Scoring the Boss: Mr. Match Book 4

by Stewart, Delancey

  But I wanted to make this last. Some part of me worried it might be our last time, that Tate might finally find the resolve to step back, to keep things purely professional. And if she did? I'd have to respect her decision.

  I released into her just seconds after she collapsed over my shoulder, gasping for air.

  If she told me this was the last time, I could handle it.

  Couldn't I?

  Chapter 27

  It Always Comes Back to Cheese

  Max

  Monday at the office was torture. Partly because I didn't trust my staff after the weekend's newscast revealed the office location—information only they were privy to. I'd deal with that later. But a bigger part of my discomfort was that Tate had done exactly what I had been afraid she'd do. She'd taken a step back.

  "Hi Max," she'd said, appearing in my office at exactly nine o'clock Monday morning. "Do you have a moment to talk about how the week will go?"

  "Hey you." I grinned upon seeing her, my body reacting to her presence as it always did, with a semi-chub and a wash of glee I still wasn't quite used to. I wasn't a gleeful guy, but every cell inside me responded to Tate like a puppy looking for a pat.

  But her face was a warning. She kept it still, and I sensed it was an effort for her. "Of course," I said, reining myself in. "Yeah. Sit down."

  She glanced around, making sure no one else was within earshot. "I think you know I need to keep things purely professional from this point forward," she said, her voice strained.

  "Ah ... " I wanted to protest, but I knew what it could cost her to lose her position at work. I knew how hard she'd worked to get there. It was clear she'd made her choice. "Okay. Of course."

  Her shoulders dipped a bit, and I thought maybe she'd expected me to argue. "Good, okay. Well, can we look over the expansion plans I've worked out?" She put a portfolio on the edge of my desk, flipped it open. "I've discussed this with my manager, and we think a three-phase plan makes the most sense, with marketing campaigns backing up each new market entrance."

  "Did he ... I mean, was there anything about the news? Did they see?" I was worried about her. As much as I'd hoped she might throw caution to the wind and decide it didn't matter what they thought at work, I understood why she couldn't do that. I wanted her to tell me how things were for her. But her face was stern.

  "It's fine. For now." She waved away my concern and pointed to the three-phase plan on the printout she had in the portfolio.

  "Right." I tried to listen to her words. But instead, I marveled at the depth of the disappointment I felt, at the strange gaping ache that seemed to be opening up inside me as I thought about never holding her in my arms again, never nuzzling the soft skin just beneath her ear. The more I contemplated the loss, the harder I found it to look at her. It was like having a platter of the very tastiest cheese right in front of you and being told you couldn't sample even a bit. And I liked cheese. A lot.

  "Do you agree then?" she was asking me, the cold distance in her voice twisting my stomach into knots.

  "Sure. Sounds good," I said, having no real idea what I'd just agreed to.

  "And you're fine with me taking the empty office across the hall?"

  "Of course," I said, looking up at her finally. How would I be able to breathe with her just across the hall?

  Our eyes met, and I heard her intake a sharp breath as if I'd touched her.

  At least it wasn't easy for her either.

  "Tate, listen," I started, but she stood abruptly and picked up the portfolio, snapping it shut.

  "I've got work to do, Max," she said, and then she walked out of the room and into the office across the hall, closing the door behind her.

  Something inside me went dark, and I sank back into my desk chair, wishing Tatum Archer had never walked into the office in the first place.

  There was nothing right about the way I wanted her, the way I felt. I'd spent years proving that impulsive approaches to romantic relationships—and I thought that included sexual interludes—ended in heartache. Maybe this pain I felt was proof of that. How had I let myself get so wrapped up when I'd known from the beginning it could never work?

  I didn't know if this was love, but I knew I'd lost something here. And no matter what people said, I knew for sure that it was not better to have loved and lost.

  Losing sucked.

  Chapter 28

  Crocheting for a Teeny-Tiny Army

  TATUM

  The conversation I’d had with Foster after the news coverage had been uncomfortable.

