Valentine's Vengeance

by Michele De Winton

  “Wait, what? What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. I wanted to call you before I went in there in case, you know, you had private stuff going on.”

  “Well I don’t. I’m on my way, but if you could get up there and find out what’s going on I’ll owe you more than a small drink.”

  4.

  Joe had to admit that Cara and her team had a decent strategy to get media attention. It was quirky, different and there was a decent level of risk involved with filming everything, but if you didn’t risk things in this environment, you never got anywhere. He’d learned that the hard way these past five years. And? And he’d also just learned that Cara Reynolds got under his skin like she had five years ago.

  The denim skirt she’d been wearing was tight in all the right places and following behind her on the stairs had been torture as the stiff fabric cupped her butt with every step. The soft grey color of her top made her green eyes glisten too, and when he called her on her strategy the sparks glittered there in a way he hadn’t realized he’d missed. He was a powerful man. Too powerful for some women, and he appreciated that she stood up for herself, especially when she was passionately arguing a business case. Keeping good people around you was good business practice, shame she was letting all that brain go to waste with illegal dealing.

  Reaching his floor he nodded to his PA and she simpered at him, batting her eyelashes and flicking her blonde hair like a fifties pin up, something Cara had never done. God how he’d wanted to pull her curly dark hair out of its pins and wind it around his hand. She always looked like she’d had a fantastic night out with that hair. Not that it was scruffy, but sexily mussed so he just wanted to touch it. He didn’t understand the fascination so many women had with slicking themselves down.

  When she’d touched him the shock had been clear on her face, but it was nothing like the shock he’d felt. That she still held power over him was something he resented, but it was a power he wasn’t going to let her keep. She’d seduced him into giving up his secrets last time, why would this time be any different?

  Striding into his office, Joe tried to pace off his frustration. She was nothing. Less than nothing. An employee who he would see fired and sent to prison for the illicit drug smuggling he was sure she must be a part of as well as the espionage she hadn’t even bothered to defend herself against. The trouble was that five years ago he didn’t have enough to pin on her. A couple of fingerprints in his office and a carefully worded memo from a take-over target were hardly compelling evidence in a court of law. But he knew she knew more than she was letting on and damned if he was going to let her make a dent in his company again.

  No one would be able to send him a memo about his abilities to handle an expanded workload now though. It had taken ten years to build a team that could find a cure for his condition. A condition he’d inherited from his mother apparently. The Recurrent Benign Intrahepatic Cholestasis wasn’t fatal, it didn’t even do lasting damage, but it had knocked him sideways for a week at a time sometimes. He cracked his knuckles. That was done now. Being a billionaire had plenty of perks but that had to be a highlight.

  Feeling better after the cardio work out of the stairwell and several circuits of his office, he sat at his desk, going through the accounts for other parts of Kings and generally making sure he felt completely on top of things. As the hours ticked by and he fielded calls from his office back in New York as well as managers at the other subsidiaries, he felt calmer and calmer.

  By five o’clock, the perfect plan had formed in his mind. He was going to make her as vulnerable as she’d made him. She was wrong when she’d said that sex only sells sometimes. Tonight he was going to let her think he was giving in to the pull of their sexual connection and feed her some industrial secrets. Then he could sit back and wait to see where they ended up.

  Firing off an email at 5.45pm he left the building and headed for the penthouse suite he’d rented till he could find something more permanent.

  #

  Cara answered the call while she was yanking on Boris’ lead. Muttly was already in his and was scratching at the door ready to go out. “Yes, this is Cara Reynolds. No I’m not at the office, I had to deal with a…family emergency.

