Falling for Fate (14 page)

“I do. You grew a pair and decided to do what you wanted for once. Good for you. So what happened after? Did you guys have some steamy affair all weekend or what?”

Yeah, that would’ve been the smarter option. Why hadn’t she seen that back then? “No. Once again, I ran. Like, freaked the heck out.
Ran
. He, uh, stepped away for a minute, and I hid behind a garage beside someone’s beach house until he left.” She buried her face in her hands. This could not really be happening.

“Aw, honey. That’s not so bad. So you got burned by the love of your life and went out and had a hot spur-of-the-moment fling with a stranger. Sounds like the stuff romance novels are made of. But, um, what does any of this have to do with our new boss looking at you like—”

Fate’s head snapped up and she met Gwen’s confused stare mid-sentence. She couldn’t even bring herself to say it. That would make it one hundred percent real.

The other woman’s eyes widened and her mouth gaped open as the realization sank in. “No way. Seriously? Oh…mother of… I can’t. There aren’t even words for situations like this.” Gwen shook her head and stifled a laugh.

“Please don’t laugh.” Though Fate kind of wanted to laugh. And cry. And crawl under the table and into a hole in the earth.

“I’m sorry.” Nervous laughter escaped her roommate and she bit her lip to contain it. “Can I ask how you plan to handle this?”

She took a few more calming breaths and poked at her salad with her fork. “I don’t know. I need this job. There’s a lot going on with my mom and…” Okay, now she just wanted to cry.

“Hey, listen.” Gwen waited to finish until she looked back up at her. “His dad can’t fire you for something that happened months ago, and I’ve heard that ‘no intracompany dating’ policy is bullshit anyways.”

Fate nodded but couldn’t get words to come up over the lump in her throat. Gwen filled the silence.

“And judging from the way he was ripping your clothes to shreds with the power of his mind, all our new boss wants now is a chance at round two.” She shrugged. “But if he starts harassing you, I will threaten to go to HR on his ass. So if you want him to back off, say so.”

Fate sucked in a healing breath. “You’re right. I’m freaking out over nothing. He’s probably slept with half the girls we work with.” She rolled her eyes at her own dramatics. The only one making a big deal out of this was her. Time to pull up her big-girl panties and get on with her life.

“Uh, yeah. Probably.” Gwen made a strange face that involved rolling her lips inward as if she were dying to bust out in laughter. After composing herself, she stared at a spot over Fate’s shoulder. “Um, Fate, that thing I said about you wanting him to back off. Do you?”

She finished chewing the bite of cucumber she’d just taken and swallowed. “I don’t know. I mean it’s not like he really did anything other than stare like a man possessed. It was just a shock for both of us, I think. I just don’t want everyone knowing, you know? It’s bad enough that I’m probably going to be waiting on my support staff at Lux every night.” She took a drink of her tea before shaking her head and laughing at her own pathetic situation. “I can just see it now.
Hey, did you send that report I asked about? Oh, and by the way, can I grab you another beer?”

Gwen nodded in sympathy. “Yeah, that’s…um… Hey, Fate, I need a concrete answer. Do you want him to back off or not?” Gwen’s expression was morphing from amused to panicked.

Fate had a mouthful of salad and couldn’t answer right away.

“Swallow your damn food.
Now
.”

Fate did as she was told and gaped at her friend. “What the—”

“Ladies,” a male voice interrupted. “Kind of early for lunch, isn’t it?”

Both women looked up at the handsome stocky-built sandy-haired man with a goatee standing next to their booth. Fate recognized him from the meeting but couldn’t remember his title. Keaton Something. Some type of financial guy.

“We could say the same to you,” Gwen informed him. “But since this isn’t elementary school and there’s no set time for lunch breaks, we won’t.”

Fate watched as the man regarded her friend with a raised brow. Her tongue went thick and dry when she realized that he wasn’t alone. Dean Maxwell—a.k.a. her random beach hookup, a.k.a. her new boss—was standing behind him. Every cussword she knew flitted through her head.

“Touché, Ms. Scott.” Keaton winked. Gwen smirked at him in response, but his smile only widened. “Care to help me order? I think I need your marketing expertise and an in-depth cost-benefit analysis of pastrami versus salami.”

“In other words, our friends need to sit down and discuss how to work together after seeing each other naked. Got it.” Gwen smiled at Fate, who glared back at her. So much for no one knowing. It was obvious that Keaton already knew. Fate didn’t bother to correct Gwen and clarify that they hadn’t actually seen each other completely naked. Seemed irrelevant at the moment.

“Oh how I love an honest woman. Too bad you’ve already ordered or I’d buy you lunch.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Gwen shot back at him as she slid out of the booth with her lunch in hand.

“You’re right. I’m a cheap bastard.” He shrugged and the two of them walked away, leaving awkward silence behind them.

Fate watched as the man she’d been unable to forget for the past three months slid into the booth across from her. She squirmed under the intensity of his glare. For the love of pastrami on rye, one of them was going to have to speak first. Taking a deep breath, she decided it might as well be her.

