Scream My Name (3 page)

She shook her head. No time for those thoughts.

She unconsciously began to drum her fingers on the kiosk and stared at his broad, retreating back before her lips stretched into a wide smile.

“Anything else we can do for ya, Miss?” Charlie number one asked, a frown on his aged face as he stared down at her.

“No. Thank you, men, for your help. I’ll just call next week and reschedule with Mr. Swabb.” With a nod in their direction she quickly walked away.

Leila turned as though walking toward the exit. She glanced over her shoulder and once the old men were no longer looking in her way, she quickly reversed her steps and walked briskly toward the closing elevator.

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do now,” she murmured and stepped inside the elevator. “I’m going to pay Mr. Brandan Walters a little visit.”

A
fter Brandan entered his inner office, he casually tossed his Stetson in a nearby chair.

He sat down in the oversize leather chair behind his desk, picked up the phone, and buzzed his assistant.

“Judith, what do I have scheduled for this afternoon?” he asked.

“Why don’t I bring in your calendar when I bring your coffee, Mr. Walters?” she asked, and Brandan agreed.

Today was Friday, the last Friday of the month, and he wanted to break away early if possible so he could make it to Austin before the rush hour traffic hit.

He had a full weekend ahead and the past few weeks he hadn’t had the chance to get away, kick back with a beautiful woman, and leave business behind.

This weekend he had plans with a beautiful hot blonde he’d met the previous week, and he wanted to spend the entire weekend letting her prove she could do all the things her body promised it could deliver.

Damn, it had been too long since he’d been with a woman. By choice. He’d been restless lately, and although he’d had plenty of opportunities, he’d declined the many offers thrown his way, much to his partners’ amusement.

Damian told him he needed to stop “ho-ing” around, settle down, and find the right woman. And after he’d stopped laughing at
that
thought, Mateo accused him of being in a sexual slump, and claimed the cure wasn’t abstinence—as their happily married partner, Damian claimed—but the exact opposite. His advise was to go out and saturate himself with women, all the while laughing at Damian’s assertions of true love and commitment to one woman.

Whatever the answer, he needed…something, he thought. Something that would ease away the tension that had been steadily growing the longer he went without a woman.

If he thought about it, the last time he’d been with a woman had been shortly before he’d started communications with Leila James, the owner of one of the properties he and his partners were trying to buy.

Just the thought of the woman, and her sharp little emails—emails that had started off professional, telling him she had no plans to sell her property, but had grown progressively sharp—provoked him.

A reluctant laugh burst from his mouth when he thought of their last exchange. She’d emailed him with her usual in-your-face attitude, and he’d shot back an answer, telling her they’d simply build around her and her little shop. He even referred to Dr. Seuss’s tale of the two stubborn creatures who refused to see logic, oblivious to the fact that the world went on, with or without their assent.

Well…she then called back, and left a blistering message on his voicemail, basically calling him a money hungry, no sex-life having dirt bag whose only aspiration in life was to trump on small business owners’ dreams.

She’d told him that if he had had a life, he’d have better things to do with his time than harass her. He’d definitely have better things to do than to read Dr. Seuss. Instead of screwing around with her, he’d be out getting screwed by a woman.

“Damn,” he muttered, and shook his head. “Hell, maybe there’s some truth to that,” he murmured out loud.

It had gotten to where he looked forward to their exchanges, and if a few days went by and he’d not heard from her, he’d shoot her an email.

Always polite, to the point…with just a bit of bite. She seemed to like it that way, he thought with a laugh. More than once he’d contemplated calling her and inviting her out to have a drink where they could talk about the issue, but had refrained from doing so.

He had an image of what she looked like, how she would be, firmly in his mind. He wasn’t ready to chance that the reality, and his fantasy of her might be nothing alike. The conversations, emails though they were, had been the most engaging conversations he’d had with a woman in too long a time.

Thinking back, her voice, low, smoky, deep, and sexy as hell, had turned him on more than any of his recent dates had. He had to admit to a certain anticipation if and when they ever met.

