Taking the Boss to Bed

by Joss Wood

  “But you run, every time. Every time we get close, you bolt.”

  “And that’s something I will try to stop doing,” Ryan told her, a smile starting to flirt with his eyes and mouth. He held out his broad hand to her and waited until she placed hers in it. Jaci sighed at the warmth of his fingers curling around hers. She stared down at their intertwined hands and wondered if she was dreaming. But if she was, surely she would’ve chosen a more romantic setting for this crazy conversation? It was a tiny bathroom in a tiny apartment... It didn’t matter, she’d take it. She’d take him.

  Ryan’s finger under her chin lifted her face up and she gasped at the love she saw in his eyes. No, this was too good to be a dream. “I really don’t want to carry on this conversation in the bathroom, but you’re not getting out of here before I hear what I need to.”

  Jaci grinned and picked up her spare hand and ran her finger over his collarbone, down his chest, across those ridges in his abdomen, stopping very low down. “What do you want to hear? That I love your body? I do,” she teased and saw his eyes darken with passion.

  Ryan gripped her finger to stop it going lower. “You know what I want to hear, Jace. Tell me.”

  When Jaci saw the emotion in his eyes, all thoughts of teasing him evaporated. He looked unsure and a little scared. As if he was expecting her to reject him, to reject them. Her heart, bottom lip and hands trembled from excitement, from love...

  “Ryan, of course I love you. I have for a while.”

  Ryan rested his forehead on hers and she could feel the tension leaving his body. “Thank God.”

  “How could you not know that?” Jaci linked her arms around his neck and placed her face against his strong chest. “Honestly, for a smart man you can be such an idiot on occasion.”

  “Apparently so,” Ryan agreed, his arms holding her tightly. He pulled his head back to smile at her, relief and passion and, yes, love dancing in his eyes. “Come back to bed, darling, and let me show you how much I love and adore you.”

  “You’ve just missed sex,” Jaci teased him on a happy laugh.

  Ryan pushed her bangs off her forehead and rubbed the pad of his thumb across her delicately arched brow. “No, sweetheart, I’ve just missed you.” He grinned. “But hey, I’m a guy, and if you’re offering...”

  Jaci launched herself upward and he caught her as she wrapped her legs around his waist. “Anywhere, anyhow, anytime.”

  Ryan kissed her open mouth, and Jaci’s body sighed and shivered in anticipation. “Can I add that to your contract?” he asked as he backed out of the bathroom into the bedroom.

  Lover, friend, boss...there wasn’t much she wouldn’t do for him, Jaci thought as he lowered her onto the bed and covered her body with his.

  Anything. Anywhere. Anytime.

  * * *

  Much, much later Ryan was back in his jeans and Jaci was wearing his button-down shirt and they were sitting cross-legged on her bed, digging chocolate chip ice cream from the container she’d abandoned earlier.

  What an evening, Jaci thought, casting her mind back over the past few hours. She felt as if she’d ridden a crazy roller coaster of emotion, stomach churning, heart thumping adrenaline, and she’d come out the other side thrilled. Happy. Content. Dopey. Oh, they still had a lot to talk about, but they’d be fine.

  Had he really said that he’d secured funding for Blown Away? Her spoon stopped halfway to her mouth and she didn’t realize that ice cream was rolling off the utensil and dropping to her knee. “Did I hear you say that you have funding for Blown Away?”

  Ryan leaned forward, maneuvered the spoon in her hand to his mouth and ran his thumb over the ice cream on her knee, licking his digit afterward. “Uh-huh.”

  “Do I have to pretend to be your girlfriend or your wife this time?” Jaci teased.

  “No pretending needed this time,” Ryan said, peering into the empty container. “Is that it? Damn! I’m still starving. Don’t you have any real food in this house?”

  “No, I was on the I-hate-men diet. Ice cream and wine only.” Jaci tossed her spoon into the container and placed her elbows on her knees. “Who is your investor, Ry? Did you make nice with Banks?”

  “Hell no! However, I did meet with him. I felt I owed him that.”

  “And?”

  “He ripped into me, which I expected. Afterwards he offered me half of the money, told me that he wanted you off the project and that he wanted creative control.”

  “And you said no. You’d never give him control.”

  Ryan sent another longing look at the empty ice cream container. “That was part of it but not having you as part of the project was the deal breaker. I need real food.”

  He was trying to change the subject, Jaci realized. No chance, buddy. “Ok, so who is this new investor that you found so quickly?”

  Ryan stretched his legs out and placed them on each side of her hips. He leaned forward and dropped his head to nibble on her exposed collarbone. Jaci frowned, pushed his head away and leaned back so that she could see his face. “Stop trying to distract me, Jackson, and keep talking to me.”

  Ryan twisted his lips and tipped his face up so that he was looking at the ceiling. Okay, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that he didn’t want to talk about this, but the sooner he learned that she was the one person he could talk to, the easier the process would get.

  “Chad Bradshaw,” he reluctantly admitted.

  Jaci gasped. “What? Chad? Your father?”

