Love & Secrets

by Elizabeth Lennox

  When she turned around again, peering back at him over her shoulder, he felt intense stirrings. He looked down at Betty, her dark eyes full of longing and her tongue hanging gracelessly out the side of her mouth.

  “I’m with ya, girl,” Oz told his dog, scratching her ears. Betty took a moment to glance up at him with love, but she turned back to the woods and the retreating duo with longing. “Yep. We have a new mission.”

  An hour later, he walked into the lobby of The Solutions Group, the company that he’d started several years ago with his half-brother Jayce and his best friend Ryker. He waved to the receptionist. “Everything okay, Mike?” he asked the twenty-something guy dressed in an impressive three piece suit.

  Mike smiled, adding a professional nod. “Everything is great, Mr. Cole,” he replied and handed him several messages. “I believe your sister is looking for you.”

  Oz had no doubt. Carly was usually looking for him. “Which way did she go?” he asked, stuffing the messages into his pocket.

  “Through the left doors.”

  “Perfect. Thanks.” And he went to the right. He loved his sister completely and would do just about anything for her. Carly was the general manager of the company and was efficient and brilliant, amazing with the clients and kept him, Jayce and Ryker, the other two owners, in line and on mission. But sometimes, she was a bit too efficient. She liked organization and color coded just about everything when she was stressed. When she wasn’t stressed, she was still annoyingly efficient. If she was looking for him, that meant that she had some boring administrative task she needed him to accomplish. As a former member of the Army’s elite Delta Force, he preferred to be either planning an operation, or actually doing an operation. He was much better out in the field, taking care of the bad guys, or doing things that other governments couldn’t, or shouldn’t, handle themselves. He knew how to get things done and make it appear as if no one on his team had ever been there. Oz could make bad people disappear and help the good guys win, and made it all look effortless. While he’d been in the military, he’d excelled at just about anything they’d asked of him.

  But now, working for his own company, he chose which missions he would handle. If it didn’t smell right, he passed. He knew of several other black ops companies that would handle just about any kind of dirty work that a government anywhere in the world needed accomplished. The Solutions Group didn’t play like that. Their integrity was paramount. They might skim along the edges of the law, but they did it for the greater good. Need a cruel, despotic government toppled? He was your man. Need someone assassinated because they weren’t playing ball right? Find someone else.

  “Oz!”

  “Damn!” he mumbled, watching Carly hurry down the hallway towards him. “I thought you were on the other side of the building.”

  Her bright smile told him that he’d been played.

  “I was. But I knew you were on your way in and I needed to talk to you.”

  He glared down at her, both irritated and impressed. “So you told Mike to make me go the wrong way?” he asked. Ever since he’d found out that he had a baby half-sister, he’d loved her. She was smart and amazingly resilient. She had to be in order to survive in their father’s house. The brute had beaten Carly from the moment her mother had died. Unfortunately, Oz had escaped their father’s house years before. But not before he’d gotten a good taste of what the man could dish out.

  So when he’d found out that he had a half-sister, and that the poor thing was living with their father, he’d flown into town, scooped the skinny, bruised, and beaten girl up and gotten her out of the house, ignoring their father’s furious claims of kidnapping.

  “I didn’t tell Mike to lie to you,” Carly grinned up at Oz. “After all these years, I just know how to manipulate you.”

  He dropped his hand and stared at his baby sister. Yeah, she was an adult now, but…damn! Where had this spunk come from?

  “I think you need a good spanking,” he warned and walked around her, heading towards his office.

  She laughed, knowing that he would never hurt her. “Yeah, well, you’re going to have to put off your plans for today. You know the obstacle course where you test and train all of your teams?”

  “Yeah. What about it?” he asked, flipping through the messages but really, he was thinking about his blonde neighbor, wondering what her name was.

  “The city is planning to build a new community center on the south side of our property. That’s not really going to…” she stopped speaking when he swung around. Any other time he would have laughed at her irritation when she jumped back to stop herself from crashing into him. But this was a serious issue.

  “They can’t put a community center in there. I put an offer in for that property. I want a bigger buffer between us and the community. We can’t have anyone sniffing around, trying to figure out what we’re doing here.”

  Carly crossed her arms over her chest and sighed. “Yeah. I know. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Oz. The city put the land up for sale and yes, you were the highest bidder, but now they are reconsidering. Someone submitted an idea for a community center. You know, swimming pool, basketball courts, community services, and all.”

  “They can put it over on that piece of land on the other side of that senior’s center. It’s closer to the high school and a better idea all around.”

  Carly’s dark eyebrow lifted, silently admonishing him for telling her information that she already knew. “Yes. Excellent suggestion. I think you should head right on over to the town council meeting and tell them that.”

  Oz pulled back, horrified by her suggestion. “Why should I do it? You’re the manager. You do it.”

  Her triumphant grin told him that he was in trouble. “Because you’re the one who bid on that land. Only property owners are allowed at this particular meeting.”

