by Donya Lynne
“I really like you, Katherine.” He cups my cheek with his free hand. “I’m not ready to let this end.”
“I really like you, too, Greyson, but I can’t see how this is going to work, whether we strike a deal between our companies or not.”
His fingers linger on my face as he stares at me. “Forget about my interest in Freedom. If I didn’t want to buy your company, would you want to be with me?”
I search his face. I could lie, but I know he’d see right through me. “Yes.” And I want to be with him for reasons other than how good the sex is. I just don’t want to admit that out loud, let alone to myself.
“Then don’t end this.” He puts the exclamation point on his plea by claiming my mouth with his. In an instant, I’m in his arms, holding him, pulling myself against him, caught up in the heat that seems to swallow us any time we touch one another.
The animal attraction and physical connection is so incredibly strong. So strong that once it builds to a certain point it overtakes everything else. Logic, rational thought, reason, restraint. All else pales in comparison to our chemistry.
Which is why this has “bad idea” written all over it.
Somehow, I break through the supernatural haze trying to cloud my judgment and gently push him away, bowing my head so I won’t keep kissing him.
“Katherine . . .” He cradles my cheek.
“Greyson, don’t . . . please.”
“No one has to know,” he pleads.
“Someone will find out. Someone always does.”
He’s backed into a corner, and while I can see resistance edging into his expression, I also see realization. He knows I’m right. He doesn’t like it, but he knows it.
He takes a step back, glances over his shoulder at the restaurant then faces me again as he combs his fingers through his thick hair. “Don’t make any firm decisions tonight.” He’s not ready to give up, and I admire him for his tenacity. But it’s not going to change things. “Think about it for a few days. I’ve already made reservations for the Red Room at seven o’clock on Friday. If you still think it’s better that we don’t see each other, I’ll dine alone, and the only time you’ll see me from here on out is when we meet to talk about whether or not we can make a business deal work between our companies.” His gaze drinks me in as he takes my hand again. “But if you’re willing to see where this can go . . . if you change your mind and want to continue what we’ve started . . . well, you know where I’ll be.” He gives my hand a squeeze then lets it go. “The Red Room. Friday. Seven o’clock.” Without another word, he turns and crosses the parking lot to his SUV.
I watch him go, feeling a part of me go with him, hurting inside, because I know tonight was the last time we’ll be together. As in, together.
Guilt falls over me. He held such hope in his gaze. It had shone with barely bridled optimism from deep inside his eyes, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’m not going to change my mind on this. I’m crazy about him, and the sex is amazing, but my job is more important than great sex. In two months, he’ll be gone, but I’ll still have to face my employees. I can’t have them seeing me cavorting with the person trying to put them out of a job. Okay, so it didn’t sound like he wants to put anyone out of a job, but my employees won’t see it that way.
Maybe if we’d met under different circumstances, at a different time and place, we could have made a run at whatever this is between us. And maybe someday we can try again, but not right now. Not under these circumstances.
I stare at him as he drives past, barely holding in my tears, but once he turns the corner, and his SUV is gone, I break down.
With tears streaming my face and doubt that I’ve made the right decision—even though I know I have—choking my heart, I climb behind the wheel of my Audi and pull out of the parking lot.
Maybe I’m thirty-four years old, but I still hurt like a college coed when I suffer the end of a relationship. What surprises me about how I feel about the end of this relationship is that it only lasted forty-eight hours, yet it feels like it lasted a year. Ten years. A lifetime.
The other thing that surprises me about how I feel is that I’m the one who ended it.
As I’m driving away from Gochet Arlain, fighting to see through my tear-blurred vision, a thought occurs to me. I finally found the fault I needed to break up with him. It just wasn’t his fault.
Greyson has no faults.
The fault is all mine. My sense of responsibility and ethical conduct have done me a disservice tonight, and I’m not sure I’ll ever recover.
How am I going to make it through the summer without Greyson?
DID YOU ENJOY THE BOOK?
This concludes Choose Me, book one of the Banger Trilogy. If you enjoyed this story, please help others enjoy it, too.
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Now, turn the page for an excerpt of Covet Me, book 2 of the Banger Trilogy.
Excerpt from Covet Me
Greyson
Did Katherine really break up with me last night?