  “You know any other Chad Bradshaw?” Ryan muttered.

  Jaci rubbed her forehead with the tips of her fingers. “Wait, hold on a second, let me catch up. Your father, the father you don’t talk to, is financing your movie?”

  “Yep.”

  Oh, right, so she was going to have to drag this out of him. Well, she would, if she had to. “Ryan, we’re in a relationship, right?”

  Ryan smiled and it warmed every strand of DNA in her body. “Damn straight,” he replied.

  “Okay, then, well, that means that we get to have spectacular sex—” Jaci glanced at her messy bed and nodded “—check that—and that we talk to each other. So talk. Now.”

  “I went to go see him,” Ryan eventually admitted in a low voice. “I needed the money, I knew that he wanted to invest in one of my projects, so I made it happen.”

  That didn’t explain a damn thing. “But why? You told me that if Banks bailed, you would mothball Blown Away.”

  Ryan squeezed her hips with the insides of his calves. “My and Thom’s careers would withstand the hit, but yours wouldn’t.”

  It took a minute for her to make sense of those words, and when she did, she tumbled a little deeper and a little further into love. She hadn’t thought it possible, but this was just another surprise in a night full of them. “But you hate your father.”

  “Well, hate is a strong word.” He pulled his long legs up and rested his elbows on his knees. “Look, Jace, the reality is that your career is on a knife’s edge. Your script is stunning but if nobody sees your work, it could be months, years before you get another shot at the big leagues. I don’t want you to have to wait years for another chance, so I made it happen.”

  Jaci placed her hands on his strong forearms and rested her forehead on her wrists. “Oh, Ryan, you do love me.”

  His fingers tunneled into her hair. “Yep. An amazing amount, actually.”

  Jaci’s heart sighed. She lifted her head and pulled back. “Did he make you grovel?”

  Ryan shook his head. “He was...pretty damn cool, actually.” Ryan took a deep breath and Jaci listened intently as he explained how Chad had known about Ben’s affair with Kelly and how Chad had clumsily, Jaci thought, tried to protect Ryan. It was so Hollywood, so messed up, but sweet nonetheless.

  “Chad tri
ed to explain that they, Ben and Kelly and Chad himself, looked at affairs differently than I did. That to them sex was just sex, an itch to scratch, I think he said. That they didn’t mean to hurt me.”

  “It shouldn’t have mattered how they felt about sex. They knew how you felt and they should’ve taken that into account,” Jaci said, her voice hot. She looked at Ryan’s bemused face and reined her temper in. “Sorry, sorry, it just makes me so angry when excuses are made.”

  “I’ve never had anyone defend me before.”

  “Well, just so you know, I’ll always be in your corner, fists up and prepared to fight for you,” Jaci told him, ignoring the sheen of emotion in his eyes. Her big, tough warrior-like man...emotional? He’d hate her to comment on it so she moved the conversation along briskly. “What else did Chad have to say?”

  “That he would narrate the documentary on Ben if I ever chose to do it. For free this time. But I don’t know if I can make that film.”

  “You’ll know when you’re ready.”

  Ryan’s hand gripped her thigh. “It’s not because I care about their affair or care about her anymore, Jace. You understand that, don’t you? It feels like another life, another time, and I’m ready to move on, with you. It’s just that he was...”

  “Your hero. Your brother, your best friend.” Jaci touched his cheek with her fingertips. “Honey, there is no rule that you have to make a movie on him. Maybe you should remember him like you’d like to remember him and let everyone else do the same.”

  Ryan placed his hand on top of hers and held it to his cheek. He closed his eyes and Jaci looked at him, her masculine, strong, flawed man. God, she loved him. She saw his Adam’s apple bob and knew that he was fighting to keep his emotions from bubbling up and over.

  “Don’t, Ry, don’t hide what you’re feeling from me,” she told him, her voice low. “I know talking about Ben hurts. I’m sorry.”

  Ryan jerked his head up and his eyes blazed with heat, and hope, and love. “I’m not thinking about him. I’m thinking about you and us and this bright new life we have in front of us. I’m so damn happy, Jace. You make me.”

  Jaci cocked her head. “You make me...what?”

  “That’s all. You just make me.”

  Jaci sighed as he kissed the center of her palm and placed her hand on his heart. “I never realized how alone I was until you hurtled into my life. You’ve put color into my world, and I promise I’ll make you happy, Jace.”

  Jaci blinked away her happy tears. “For how long?” she whispered.

  Ryan pushed her long bangs out of her eyes and tucked them behind her ear. “Forever...if you’ll let me.”

  Jaci leaned in for a kiss and smiled against his mouth. “Oh, Ry, I think we can do better than that. Amazing love stories last longer than that.”

  * * * * *

  If you loved TAKING THE BOSS TO BED by Joss Wood, pick up these other stories about sexy bosses from Harlequin Desire!

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  Available now from Harlequin Desire!

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  Bane

  by Brenda Jackson

  Prologue

  “You wanted to see me, Dil?” Brisbane Westmoreland asked, walking into his eldest brother Dillon’s home office.

