Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) (35 page)

I was still shaky, and I still felt a little sick, but at least I didn’t feel unprofessional anymore.

It was all in the comparison.

I didn’t stop at my cube. I went straight to Henry’s office. Even though it felt like an hour, barely ten minutes had passed since the meeting had ended, and I wanted him to know that I was downstairs, and that I’d
been
downstairs for a while.

I tapped at his door and told him, when he looked up, “I’m doing those minutes for you, assuming you still want them after the shift in priorities.”

His gaze was blue steel. “I still want them.”

I hesitated a moment, then said, “I realize you told me I shouldn’t talk, and that I did.”

He sighed and said, “Come in.” When I did, he said, “Sit,” and when I did
that,
he said, “The only thing that matters is the right result. That’s why you have debate. That’s why you have meetings, contrary to popular belief. They’re not just to waste everybody’s time. They’re about putting the information and the opinions out there so the person in charge—the one with the best judgment, you hope—can make a decision. Do I wish Hemi hadn’t chosen this year to take a vacation, and that we’d had that debate a month ago? Of course I do. I wish I still had all my hair, too. But we’ve had it now. It’s done.”

“That’s great,” I felt emboldened to say, “except when you
don’t
think it’s the right result.”

He didn’t smile. He said, “The right result is the one that makes the most money, and Hemi has a nose for money like nobody in this business. Why do you think I’m still in this job? It’s not for the relaxed atmosphere.”

“Well, not today, anyway.”

“Get used to it,” he said. “It’s not going to change. And starting on Monday, you’re going to work for Cherise Clairmont. She’s going to need more help if she’s going to be starting from scratch.”

“I don’t think that’s going to work,” I said over the
thud
that was my heart sinking to the bottom of my chest. “She doesn’t exactly love me. Maybe I could work with Gabrielle instead.”

“News flash,” he said. “I don’t care about your feelings. Nobody loves me except my grandkids, and only because they’re too young to realize what an SOB I am. I do my job anyway. I expect you to do yours, or go find another one. I don’t babysit. Cherise needs help, and that’s where you’re going, or you can stay with Simon and quit whining about what he gives you to do. Maybe you’ll be good enough to think it over and tell me which you’d prefer. For now, get out of here and type up those minutes. I sent you a couple more things I need done after that, and time’s a-wasting. You want to work? Then go get busy.”

Rock, meet hard place.

Hope

I thought about canceling with Nathan, but I didn’t.

To begin with, I’d told Hemi about it the evening before, he’d worked hard to be reasonable, and especially after the events of today, I didn’t want to give up that ground.

I’d cheated a little, of course. I’d brought it up while I’d had my hand on his bare chest and my legs tangled with his, during those peaceful few minutes before sleep. In the wee hours of the night, to be exact, after he’d finally slid into bed beside me after another late-night session in his home office. When I’d woken and turned to him, and he’d made such slow, tender love to me that he’d nearly brought tears to my eyes. When he’d loved me like I was his glass of warm milk, his sweet treat before bedtime.

When we’d finished and were quiet, resting together, I said into the dark, “I’m going to have a drink with Nathan after work tomorrow. So you know.”

“Are you, now. And Karen will be off making popcorn, eh. Reckon I’d better take you out to dinner afterwards, then, or I’ll be all alone, and wouldn’t that be a pity.” His voice was a deep, slow rumble, his hand stroking down my back, finding the sensitive spot at the base of my spine and drawing slow circles there. That could nearly bring me to orgasm all by itself once I was all the way wound up, and he knew it. Right now, as satisfied as I was, it just felt delicious, like licking rich dark-chocolate ice cream off the cone and feeling it melt on your tongue, all sweet, sensual pleasure.

“Mm,” I said, letting myself feel every bone-melting shiver. “You’d better do that, I guess. If you think you have time for me.”

“I’ll make time.” He moved on down to stroke my bottom, my upper thighs, his hand so sure on me. “Seven o’clock do you? Where will you be?”

“O’Doul’s.” I pressed my lips to his chest, warm skin over hard muscle. “Thank you, sweetheart. I love you.”

I’d never called him that, I realized as soon as I said it, and I stiffened momentarily, but he didn’t say a word. He sure didn’t stop holding me, so I closed my eyes, snuggled closer to his radiant warmth, and in another minute, fell asleep, because if I was his security blanket, he was mine, too.

Of course, that had been then, this was now, and he hadn’t even sent me a text after I’d walked out on him this afternoon. I didn’t know if he’d show up at seven, or what I’d get when he did.

And if you think that might have excited me a little…well, color me guilty. I’d been right to say no, and I reserved the
right
to say no. You bet I did. That didn’t mean I wasn’t imagining the consequences of having said no, or that the tingles weren’t hitting me like sharp little shocks at the suggestions my naughty brain conjured up in answer to that interesting question.

The dirty truth was that it was more for Hemi than for Nathan that, at five-thirty on that endless afternoon, after a final check-in call with Karen, I stopped in the ladies’ room, site of my most recent disaster, did some hasty freshening up, dabbed on a little more perfume, and headed down to the lobby.

