by Lila Monroe
“Fine,” I managed after a few stunned seconds, trying not to openly gape at the robot faultily programmed to portray a Portia-like being—that still made more sense than Portia being nice, right? She’d never supported my relationship with Grant, even knowing it was a hoax all along. “Um, I mean. You know. Fine.”
If this had really been Portia, she would have taken this opportunity to issue a stinging insult about my capability for stringing words together into a sentence of comprehensible English.
But the genetically modified shape shifter currently wearing Portia’s skin just smiled sympathetically—an actual smile! It stretched the length of her lips and everything!—and said, “It’s difficult, isn’t it? Oh, the press are such animals. And they never stop to think how you might feel, do they?”
I listened intently for the sound of the Twilight Zone theme music. It stubbornly refused to play. “Uh, no? I guess?”
“I think you’re holding up marvelously, myself,” she said, giving me a supportive little squeeze of the arm. “Shockingly classy. And your parents?”
“What about my parents?” I demanded, suddenly sure I knew where this was going. Portia had found out about all their hippy-dippy nonsense, and this nicey-nice act was just to throw me off-balance before she hit me with a really cutting one-liner about their organic toilet paper or something.
Portia just blinked innocently, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “Are they well? I do hope they’re well. It can be so stressful, when a young person you care for is first encountering the rocks and shoals of fortune.”
“Uhhh, they’re fine.” Now I was really thrown for a loop. “Holding up great. Eating a lot of quinoa.”
“Really?” Portia said with so much enthusiasm I was worried she might burst a blood vessel. “I’ve heard simply wonderful things about that. You must ask them to pass along some recipes for my chef.”
“Er…okay?”
“Well, I must be going!” she trilled. Honest to God trilled. And then she clasped my hand earnestly. What the hell was this? “My dear, I wish you the very best.”
She must be more relieved than I ever thought possible that Grant and I were kaput. Sure, it wasn’t the best PR move for Grant and the company, but he was free and clear of me now and I was no longer a financial liability nor a smudge on their good family name. No wonder Portia was in such a good mood. Too bad I wasn’t.
Portia swept out of the bathroom, leaving me with but one thought in my severely rattled head:
What the fuck?
29
There were probably dungeons and torture chambers more intimidating than the executive boardroom, but I’d certainly never come across any. The dark walnut of the long table gleamed malevolently, and the dim wall sconces definitely added to the Pit of Despair vibe.
Standing and sitting around the room were plump, self-important men who looked as though they’d been born in their thousand dollar suits, they seemed so at ease with the power they held. The room was long and narrow, my seat the farthest from the door and thus the farthest from escape.
And of course seated at the opposite end of the table, like a king about to pronounce royal decree, was Grant.
The second I stepped into the room, Grant’s eyes had snapped towards me; his head had remained still, as if he were a wolf tracking me with his ice-blue eyes, not wanting to give away his intent with movement. His tie matched his eyes, made them seem even brighter, like lasers that could cut straight through me. I could feel his gaze burning along the lines of my body as I took my seat, trying not to feel the flush of heat it awakened between my legs.
Our eyes met, and again I saw that flicker—of the old Grant, the one who’d accidentally driven us straight into a duck pond on a souped-up golf cart, the one who I’d beaten at video games, the one who’d laughed with me and moaned my name and pulled my hair and—but then he looked away again, his jaw set, his neck gone stiff with tension.
“So you’ve deigned to join us,” he said coldly, without glancing at me again, even though a peek at my watch told me I still had five minutes before the meeting officially started. “And where are we on the projections for the next quarter?”
“Well, the situation’s growing in complexity because—”
“I didn’t ask about the situation, Miss Newman,” he cut me off, his voice hard. All other chatter in the room dropped to dead silence. “I asked about the projection.”
“I’m just trying to explain—”
“Do let us know when you are actually able to explain, instead of simply trying,” Grant said, already dismissing me. “In the meantime, if anyone else has actually prepared for this meeting…”
There was a sudden flurry of movement and sound as the others began to address the first item on the agenda, but I couldn’t raise my head to meet anyone’s eyes, let alone listen to their words and come up with appropriate responses. Unshed tears stung my eyes, and my cheeks burned with humiliation. That asshole—he had no right—I was going to—to—to—
Worse than the fact that Grant had been so unspeakably cruel I couldn’t even think of an appropriate retaliation was the fact that some small traitorous part of my brain—no, who was I kidding, my brain had nothing to do with this—was actually aroused.
Even as I longed to storm off and have a good cry in my office, my mind was assaulted by mental images of Grant in that dark suit, taking control, ordering me to my knees…maybe he’d slowly unwrap that blue tie from around his neck, tease the soft silk fabric across the sensitive skin at the tops of my breasts, before tying it tightly around my wrists and—
I felt myself growing lightheaded, my thighs tensing, and I tried to shove my thoughts back toward the meeting. I couldn’t think about this, not now. I couldn’t think about Grant’s deep, dark voice demanding, about me complying. I couldn’t think about how I might pay him back for his pleasurable tyranny…
Dammit! I couldn’t let myself think about that. I had to focus. Baby steps. People were talking, focus on the people talking. Portia was talking. Okay, Portia was talking, so what was Portia—
Wait a minute. Portia?