  “I’m glad to see you’re getting out of the office a bit, Tatum,” he’d said when I’d answered his Saturday call.

  “So you saw the news.” My heart sank into my stomach and wilted there. He was going to fire me.

  “I did,” he said, his voice holding a thoughtful note. “I don’t like the way they tried to insinuate a romantic involvement between you and Mr. Winchell,” he went on. “But given the anonymity of the venture we’re working there, I’m not surprised to see them skew it that way.”

  “Really?” Surprise made it difficult for me to think of the right words.

  “They don’t know what else to make of it, and that makes for juicier television, doesn’t it?”

  “Right,” I agreed. I respected Foster. Admired him. Could I lie to him outright?

  “I think it’s perfectly understandable that you’d be spending time with the client outside the office. Nothing to worry about there at all, I think.”

  “Oh.” I swallowed. Either he thought there was something going on and didn’t want to talk about it, or he really didn’t think there was. Either way, this was more of a reprieve than I’d dared to hope for. “Yes, well, everything is going well,” I said, happy to focus on the business side of things.

  My manager was a nice guy, and we had a good enough relationship for me to know he would have told me if I had anything to worry about. And so far, he hadn't said that.

  But the cautionary tale of Lana Holmes was never far from my mind these days, and I held it in front of me as I spent the week in the Mr. Match offices, pointedly avoiding Max.

  Mom and Charlie both knew exactly what was going on—partly because I was suddenly home a lot more often, and partly because I'd begun crocheting tiny hats and sweaters like a woman preparing for an apocalypse to be delivered by shrink ray. The pile of tiny clothing in cheerful colors on the chair in my bedroom was growing by the day.

  "I don't think you've made this many tiny sweaters since the divorce," Mom said as I finished off another one, a little pink cardigan with daisy buttons and a scalloped edge.

  I shrugged and shuffled to my room to drop it on the top of the heaping pile. When I came back out, Mom was standing next to the doors looking out upon the back yard, her arms crossed. She turned to face me. "Tate, honey, this isn't right."

  I pressed my palms into my eye sockets, wishing the headache I'd had for the last week would subside. My brain wouldn't stop looking for scenarios in which I could feasibly run over to Max’s and tell him I’d been wrong and that we could be together. But there were none in which I could do that and still keep my job. "What's not, Mom?" Mom's life, on the other hand, had seemed perfectly right. She was dating both Peter and Raaah-jerrr and I'd never seen her looking so confident and happy.

  Mom waved a hand at me, indicating my sloppy sweatpants, messy bun and general air of defeat. "You're melting."

  "I explained everything, Mom. I screwed up. Huge. Like career-ending huge. And this is how I fix it." I went to the kitchen and poured a glass of wine. It was Thursday afternoon, after all. I'd endured almost an entire week of a purely professional relationship with Max, and I deserved wine.

  "You fix it by dressing like an overgrown teenager, knitting four thousand miniature sweaters and guzzling wine? Have you even been for a run this week, Tate?"

  I narrowed my eyes at her. "Are you saying I'm gaining weight?" I hadn’t run because running tended to lead to run-ins wi
th Max. And I couldn’t see him outside of work. I didn’t trust myself.

  "No. I'm saying you're falling apart."

  "I'm doing the opposite," I said, lifting my glass to her in a silent toast. "I'm pulling it all back together."

  "If this is put together—"

  I moved back to the couch and sat, ignoring Charlie sitting just outside, his big eyes watching me imploringly. I hadn't taken him to the beach all week for fear of literally running into Max. "Okay, Mom. I get it. You don't approve. You've never been a huge fan of my job. Same story. Nothing new here. Move along." I waved my hands at her and flipped on the television, annoyed when the first face that appeared was Beckie Arduna on Channel Six. I changed the channel.

  Mom moved fast, surprising me by grabbing the remote out of my hand switching the television off.

  "Hey!"

  "Enough, young lady. If you're going to act like a spoiled teenager, I guess I'll be treating you like one then."

