Her Favorite Rival (22 page)

She turned away and started down the garden path. She beeped her car open and slid behind the wheel. Zach remained silhouetted in his lit doorway, waiting for her to leave. She started her car, then pulled out into the street. Only when she’d turned the corner and was safely on her way home did she let out the breath she’d been holding.

Holy bloody hell.

An incredulous, slightly hysterical laugh bubbled up her throat. She’d had wild, crazy, hot, consuming monkey sex with Zach Black. The Man With the Golden Ass. Three times!

Three times. Who does it
three times
in one night?

Her euphoria lasted all the way home, following her into the shower as she washed the last traces of him from her body. There were a few more lasting reminders that he’d had his wicked way with her, however. A small suck mark on her inner thigh, along with a slight irritation from his beard on her belly. There was also a sort of general tenderness downstairs—more an awareness, really, that her body had been well and truly loved.

Way to break the drought, Mathews
.

Afterward, she toweled herself dry and slipped into bed. She pictured Zach doing the same thing across town, lying in his sex-rumpled sheets, and smiled.

It had been stupid to go over there. Crazy, even, given the way Whitman was hacking and burning his way through the head-office staff at present. Now was not the time to slip up, in any way.

But she couldn’t regret it. Wouldn’t. Refused to, in fact. It had been for her, and she’d needed it, and it had been
good.

So, no regrets.

Closing her eyes, she rolled onto her side and prepared to dream of Zach.

Definitely no regrets.

* * *

Z
ACH
DID
ALL
the things he’d normally do come Monday morning. Woke, pulled on his running gear, hit the road for a five-kilometer run. Returned home, ate breakfast, showered, dressed, drove into work.

A normal day, like any other working day. Except...

He was aware of a certain urgency within himself to set foot inside the office. His gut was jumpy, and he had to wipe his palms down the side of his pants when he got out of his car.

Stupid, but he was nervous about seeing Audrey. And excited. And, of course, freaking turned on.

Nothing’s going to happen, dude. Calm the hell down.

He took a couple of deep breaths as he ascended the stairs to the main level, willing his body to relax. They’d had their time-out, and now it was business as usual. Which meant the dirty little voice in the back of his mind that was urging him to get her alone and naked again was going to be steadfastly ignored, no ifs, buts or maybes.

Zach made his way to the merchandising department, then stopped in his tracks when he saw that Audrey’s light was already on.

Immediately all other thought left his mind. Of their own accord, his feet changed direction. Twenty seconds later, he stopped in her office doorway, telling himself that it was far better that they get this first meeting over and done with when no one else was around than do it later when there would be dozens of witnesses.

It was a good excuse to allow himself to do what he wanted—look at her and talk to her and breathe in the subtle vanilla-floral scent of her perfume.

She glanced up immediately. There was a flicker of something in her eyes when she saw him, then her expression became smoothly blank. Her professional mask, the one he’d become so used to over the past six months. He knew what lay behind it now, though. Passion and laughter and sass.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey yourself.”

“How was the rest of your weekend?”

Her gaze slid sideways, as though to confirm that no one else was around to hear that they’d spent part of the weekend together.

“There’s only us,” he reassured her.

Her shoulders relaxed. “I didn’t do much. How about you?”

“Just took it easy. I’m not as young as I used to be. I needed to recharge a little.”

A smiled tugged at her mouth. “Really? I didn’t notice any stamina issues.”

“Correct answer, Ms. Mathews. You say all the right things.”

She was grinning now, sitting back in her chair, waggling her pen from side to side playfully. She was wearing an oyster-gray silk shirt, the fabric draping her breasts enticingly. “Funny you should say that, since you’re the one who has a way with words.”

Lured by the mischievous glint in her eyes, he entered her office fully, resting an elbow on the filing cabinet near the door.

“Yeah? What way is that?”

She was a little flushed and he could tell she was enjoying their wordplay as much as he was.

“You know.”

He was about to respond when a voice piped up behind him. “Sorry. I got caught in a traffic jam because some idiot ran out of gas and blocked a whole lane. Who does that in this day and age?”

His smile dropped as he glanced over his shoulder to see Lucy standing in the doorway.

“I know you wanted to get a head start on the pricing report.” Lucy’s gaze was on Audrey. “Hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

“Of course not. Zach and I were talking about some stuff that came up at the conference.” Audrey shuffled some papers around on her desk. Very busy.

“Oh. Right.” Lucy’s glance bounced between him and Audrey. “I hope I’m not interrupting?”

“You’re good,” he said easily. At least, he hoped it sounded easy. Privately, he was kicking his own ass. If Lucy hadn’t announced herself immediately, there was no telling what she might have overheard.

Audrey’s tense expression said she was thinking the same thing. So much for business as usual.

“I’ll leave you to it.” He gave Audrey a brief nod.

She returned the acknowledgment grimly.

When he was back at his desk, he tapped out a quick email to her.

Sorry. Won’t happen again.

She responded immediately:

No, it won’t.

He rested his fingers on the keyboard, driven to write something else. Anything to maintain the connection. Then he dropped his hands into his lap.

He needed to let it go. They were colleagues, and they might be becoming work friends, and for a few short hours they’d been lovers.

God, had they been lovers.

But it had been a one-night-only thing, and it was done, and he should never have let himself stop by her office like that.

Stupid. Really freakin’ stupid.

He’d thought it would be easy, slipping back into their old relationship at work, especially given the risks attached to their little fling becoming public.

He’d been wrong. Big-time.

He knew what she looked like naked now. He knew that she made soft, desperate noises when she came, that she arched her back off the bed and dug her nails into his skin. He knew that she liked it when he was a little rough with her, and he knew that he could drive her crazy if he put his mind to it.

He couldn’t un-know any of the above. It was burned into his memory, along with the feel of her and the smell of her and the taste of her.