What the hell was Portia doing at an executive meeting?
“In summary,” Portia said, “While our performance in some areas has been heartening, questions remain. Why have we not made more payments on the Jankowski Project loan? Why aren’t we pursuing more cost-cutting measures?”
“I sent you the report on cost-cutting,” Grant said dismissively. “We’re doing all we can to reduce waste and eliminate expenses without cutting into the quality of life of our employees. The Jankowski Project loan is due to be paid off within five years, which is a perfectly acceptable timeline. Of course, if you think you see other areas of potential improvement, you’re welcome to send an e-mail to me or the project manager. Moving on—”
“One moment,” Portia interrupted with an apologetic look on her face. Her face looked a little uncertain about how an apologetic look was supposed to go, but she conveyed it pretty well considering that it was probably the first time in her life she’d ever had to try it. “I know we were just having an interesting discussion with Mr. Hines here—” she gestured languidly at CFO—“about our expenditures. Are the revenues coming in from the Costa Rican plan really offsetting the costs of the relocation packages we offered to the employees—”
“It’s a loyalty building tool,” Grant said soothingly, as if he were explaining a complicated math problem to a stressed-out child. He didn’t seem at all concerned that Portia had been chatting up his chief financial officer behind his back. I frowned. What the hell was he thinking?
Portia shot Hines a look I almost didn’t catch, and he nodded. Grant wasn’t even looking at them.
Where the hell was his brain today?
“If I may just ask,” Portia said, a slight nervous titter—ha, I’d be willing to bet that that nervousness was as genuine as a street corner Rolex; that woman was up to something—she batted her l
ashes. “How you feel the strategic plan aligns with the newest health insurance coverage increases for the housekeeping staff—”
“Portia, I promise Jorge and his mop will never splatter your French silk again,” Grant drawled, cracking the first real smile I’d seen all day. Despite everything, the sight of it lifted my heart a fraction. He could still smile, after all. “I’m not going take away everyone’s dental because you had to attend a premiere with a bit of mud on your hem.”
Portia smiled, but this time the brittleness was plain. She was barely restraining herself from tearing him a new one.
Grant went on. “I believe the next item on the agenda is the impact of the new tariffs…”
He trailed off, letting one of the division heads leap in and carry the thread of the discussion. Outwardly he appeared to be paying attention, nodding every once in awhile at a particular point, but I could see his eyes glazing over. He was distracted, completely checked out. What the hell was going on with him?
Maybe Kate had had a point—
“And now I’ll be turning it over to Miss Newman,” a voice said.
I snapped to attention. “What?”
“Care to join us, Lacey?” It was no longer the division head who had been talking when last I checked into the conversation, but Jim Baker, a guy I knew mostly from the times he had stopped into Jacinda’s office to bond with her over a discussion of how terrible I was. He was smirking, but there was no time to get angry over that as sheer terror flooded my veins—I’d been so absorbed in the weird Portia thing that I totally hadn’t kept track of the flow of the meeting.
“Uh, right,” I said, trying to dart my eyes discreetly around the table to pick up clues about where the meeting had been. A flow chart, some notes on the expansion of our Los Angeles office—okay, okay, I could do this. “Sorry.”
I called up my PowerPoint on the projector, straightening my back and trying not to let my nervousness show as I stood and began my presentation on the publicity aspect of adding a new wing to our second-busiest location. “I thought we’d set the stage with some billboards and viral marketing, followed by ten-second TV spots highlighting job growth and local culture. As you can see, I’ve based the timeline on the 2005 San Antonio situation—”
“Unacceptable,” Grant interrupted. “That was a decade ago. It’s a completely different business culture now.”
“Yes,” I said, trying not to show how flustered I was as I skipped to the PowerPoint slide showing my research, “but as you can see, that’s more than made up for by the commonalities between—”
“What I can see is that you’ve been entrusted with a position and failed to deliver,” Grant shot back. “You’re obviously not prepared.”
“That’s not true,” I shot back, feeling my voice start to shake with anger. “I am prepared, and if you’d let me get one word in—”
“I’ve let you get plenty of words in, Miss Newman,” Grant said, not raising his voice a single decibel. Cool disdain dripped from every syllable. “But we’re short on time, so please, sit. You’re done here.”
I sat down, fuming. I could see the others around me shifting uncomfortably, knowing Grant was out of line but not wanting to say something to their boss. I couldn’t blame them, not really; nobody wanted to get caught in the middle of an ex fight, especially when one half of the fight paid your salary.
It wasn’t really an ex fight, though we were the only ones who knew were weren’t really exes. We were the only ones who knew we had barely been lovers.
But Grant sure was acting like a jilted man.
30
Three hours later, the elevator doors began to close, and I breathed a deep sigh of relief. That had been hell, but I had gotten through it, and I was still breathing. I could say that much. And I had seven stories of solitary elevator-riding to decompress before having to put my public face back on.
