Talking Dirty with the CEO

by Jackie Ashenden

  But her friend knew her far too well. “It’s not nothing. You’re biting your lip like there’s no tomorrow and if you’re not careful you’ll lose mountain climbers in that crevasse between your eyebrows.”

  The words on Christie’s screen began to blur again. Dammit, those weren’t tears. They weren’t.

  “It’s really nothing,” she said, hoping her voice was steady. “Joseph isn’t answering my texts and I can’t get hold of him. I’ve left messages but…” She stopped, her voice starting to slide all over the place like a toddler wearing ice skates.

  “But he hasn’t responded?”

  Christie looked down at her hands. Yep, same old hands. Except they were blurry, too. Hell, that did mean tears. Either that or she needed her eyes checked. She blinked. Hard. “No, he hasn’t.”

  “Perhaps he’s just busy.”

  “Yeah, perhaps.”

  There was a silence.

  “Chris?” Marisa said softly. “Please tell me you haven’t fallen for him.”

  No, she hadn’t fallen for him. Of course not.

  Oh no, you’ve just plummeted off the side of Everest.

  Crap. May as well admit what she’d been ignoring the whole week.

  “Yeah,” she said thickly. “I think I have.”

  The knowledge settled down inside her heart. Inside her soul. Completely and totally inescapable.

  She was in love with Joseph Ashton. The guy who’d left her bed without a word and who was currently ignoring her texts and not returning her calls.

  What wonderful freaking timing.

  Marisa said nothing for a long moment, then muttered a filthy curse under her breath that had something to do with men having excrement in their cranial cavities. Then she said, “So what are you doing sitting here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve fallen for this guy, who and I’m sorry, St. John, but for the record he sounds like a douche. And yet you’re just letting him get away with not calling? Are you really going to let him treat you that way?”

  Christie looked up at her. Marisa’s blue eyes were blazing with defensive anger.

  “Don’t you let him treat you like that,” her friend said. “You’re worth ten of him.”

  And despite her misery, Christie almost smiled. For all her faults, Marisa was loyal to the core and fiercely protective of her friends. But Joseph wasn’t what Marisa thought of him.

  Yes, he was rich, successful, and just the sort of guy her parents adored.

  But he was also kind. And tender. And complicated. And fascinating. And made her feel as if she could do anything she set her mind to.

  Which meant she had to go and find him.

  As it had the night at her parents’ house, a deep calm descended on her.

  Yeah, no more sitting around waiting for him to call. No more denying she needed him. Denying she wanted him. She was over that, she was done.

  It was time to go out and tell him exactly what she did want.

  She pushed her chair back, the movement making Marisa’s eyes widen.

  “Hey, what are you doing?”

  Christie grabbed her bag. “Can you cover me with Ben?”

  “Uh, sure. Where are you going?”

  She grinned. “I’m going to tell Joseph Ashton I want more than one night. More than one weekend. I’m going to tell him I want the rest of the freaking year. At the very least!”

  Christie headed straight to the offices of Ashton Technology. The stylish foyer was incredibly intimidating, but she made herself approach the receptionist, some icy blonde with a “don’t mess with me” face.

  The woman took Christie in, from the top of her untidily pulled back ponytail, down over her “What Would McGyver Do?” T-shirt and jeans, her favorite black biker boots.

  “Can I help you?” she asked in frigid tones.

  Christie put on the expression she used when kicking alien butt. “Yeah. I need to see Mr. Ashton.”

  The blonde raised an eyebrow. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, but—”

  “I’m afraid Mr. Ashton doesn’t see anyone without an appointment.”

  Christie lifted her chin. “He’ll see me.”

  “I hardly think so.”

  “Dude, are you willing to bet on that?” She folded her arms. “Ring him. Tell him Christie St. John is here to see him. He’ll be annoyed if he finds out I’ve been turned away.”

  The blonde eyed her. Then, clearly viewing Joseph’s displeasure as the lesser of the two evils, she picked up the phone, spoke a few words, then ushered Christie toward one of the elevators.

  Christie wasn’t relieved. If anything she felt sick, her determination seeping away. Because it meant Joseph was here and maybe he’d had his phone with him, and had seen every single one of her desperate calls. Her desperate texts. Had seen them, then ignored them.

  Nausea turned over inside her as she stepped into the elevator.

  No. Of course he wouldn’t do that. He wasn’t that type of guy. Perhaps he’d been in meetings all morning. Been in meetings for the last three days. Yeah, that was it. Perhaps he hadn’t had time to check his messages. Or something.

  In which case her turning up out of the blue was going to look really pathetic.

  Christie swallowed, debating whether or not to just turn tail and leave. But then the doors closed and she was heading up.

  Right. So she was committed now. But that was okay. There was the whole being-in-love-with-him thing and he needed to know that. Yeah, he did.

  She didn’t know what to expect when she stepped out of the elevator. Maybe a huge corner office, a monolithic desk, and at the very least a piece of minimalist but heinously expensive sculpture.

  But what she got was a large open area with long desks, beanbags scattered everywhere, people hanging around chatting in huddles or working together at the desks. Some had laptops, some had desktops, and some were fiddling with touch-screen tablets.

