DAVID: A Standalone Romance (Gray Wolf Security)

by Glenna Sinclair

I never should have gotten involved with him. It was a mistake from the very beginning.

  Chapter 15

  David

  I ran the diagnostic a second time, frustrated when it came back saying the same damn thing. How many times would I have to go over this crap before it finally worked the way it was supposed to?

  “Hey, David, do you—?”

  “I’m busy.”

  Kirkland stopped at the corner of my desk, a wounded look on his face.

  “I was just going to ask if you wanted that last piece of cake. Rose said you hadn’t had any.”

  I shook my head, typing furiously on my keyboard.

  “Are you sure? Rose made it. It’s German chocolate—”

  “Do you not see that I’m working?” I demanded, finally looking at him. “Some of us have things to do despite the fact that your only chore these days seems to be trolling bars for the most diseased—”

  “Enough!”

  For a second, I thought my father had somehow materialized behind me. His voice, anyway. But it was just Ash, watching Kirkland and I as if he thought we were about to come to blows. I returned my attention to my work, vaguely aware of Kirkland skulking off like a kid freshly scolded by a greatly admired mentor.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  Ash was right behind me, hissing in my ear. I batted him away with a wave of my hand.

  “Nothing.”

  “You’ve been biting everyone’s heads off for three days.”

  “I haven’t.”

  But I knew I had. The things Ricki had said to me Sunday morning kept racing through my head, making me feel more and more like an ass the more I heard them. I kept telling myself that she’d been way off base, that she had no right to say the things she had. But I couldn’t quite convince myself.

  Ash yanked my chair back from the workstation so that I was forced to look up at him.

  “Is this about that thing with Joss?” I shook my head. “Then what? What’s going on?” I started to shake my head again, but Ash kicked one of the big wheels of my chair and said, “Don’t even think about lying to me.”

  “Who do you think you are?” I demanded, rolling away from him, heading anywhere but where he could stare at me with that big brother stare that had always gotten me to confess my crimes when we were young. But we weren’t kids anymore.

  “Do you really want me to answer that?” Ash asked, as he followed me across the room.

  I spun around on my tires and stared at him. “Oh, now you’re going to start pointing out how you’re my boss?” I shook my head. “I can nip that one in the bud right now. I quit.”

  “Don’t be stupid, David.”

  “Stupid? Stupid was coming to work here in the first place.”

  “Listen to yourself,” Ash said, calmer than he was when he first confronted me, if that was possible. “You’re acting like a mad man.”

  “No. I’m acting like a man who has finally had enough of people telling him what he can and cannot do, and how he should and should not feel.”

  “Who’s telling you those things?”

  “You. And them,” I said, gesturing to where Rose, Joss, and Kirkland were trying very hard to pretend they weren’t hanging on every word falling out of our mouths. “Aren’t you the ones who told me I had to get the surgery? Never mind the fact that I’m the one putting my future at risk by going under the knife. I’m the one who could wake up with less function than I have now. But you people don’t think about that.”

  “We do, actually. At least, I do,” Ash said, as he crossed his arms over his chest. “You have no idea how much I think about that. But I also watch you rolling through this place with a weight on your shoulders that you shouldn’t have to bear. I just want to help.”

  “If you want to help, then maybe you should stay the hell out of my business!”

  I turned away from him again, somehow managing to get through the front door without looking like a complete idiot. However, it wasn’t quite as dramatic, rolling down that ramp, as it would have been if I’d been able to slam the door the way Ricki had done when she left my place.

  I could almost hear them talking in there, Kirkland telling Ash about the car he’d seen coming and going from my place. The gossip floating around. I was sure they were all talking. And the things they were saying…most of it was probably true. I was an asshole, too stubborn to let them in—even when I wanted their support and needed their advice. I could have asked Kirkland about the argument Ricki and I had; I could have gotten his view on things. But I didn’t. I was too proud for that.

  And that was why I was going to end up a fucking miserable old man, all alone with just my wheelchair and a bottle of whiskey between my legs.

  I didn’t want that.

  I turned my chair around and headed toward the main gate, tugging out my cell phone the moment I had a spare hand.

  ***

  I lied and said I had information on her case. Her assistant, Jacy, told security to send me up, and she escorted me into her office when I arrived on the executive floor. Ricki wasn’t there. She had a meeting down the hall, but Jacy assured me she would return shortly.

  I hadn’t been alone in this room before. I found myself looking at the simple, expensive but functional furnishings, the stock prints on the walls and the dying hydrangea in the corner. It really was kind of sad. There were no personal pictures, nothing to make this space her own. I’d noticed the same thing in her bedroom upstairs—though I’d simply assumed it was because she didn’t have time for decorating. But this was her office, the space her advertisers and employees and investors saw. She would have taken more care with it than her personal space, but she hadn’t.

  That word, broken, reverberated in my head. It made me sad that she saw herself that way. Despite what had happened when she was a child, she’d made something of herself. A broken person couldn’t do that.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  She strode past me, dropping an iPad on her desk and picking up a couple of pink message slips, her eyes never moving anywhere near me.

