Beneath the Surface (29 page)

EJ hit a solid wall this time and couldn’t break through.

“I don’t have time for this, Eric. I’m at work.”

163

Gracie C. McKeever

“I’m going to be on the move a lot the next three weeks…”

“I know. On your book tour.”

“But the signings are all going to be here in New York, so I won’t be too far away from you at any given time.”

“That’s nice.”

“Tabitha, I want to see you.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“For Christ’s sake, haven’t we gotten past all this?”

There was a long pause on the other end as he listened to her light breathing, tried again to touch her but couldn’t.

Damn, this was frustrating!

“I thought we had, before last night.”

“I can’t talk to you over the phone like this. I need to see you.”

“I have to go.”

“Tabitha, don’t hang up!”

But she did and left EJ talking to dead air.

He clutched the receiver in his fist so hard his hand turned tallow white.

Okay, he’d have to play hardball and go uptown to see her and say his piece.

Make her listen to what he had to say. He was relatively certain she wouldn’t make a scene and throw him out—not at her place of business—if he just showed up. Sure it was a dirty trick, but he had to use whatever advantage he had at his disposal with that woman.

* * * *

“I wish you’d tell me what happened in Colorado.”

“It didn’t happen in Colorado.”

“Where did
it
happen, and
what
happened to make you scorn him this time?”

Tabitha wanted to tell the girl it wasn’t any of her business, but didn’t feel like alienating another person right now, didn’t have the energy for the backlash.

She performed enough self-castigation and dished out more punishment on herself than anyone else could have. She didn’t need incriminations from outside sources.

“Tabitha, he’s such a nice guy. I don’t see why you two can’t make peace.”

“Just because he’s nice doesn’t mean he’s right for me.”

“What makes him wrong?”

164

Beneath the Surface

Jade Aliberti for one.
To Cynthia she said, “He’s too polygamous for my tastes, okay.”

Cynthia frowned, disbelief plainly written across her face and Tabitha couldn’t understand why.

The man was a player, it was plain for anyone to see. Unless he had charmed Cynthia so thoroughly in his brief visit and several phone conversations that she couldn’t see beyond those gorgeous dimples to his true nature.

“Cynthia, I don’t really have time to discuss this right now. So if you don’t mind, I’d rather just drop it.”

“Okay, if that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want.”

Cynthia stood up straight from the jamb, gave Tabitha one last look before turning to go.

Tabitha knew she hadn’t heard the last from her assistant on the subject.

Maybe she’d have to adopt a tough, do-not-mention-Eric-Vega-in-my-presence rule. But then Cynthia never did mention him by name, just referred to him as “he” or

“him,” though Tabitha knew for a fact Cynthia addressed him as EJ when she thought Tabitha wasn’t in earshot.

Tabitha smiled as she glanced at her monitor and dug into her e-mail.

In a half-an-hour, she responded to most of them, and set up several appointments on her calendar before Cynthia buzzed her.

Tabitha pressed the “Listen” button on her console. “Yes?”

“He’s here.”

Sheesh, like God, he didn’t even need a name.

Tabitha sat with her finger poised over the “Talk” button, unsure what to do.

Running and hiding wasn’t an option, and the bastard knew that. Knew her all too well as he’d been claiming from the beginning, knew that she wouldn’t make a scene not where she daily conducted business.

She clenched her jaw as she pressed the “Talk” button. “Send him i—”

He appeared at her door before she finished, expectantly poised on the threshold.

“I was hoping you’d see me.”

He was dressed in another of her favorite outfits—mint green dress shirt, purple tie, and purple chinos—the ensemble he’d had on during that infamous fitting room incident, and Tabitha wondered if his choice were purposeful. After only a second she decided that it was, because as well as he knew her, she thought she knew him, and Eric didn’t do anything without a motive.

Her body vibrated with nostalgia, her pussy clenching with remembered excitement as she glared at him. “Come in and close the door behind you.”

165

Gracie C. McKeever

He shivered dramatically as he did what he was told. “Ooh, orders. I like a woman who knows her mind.”

“You won’t be liking me so much in the next few minutes.”

“Is that a promise?”

She just rolled her eyes at him, didn’t move from behind her desk as he grinned and made his way across the room in a sexy rolling gait that instantly got her hot and wet.

She followed his progress all the way from the doorway to the seat in front of her desk and watched him sit down.

He got comfortable, adopting that familiar laid-back posture she knew so well, with one ankle crossed over the opposite knee as he stared at her.

Tabitha momentarily averted her eyes, glanced at his shoes, a pair of black, well-buffed Kenneth Cole’s, and thought that she had created a fashion monster; he’d turned into a male her.

“This is dirty pool, Eric. Even for you.”

“What’s dirty?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. The clothes—”

“You like?” He raised his arms from the sides of the chair and smiled.

Tabitha had another flashback, this one of him spinning around in front of her, modeling. “You know damn well I like it. I helped you pick it out. Like I said, you’re playing dirty. Dressing seductively, coming over to my job when you know I can’t—”

“Yell at me?”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“You wouldn’t speak to me over the phone. How else was I going to get you to listen to me? If Mohammed won’t go to the mountain—”

“Please spare me.”

“Tabitha, Jade and I were only friends. Friends who had sex.”

At least he was speaking about her in the past tense. “She was your fuck-buddy then.”

He arched a brow, seemed surprise that she either knew the term, or was capable of using the infamous F-word. “That’s all there was between us,” he affirmed.

“She seemed to be under a different impression.”

“I know that, but I straightened that all out last night.”

“Is that what you told her it was between me and you? Just sex?”

“No,” He shook his head. “And you know it. I’ve told you more than once there’s more between us than just sex.”

166

Beneath the Surface

“How do I know what you’ve told her? How do I know you’re not stringing us both along?”