  “Wait? What? It’ll take me a while to get there. No, I can find my own way there I don’t need a driver. No, if you could just…” She closed her eyes as the other caller rang off. “Change of plans boys, my new boss has decided he’s going to make my life hell.” Cara gazed at the ceiling and contemplated calling her mom. If only she liked dogs, things would have been a whole lot easier. “But she doesn’t like you does she?” she asked Boris and he whined in reply. Anna Brooks didn’t just dislike dogs, she was an advocate for animal testing and Cara hadn’t been able to let that go. They didn’t talk about it anymore, but it was the only thing they didn’t talk about. “Still, it means we don’t get to stay at Chateau de Brook hey boys.”

  She looked around her apartment and bit back a curse. The mess was worse than she had allowed herself to see on first glance. Boris had trapped Muttly in the bathroom somehow and both dogs had started up howling, worried for the other; Boris knocking down a pot plant and then digging the dirt into the carpet. The carpet could be cleaned, but the scratches in the bathroom door were going to take some fixing. What was worse, her neighbor had already called dog control and the guy had been standing on the landing waiting for her. After issuing her with an official warning to get the dogs off the premises, Cara was left with no choice but to be seen to get them out, pronto. Running back to work with her dogs in tow had not been how she’d planned to spend her evening.

  “And here we are boys.” She looked up at the Kings building and wondered how on earth she was going to make this happen. Just then however, Johno from security sauntered past. “Hey boy,” he said, bending down to ruffle Muttly’s ears. “And how are you,” he said as Boris nudged him, not wanting to miss out. “They yours?”

  “They are,” she said. “My neighbor just ratted me out to dog control. They can’t live with me, they can’t live without me, I’m a bit stuck. ”

  “You going to give them up?”

  “No.” Cara was emphatic. “I already saved them from being put down once, I don’t think they’d get another chance.” She bit her lip. “I’ll work something out, but right now I’ve got a meeting with the new owner and I can’t exactly take them with me.”

  “Well then, better give them to me for the night.”

  Cara looked at him open mouthed then snapped her jaw shut. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m about to start a shift down at the factory, they’ve put on extra staff apparently. So I can take them down there with me. They can be guard dogs for the night can’t you boys?”

  The dogs wagged their tails emphatically and Cara almost kissed Johno. “That’s perfect. Thanks so much. What time do you finish and I’ll come and collect them.”

  “No rush. Looks like you’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  A black car slid up beside them and the driver got out, opening the back seat for Cara. Handing over the leads to Johno, she ducked down to give both dogs a kiss each and then scruff them behind the ears. They trotted off happily with Johno and she huffed. Fickle. Just like all men. Then she climbed into the back seat of the car. Of course Joe Diaz wanted to make her feel small, it’s what he did. Still, she would play his game, keep her job and think of a way of keeping her apartment and precious pooches.

  #

  Joe looked around the empty dining room in the hotel’s restaurant, checking he had everything right. He’d had his PA book it out to make sure he and Cara had the room to themselves. Wine on ice, papers scattered on the table with a document he’d printed onto Mex Industries letterhead poking out at a tantalizing angle, yep good to go. All he had to do now was make sure she took the bait.

  “Sir, your guest is here.”

  She poked her head round the door tentatively. He smiled, she was nervous? Good. Standi
ng, he pulled her seat back. “I had a meeting in the hotel earlier so figured you could brief me on the Africa project here rather than having to go back to the office. My driver can drop you home later. Shall we sit?”

  He took her coat, putting a hand on the small of her back and trying to ignore the tingle the contact with her sent ricocheting up his arm. “Drink?” he took the chilled wine from the bucket next to the table and showed it to her.

  That stopped her and she put her hands palm down on the table in front of her. “What is this?”

  “It’s an evening meeting.”

  “At a fancy hotel, with wine. You don’t even drink. Has that changed?”

  It was true, because of his condition he hadn’t drunk since he was a teenager. The Recurrent Benign Intrahepatic Cholestasis was a liver disorder, and he’d learned the hard way that adding alcohol to it landed him on his ass harder and faster than a rhino with a migraine. As he’d spend most of his life without it, he now didn’t bother with alcohol, even if he could have had it. “Five years is a long time.”