I think she did, even though I can tell she’s as attracted to me as I am to her.
Sure, we’ve only been on two dates. Two unplanned, surprisingly erotic dates that felt more like sex than substance, but dates nonetheless. Dates that created a burn inside me that demanded I continue getting to know her and continue exploring this newfound sexual awakening she’s kick-started in my libido. Breaking up wasn’t even on my radar, so how could it have been on hers?
I’ve learned the hard way that I’m a lot of man. More man than most women can take. But not Katherine. She can take me just fine. In fact, she’s the first woman I’ve been with where sex felt the way it’s supposed to. All savage freedom and red-hot pleasure. And like an archaeologist who has searched his whole life for the Holy Grail only to have it ripped away the moment he finds it, I’m not handling it very well that she broke things off with me.
But she has it in her head we can’t see each other if we’re talking about merging our two companies. Something she adamantly insisted she wasn’t open to discussing at the beginning of last night’s meeting, by the way. But somewhere between telling me that she had no desire to sell her company and our hotter-than-an-inferno fuck session in the restaurant’s ladies’ room at the end of the evening, she changed her mind. Suddenly, she was open to hearing more about my offer.
I guess I sold the idea that a merger was in her best interests better than I thought I did. Unfortunately, that meant ordering a cease-fire for any extracurricular sexual activities I might have been planning.
Go figure, the door was still open on one venture but seemed to have closed on another.
I need to figure out a way to get both doors open again, but right now the ball is in her court. She’s the one who said we can’t see each other socially, anymore.
I enter the office building where Rugged has its corporate headquarters on the seventeenth and eighteenth floors and stroll into the elevator bay. The eight o’clock crowd crushes in around me.
“Grey!”
I turn to see Mike approaching. He’s wearing his trademark khakis, golf shirt, and a faded purple and black Colorado Rockies baseball cap. Given our industry, Rugged is a pretty casual work environment. It has to be if employees want to wear the clothes we manufacture. Biking shorts, sports bras, team uniforms—including those for the next Olympics—as well as golf shirts, T-shirts, and outdoor sandals. Hell, I’m the owner of the company, but even I occasionally wear cargo shorts, a T-shirt, and fisherman sandals to the office.
“Hey, Mike.”
One of the six elevators opens. I allow a trio of women to enter in front of me, and then I step inside, holding my arm over the door to keep it from closing on Mike.
“How did the meeting go with Robert last night?
” he asks.
I catch two of the women checking me out. They quickly avert their gazes and smile secretly at each other as the doors slide shut.
“It didn’t.”
“Did he cancel?”
“No.” I remember looking up to see Katherine walk around the corner from the restaurant’s vestibule, behind the maître d′.
“You’ve lost me.” The elevator stops, and Mike glances at the digital display marking which floor we’re on. He steps aside to let the three women out. One casts me a demure, come-hither glance as she passes. She’s attractive, but right now no one holds a candle to Katherine.
“His daughter took the meeting.”
Mike frowns at me. “His daughter? Why the hell did she show up?”
The elevator starts its upward climb again.
Keeping my gaze straight ahead, I say, “Because she runs the company now. Apparently Robert Clayton retired Friday. Publicly announced it yesterday.”
I’d been so busy all day that I hadn’t heard the news until after I got home last night and listened to the voice mail Brent left me.
“No shit,” Mike says.
“No shit.” The elevator stops again on the twelfth floor, and another passenger hops off. “But that’s not the best part. You’ll never guess who his daughter is.”
Mike smirks. “Everyone knows who his daughter is. Kate Kelley.”
If only he knew.
“Clayton,” I correct.
“Huh?”
“She recently changed her last name back to her maiden name.”
“Okay, so what? She changed her name.”
“Yeah, but what I’m saying is that you’ll never guess who she is to me.”
The only other person in the elevator seems curious where our conversation is going, but the elevator stops again at the fifteenth floor, and he has to bail before I get to the good part. The doors close again, leaving me alone with Mike.
Mike shifts the shoulder strap of his briefcase on his shoulder. “I didn’t think you knew Kate.”
“I don’t. Or, rather, I didn’t. Not until Saturday night.”
“Saturday night?” Mike’s eyes narrow. His wheels are turning, but they’re not connecting.