  “We need to talk.”

  “Unless it’s about my relationship with your security firm, I’m not interested.”

  “I don’t think I work there anymore.”

  That made her look at me. Her eyes were widened in surprise, but then she looked away again.

  “Then you have no reason to be here.”

  “I wanted to apologize for the other morning.”

  She shook her head. “No apologies necessary. I told you, it never meant anything, so there’s nothing to be sorry about.”

  “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

  “Should I?”

  “Look, Ricki, I was being a jerk. You were trying to help and I totally freaked out.”

  Ricki dropped the message slips she’d been reviewing and shook her mouse, waking her computer screen. She was clearly not interested in talking to me about this. And I wasn’t interested in leaving until she did.

  “I miss you,” I said, saying the only thing I could think of that might get her attention. However, she didn’t even look up. “I had a fight with Ash this afternoon because I can’t think of anything but you. I try to work and I run the same code, the same diagnostic over and over because I forgot that I already did it. Or I forget that I changed the parameters and that’s why the same stupid warnings keep coming up.” I rolled my chair around the side of her desk, trying to get closer to her, but she shifted to the side, putting her office chair between her and me. “I miss you. I miss whatever it was we had, whether it meant something to you or not.”

  She wouldn’t look up. She wouldn’t even acknowledge me.

  “It’s not like there’s a whole line of women just waiting outside my door to be with me.”

  “Oh, great,” she said, her voice a little choked by emotion. “You miss me just because you have no other options? That’s really romantic.”


  “I thought these things didn’t necessarily have to be romantic.”

  “Don’t throw my own words back at me.”

  “Look at me, Ricki.”

  She shook her head, her eyes still glued to the computer screen.

  Being able to stand would have really come in handy at that moment. I shoved the office chair forward, inadvertently slamming it into her thigh. She jumped back, startled. There were tears on her cheeks and that sight made my chest begin to ache.

  “Look at that. The Ice Queen has a heart after all.”

  She hit me, punched me in the shoulder. My chair rolled back a little, and she chased me, hitting me again.

  “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

  “I do.”

  She punched me again, pain bursting through my body, but I just sat there and watched emotion rush over her face like a dark cloud over the sun.

  “You say the stupidest things,” she said. “Always trying to push everyone away. Would it really kill you to let someone help you once in a while? I mean, seriously, how’s it going to hurt you to let me help you onto the bed just once?”

  “It won’t.”

  “And all your secrets. You know every damn thing about me, but you won’t talk about your secrets!”

  “I know.”

  “You think you’re so fucking special just because you’re in that chair. But you’re not. You’re just like every other man I’ve ever dated.”

  “So now you admit we’re dating?” I asked, tilting my head slightly. “That’s progress.”

  She hit me again, but not nearly as hard this time. I caught her wrist and tugged her toward me. I could have pulled her onto my lap, but I wanted her to come willingly. She resisted me for a second, actually stepping back just slightly, but then she gave in, sliding onto my lap almost reluctantly.

  “You really missed me?” she asked, as she slipped her arms around my neck.

  “I did.”

  She studied my face, her hand sliding slowly over my jaw. “I’m sorry I hit you. I don’t normally act like that.”

  “It’s okay. I’ve been told I bring out the worst in people.”

  “You do.”

  I groaned. “Thanks.”

  She giggled softly, but then she kissed me and the laughter died as the heat began to build. I ran my hand up her back, my fingers dancing over her spine. She wiggled against me, setting my lap on fire. I couldn’t help myself. I was so grateful she was wearing a skirt because my hands had a mind of their own. One slid under the hem of that tight pencil skirt, sliding slowly up the outside of her lovely thigh. The other buried itself in her hair, tugging her head around so that I could touch all those lovely places inside of her that I’d been dreaming of since the first moment we touched.

  Her thumb brushed my jaw, her fingers doing something to my ear that made me pull away.

  “You’re too sexy for your own good,” she said.

  I smiled. “Glad there’s something about me you like.”

  “There are quite a few things.” She touched my bottom lip. “I like the way you kiss.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And I like the way you look at me.”

  “The way I look at you?”

  “Yeah.” She blushed a little. “You look at me like you’re actually happy to see me.”

  “I am happy to see you.”

  I slid my hand further up her leg, cupping it around her hip and dragging her closer. And then I was holding her bare ass in my hand, my mouth sliding over her throat. She sighed, her hands moving over my head, her fingers catching in my hair. And then we were kissing again, and I was floating on a cloud. I wanted this. I hadn’t let myself truly want anything since the accident. But I wanted this, and it felt so very good.

  “I hate to break this up,” she whispered against my lips, “but I have a meeting that I should have gone to five minutes ago.”

  “Let them wait.”

  “I would, but it’s my lawyers, and they charge me five hundred dollars an hour.”

  I groaned, reluctantly pulling my hand out of her skirt. “If you insist.”