“Because I’m telling you I’m not.”

Tabitha peered into those indigo eyes, saw her own reflection staring back at her from the heated blue depths and her stomach flipped over then spiraled down to her core, suffusing it with the warm fluid of her desire.

She wanted to believe him; the sincerity in his voice, in his eyes, the total lack of subterfuge in his posture, told her that she probably should. Unlike him, however, she wasn’t a body language expert. She only had her gut and instincts to go by, and she knew that each was totally lacking from disuse.

Because rather than exercise her intuition and put herself through guessing a guy’s intentions, whether he was being straight with her, Tabitha tried to avoid the entire mating dance altogether. Those times that she couldn’t avoid it, the minute a guy got close enough to ask about her family, her life beyond work, she backed off, ended the dance, no second dates allowed.

She’d ticked off a lot of well-meaning matchmaking acquaintances this way, but it was so much safer to keep her distance rather than rely on her rusty people-reading skills and risk falling for some silver-tongued devil’s line.

She’d been out of practice too long, Eric the first man with whom she’d gone so far, the first man she’d come close to trusting since…God, she couldn’t think of anyone besides her father before he’d left her and her mother, and Frankie.

There’d been another guy back in college, a young maverick as hungry as her for success but much more willing to step on anyone to get where and what he wanted than was Tabitha.

Taylor had been her second after Frankie, insinuating himself into her life when she’d been twenty-one and nearing her final days of college.

Before she’d met him she’d been a single-minded and serious student with one goal on her mind after she got her degree: start her own business.

She’d been building her resume since she’d left high school, picking up odd jobs here and there, but the most important one as a mystery shopper evaluating customer service at sundry businesses like restaurants and retail stores before finally snagging her dream job at Macy’s as a personal shopper.

Taylor had approached her during lunch one day, said he’d noticed and liked her style and fashion sense—what she now recognized as appealing to her vanity—and asked her to help him with his. He promised to pay her well for the privilege of her opinions.

Only it didn’t quite work out the way he outlined it, and her opinions gradually turned into outright shopping trips that ate up time she could have put into her real jobs.

Tabitha chalked it up as needed experience, something extra to add to her personal shopping background.

167

Gracie C. McKeever

She worked hard helping Taylor define and refine his image, haunting boutiques for just the right jacket, hunting in thrift stores for just the right accessories to dress up a particular outfit already in his possession.

She held up her part of their bargain, but when it came time for payment, Taylor always had an excuse, wielding explanations and promises with that quick and skilled tongue as he seduced her with his wicked smile and body.

For the hours she spent in his arms, she forgot about business, forgot about her plans, his wild sensuality and relentless pursuit of pleasure nothing she’d ever experienced before, satisfying the secret needs of her body, while he filled up her head with requisite assurances of commitment and coupledom.

However, once Taylor got what he wanted from her, an impressive new wardrobe at the expense of her ingenuity and talent, he dumped her. He was essentially her first and most important lesson never to mix business with pleasure, never to trust anything that came out of a good-looking man’s mouth.

Tabitha glanced at Eric now, wondered where all her wisdom and reason had gone when it came to him, wondered what made him important enough that after her experiences with Taylor and Michael she was willing to believe almost anything he said, willing to forgo her personal hard-won credo. Willing to jeopardize her stability and freedom.

He rose from his chair as if he knew all the doubts she entertained, as if he knew she was teetering on the edge of saying good-bye and going about her life without him.

“Tabitha, we need to talk.” He planted his palms on her desk, leaned in and kissed her on the mouth, his lips firm and searching as he finessed open her mouth with his tongue, demanding and getting entry.

She returned the kiss, kicking herself the entire while her tongue dueled with his, before she pulled back, breathless, several seconds later. “You said we need to talk. That was suspiciously not talking.”

He shrugged. “But it’s so much more fun.”

Tabitha folded her hands on her desk, tried to assume a cool professional mien, and knew she was miserably failing when Eric circled her desk and stood before her.

She turned to face him, eyes level with his zipper before she raised them to his face, at a total disadvantage, didn’t like the hold he had over her and quickly stood. He still towered more than half-a-foot over her, but at least now she wasn’t as tempted by that enormous hard bulge in his pants.

Time to turn the tables.

“You have a birthday coming up soon, don’t you?”

He narrowed his eyes. “December 19th. Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” she said, but knew exactly how she was going to get him out of his house for the day, and that she was going to enjoy every minute of it.

168

Beneath the Surface

She had been thinking about it since Angela had called her, but the idea only came to fruition just now as she reached for his tie and worked on loosening the knot.

“No reason, huh?”

“Just thought we could do something special. Spend the day together. My treat.”

If Angela’s theory was right, then he’d jump at the chance.

“What do you have in mind?”

“Not sure yet. But I’ll think of something.”

“So how do I prepare?”

“Just be ready for anything when you wake up in the morning.”

“Sounds kinky.”

“Hmm, it is.” She finished unknotting his tie, slid it from the collar of his shirt.

“Speaking of kinky…you did wear this on purpose, didn’t you?”

He grinned. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“Neither can I.” Tabitha circled around him until they had switched places, and pushed him down into her executive chair.

He glanced up at her from the seat, eyes blistering and curious.

Tabitha’s stomach trembled with the knowledge of what she was about to do.

“Since you enjoyed your bondage so much last time…”

“I never said that.”

“Did you lock the door?”

He smiled, and nodded.

“I knew you would when you came in.”

“So you know me now?”

“I’m beginning to.” She circled behind him, slid her hands down his shoulders to his wrists as she pulled his arms behind his back. “Just like I know you like this.” She looped the tie around his wrists several times, finally knotting it firmly.

It suddenly occurred to her that it took a man totally comfortable and secure in his masculinity to let her keep tying him up as she pleased.