Which meant work was probably going to be a living hell for the next little while.

The thing was, even knowing that, he wouldn’t take back Saturday night for anything.

Shaking his head at his own perversity, he dragged the top file from his in-tray. He had an hour to kill before he made his weekly call to Vera, and he planned on using it productively.

* * *

L
UCY
WAS
TALKING
, but Audrey struggled to take in the words. All she could think about was that moment—that horrible, gut-clenching moment—when Lucy had appeared behind Zach, interrupting the world’s most suggestive conversation.

She was almost certain Lucy hadn’t heard enough to jump to the right conclusion—her assistant wasn’t a good enough actor to cover a realization of that magnitude—but the sheer closeness of the call made Audrey more than a little sweaty.

She’d given herself a little lecture about keeping things on track before she came into work today, too. A little pep talk about how, if she behaved the way she always did, no one would ever clue in that she had spent several hours in Zach’s arms on the weekend. Then he’d appeared in her office doorway looking smoking hot in a dark pinstriped suit and deep blue shirt that was almost an exact match for his eyes, and every nerve ending in her body had gone on high alert, like a well-trained dog responding to a high-frequency whistle.

Every good-girl, sensible vow she’d made had gone out the window when he’d smiled and looked at her with that knowing, dirty glint in his eye.

He was irresistible. Utterly charming and sexy and magnetic, and whatever puny power she’d had to ignore him had been well and truly incinerated by their marathon session on Saturday night.

So much for treating him the same as usual—she’d be lucky if her underwear didn’t catch fire every time he was in the vicinity.

“...so, if you like, I can double-check that, but I think it should be okay.” Lucy waited expectantly, pen hovering above her notepad.

Audrey shook her head, thoroughly ashamed of herself. Lucy had gone to all of the trouble of coming into work early—overtime she would not be paid for—to help her out in a vain attempt to clear some of the backlog they were all struggling to deal with since Whitman had made his cuts. And all Audrey could do was zone out in a sex-induced zombie state.

Pathetic. And more than a little worrying.

“Luce. Sorry. Hold that thought—I’m going to powder my nose.” Audrey sprang to her feet before her assistant could respond, circling her desk and heading for the door. Once she was in the privacy of the ladies’ room, she locked herself in a cubicle and sat on the closed lid.

You need to get with the program. Now. You cannot afford to drop the ball at the moment.

She took some deep breaths.

She was better than this. Smarter and stronger. Good sex was not going to rob her of her focus and determination. It simply wasn’t.

Feeling much calmer, she washed her hands and returned to her office.

“Right. Where were we?”

Resolve got her through the morning and into the afternoon. Then she looked at her calendar and realized she had a department meeting scheduled at three. The first since the layoffs. In other words, mandatory.

Well, damn. The last thing she wanted to do was spend two-plus hours sitting in the meeting room with Zach and a bunch of other people. Not today, of all days. End of the week, sure, she’d be good to go by then. But today she needed some time to get her game face on.

Unfortunately, there was no getting out of the meeting, so at three she buckled on her big-girl panties, grabbed the relevant files and reports, and made her way to the conference room. As luck would have it, Zach was already ensconced at one end, and she chose to sit on the same side of the table at the opposite end so she wouldn’t have to look at him for the whole afternoon.

As a strategy it was reasonably effective, except that every time Zach spoke, a little shiver of lust ran down her spine as she remembered him whispering dirty somethings in her ear as he moved inside her.

“You want my cardigan?” Megan asked quietly an hour into the meeting.

“No, thanks, I’m good,” Audrey said.

“You’re sure? You keep shivering.”

“I’m good,” Audrey repeated, willing away the heat that was flooding her cheeks.

Clearly, she seriously sucked at flying under the radar. Something it might have been good to know
before
she’d made the decision to turn up on Zach’s doorstep for a booty call.

She concentrated fiercely on appearing normal for the rest of the meeting, even if her mind was racing in ten different directions at once.

“Okay, we’re done,” Gary finally announced. “Don’t forget the Makers golf tournament is next Wednesday. We’re at Cape Schanck this year, so there will be transport provided if you need it. Jenny’s got the list of teams for anyone who is interested.”

Audrey barely managed to not roll her eyes as people began to file out of the room. She hated the golf tournament. As far as she was concerned, it was a big old waste of time and money, and it felt like a particularly egregious waste of both when so many of their colleagues had been given their marching orders and they were all still scrambling to pick up the extra load. The powers that be, however, thought that walking around a big swath of grass chasing an itty-bitty white ball was a great way to maintain relationships with their supply base, which meant she had no choice but to put on a pair of stupid shoes and pants and go mix it up on the golf course.

Blurg.

“I hate golf day,” Megan said as they left the room.

“Tell me about it. I bet it rains again like last year.”

Audrey could still recall the sheer misery of completing eighteen holes in the drizzling rain. Oh, the humanity.

“It’s times like these that I remember hardware is a male-dominated industry,” she said.

“I know. I would totally make it a spa day if we ruled the roost,” Megan said.

“Followed by a shopping spree.”

They gave each other a jokey high-five as they parted ways. Audrey diverted by Jenny’s desk to find out who she’d be playing with next Wednesday. She was pleasantly surprised to see she’d been teamed with three of her favorite suppliers. At least the day wouldn’t be a total bust.

She worked until seven before packing up her desk for the day. As luck would have it, Zach and Gary were about to enter the stairs to the parking garage as she approached. She slowed her pace, hoping they’d get the hint, but Gary stood to one side, gesturing for her to go first.

“After you, madam,” he said with his usual friendly smile.

“Thanks.”

She carefully didn’t look at Zach as she slipped into the stairwell, but she was preternaturally aware of the fact that he followed her down the stairs.