Without Limits: Austin (Rugged Riders Book 4) (14 page)

Z
aira was
happy to see her dad back after his absence to take care of some business in Italy. What she was not happy with was having to drag herself into yet another impromptu meeting called by him. Not only did he insist that she be there, he also arranged for all department heads to be there too. What it meant was that Trent Stone would be in attendance as well.

She made sure to sit way on the other end of the table from him, but that turned out to be a bad idea. With him at one end of the long conference room table and her on the other end, it wasn’t easy to keep her eyes off of him. A couple of times, they’d look up at the same time, catching each other staring.

Zaira had gotten over most of her animosity toward Trent even though it had taken a couple days after the incident. She should have known that Trent came with baggage with his magical magnet dick. Just thinking about it sent her blood past the boiling point again.

She reached for the bottled water on the table in front of her and took a long swig. The next time she caught Trent staring at her, she cut her eyes at him. Of course, he wore a poker face that no man or animal could decode.

Her cell phone screen lit up on the screen in front of her. The silent mode didn’t distract anyone’s attention except the guy sitting right next to her, who was also the head of Svelte’s IT department. He was also nosey as hell.

Zaira picked up the phone to read it.

Trent:
Your hair looks beautiful that way
.

Her face became flustered and she looked up quickly to see him fumbling with his iPhone on the table.

She might as well just put everything out on the table for him even though he failed to do that with her. She texted him right back.

Zaira:
I’m going out to dinner tonight with my Dad and Phil, from the graduate school he mentors at.

His response came immediately.

Trent:
Let’s hope Phil doesn’t get any ideas about being with you.

Before she could object or respond, her Dad called for the meeting to begin. His secretary, Ann, adjusted the settings on the projector as he spoke about the items on the agenda. After his summary on a meeting he had with his Italian investors, Zaira sort of drifted off. She perked up at the mention of certain keywords that concerned her, but after taking another look at the agenda, she realized that the accounting and finance portion of the session was further down on the agenda.

“So there are three main things I want us to accomplish between now and December of this year…” her dad continued, clicking from one screen to the next as he spoke.

Not only did Zaira’s mind wander, but her eyes wandered as well.

Hell in a hand-basket! Why did Trent Stone have to be so goddamned fine? He was engrossed in her dad’s presentation, but the dark, serious expression on his face would’ve had any woman swooning. Somehow, he must have known about the meeting because he was groomed well. No five o’ clock shadow on his face. His hairline was groomed. His dark mane was lightly slicked back, and he was dressed to the nines in business attire.

Her gaze dropped to his big hands just as he began to write something on his notepad. Suddenly she got a flash of his car-greased palms gripping her ass as he pounded into her pussy. She grabbed her bottle from the table and chugged down some more water.

Zaira turned her chair slightly to face the presentation, so she wouldn’t be tempted to take another peek at the man whom she both loved and hated. It was a curse to feel both ways at the same time. She was certain of that.

“Now, I have a short video clip to play from Mr. Barrett, one of our investors. He wished he could have been here today, but his flight got mixed up at the last minute,” her Dad informed them.

Ann fiddled with the laptop once again as he spoke.

“He’ll meet with each of you individually sometime next week.”

The last time Mr. Barrett spoke at a Svelte meeting, she was utterly bored. The man was nice and pleasant to his core, but he always took ten minutes to say what could have taken two minutes.

When the video started playing, the screen was black but there were a few audible noises in the background. The voice coming from the speakers didn’t belong to a man. It was a woman speaking.

“Ann, is this the right clip?” Dad asked.

“Yeah, you handed me the diskette this morning to include with the presentation.” Ann rose and walked back over to the laptop. “There must be something wr—.”

When the movie clip came into view, Zaira almost chocked on her own breath. It was her! In the white dress giving Trent oral sex as he sat in his big leather chair. The angle wasn’t quite right, but sure enough her head bobbed up and down in his lap.

There was a chorus and gasps and guffaws across the conference room table.