  "Excuse me?" Surprise had me straightening up, gaping at my mother.

  "I can't stand here and watch you rip apart the first thing that's made you happy in years."

  I stared at her. Was my mother really going to insert herself into my disastrous love life?

  "I don't know what's going on between you and Max Winchell, but I do know that since you met him—before this week when you've reverted to a homeless version of Madonna with your weird off-center ponytail and ripped sweatshirt—you've been happier than I've ever seen you. Ever. Even when you were dating Austin. Something clicked, Tate. Don't you see that? It's like maybe he was the piece missing out of whatever puzzle you've been working on forever. And now you're going to take that piece and just shove it back into the couch cushions so you can continue being miserable?"

  Weird analogy, I thought, but I did understand what she was saying. "Mom, I don't have a choice. If I'm linked to Max romantically—well, technically that already happened, but if I'm not careful to make sure not to give them any evidence to prove there's something going on—then I could lose everything I've worked for all these years. All those years of hard work and sacrifice will have been for nothing."

  "Instead, you're going to make sure they lead to more years of hard work and sacrifice." She sank into the cushion next to me, her stern-mom lecture evidently over. "Tate, what are you sacrificing? Have you ever wondered? Is it your own chance at happiness?"

  I leaned forward and dropped my head into my hands, exhausted. I wanted to tell her she was wrong, but a tiny part of me thought maybe she had a point. Still, I couldn’t give up everything I’d worked so hard to achieve. "I can't do this with you, Mom. I'm a grown woman and I make my own choices. Just because you've decided to become some kind of retirement-age party girl the men around her can call for a good time doesn't mean I'm going to do the same. Some of us have important work to do."

  Mom sucked in a breath and moved away from me, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see the hurt on her face. "Fine," she said softly, and she stood and went outside with Charlie, leaving me to stew in my misery alone.

  I didn't want to think about her words, or the fact I'd just hurt her feelings. I was drowning in my own feelings right now, and didn't have the capacity to think about anyone else's. I went into the bedroom and threw myself on the bed, staring at the cracked ceiling over me.

  Being around Max was torture. Every part of me—my heart, my mind, my traitorous body—pushed me to run across the hall at the office and throw myself into his arms. But I was not going to give into that impulse. How could I? How could I imagine destroying everything I'd built over the past decade for a relationship with a man who lived six hundred miles away from me, who was not looking for a relationship himself, and who was a client? Hadn't Max assured me he would never date someone who wasn't his mathematical match? Hadn't he told me he didn't date in general?

  And none of that was the point.

  The real point was that when my stint as temporary CEO was through, I had to go back to Palo Alto, back to the office, and I had to be able to look those men in the eye and hold my head up. I was not going to be another weak woman who put her heart and her need for companionship over her success in the business world. I was good at my job, and I wasn't going to let them forget it.

  * * *

  Going downtown each morning now was like torture.

  Max was always there—I got the feeling he was getting up extra early and keeping long hours just to make it even harder for me to pretend I was just the CEO, doing a job and nothing more. After that first morning where he'd tried to get me to talk, wanted to address whatever this thing had been between us, he'd swung to the complete opposite end of the spectrum. He was the consummate professional now, maintaining a reserved distance and only speaking to me when absolutely necessary.

  It was killing me.

  He'd also taken on a terse tone with the developers and with Megan, who I think he suspected of leaking details about Mr. Match to the press.

  As someone well-versed in corporate research, I had my doubts about any of the twenty-somethings working here actually being a leak. They all appeared completely dedicated to Max, wowed by a combination of his star-power as a Sharks player and his general charisma around the office. I sensed that they were loyal, and I knew it wasn't that hard to dig up a paper trail when it came to company ownership.

  Friday morning I was in at eight, and Max was already there. Alone.

  "Good morning," I managed, walking by his open door without looking in. I didn't need to see the way his hair waved perfectly over his face, the way his forearms flexed under the rolled oxford sleeves. I already knew those things had the power to bring me to my knees and I was barely hanging by a thread as it was.