  The scenic view out the window was that of Gemma Lake, the main waterway that ran through the rural part of Denver the locals referred to as Westmoreland Country. For Bane, this was home. This wasn’t Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria, which meant he didn’t have to worry about booby traps, enemies hiding behind trees and bushes or the boat dock being wired with explosives set to go off the second someone stepped on it. Westmoreland Country was a place where he felt safe. All in all, he was glad to be back home.

  Thanksgiving dinner had ended hours ago, and keeping with family traditions, everyone had gathered outside for a game of snow volleyball. Now the females in the Westmoreland family had gathered in the sitting room to watch a holiday movie with the kids, and the men had gone upstairs for a card game.

  “Yes, come on in, Bane.”

  Bane stopped in front of Dillon’s desk. He knew Dillon was studying him with that sharp eye of his, taking in every detail. And he could imagine what his brother was thinking. Bane was not the same habitual troublemaker who had left Westmoreland Country five years ago to make something of himself.

  Bane would be the first to admit that a lot in his life had changed. He was now military through and through, both mentally as well as physically. Since graduating from the naval academy and becoming a navy SEAL, he’d learned a lot, seen a lot and done a lot...all in the name of the United States government.

  “I want to know how you’re doing,” Dillon inquired, interrupting Bane’s thoughts.

  Bane drew in a deep breath. He wished he could answer truthfully. Under normal circumstances he would say he was in prime fighting condition, but that was not the case. During his team’s last covert operation, an enemy’s bullet had nearly taken him out, leaving him flat on his back in a hospital bed for nearly two months. But he couldn’t tell Dillon that. It was confidential. So he said, “I’m fine, although my last mission took a toll on me. I lost a team member who was also a good friend.”

  Dillon shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Me, too. Laramie Cooper was a good guy. One of the best. We went through the academy together.” Bane knew Dillon wouldn’t ask for specifics. Bane had explained to his family early on that all his covert ops were classified and linked to national security and couldn’t be discussed.

  Dillon didn’t say anything for a minute and then he asked, “Is that why you’re taking a three-month military leave? Because of your friend’s death?”

  Bane eased down in the leather armchair across from Dillon’s desk. When their parents, aunt and uncle had gotten killed in a plane crash over twenty years ago, Dillon, the eldest of the Denver Westmorelands, had acquired the role of guardian of his six brothers—Micah, Jason, Riley, Stern, Canyon and Bane—and his eight cousins—Ramsey, Zane, Derringer, Megan, Gemma, the twins Adrian and Aidan, and Bailey. As far as Bane was concerned Dillon had done an outstanding job in keeping the family together and making sure they each made something of themselves. All while making Blue Ridge Land Management Corporation, founded by their father and uncle, into a Fortune 500 company.

  Since Dillon was the eldest, he had inherited the main house in Westmoreland Country along with the three hundred acres it sat on. Everyone else, upon reaching the age of twenty-five, received one hundred acres to call their own. Thanks to Bailey’
s creative mind, each of their spreads were given names—Ramsey’s Web, Zane’s Hideout, Derringer’s Dungeon, Megan’s Meadows, Gemma’s Gem, Jason’s Place, Stern’s Stronghold, Canyon’s Bluff and Bane’s Ponderosa. It was beautiful land that encompassed mountains, valleys, lakes, rivers and streams.

  Again, Bane thought about how good it was to be home, and safe here talking with his brother.

  “No, that’s not the reason,” Bane said. “All my team members are on leave because our last operation was one from hell. However, I’m using my leave for a specific purpose, and that is to find Crystal.”

  Bane paused before adding somberly, “If nothing else, Coop’s death showed me how fragile life is. You can be here today and gone tomorrow.”

  Dillon would never know that Bane wasn’t just referring to Coop’s life, but also how close he’d come to losing his own more than a few times.

  Bane watched as Dillon came around and sat on the edge of his desk to face him, unsure of how his brother had taken what he’d just said about finding Crystal. Especially since she was the main reason Dillon, and the rest of Bane’s family, had supported his decision to join the navy. During their teen years, Bane and Crystal had been obsessive about each other in a way that had driven her family, as well as his, out of their wits.

  “Like I told you when you came home for Jason’s wedding...” Dillon said. “When the Newsomes moved away they didn’t leave a forwarding address. I think their main objective was to put as much distance between you and Crystal as they could.” He paused, then said, “But after your inquiry, I hired a private investigator to locate their whereabouts, and I’m not sure if you know it but Carl Newsome passed away.”

  Bane shook his head. Although he definitely hadn’t been Mr. Newsome’s favorite person, the man had been Crystal’s father. She and her dad hadn’t always seen eye to eye, but Crystal had loved him nonetheless. “No, I didn’t know he had died.”

  Dillon nodded. “I called and spoke to Emily Newsome, who told me about Carl’s death from lung cancer. After offering my condolences, I asked about Crystal. She said Crystal was doing fine, working on her master’s degree at Harvard with plans to get a PhD in biochemistry from there, as well.”