Was she dreaming this? Imagining it? Her eyes spread wide, nearly popping from the sockets. She was so stunned that she couldn't even breathe. If she passed out from lack of oxygen, she'd be better off.

Obviously she was slipped something in her water, because she could not believe that this was a video of her and Trent exchanging sexual favors.

The images were fuzzy and cloudy as if the clip was taken from somewhere far away, but there was no mistaking that it was Trent’s office. The video advanced and switched to the next clip and she could be seen on top of Trent’s desk with her legs spread wide and his head between it. There was no audio on this one and for once she was glad she’d held her cries of pleasures.

Time stopped. She stopped breathing. She stopped moving. It was possible that she was dreaming, but no…

She was actually dying from embarrassment. What and who had done this to them? Did Trent film her without her knowledge?

Turning swiftly, her eyes met Trent’s equally horrified gaze. His face had gone deathly pale which was odd given his tanned complexion. It looked like he’d seen an alien from outer space the way his mouth was parted in shock. When she looked at him in question, he shook his head.

Ann gasped. “Ah….Mr. Wright…sir?” Ann looked just a embarrassed as Zaira felt. The IT head guy beside her even sported a beet red face with wide eyes.

“Stop it! Stop the clip.” Her dad rose from his chair with veins popping up on his face and neck.

The present hit Zaira like a freight train and she jumped up from her seat and rushed out of the conference room. The furthest she could make it before she burst into tears was the ladies room. Her breath came in pants as she heaved dry air. Resting her back against the bathroom stall, she clutched at her chest.

There was a mix of feelings burdening her heart. Pain. Humiliation. Betrayal. Hate. Hurt.

She wanted to jump in the toilet, flush it down, and swim away.

“Zaira?” Patrice, the receptionist, walked into the restroom and called out to her. “Zaira, are you in here?”

“Patrice, not right now. I can’t.” Her voice was strained.

“I saw what happened. I know you want to get out of here. Let me walk you down to your car.”

Zaira slowly came out of the stall. “Who did this? Who taped us?”

Patrice shook her head. “I don’t know. The video must have gotten swapped somehow. Loyd said it was in his inbox when he arrived this morning. He's called security to gain access to the door logs.”

When they exited the bathroom, Marcus was talking to Trent on the other side of the door. They turned their attention to Zaira and paused their talking.

Trent left Marcus’s side and fell in step beside Zaira and Patrice.

“I am so sorry. I’ll find out who taped us like that,” he said.

“Stay out of it, Trent. Please. I warned you about this.”

It was her fault. Why did she ever insist they have sex in his office?

“Zaira, stop, please…for once. I’m tired of acting like children.” Trent stopped in front of them.

At this point, Zaira was so confused, she would have done anything to hear Trent say that none of this had ever happened and that she’d never seen him and Eve at his condo and they could go on with their lives. One part of her understood that wasn’t going to happen, but another part still held onto hope.

She paused. “What is it, Trent? These past few days have been miserable for me.”

“I want to make it right for you.” He took her forearm gently. “That was our private moment together. No one should have encroached on that, but someone did. I’m not fucking embarrassed about it? You know why?”

She shook her head.

“I love you. I would make love to you and declare my love for you one million times over and over again in front of God and in front of the world. You’re my woman. Do you understand?”

Trent looked both troubled and angry as he bit into his lips, but she understood fully well. She knew him enough to know that he wasn’t lying. His words were truth and she could see it in his eyes and in his demeanor.

Zaira met his gaze, her vision cloudy with tears. “Yes, I understand.”

Her eyes shifted behind him to her dad who stood off to the side. Loyd Wright looked as though he was waiting for his chance to argue. He was impatient. His arms were crossed over his chest. She couldn’t even hold her father’s gaze. She avoided it. She knew that man enough to know that he was pissed.

“I’ll call you later, if that’s okay with you,” Trent said. “I have some business to take care of with your father.”

She nodded just as Patrice pressed her hand to the small of her back and urged her to an open elevator cab.