Here went nothing.

“I
enjoyed your speech this morning,” she told him. Like
that
was what he wanted to talk about. “Did you actually mean any of that or did someone else write it for you?”

Whoa.
What the fuck was her problem? “Excuse me?”

“Just seemed a little scripted is all.” She shrugged and lifted a cherry tomato from her plate. He watched intently as she placed it in her mouth. That sweet, perfect mouth. His thoughts traveled south.
Dammit.
He had to get this under control.

Obviously this woman was a one-and-done and didn’t want anything else to do with him.
No shit, genius. Hence why she dropped off the grid.
To think, he’d wasted an entire summer looking for her. It stung. But he had a career—no, a whole company—to consider. He could be professional. He had to be.

“We seemed to have gotten off on the wrong foot here.” He attempted to smile warmly at her.

“Interesting choice of words.”

He’d said “gotten off.” Apparently, she wasn’t going to make this easy. For either of them.

“Yes. I think you’ll find I’m not nearly as articulate as yourself. Your presentation this morning was impressive. Not scripted at all.”

There. Women loved flattery. That much he knew.

She didn’t smile or thank him like he’d expected. Of course not. She wasn’t in the habit of doing what he expected.

“Which part did you find particularly engaging?” Her expression was even as she waited for his answer.

“Um, which part of what? The presentation?”

She nodded.

“The part about, er, all of it. The bringing stuff in-house part, backing off the outsourcing. Good ideas. Innovative stuff.” He hoped to hell that’s what her presentation had been about. He’d been drowning in memories of being inside her.

She grinned, and as much as he hated the feeling of being busted, he loved the sight of those two sexy dimples on either side of her mouth. His tongue ached to reach out and taste her sweet smile. So he clenched his teeth shut and waited for her to tell him that he was full of shit.

“Oh,
that
part. The topic of the entire presentation. Well, makes sense you would’ve heard
that
part.”

“Look, I’m done playing around here.” He leaned in close in case any of their coworkers were nearby. “No, I couldn’t concentrate on your presentation because I was distracted by the memory of burying myself deep inside you and those sexy little noises you made when you came. So, my bad. Email me the damn thing and I’ll write a report on it if it’s so important to you. But don’t sit here and act like you don’t remember. Like you didn’t vanish into the damn wind three months ago.”

He could tell he’d shocked her exactly like he’d intended. Her green eyes rounded. She pulled her full bottom lip in with her teeth and he had to fight with everything he had not to lean a little closer and do the same.

“What do you want me to say?” she whispered. “I’m sorry? I was having the worst day of my life and then you dropped down from the sky and asked me what you could do to make it better.” She looked as if she might cry.
Jesus.

“No.” He rubbed his hand over his face. Hell of a first day this was turning out to be. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. It’s just… I looked for you. I had no idea what had happened. For all I knew, you’d walked out into the damned ocean.”

She snorted, and for some reason, it made him angry. “Do the women you sleep with usually contemplate suicide immediately after?”

That was low blow. Some of them got pretty nuts, actually—when they realized he was done with them. “No. They don’t usually run off and go into hiding afterwards either. But apparently, you aren’t most women.” That was an understatement if ever there was one.

“No, I’m not,” she said barely loud enough for him to hear.

As she fingered the pearls around her neck, his traitorous gaze dipped to her chest. The dress she was wearing was tight fitting but modest by most standards. It was doing things to him nonetheless. Probably because he knew exactly what was under it.

“So how do you want to play this?” He leaned back in the booth, deciding to give the headstrong woman the upper hand. “You want to pretend it never happened? Want me to buy you dinner? Flowers? What? You tell me, because if I’m being honest, I have no clue what the proper protocol is here.”

Her brows dipped and she stared at him for what felt like an eternity. Then she made a breathy little noise that both turned him on and pissed him off. “Right. You expect me to believe you haven’t slept with half the woman we work with.” She did her little snorty thing again. “Okay.”

Usually he was a pretty even-keeled guy. But this particular female seemed to know exactly what to say to make his blood pressure rise to a dangerous level.

“How about this? How about I don’t pretend to know anything about you, and you don’t pretend to know
everything
about me?” He propped his elbows on the table and leaned in once more. “I’ll behave like the professional I am, and you can go on with your high-and-mighty bullshit pretending you didn’t let a stranger pop your cherry without even getting his name first.”

He almost reached into the air to attempt to grab those words back. But he wouldn’t have been quick enough anyways. They hit her with the same force a slap would have. She recoiled and pain smeared all over her pretty face.

“Shit. I shouldn’t have said that.” He was a grown man, not a sixteen-year-old walking hard-on. He could admit when he’d taken something too far.

“No, you shouldn’t have.” She bit her lip again and looked around. Probably for someone to rescue her from the asshole in her booth. She squared her shoulders before she spoke again. “But you’re right. It happened, and my being a bitch about it isn’t going to change anything.”