  Mom wasn't speaking to me now at home, communicating with me through veiled remarks made to Charlie, who was clearly caught in the middle. This morning, she'd wandered through the kitchen as I'd had my first cup of coffee, and she was annoyingly bright and cheerful. "Good morning, Charlie," she'd cooed. "What a pretty day for a walk. I guess I'll have to take you down to the beach, since Tatum doesn't run any more. She just works now, huh, boy? Very important job." She'd poured herself a cup of coffee and gone out to the backyard, letting that little spear stick into my side without acknowledging me directly.

  If this was what doing the right thing felt like, I was beginning to wonder if it was worth it. After a week of the right thing, my soul ached. The two people I had felt closest to since coming to San Diego—my mom and Max—were both giving me the silent treatment.

  But my job was secure.

  Max appeared in my doorway, startling me out of my self-pity. "Need to go over a couple of these expansion ideas," he said, dropping a folder on my desk. "You have time today?"

  "Uh, yeah," I said, turning away from the email I hadn't actually been reading. "Now's good, I guess."

  We hadn't made eye contact yet. Max moved into my small office, taking the chair next to my desk and dropping one royal-blue clad elbow to its edge, letting out a pained sigh.

  I risked a look at his face. He looked tired, and sad. And so handsome my insides twisted at the memory of running my fingers along that perfect jawline, wrapping myself around him. The pain I glimpsed in his eyes gave me a jolt too—had I put that there? Was this about us? I wanted to ask him. Wanted to move closer to him, see if I could help.

  But I was the problem. We were the problem.

  "I don't think the same tactics are going to be effective in the Midwest that we're using in the more urbanized coastal areas. This phrasing here," he pointed to one of the initial concepts for copy I'd gotten from the in-house marketing folks in Palo Alto. "This seems really specific to the Bay Area."

  I took the paper he was pointing to and read it more carefully. He was right. This was the problem with being distracted by whatever it was that was happening inside me. I couldn't focus. And even though I'd managed to keep my job, I wasn’t doing it very well. "I'll have the marketing people think
again," I told him. "And I think doing an agency search would be a good idea. But if you want to remain anonymous, you probably can't be part of the process."

  He nodded, and I let my eyes rest on his face. He was staring at the surface of my desk.

  For a moment we sat still, silence ringing around us. Something was hanging in the air, some glimmer of opportunity, and I knew I couldn't address it, knew if I let myself acknowledge it, that would be the end. I couldn't be this close to Max and sit here, impassive. I needed him to move, to leave, to do something. I cleared my throat, and it seemed to break him out of the trance he'd been in. But he didn't stand up and walk away.

  Instead, he looked up at me, his hazel eyes meeting mine. And something snapped.

  "Tate," he whispered, his voice like a ragged piece of twine, a tenuous connection dangerously close to severing.

  Before I could think, he shifted, his hands reaching for me, and my body responded. I was in his lap without thinking about it, my hands cupping the back of his neck, my lips pressed to his. He pulled me closer, my legs to one side as his hands gripped my hips, my back. Our tongues met and I saw stars, felt something release inside me, and I gave in to it, let myself melt into Max.

  But it had to be the last time.

  Like a drowning woman taking her last gulps of air before finally giving in to the deluge that would end her, I kissed him. And then I pushed myself away and stood, moving to the corner of my office to put as much distance between us as I could. "I can't," I told him. "I can't do this. I can't be here. I can't ..." I trailed off, something desperate and pained rising inside me. A tear actually slipped down my cheek.

  Oh God, I was crying at work.

  "Tate, I—"

  "Please don't, Max," I told him. "Look, I've still got the list of potential interim CEOs. There's a good one locally who we should have chosen in the first place. I'll set it up. I have to go back to Palo Alto. I can't stay here and do ... this. I can't risk my job, and I clearly can't be here." I shook my head, turned away from his narrowing eyes.