Only when Zaira was in the privacy of her car did she let go.

This wasn’t all about her. She’d contributed equally. No one told her to spread her leg in a public place for Trent—in his office of all places. Now she would have to face the consequences and so would he.

She had done what she told him she would never do: Come between him and his job at Svelte.

“
Y
ou’re my best friend
, Marcus. You tell me…what would you do?” Trent asked the next night. He rolled around a stress ball in the palm of his hand as he sat facing his long-time friend.

He and Marcus were seated in Marcus’s office at Svelte as Trent weighed his options.

“Loyd believes in you, Trent. He speaks highly of you.” Marcus jabbed at his notepad with a pen for emphasis. “He saw something in you that he saw in no one else when he offered you that position.”

Trent shook his head. “I offered to resign so he could find my replacement and he said no. Then he had the nerve to suggest that Zaira and I were just a fling, just puppy love. Pfft.”

“You and Zaira did part ways for a long time. I can see how he figured you two weren’t really serious. Of course, he knows nothing about what’s going on between you two,” Marcus offered.

“Exactly. I need Zaira in my life and if he has a problem with a leader in his company dating his daughter, I would gladly resign to have her. It feels like maybe he thinks this white boy is good enough to run his company, but not good enough to date his daughter.”

“It’s not about race and you know that. It’s not about social status either. Loyd knows better than that,” Marcus replied.

Trent shrugged. “Well he about damn near called me stupid when we talked.”

“Come on, dude.” Marcus typed away on his laptop as he spoke. “You fucked a woman in your company supplied office on your company supplied desk. Might I add that you were fucking the owner’s daughter? Um….that’s pretty damn stupid, bro.”

Trent threw the stress ball at Marcus who chugged it back at him.

“Man, you are no help,” Trent protested.

“We do stupid things when we are in love. Trust me, I know. I’m not an angel, nor will I ever be. You feel me?”

“I feel ya.” Trent sighed and leaned back in his chair.

“Plus you answered the question,” Marcus added.

“What question?”

“If it were me and I was in love…I mean really really in love, I’d follow my heart,” his most trusted friend offered. “It feels right being with the woman you love. Nothing and no one else matters, except for her.”

Trent nodded. “Yeah, that’s exactly how I feel.”

“You talk to Zaira any since this?”

Trent swallowed. “Yeah but not for very long. She still won't let me inside to talk. It’ll take some time for her. You know how women are about their egos. She was really ashamed about the whole thing. I could tell.”

“I bet she was.”

“Plus, we weren’t really on good terms when the whole thing went down either.”

“What happened with that?” Marcus flipped through a few pages on his desk and scribbled some notes across the top.

“My not so clean past caught up to me. She thought I was stepping out on her.” He sighed. "I need a new timeshare agent, by the way. Know any?"

"I thought you said Eve was the best one at the company and….oh…" Marcus nodded slowly, realization slowly forming in his facial expression. "…I get it. Were you fucking them at the same time?"

Trent sat straight up in his chair. "Hell no! I would never do that to Zaira."

“Well, I’m glad that’s not true. You don’t need to fuck this up for yourself doing something like stepping out.”

Trent placed the stress ball back into its holder on Marcus’s desk.

Something crashed loudly on the other end of the hall. They both jumped up from the their seats and dashed out of the door.

A black shadow vanished around the corner. Thinking someone might be in trouble, Trent ran in that direction. As soon as he turned the corner, the dark frame fled past the elevator doors and down the hall toward the fire escape. That’s when Trent realized that this wasn’t a person in trouble. This was a person trying to prevent being caught.

Except for the red exit signs and a few strobe lights overhead, the stairwell was narrow and not well lit.

The person, who Trent now identified as a male, rushed down the stairs like the devil was after him. He dropped something on one of the steps, paused for one moment, and looked at Trent for one second with his black ski mask covering his face. He decided that the thing on the ground was less valuable than getting away. He high-tailed it again, taking the stairs two at a time.