The walls might have been glass, but being twenty stories off the ground did wonders for privacy. I scrubbed at my face with the heel of my hand, feeling the gritty remnants of my makeup. I just wanted to curl up and take a nap. But there was still so much to do.
I took another deep breath. Focus on the bright side. The worst part of today was over, and there was only mindless busywork to fill the remaining hours. For now at least, it was all over—
A strong hand caught the door and arrested its movement. A second later, Grant Devlin slid inside, and suddenly the luxuriously large elevator seemed a whole lot smaller.
He insinuated himself next to me as the door glided shut, despite the fact that there was about ten square feet of rich carpet floor to take advantage of.
But he still wouldn’t look at me.
He pressed a button—five. What the hell did he need to do on accounting? I wondered if he had just panicked and pressed a button to not have to get off on the same floor as me. One glance at his stony face, however, and I had to admit that that seemed unlikely.
The elevator descended, so slowly that I thought I might scream. I stared at the changing view of doors and walls, trying not to look at Grant next to me. Trying not to think of what to say if he spoke to me. Trying not to count the seconds until I could flee—oh God, what if the elevator got stuck?
Meanwhile, Grant stared straight ahead. I watched his face in the glass reflection. He was doing his best imitation of a statue.
The floors clicked by with a slowness that would have been a credit to Chinese water torture. Sixteen…fifteen…fourteen…
“Is it normal for Portia to be so active in meetings?” I asked just to break the silence. My voice sounded oddly high-pitched and shaky in my ears. “She seemed pretty aggressive today. I thought she was just an advisor.”
“Portia has occasional delusions of power,” Grant said. He sounded bored. “She flutters about like a deranged butterfly for a few days before realizing she’s made no impact, and then she retires to her house for Valium and white wine. You’d know that if you knew anything about this company.”
Now that was completely unfair, and my blood boiled. “Now you look here—”
Faster than I could blink, Grant’s hand slammed the stop button, freezing us between the twelfth and eleventh floors, the glass window bisecting the view of downtown into two rectangles. He grabbed my arms and pressed me up against the wall, his lips a mere fraction from mine as he breathed: “No, you look here, Lacey Newman. Why can’t you just leave me alone? You press and you pry and you pout up at me with those sad little eyes—what are you looking for when you look at me like that? Didn’t you get all you wanted?”
“I—” All my anger had melted away, and along with it all my angry speeches about his behavior. Hell, I think I’d lost ability to string words into sentences altogether.
His full lips were so close to mine, his eyes were the night and I could get lost in them. He smelled like sweat and cinnamon and aftershave and I wanted to taste him, his lips and his neck and that patch of skin just tantalizingly revealed by the undone top button of his shirt. I wanted to unwind his tie and lick that drop of sweat that hovered at his temple…
“I—”
Grant’s eyes grew calculating; he lowered his voice to a rumble, like far off warning thunder before a storm. “Do you miss me, Lacey?”
His hands slid up my arms, leaving goose-bumps in their wake before they wandered over my breasts, his thumb circling my nipple as it grew hard beneath the silk of my shirt and insubstantial lingerie. I shivered under his touch, and he leaned forward to whisper in my ear.
“Have the memories not been enough?”
He set up a slow, torturous rhythm around my right nipple as his other hand slid to my waist, fingertips flirting with the top of my tight pencil skirt. A whimper escaped my throat. His voice deepened, gravel and whiskey and darkness twining in each syllable.
“When you rode off into the sunset, did you go home that night, touch yourself all alone in your bed?” His voice grew rougher yet his touch stayed light, the gentleness
a startling contrast to his coarse words, the combination making me slick between my thighs. “Did you imagine it was me inside you, did you think about how hard I used to fuck you?”
Oh God, I could feel him hardening against my thigh. I could remember how he felt inside me, and I wanted to feel him again, oh God, right here up against this wall—no, we couldn’t—but—
“Did you say my name out loud when you came?” he whispered, and I moaned, unable to respond in any other way to his warm breath on my skin, his strong hands intent on my body, even as his words broke my heart.
“Grant—” I pleaded. Oh, if he could just give me a moment to think, to think about anything except how desperately I wanted him, I could explain.
“Just like that,” he growled. One of his hands had made it under the hem of my skirt, he was pinching and teasing my clit through my thin lingerie. Oh God, his fingers would be slick even through the fabric. “Did you say it just like that?”
I surged upward, grabbing at his collar as I kissed him. I devoured his mouth as if he were going to war, as if he were water in the desert, as if he were the antidote to poison and fear and despair. And he kissed me back as if he were starving for the taste of me, biting my lips possessively, thrusting his tongue into my mouth, claiming me—
Suddenly he pulled away and slapped another button, and the elevator was moving again.
I staggered, dizzy with the loss of him holding me upright, wondering what kind of tension was filling the elevator now. Was that—? Did he—? Should I—? And then we came to a halt, the elevator chiming as the doors slid open.
Grant smirked, as if he had just scored a point in a game he didn’t quite know how to win. He smoothed down his tie and tweaked his cuffs back into place as he stepped toward the doors. “I guess I’ve still got it, Lacey?” he asked, almost as if he wasn’t sure.