Nathan was leaning against one of the polished granite walls when I showed up, a dark, casually elegant figure typing on his phone with an uncharacteristically serious expression on his dark, handsome face.

“Hey,” I said when I reached him and he still hadn’t noticed me.

He looked up, his expression clearing a bit, and said, “Hey.”

Well, that was a great start. I said, “OK, what? Job got you down?” I resisted the idea that it was awkwardness with me. He’d worked with me for nine months, we were friends, and surely
Nathan
wouldn’t treat me differently now.

Of course he wouldn’t. It was probably about the job, just like it always was with Hemi. Nathan had been promoted to full-fledged Publicity Associate a few months earlier, a much-deserved jump. Despite his laid-back attitude, he had a knack for the work like nobody I’d ever seen, and I could tell he enjoyed it.

“Ha,” he said. “The job? I should be asking
you
about that, from what I hear.”

“Oh. News gets around, I see.”

“Well, yeah. If you’re going to post your political manifesto to the entire marketing department and torpedo their whole campaign, not to mention the interesting aftermath? That would tend to happen.”

“What interesting aftermath?” The Mean Girls had talked about what they’d said in the ladies’ room? Surely not. Talk about torpedoing. You didn’t have to know Hemi well at all to know how
that
would have gone over with him. He got mad if somebody
looked
at me wrong.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Being kept after school to bang erasers?”

I sighed and
didn’t
blush. “Oh. That. I wasn’t kept after school. I cannot believe people. Let’s go. I’ll tell you about it, if you want to hear. Except that you already have.”

“I could hear it again from the horse’s mouth. Beats talking about me.”

Really? That was odd. At that moment, though, I spotted Gabrielle coming out of the elevator. I hesitated, torn, before I put a hand on Nathan’s arm. “Hang on one sec, will you?” I waited until Gabrielle had caught up to us, then said, “Hey. I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you. Do you know Nathan Forrest?”

She smiled her secretly-amused, no-BS-tolerated smile and told him, “In a manner of speaking. Your reputation precedes you. Gabrielle Washington.”

“We were just going for a drink,” I said. “To celebrate my disastrous day.” I tried to make that sound a whole lot lighter and less catastrophic than it felt, and then threw caution to the winds, risked another rejection, and asked, “Want to come?”

“You know,” she said, “since I’ve officially kissed your ass now—why not?” She glanced at Nathan. “If I’m not interrupting.”

He was looking a whole lot more cheerful himself than he had been a few minutes ago. “Now, would I ever turn that down?”

She studied him, long and slow, then said, “Ah. I heard about that, too. All right, then. I’m coming.”

That was why there were three of us snagging a table in O’Doul’s, thanks to a departing group and Nathan’s quick reactions, and, five minutes later, three of us with wine glasses in front of us, Friday night starting for real, and me realizing how much I’d missed this. Hanging out. Being…normal. Having friends.

After a couple minutes during which Gabrielle and Nathan made some pretty good inroads on their wine and I worked much more slowly on mine, Gabrielle said, “After all that excitement today, I feel like this should be tequila.”

“Tell,” Nathan urged. “That’s the only reason I’m here tonight after
my
week, even though Hope’s about impossible to pry anything out of. I’m hoping you’re easier.”

“I know you are,” Gabrielle said.

He grinned. “Oh, yeah. That’s what I’m talking about. Tell.”

She staged a performance, then, working through her wine along the way and loosening up with every sip. She described the meeting, and the moment when I’d started to talk, as if it had been a whole lot more exciting than it had actually been. She ended up by jumping to her feet, pounding the table with a fist, throwing her arms wide, and proclaiming, “This is for the skinny-ass little white girls like me. For the brown people, the wheelchair-bound, the sisters with junk in the trunk, and our brave veterans home from war. This is for the downtrodden people, the real people. This is for the world. This is… For Every Body!” By which point, Nathan was hanging onto the edge of the table and laughing his handsome head off, and I’d long since stopped protesting and succumbed to my own fit of the giggles.

“I shouldn’t laugh,” Nathan said, straightening up as Gabrielle sat down again, looked with disappointment at her empty glass, and accepted my nearly full one as a substitute. “My mother was a model. Family disloyalty. But
damn,
girl,” he told me. “Do you have to live dangerously?”

“Apparently I do,” I said, some of the laughter dying away. “Since I went from bad to worse after that.”

“Uh-oh,” Nathan said. “If we’re going to get into it, I feel sure that I need more wine. Who else?” Gabrielle waved her hand in the air, and he headed to the bar.

“OK, go,” she said as soon as he took off. “Details.”

“Uh…details about what?”

She made a beckoning motion with her hand. “Come on. You’re not that slow. Nathan. Girlfriend? Status? Details? Let’s go, because that is
fine.”

“Girlfriend, yes, last time we talked,” I admitted, because the Girl Code was a thing, too. “But he’s not acting like it tonight, is he?”