As he waited for Judith to appear, his thoughts left Leila James and went to the woman in the lobby. He smiled, the edges of his lips pulling up in a purely masculine way.

She’d immediately caught his attention the minute he’d entered the lobby and laid eyes on her long leggy body.

Even from the back he could see her agitation as she spoke with the Charlies.

Brandan chuckled. Hell, anybody not familiar with the Charlies would get agitated with the pair and their antics.

He’d checked her out, starting at the tips of the sexy stiletto-heeled boots on her feet that added at least three inches to her already impressive height. His gaze had then traveled up the length of her long shapely legs—legs that had instantly wrought images of being wrapped around his waist—to her softly rounded hips, past the sexy indentation of her waist, and onward to small, perfectly rounded breasts pressed tightly together, highlighting the soft swell of her dark honey-colored cleavage.

She had the most striking face he’d ever seen. Bold features, full sensual lips, light brown eyes with a ring of gold around her irises, tilted up slightly at the corners, giving her a mischievous look.

High sculpted cheekbones, and a small nose with the slightest hint of a dimple at the end, completed the picture of bold, unabashed beauty.

She’d had her long hair in what looked like upswept dread-locs, yet several had defiantly escaped the sophisticated updo, and for a moment, Brandan had wanted to wrap his fist around the errant locs and pull her to him.

“Mmmm,” Brandan smiled.

The memory alone was enough to make a man forget his responsibilities and hunt out the sexy, statuesque beauty.

Damn.

It didn’t help matters when he’d caught her large, sleepy eyes roaming over him, head to toe. Just as he had been checking out every fine inch out of her.

They hadn’t exchanged a word.

Hadn’t needed to.

They’d been caught in some strange cocoon of their own until one of the Charlies had interrupted. He could still feel the aftereffects.

Hot. Charged. Electric.

Judith, his assistant, walked in his opened door with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand, and balancing his calendar in the other, effectively dousing the directions his thoughts were taking him regarding the woman downstairs, and their strange, sexually-charged encounter.

“I have your calendar and coffee, Mr. Walters.”

She placed the mug of coffee in front of him and sat down in the chair facing his desk, her half lenses perched on the end of her nose as she glanced over his calendar.

Judith was old school, and when it came to organizing Brandan’s calendar, had a tendency to forget such things as spreadsheets and Microsoft Excel.

Neither did she deem it professional to take him up on his many requests for her to call him by his first name. She was all business, from the top of her neatly coiled hair, to the conservative three-piece suit, to the bottom of her appropriately-heeled navy blue pumps.

“Thanks, Judith,” he replied before taking a drink of the coffee she’d sweetened perfectly to his taste.

“Umm…perfect,” he murmured, and was rewarded for his praise with a minute uplift of her thin lips in what he
thought
was a smile.

“Thank you, Mr. Walters,” she replied, and sat very straight on her chair, her legs close together as she perched on the edge of the leather chair.

The way she sat always reminded him of a tiny bird preparing for flight at any moment.

She even looked like a bird, Brandan thought, surreptitiously running his eyes over her small, frail-looking form.

At six feet, six inches tall, he was used to towering over most women, and many men. Judith couldn’t be much taller than five feet, as the tip of her neatly coifed chignon barely reached his midsection. He always felt like a giant next to the small woman.

Although he’d instructed her on her first day working for him five years ago that business attire around the office was casual, Judith continued to wear variations of the same business suit she wore today: dark blue skirt and matching jacket, dress shirt, and sensible shoes.

Nothing like the beauty in the lobby, he thought, his mind again going back to the woman he’d encountered.

“Ahem…are you ready, Mr. Walters?”

Brandan shook his head and felt his cheeks warm. Damn. Caught daydreaming like some schoolboy with a crush.

“Sorry about that, Judith. Just thinking about the downtown project,” he said, though he could have sworn he saw her brow rise as though she could read his thoughts and knew he hadn’t exactly had his mind on acquiring the new commercial property.

He adjusted himself in his chair before he gave Judith his full attention, firmly putting the woman from the lobby out of his mind.