  The whole place had a real energy to it. A buzz. Kind of like Joseph himself in many ways.

  She was shown to his office by a guy wearing a Led Zep T-shirt and skater shoes, who left her outside the door with a low, “I’d watch it. He’s in a bad mood,” warning.

  Christie set her shoulders, bracing herself. Yeah, well, she was in a bad mood now, too. So he could damn well suck it up.

  A rhythmic thumping noise came from inside the office. Odd. She took a breath and pushed open the door.

  The only thing about Joseph’s office that met her expectations was its size. It was, indeed, large. His desk sat in one corner, facing away from the huge windows, the top of it scrupulously neat. As though no one ever touched it. A treadmill stood set up in another corner. In the middle of the room sat a huge, squashy black couch with a coffee table next to it, the detritus of a whole day’s worth of coffee mugs on it.

  Joseph was over by the windows, walking back and forth, talking on his phone. In jeans and a black casual shirt, he had a small red rubber ball in his hand and as he walked, he bounced the ball off the back wall of his office, caught it, then bounced it again. Over and over.

  Christie stopped dead, watching him.

  Oh, he was so damn gorgeous. Pacing up and down with all the lithe, animal grace of a big cat. Magnetic. Charismatic.

  His blue gaze glanced over and she met it, felt the charge between them like a power surge.

  Her breath caught, her mouth gone bone-dry.

  Joseph didn’t take his eyes from hers as he continued with his phone call for a few moments. Then he ended it, put the phone in his pocket, and tossed the ball in his hands while he looked at her. The expression on his face told her nothing.

  “So, what did you want to see me about?” The words sounded flat.

  “I-I-I…” Crap, the stuttering was back. She swallowed, tried again. “Y-you’ve been a bit quiet these past couple of days. I wondered where you’d gotten to. I sent some texts…”

  “Yeah, I got them.�
� His phone pinged and he pulled it out of his pocket again, glancing down at the screen. “Hey, look, can we talk about this later? I’m kind of busy here.”

  He did look busy. Busy and distracted.

  Doubt suddenly descended like a ten-ton weight, her earlier determination deserting her.

  He had a point. What was she doing here? He’d gotten her texts and clearly he was too busy to answer them. Maybe she should just go back to work and wait. He’d get to her when he was ready, right?

  Her jaw tightened. “Oh…um…sure,” she said. “So you’ll call me tonight, then?”

  He didn’t look up, his attention on his phone. “Whatever. Make an appointment next time, okay?” Then he turned back to the windows, raising his phone to his ear, making another call.

  An appointment. He wanted her to make an appointment. As though she was a stranger who wanted to talk to him about business. Not someone he’d held in his arms. Not someone he’d made love to.

  Ice began to creep through her veins. She felt dismissed. Like a child told off by the headmaster, then expected to make her way back to the classroom.

  She took a breath, wanting to say something snarky and sarcastic. Then leave, slamming the door behind her.

  But a tiny, hard lump of pride stopped her.

  How dare he do this to her? As if their time together had meant nothing.

  Because it hadn’t meant nothing. She was in love with him. Freaking love.

  She straightened as the spark of anger became a flame, licking up inside her. She’d been dismissed many times in her life, but to have this man do it to her was the one thing she just couldn’t bear. And she knew if she let him she’d regret it. Forever. She knew it as surely as she knew the layout of Zombie Force level one.

  Her hands curled into fists as she strode over to where Joseph stood with his stupid phone. “I want to talk to you,” she said. Loudly.

  He frowned, not bothering to look at her, talking to whoever was on the other end.

  “I want to talk to you now,” she insisted.

  Joseph shook his head as if he was shaking off an annoying insect, beginning to turn away from her again.

  Christie lost her temper. “Now, Joseph!” She whipped his phone out of his hand and stabbed the disconnect button before he could do anything about it.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he growled, making a grab at the phone.

  She chucked it onto the couch, out of his reach, and stood in front of him, adrenaline pumping through her, shaking with a strange combination of rage and fear and—weirdly—excitement. He glared at her, eyes glittering in the light, anger stamped on his handsome face.

  And had she been the Christie of three weeks ago, she would have run. Would have turned tail and vanished out the door.

  But she wasn’t that Christie any more.

  She was strong. She was beautiful. She was brave.

  And she was in love with him.

  “What do you want?” he demanded. “I’m extremely busy.”

  Behind her, his phone chirped happily and his gaze flicked to where it sat on the couch.

  Damn him. Fueled by an assertiveness she hadn’t known she possessed, Christie reached up and grabbed his chin, forcing his gaze back to hers again. His eyes widened as they met hers.

  “Don’t dismiss me like a child, Joseph Ashton,” she said. “I want to talk to you.” Beneath her fingers his skin felt warm, rough with stubble.

  He stared at her, his focus sharpening. “What about?” He didn’t pull away, letting her hold him, and she couldn’t help moving her thumb over his skin, couldn’t help brushing it over his lower lip, the softness in contrast to the roughness of his jaw.

  His breath caught. She heard it. And it made the anger inside her, the fear, the doubt, turn into something else.