  And with that, she shoved a file folder into his hands. “This has all the details. I put together a presentation for you. Now go!” she shoved him towards the exit. Well, she tried to shove him. Oz was six feet, three inches of pure muscle and male obstinacy. If he didn’t want to move, he didn’t move.

  “You’re getting a bit bossy. You know that, right?” he teased, his green eyes, identical to Carly’s, twinkling down at her.

  Carly groaned. “I am the boss! You’re just the muscle. Now go!”

  He laughed as he headed towards the exit.

  “Don’t mess it up!” she called out just to rile him. She laughed when he glanced back over his shoulder with a “Payback is Hell” look.

  Oz flipped through the pages of the file folder Carly had given him, impressed with the amount of detail she’d been able to pull together so quickly. But it still irritated him that the city was planning something only months after he’d bought up all of the surrounding property. And why did they have to build the community center there? He pulled up a map of the town on his phone, studying the open plots. Immediately, he came up with a plan. Something that might work out better.

  The town council meeting was held in the small, classically designed church right in the center of town. Oz figured that the council members chose this place due to the excellent acoustics, and also because it was one of the few places in town that was available during the week for long periods of time.

  Twenty minutes into the meeting, he was bored and restless. Carly was in big trouble for convincing him that he needed to be here for this. The council members were currently debating the best date to put up the decorative flags on the light posts of Main Street. Oz could have solved the problem by simply telling them what to do with the flags, but bit his tongue. Probably not a productive comment, he thought.

  Besides, the tedious discussion gave him additional time to think of retribution. He thought of several different ways he could get back at her. But as he’d gotten to the tenth idea, the doors to the church breezed open. Oz turned to look, eager for any kind of distraction from the tedium of listening to the town
council discuss what flowers to plant on the Main Street planters for the next season – seriously, was there really a huge difference between purple flowers and pink flowers?! How could a color choice generate a fifteen minute debate?!

  But when the blonde woman stepped through the heavy wooden doors, everything in him sparked back to life. The neighbor! Bart’s “mom”. Oh yes! Now things were going to get a bit more interesting!

  In that same instant, she put down her leather briefcase and scanned the room, her eyes stopping when she reached him. The instant recognition diminished the last little bit of tedium he’d been feeling. He knew that she was fully aware of him. And when her eyes moved over his shoulders and what she could see of him over the church pew where he was sitting, he had to smother a laugh.

  Even so, he could still feel her eyes caressing him.

  Damn, he wanted her! He’d never felt this kind of intensity towards a woman before. The ladies of his past were always lovely, always interesting. But a woman hadn’t ever affected him like this. He wanted to know more about her. Starting with her name. Hell, if Carly hadn’t ambushed him this morning, he’d intended to get his computer team on the job to find out who she was.

  Since he knew that there was no reason he needed to be here for this, Carly’s excuse that only property owners were allowed at the meeting was a total lie, he really was going to have to get her back.

  But in the meantime, he started considering how he should introduce himself to the lovely woman. Calling her “Blondie” wasn’t really a good option.

  And looking at her now, he realized that she was even more amazing all dressed up. The woman wore a black skirt that ended just below her knees, taunting him with not enough skin. He imagined that, when she sat down, that black material would slide up and he’d have a better glimpse, but until then, he’d have to use his imagination. He liked the silk blouse too. It was buttoned all the way up to her neck, but without the sports bra she’d been wearing the previous two mornings, he could now see that she had full, round breasts. He already knew that they were topped with pretty nipples, although he wanted to know the color of them. All he knew at the current time was that they were probably on the small end of the spectrum. Not that he cared. Big breasts, little breasts. Big nipples, little nipples. He loved them all. Breasts were amazing things and he didn’t discriminate.

  “And now to the community center,” someone said.

  That pulled his attention away from the blonde beauty sitting towards the back of the church. He was just about to stand up when he heard her voice. Damn, that voice had created some pretty vivid dreams for him the past two nights. Or night, singular, because after her visit yesterday morning when she’d looked at him all over with those amazing light-blue eyes, he hadn’t been able to get back to sleep. He’d been too aroused and ready for something more than just a shower. Unfortunately, he’d gone into the office instead.

  So now, hearing that soft, lilting voice that had whispered things to him in his dreams…

  Hell, she wasn’t saying the same things! In fact…

  “Good morning! I’m here with the plans,” his blonde beauty announced, standing up and stepping into the aisle. Oz watched, fascinated by the enticing movement of her full breasts underneath that cream silk. So demure and yet, he suspected she had absolutely no idea how amazingly erotic silk could seem. She was like a sex goddess, taunting mortal men with what they couldn’t have.

  But Oz wasn’t the kind of man who stopped when someone said no. Not that she was saying No. Because….well, hell, yeah, he respected the word when a woman said No. But…his eyes moved lower, watching the gentle sway of her full, round hips as she walked to the front. Never in his life had he been so transfixed by a woman’s walk. In his line of work, becoming distracted could be a death sentence. But in this case, he’d die a happy man.