“Yes, well, shall we go over your calendar, sir?”

Leila furtively looked up and down the long hallway, making sure no one saw her. She felt a bit crazy, knowing she was acting way over the top.

One would think she was attempting to break into Harry Winston’s to steal the Hope Diamond the way she was acting.

She checked her watch. It was close to lunch.

After her duck into the elevator to avoid the two Charlies’ watchful eyes, her triumph had been short-lived when she realized she didn’t know which floor held the offices of Sanchez, Walters and Reed. She’d had to do a retreat and regroup, trying to figure how she could find out without going back to the lobby and risk running into either Charlie.

So, she’d done it the hard way.

Thankfully, it was past time that most people used the elevators, after most were settled into their offices, and not yet time for the mass exodus of lunch.

So she’d pressed each button—all thirteen of them—gotten out, and checked each glass door. Most had the name of the company displayed, and only a few times did she actually have to go inside the doors to find out. It was on her sixth try, that it finally hit her: Just ask one of the receptionists which floor held Walters’s business.

She cursed Brandan Walters, mentally blaming him for her unusual denseness, particularly when she found out he was on the top floor.

The penthouse.

Figures, Leila thought with a curl of her upper lip.

That accomplished, she’d thanked God there was no special key to access the top floor.

Now here she was acting like a cat burglar as she crept down the long hallway, her heels sinking into the thick, plush carpet. At the end of the hall a large glass door with a small discrete plaque proclaimed itself to be the office of Sanchez, Walters and Reed.

What was she going to do now?

In her mental figurings and planning, she hadn’t exactly thought of just
what
she was going to do once she reached his office, only that she had to seize the opportunity quickly.

Opportunity for what? that unwanted voice of reason asked. What was she going to do? Storm inside, demand that Brandan see her, and once he did, he’d listen to what she had to say and abandon his plans to buy her out?

Fat chance.

She’d once tried to make an appointment with one of his partners, but to no avail. The man hadn’t even had the decency to return any of her calls.

And then she’d gotten a passive aggressive note from Brandan Walters, explaining that she was the lone owner holding up progress, and it had been on between them, at that point.

The two of them had gone back and forth, first in letters, and then in emails. She’d not gone the route of demanding a face-to-face conference, hadn’t even called him. Call it pride or whatever, but she wasn’t up for being ignored again.

But then he’d likened her to a Dr. Seuss character, and she’d lost it. She called him and had gotten his voicemail. She hadn’t even been aware of what she said to him, she’d been so angry. But she was
sure
it was something that would have had her great-aunt, had she still been alive, washing her mouth out with lye soap.

Although, in his emails, Brandan hadn’t made her feel ignored at all. Truth be told, she had begun to look forward to their emails, his always professional, yet she felt his humor coming through on several occasions.

Particularly when she all but called the man a lowlife, an unscrupulous hustler, out to make that almighty dollar by any means necessary.

Okay, so maybe she’d gone a
tad
too far on that one. But Aunt Sadie’s meant everything to her. It wasn’t about the money. The money they’d offered had now doubled, and the initial offer had been lucrative. She knew some of her neighbors weren’t exactly pleased with her.

Yesterday she’d caught several of them going to Ms. Mayflower’s shop late at night. She knew the woman had never really liked Aunt Sadie because of an old rivalry over some man long forgotten. Her great-aunt had been a beautiful woman and had never settled down with one man, but always had some handsome man calling on her.

But no matter what, she knew her great-aunt never messed around with another woman’s “leftovers,” as her aunt had laughingly once put it. So whatever beef Ms. Mayflower had with Sadie, it had been one-sided at best.

As soon as the offer had come from Sanchez, Walters and Reed, Ms. Mayflower had been the first one to jump on board. When it became known that Leila was against the buyout, that had seemed to spur the old lady on to start a campaign against her.

Leila shrugged it off, putting it to the back on her mind so she could concentrate on the here and now. She straightened her back, and purposely strode toward the door.

She’d figure out a game plan once she was inside.