She’s my toss-up. When it comes to everything you’re lacking, she’s spot-on, but she’s more traditional in her thinking and she doesn’t wow the clients the way you do. She’s my best candidate when it comes to team dynamics, but she won’t give clients the cutting edge they’re looking for.” He clicked the pen faster. “So here’s the rub. Do I pick what’s best for the client or what’s best for the staff?”

  “I can be both.”

  “It’s what I’d been banking on, but I’m not seeing it.” Matt opened his mouth to argue, but Hall’s clicking pen kept grating on his nerves. It beat in his head. And just as his annoyance with the thing brimmed, Hall tossed it on the desk with a clink, leaned back in his chair and crossed an ankle over his knee.

  “Let me tell you about this survey,” Hall said. “It wasn’t set up to impress Singles Inc., like everyone thinks. I’d already had their business before I came up with the idea, just like I’d already picked you for the job. The whole point of the survey was to give you the best chance to show me you could be a team player, share the spotlight and cooperate on this project.”

  “Come again?” Matt asked.

  “I used their survey to find the most suitable teammate for you, and that ended up being Carly. I needed to see you work together with someone, and in my best effort to help you succeed, I tracked down the partner most compatible with your personality.”