  “It is, but some things don’t change.”

  Was that fear in her voice? He checked her, no, not fear, frustration? Probably. “We have history, there’s no getting away from that but I own Kings now, that’s not going to change. Mr Tsiolkas raved about you and I was impressed with what you showed me today. Maybe I’m just trying to make a fresh start, is that so bad?” He put on his most winning smile, the one that had opened doors and smoothed business mergers his whole life. But she didn’t smile back.

  “You’re right when you say we have history. So I don’t buy it.”

  He shrugged. “You don’t have to. You just have to work for me. It can be painful or it can be pleasant, I’ll leave it up to you.” Pouring out a glass of Chardonnay, he pushed it along the table to her, making sure to touch the fake document on the way. “Come, relax, tell me about the rest of the Valentine’s promotion.”

  Sighing, she took the glass and took a large gulp of the wine. “Thank you. I don’t know what you’re up to, but I need this drink today. So, what do you want to know?”

  Joe listened as she spent the next half an hour outlining the outreach to Africa program that Kings had been a part of the year before but had taken up a notch to tie in with the Cupid Grove scheme this year. Again, he was impressed and as he kept refilling her glass, waving the hotel staff away, she relaxed more, sharing more of her ambitions for the program and her hopes for diversifying other aspects of the Kings range into cruelty free products. Having trained in the lab he knew how often animals were used to test products and having just gone through a clinical trial, knew that wasn’t going to stop. But she was right when she talked about the animal testing of things in many beauty and non-medical products being unnecessary.

  More than that, he was struck by how much she’d changed in the past five years. When he’d known her she was full to bursting with ideas, something he’d found refreshing. Now, she still had ideas but they were organized, categorized and linked one to the other in a strategic way that any CEO would have been pleased with. And with all that, she was still beautiful. Stop-them-in-the-street, lose-your-mind-with-sorrow-when-she-left beautiful. The five years hadn’t changed that. If anything they’d accentuated it. Her dress sense had calmed down to greys and blacks rather than orange and reds, but it was still sexily disheveled, something to do with how she layered stuff, rather than tucking everything in slick and neat. And with the years her sharp features were more defined, her cheekbones, which had always been prominent, cat-like-even, stood out and drew his gaze over and over to her brilliant green eyes. Eyes that had beguiled him before and seemed set on trying to again.

  “So,” she startled him out of his reverie. “What do you think? It’s a great program, one that will only gain momentum as we grow. And it’s a win-win for the company. You get the kudos of helping where help is so desperately needed, and you build your brand and the awareness of the need for everyone to use protection, good protection, back home.” She’d had almost half a bottle of wine now and put her hand on his to accentuate her point.

  A little startled, he let it rest there, enjoying the sensation of having a woman touch him. It had been a long time, years, since he’d allowed a woman into his bed, and no one had stayed. Not since Cara. “It is good,” he said. “You’re right.”

  She beamed. “Great.” Her finger absently traced the top of his hand and he put his other over hers more out of instinct than anything else.

  “I’m sorry how we ended things. I was serious when I said it was up to you whether this job was painful or pleasant.”

  Her pupils dilated and he saw her suck in breath, her nostrils flaring. “I don’t, I mean…”

  He leaned in closer and touched a stray strand of her wild hair. “What we had was incredible. I haven’t found it again since.” It wasn’t a lie.

  “Me neither.”

  Just then her phone pinged and she was shocked back into reality. “I better get that,” she said and practically fell off the chair in her haste to get to her bag. Looking up from her phone, she grimaced. “I’m sorry but I’m going to have to call them back, family emergency. Do you mind?”

  He waved her off. “There’s a powder room just through that door. Take your time.”

  She closed it behind her. Clearing up the papers on the table he slotted the fake numbers in with some real thoughts he’d had on the King Kondom performance targets. Thoughts that would be useful to a real PR professional. The fake document itemized a take-over bid he’d fabricated about a small scale herbal pharmaceutical range. It was an attractive enough proposition, but nothing that he was actually interested in. She came back into the room. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to go.”