“Hey!” Trent shouted out, but the man did not pause. As he reached the landing where the object was dropped, he picked it up. It was a folder of pictures taken of the various people who worked there. The individuals in the picture didn’t look like they were aware that someone was taking private shots of them as they went about their day. There were pictures of Trent and Zaira, of Marcus and Tanya, and even of Loyd Wright. Most of the pictures were pretty harmless.

“What the fuck,” Trent exclaimed. He rushed full force down the steps until he caught sight of the man once again.

Just as the man reached the last flight of stairs, he stumbled and hollered out loud.

Trent caught up with him at the bottom of the stairs, grabbed him up by the collar, and slammed him hard against the wall. “Who the fuck are you?”

The man struggled to break loose, hopping on one feet. Evidently, he’d either broken or sprained one of his legs in the fall.

Trent snatched the ski mask off his face to see if he recognized the man. He didn’t.

“What the fuck?” Marcus came up behind them.

“I think we’ve got our trespasser,” Trent said.

The man’s eyes widened, but he didn’t say a word.

“Don’t I know you, man?” Marcus closed the distance between them.

“Check his wallet,” Trent directed.

Marcus opened the man’s trench coat and hunted for his wallet. Sure enough, he had ID on him.

“You stupid fuck,” Trent exclaimed.

“Fuck you,” the man retorted.

Trent bashed the back of his head against the wall. “You obviously don’t know who the hell you’re dealing with? What the fuck are you doing up in our building? You don’t work here.”

A small video camera fell from the deep pocket in his trench coat as Marcus searched for more items to incriminate him.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Marcus whispered. “You’ve got to be kidding me?”

“What?”

Marcus gave no reply as he jabbed the unidentified male hard in the face. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and his body immediately grew limp. Trent didn’t have to worry about holding the man in his custody any longer. As sooner as he released his grip, the dude fell to the floor like a limp biscuit. He was still conscious and very well aware, but his nose was bleeding from the blow.

“Who is this punk?” Trent asked.

Marcus handed Trent the man’s open ID. “Tanya’s ex-boyfriend. Justin. The same sick fuck who leaked Tanya’s sex tape. He used to work here in the accounting and finance department.”

“Fuck. Are you serious?”

“Please,” Justin croaked out. Apparently, the blow didn’t knock him out that long. “I’ll erase the footage. Whatever you want. Just let me go.”

“Did you fucking tape me and my woman?” Trent drove his heel down into Justin’s side.

Justin spoke, but not very audibly. Trent kicked him again, grabbed him by the collar, and dragged him over to the end of the stairwell. His hand wrapped tightly around the intruder's throat.

“Man, do you have a damn mental condition? Do you know who you’re playing with? I will beat your ass within an inch of life.”

Justin made a gurgling noise and Trent realized he was still choking him. He let up his hand.

Justin panted deeply, and then held his palm up. “I…maybe your boy right there shouldn’t steal someone else’s girl and ruin someone else’s career, and maybe you should find a better place to fuck your whore at.”

Trent’s fist connected with bone and cartilage over and over again. The only reason he stopped was because Marcus pulled him away.

“Dude, he’s not worth jail time. Let’s call the cops. This petty shit ain’t even worth it,” Marcus urged, attempting to calm Trent down. “Come on. We’ve got him. Let someone else deal with the rest of him.”

“All right, all right.” Trent shrugged away, still extremely pissed.

The man was on the ground, curled up in a ball unable to move.

Trent turned on the little video recorder as Marcus called the police. Sure enough there was footage of the time he and Zaira had made love in his office. The footage went back months based on the date displayed on the screen. Trent almost upchucked his lunch when the there was film of women working at Svelte using the toilet.

Trent removed the memory stick and pocketed it for evidence, then crashed the camcorder on the concrete next to Justin’s head. Pieces shattered across the floor and some of it hit Justin in the face and he hollered in shock and curled up against a corner of the wall.