  “What about, Christie?” he repeated, a rough edge to his voice, his gaze dropping to her mouth.

  “About the little fact that you walked out on me three days ago without a bloody word. And now you won’t answer my calls or my texts. What the hell is going on?”

  …

  Joseph stared down at her, looking into big green eyes full of anger and, underneath it, a fearful kind of hope. Her fingers on his jaw sent sparks of electricity through him, his body tightening, ignoring the brain that told it their little affair was over. Oh, no, his body disagreed most strenuously.

  And that only added to his temper.

  The fact she was even here, filling up his office with her scent and her passionate, stubborn presence, making him want all the things he knew he couldn’t give her, pissed him off so much he could barely speak.

  Since he’d left Jude’s apartment three days ago he’d been trying to think of what he wanted to say to Christie. How he would end it between them. And every time he thought he knew, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  Couldn’t bring himself to make the move that would let her go.

  Procrastination when it came to things that were emotionally difficult for him was another ADHD problem. But he’d never had this issue when it came to calling it off with a woman.

  Oh no, it had always been easy. Painless.

  Not with Christie. With her it was neither easy nor painless.

  For three days he’d listened to her calls. Seen every one of her texts. Felt like the biggest bastard in the world. Knowing that calling her back and telling her it was over was what he needed to do.

  Yet still he hadn’t managed to do it. The thought hurt in ways he’d never anticipated.

  Joseph reached down and closed his fingers around her wrist, pulling her hand away. “The night of your parents’ party I was supposed to meet my sister for dinner.”

  She frowned. “Oh. Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “It was her birthday.”

  “Joseph—”

  “But I wasn’t there, was I? I was with you instead. Because I forgot about her.”

  Color crept into her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop bloody apologizing. It wasn’t your fault. It was mine.” Anger twisted inside him, bright and sharp.

  “But if you hadn’t been with me—”

  “Stop it,” he interrupted, harsh and unable to prevent it. “The fault isn’t with you. It’s with me.” He took a breath. “I’ve got an ADHD-type thing, which means I get distracted easily. I also have difficulty with remembering things. Like important dates.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “So if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine, okay?”

  Christie stared at him. “ADHD? That’s attention deficit—”

  “Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.”

  “But I thought only kids had it?”

  “No. Adults, too. I usually have reminders and things in my phone and at work to help keep me on track. But of course that relies on me actually checking my phone.” Which he hadn’t done. Watching her with her parents, he hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything else.

  Her throat moved. “I distracted you that night.”

  Joseph turned away, going over to the windows, pausing, then continuing on down to the end of the office and back again. He wanted to tell her that she hadn’t and that it didn’t matter, that Jude was used to him forgetting things. But both of those things were lies. And he couldn’t lie to her. Christie deserved more than that from him.

  He turned back to her. “Yeah,” he said bluntly. “You did. Jude’s my little sister and she’s put up with my crap for years. And I hate…disappointing her.”

  “I—I could come with you and explain things to her?” Christie’s face had gone pale.

  He gave a short, harsh laugh. “Thanks, honey, I but I don’t need you to make my excuses for me.”

  An awkward silence fell.

  Her expression was full of sympathy. As if she wanted to hug him.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he said.

  “But you’re angry.”

  “You’re goddamned right I’m angry. I
’ve been letting my sister down for years and I hate it.”

  Red lashes, the color shot with gold, fluttered over her pale skin. “If it makes any difference I’m glad you came with me last night. I couldn’t…couldn’t have faced my parents without you.”

  “Bullshit, Christie. That strength, it’s been inside you all along. You would have found it yourself one day.”

  She took a step toward him. “Maybe. Or maybe not. But you were the one who showed me it was there.”

  On the couch his phone beeped again. Another reminder. But he didn’t even bother looking at it this time.

  Christie’s gaze had a liquid glint to it. And she was looking at him the way some women did, as if he was everything they ever wanted and more.

  And he knew it was too late. That he was going to hurt her.

  He turned again, pacing away from her, going over to the windows. His hands squeezed the ball. Squeezed hard. “I say a lot of things, Christie. Most of which I hardly even pay attention to myself.”

  He could feel her behind him, the familiar scent of lavender and musk surrounding him. It made him ache with longing.

  “You didn’t mean them, then?” An underlying thread of pain in her voice.

  He wanted to say no. Anything that would push her away. Because he couldn’t handle this tightness in his chest. This ache in his throat.

  It would be easier to deny it. To cut her off now. Be cruel. Be harsh. So that she wouldn’t ever come near him again.

  But the thought was unbearable.

  He stopped pacing. Turned from the window. She stood just behind him, all her guards down, the naked vulnerability stark in her face. So lovely. Jude had asked if she was special, and she was. Guarded and geeky and passionate and brave.

  “I meant them, Christie. I meant every word.”

  The vulnerability drained away, brightness filling her expression.

  Man, she had to know. He’d told her about the ADHD, a little piece of truth about himself. But she needed to know what it meant. What the consequences were.

  He pushed a hand through his hair, the familiar antsy, restless feeling moving through him. “Don’t,” he said softly. “Don’t go making me into someone I’m not.”

  “What do you mean?”