  “Of course,” he said smoothly. “I jotted down some thoughts prior to our meeting, and given how passionate you are about the brand, I hope you’ll find them interesting. The car is waiting, I’ll just get them to get it brought around out front.”

  “Great. Thanks,” she said, taking the papers and looking a little shocked. He smiled. This was good. Keeping her off guard was good. Now he could just sit back and see where his fake take-over numbers ended up.

  And nothing else? Okay, having her hand over his had felt good. And when he’d pushed her hair behind her ear… No, it was nothing, just part of the game of getting her off guard. What he needed was to find out what she was really up to, not if the chemistry they once had was still there.

  Standing he made himself go upstairs to his penthouse suite and work for a couple more hours. But the numbers swam in front of him. The way Cara had demanded his attention when they’d been together flooded back to him. The way she had of locking her legs around his back and riding him till he couldn’t hold on anymore. No one had ever made him lose control like she had, no one before and no one since. And for once, he’d enjoyed the sensation of not being in charge. And then look what happened. But even when he gave up on work and walked through to the kitchen, the lingering scent of her made his body react viscerally. His muscles tensed, his balls tightened and he had to drown out the sensations with a cold shower before he could sleep that night.

  5.

  Cara sat in the back of the sleek black Mercedes and watched the city scape of Austin slide by. She’d asked the driver to take her to the factory but after that she wasn’t sure what she was going to do. “I can hardly ask him to take the boys across town,” she muttered to herself.

  “What was that ma'am?”

  “Oh nothing. Thank you. I just need to check in with the factory team about the African shipment. Apparently it’s been delayed. You can go when we get there. I’ll be a while.”

  “No problem ma'am.”

  Boris and Muttly filled the entire factory with their excited barking when they saw her. “Hey, guys, shush, you’ll get us kicked out of here pronto if you keep that up.”

  Johno came over and the dogs quietened. “Don’t worry about it, been good for
the guys to have something else to focus on instead of moaning about their back problems.” He winked.

  “Okay. Well as long as they weren’t in the way.”

  “They’ve been out on patrol with me haven’t you fellas? Keeping the bad guys away.”

  The dogs snuffled at his hand, clearly taken with his kind words and gentle manner.

  Discovering that there was little she could do to sort out the delays with the African shipment, Cara took the dogs and headed home in a begrudging taxi.

  The thought of Joe visiting her office was not what she had hoped for first thing the next morning. Her head was pounding from the wine she’d drunk, she’d hardly slept after finding a notice taped to her apartment door, warning that she had to get rid of the dogs or move out, and her computer screen seemed to be determined to burn out what was left of her retinas with a never-ending list of email disasters.

  “Can today go jump under a train please,” she whined to Olivia. “Tomorrow has got to be better than this.”

  Olivia grinned. “Big night huh?” She wiggled her eyebrows and Cara groaned and hit her head on the desk just in time for Joe Diaz to walk into the room.

  “Ms Reynolds. Am I keeping you up?”

  Straightening, Cara looked him in the eye. “Not at all. I’m just not used to so much wine.”

  He shrugged. “You seemed to enjoy it at the time.” He paused and Cara tried not to look at Olivia’s blatant wide-eyed stare. “I heard you visited the factory last night. Something wrong?”

  Oh shit, had he heard about her dogs being there? This was not how things were supposed to go when Joe Diaz was around. She was supposed to be calm, professional, put-together. Not a hungover, exhausted mess. And she was not supposed to get flustered when she remembered she’d put her hand over his and he’d stroked the back of her hand. He caught her looking at his hands and tucked them neatly behind his back. Damn. “The shipment to Africa has been delayed. I was trying to find out why. It needs to go today if it’s going to get there for Valentine’s Day.”