“Pray that I never see your face again,” he told Justin.

There was one groan as a reply.

* * *

Z
aira grumbled
when her phone rang on the nightstand. She snatched it up and squinted at the screen. The name on the display read: Tanya. It was also one o’ clock in the morning. What in the hell?

“Jesus, can I get some sleep?” she begged before accepting the call.

“Zaira,” Tanya called breathlessly.

“What’s up? Girl, my clock must be messed up because you cannot be calling me this early in the morning.”

“Trent’s at the jail.”

Zaira shot up in the bed and her mind stalled as she registered what Tanya was telling her. “What!”

“Trent and Marcus were taken down to the jail,” she confirmed. “Don’t worry though.”

“Don’t worry?” Zaira slipped out of bed and threw on a robe.

“They caught the intruder and peeping tom at Svelte. It was Justin, Zaira. Justin was the one filming us and taking all these pictures. I am
sooo
sorry. This was all because of me. He was trying to get back at me and Marcus.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, grabbing a pair of tennis shoes and slipping them on. “Who the fuck is Justin?”

“My ex. The one that leaked the sex tape of me.”

“Oh…” Zaira had remembered a long time ago when Justin sent a videotape to Marcus of Tanya’s sex footage. “What does this have to do with Trent in jail?”

“Trent and Marcus beat him up pretty badly. No charges have been filed, but they were taken in for questioning because of the severity of Justin’s injuries.”

“Oh, my God,” Zaira breathed. “I’m on the way there.”

“I’ve just pulled out onto the interstate. I’ll see you there.”

When Zaira arrived at the police station, the first thing she saw was Marcus trying to console Tanya. She started to barge in to help out, but over the months she realized that if anyone could reassure and calm Tanya down, it was Marcus. Those two had become two peas in pod—the perfect pair.

To her surprise, her father was there. Both Loyd Wright and Trent were deep in conversation with a cop who was taking notes.

When Trent saw her, he stopped talking and came rushing over. Zaira immediately wrapped her hands around him, realizing that if anything ever happened to Trent, she’d be devastated.

He kissed her lips softly and then threaded his fingers with hers. “You okay?”

“I should be the one asking you,” Zaira said. “I’m so glad nothing bad happened to you and Marcus tonight.”

“Well, we’ve got the asshole who mailed the video of us to Loyd,” he said.

“Good.” She frowned. “That was a total pervert and sleaze bag move.”

“Not only that, he was also wanted by the police for some other misdemeanor crimes.”

“It’s the same guy that threatened Marcus with Tanya’s tapes, right?”

Trent nodded. “I think dude wanted to take down everyone connected to Tanya and Svelte. He was out for revenge.”

“Oh man,” she exclaimed. “So he was just sneaking around and breaking in trying to get the scoop on whatever and whomever.”

“Yeah and luckily he didn’t get far. I’m not saying that the petty shit he found wouldn’t have turned into the latest city scandal, but he could’ve caused a lot of issues if this had continued.”

At the moment, Zaira’s father came to join them.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said. “I hope this didn’t scare you too much.”

“No, I’m just glad everyone’s okay.”

Loyd shook his head indifferently. “I can believe I ever trusted that guy enough to hire him.”

“That wasn’t your fault, Loyd. I believe he has some kind of mental issues,” Trent chimed in.

“Well, it’s a good thing that I have my most trusted on board at the company now. You and Marcus are like family to me. We’ll still get better security, but I’m relieved now that Justin has been caught and we can move on.”

“I won’t let you down,” Trent said.

“I believe that. That’s why I chose you.”

Zaira smiled as she witnessed the exchange between two men that she loved the most in the whole world. This was confirmation that they’d reconciled.

“Listen, um…” her father started. “Now that I know about you and Zaira’s relationship, we’re going to have to talk more…about non-business things too. I thought we could keep it business, but you’re dating my daughter and all, so…” He shuffled nervously from foot to foot. “I thought you were best friends and um…and then…”