  “It’s my last meeting of the day. You could go upstairs and wait, if you wanted.”

  “Do you want me to?”

  She touched my lips again. “I do.”

  “Be careful,” I said, kissing her gently one last time. “I might actually begin to think you like me.”

  “Hmm, we can’t have that, can we?”

  She climbed off my lap and slapped my shoulder.

  “What was that for?”

  “Just to remind you how much I don’t like you.”

  I stared at her for a minute, and then I laughed. I laughed all the way to her private elevator.

  Chapter 16

  Ricki

  I walked into the room and felt a dozen eyes on me. Normally I was as cool as a cucumber, but I could still feel David’s hand under my skirt, his lips on mine. It was hard to be professional when all I could think about was going upstairs and crawling into bed with the first man who was capable of getting me angry enough that I actually walked out on him. I can’t even put into words how relieved I was to see him in my office. I had to make him work for it, but I was so glad to see him there.

  I was really afraid that I’d screwed the whole thing up.

  “Ms. Dennison,” one of the men in the conference room said, his voice filled with irritation, “we really must begin.”

  I took a seat at the head of the table and crossed my legs. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  I could feel the disapproval all around the room. I didn’t care. I’d made this decision a long time ago. I wasn’t going back now.

  “Offers have been made to all your employees who had more than a hundred shares of company stock. Ninety percent have agreed to sell at the price you set.”

  “Good.”

  “The other ten percent have chosen to hold on to their stock despite everything you allowed us to tell them.”

  I shrugged. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “The stocks have been returned to your portfolio, as you requested.”

  “And they all signed non-disclosure contracts?”

  “The ones who sold. We couldn’t ask those who didn’t, therefore word might still get out.”

  I nodded. There was nothing I could do about that.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Dennison,” one of the other men at the table said, “but isn’t it a little cruel to take these people’s compensation package and then buy up their stock, too? That’s all these people had left to fall back on.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “You’re essentially stealing their nest eggs from them.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “Don’t you care what’ll happen to these people?”

  I stiffened, annoyed that a man I paid to do as I asked would question me. “These people still have jobs. That more than they would have if the corporation were unable to pay its bills at the end of the year.”

  “Yes, but—?”

  “We’re done, gentlemen,” I said, rising to my feet.

  “Wait.”

  I turned, and the older gentleman at the end of the table gestured to me. “Don’t you want to know what the stock you just purchased is worth?”

  “No particularly.”

  He tilted his head slightly, clearly confused. “But isn’t the point to raise your own portfolio?”

  “The point, gentlemen, is none of your business.”

  I left the room, my heart suddenly pounding. If those men knew what I was really up to, they’d have to report me to the FCC. And that was not something I could let them do.

  Jacy came around the corner as I headed back to my office.

  “You’ve got a call from Ash Grayson.”

  “Thank you.”

  She studied my face as we passed in the hall. I could feel the curiosity in that gaze, but I wasn’t in the mood to indulge her. It was none of her
business what was going on between the Grayson brothers and me. She was, after all, just an employee.

  ***

  “One of our security people said he left the grounds in a taxi. I was just wondering if maybe—?”

  “David’s whereabouts are David’s business, don’t you think?”

  Ash was quiet on the other end of the line. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Of course.”

  “When he wants you to know where he went, I’m sure he will tell you.”

  “It’s just…David doesn’t get in cars. He’s had a phobia since the accident.”

  “I don’t blame him.”

  “If you hear from him…”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Grayson.”

  I set the phone down and sat back in my chair, my thoughts whirling. I should have been thinking about business, about the events for which I’d been planning for months. However, all I could think about was David waiting for me upstairs. He was getting under my skin and I couldn’t deny it any more. The timing sucked. It was even worse that it was David Grayson of all people. If I’d put two and two together to begin with, if I had realized that he was the one…but I didn’t. And now I was between a rock and a hard place.

  And I really wanted to go upstairs and explore that hard place.

  “Oh, Belle,” I sighed, reaching into a side drawer of my desk and pulling out a picture I rarely looked at anymore. But these last few weeks I seemed to pull it out much more often than ever. I had to make this right. And I was almost there.

  Chapter 17

  David

  It was dark when we finally pulled apart, our bodies exhausted but our souls full. Ricki lay on her side, propped up on her elbow, her naked body unashamedly exposed. I couldn’t help but run my hand over the side of her breast, my thumb brushing against her nipple. She was so beautiful, her body more perfect than anyone’s had a right to be. I wanted to kiss her again, wanted to breathe in her every exhale. But I could see the questions in her eyes, and I knew it was finally time to unburden myself to someone I could trust, and I believed she was that person.

  “We’d been celebrating for hours,” I said quietly, watching her eyes as she tried not to watch me. “The final numbers came in just after midnight and my father called for the champagne. The room was filled with all his closest associates, clerks, friends, and campaign organizers, people who deserved to celebrate as much as we did. And the champagne flowed for hours. I watched, more fascinated with the people around me than interested in the drinks. Maybe if I had drank…”