  Slowly, her words filtered into his mind and he focused on what she was saying.

  “The tentative plans have been submitted by the architect, but until we decide on the exact layout, he didn’t want to move forward. Elevations need to be incorporated into the design, so this is just a proposed view,” she pulled several papers from a file folder and handed them out to each council member. “Because of funding levels, we kept the design scheme simple and easy to construct. This will allow more of the money to be dedicated to services and functionality. The pool is going to be the largest cost, but having a pool for the kids in the summer months is going to be a huge asset to the town.”

  That was his cue.

  Standing up, he stepped out of the pew, buttoning his jacket as he walked up to the front of the church. “If I might say something?” he asked, stopping next to the lady. She was wearing heels in order to gain a bit of height, but he still towered over her. He gave her a nod of acknowledgement and turned to face the town council.

  “As the property owner for the adjacent land, I’d like to ask that this community center be placed in another area of the town.” He pulled out a paper, ready to brief the council members on his suggestion.

  “That’s out of the question,” Blonde Woman snapped. He could hear the stiff outrage in her voice.

  He smiled politely. “From what I understand, the proposed land hasn’t been purchased yet.” He paused, momentarily fascinated when those pink lips pressed together in irritation. “And from what you’ve just said, the architect doesn’t have the final land or the measurements, so now is the perfect time to propose a different location.”

  She started shaking her head even before he’d finished. “We’ve been talking about this land for the past several months. Funding has been gathered. We’ve almost raised enough money to finish this project and move to the next phase.” She turned to face him now, correctly understanding that he was the real threat. The council members were forgotten as she argued her point.

  Oz moved as well, turning to face her, looking down into those incredible, blue eyes. “Why not move it to a better location now rather than later when it will cost more?” he offered. He handed her a paper. “Look at this piece of land. It’s larger and…”

  “And it’s more expensive,” she interrupted, glancing at the sheet he held up, but quickly dismissing the option.

  “I’ll cover the additional cost of this plot of land versus the other.” He turned to face the town council. “Even more, since I don’t want another business so close to my land, I’ll buy the current proposed plot of land, so the town still gains the tax revenue.” He looked down at Blondie, trying to gauge her reaction.

  Her mouth fell open with his offer and he smiled slightly. She looked amazing like that. He wondered if her mouth would fall open like that when he kissed her neck just below her ear.

  “Why would you do that? What’s so important about this piece of land?”

  He shook his head. “What happens on my property is private business. But suffice it to say, that I’m willing to compensate the town for any inconvenience this shift in placement of the community center will cause.”

  One of the town council members, the one who had been arguing vehemently for the pink flowers, voiced his opinion. “I think that’s a very generous offer, Charlotte. Any objections?”

  Ah! Charlotte! Pretty name, Oz thought.

  There was a general murmuring among the members, but he kept his focus on Charlotte and the anger brewing in her blue eyes. Trouble, he thought. But what was life without challenges?

  “The original site is better,” she argued. “It has better access. It is closer to the elementary school, so the kids…”

  “This site,” he said, referring to the land away from his property, “is closer to the high school. The community center will have better access to a group of teens that are most likely eager for the jobs that don’t require specialized skills.” He watched, knowing that he’d just scored a point.

  “The elementary school kids…”

  “Will most likely have their parents around, able to walk them and drive them to the c
ommunity center since they can’t just drop their kids off at the pool and go. Having an available work force is a higher priority.”

  Another point, he thought.

  Then her eyes narrowed and Oz knew that he was in trouble. Big trouble! “The cost differential between the original site and where you are proposing is more than one hundred thousand dollars.”

  Oh, those pretty blue eyes thought she’d won. He wanted to laugh. Or kiss her. Patience, he told himself. “I’ve already promised to cover the additional cost of the land and buy the original property. So it seems like a win-win.”

  He waited, wondering what she would come up with next. When he saw the triumphant light in her eyes, his gut tightened with both anticipation and dread. Whatever came next, she was going to zing him for his interference.

  “There’s still a funding shortage of more than half a million dollars.”

  And a good zinger it was! Oz threw back his head, laughing at her manipulation. When his laughter died out, he nodded, conceding the point back to her. “Done. I’ll personally donate the remaining funds for the community center.” He turned towards the town council, all five members were staring at him with their mouths hanging open. “But in return, I want the land around my property zoned for non-usage. Is it a deal?”

  The gavel banged down almost immediately. “Deal!” the guy at the head table announced.

  With that, he turned to face Charlotte, impressed and more turned on than he’d ever thought possible.

  “How about lunch?” he offered.

  She quickly shook her head. “I can’t. I have to work.”

  With that, she picked up her papers and walked back to the pew where she’d left her briefcase. He followed, unwilling to relinquish this moment. “You shouldn’t leave your belongings out in the open and unattended like that,” he commented, leaning against the wooden pew, watching as she bent over to shove the file into her briefcase.