“Where did we go Saturday night?” I ask, leading him.
“Alesca?” He says the name slowly, the last syllable lilting upward like a question. I can almost hear the unspoken “So?” as he continues staring at me.
I glance up at the digital number as it hits eighteen and the elevator slows to a stop. “Come on, Mike, you’re usually a lot faster than this. Who did I meet at Alesca?”
His mouth falls open as his eyebrows scrunch in disbelief. “You mean . . .”
I raise my eyebrows and angle my head in acknowledgement as I step out of the elevator. Mike’s hot on my heels.
“Are you saying that Kate Kelley—I mean, Clayton—is Katherine? The woman you left Alesca with?”
Tilting my head and raising my eyebrows at him, I open the door to Rugged’s lobby. “The very same.”
“You’re shittin’ me.” Mike enters as I hold the door for him.
“I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried.” I trail after him and nod at the receptionist. “Good morning, Elena.”
“Good morning, Greyson.” Very few people refer to me by my full name, but Elena does.
So does Katherine.
My heart takes a dive into my stomach.
I don’t want to think about this upcoming Friday night and whether she’ll show up at the Red Room. She didn’t leave me with a lot of hope last night, but I can’t bring myself to think we’re over before we even had a chance to begin.
Mike and I make our way to the break room, where we stop for coffee before starting our day.
“So, you and Katherine, huh?” Mike says, waiting as his cup fills in one of the two Keurigs. “How did she react when you told her you wanted to buy her company?” He makes a sour face that suggests he already knows how that went.
“She already knew.”
“How?”
I shrug. “She and her father are smart. Besides, there aren’t a lot of reasons why the CEO of one company would ask for a meeting with the CEO of a competitor if one of the topics on the table isn’t acquisition. It wasn’t a stretch to deduce my intentions.”
“So, what did she say? Is she going to come quietly or is she going to play hardball?”
I lift my coffee to take a drink then stop, the cup hovering in front of my mouth. I honestly don’t know the answer to Mike’s question. And, right now, I don’t care. The only thing on my mind is if she’s going to play hardball with me regarding our Friday night date.
“I’m not going to force her to sell if she’s dead set against it, Mike.”
He gives me an appraising look as his coffee finishes brewing. “Going soft?”
“Hardly.”
“So, what’s your plan?”
I shrug. “We schedule another meeting and see how it goes.” I’m really not in the mood to think about the merger.
“Is she at least open to talk with us?”
Her words as we said our good-byes last night haunt me.
“She wasn’t at first, but by the end of dinner, she’d come around. I think she’s open to negotiations. Whether they go anywhere, I can’t say, but right now we’re still in the game.”
But am I still in the game? I guess I’ll find out Friday night.
Mike and I head toward our offices along the back wall. “I need to set up another meeting with her for early next week. I’ll want you and Ed involved. And Brent. We need to start a full-court press while she’s interested. I don’t want her reconsidering.”
“And what about the two of you? Are you going to see each other again?”
I hear the concern in his voice. Like Katherine and just about everybody else who would offer me business advice, Mike doesn’t think it’s a good idea for me to be screwing the CEO of the company we’re trying to buy.
“Don’t worry. She closed the door pretty hard on that idea last night.” After we fucked like horny teenagers again, which doesn’t help the yearning I still feel for her in my heart. And in my dick. And everywhere else in my body. “She thinks it would look bad to her employees if she were to get involved with me personally.”
“She’s a smart woman. Smarter than you from the looks of it.” He snickers and lightly chucks my shoulder.
I turn and frown at him. “What do you mean?”
“I can tell you’re all over that, Grey.” He shakes his head and laughs. “Man, you just can’t catch a break, can you?”
Like Ed, Mike’s been with me long enough to know all about my woman troubles.
“I’ll live.” But inside I’m miserable. Every hour that passes only serves to feed my growing despair that Katherine and I will never see each other again on a personal level, and I can’t accept that.
As we pass Ed’s office, he looks up from his computer. I brusquely nod a greeting at him, and he nods back, but I don’t stop. Ed didn’t come home last night, which means he spent the night with Katherine’s friend Jess. Since he’s not divorced from his cheating wife, Anabel, yet, I can’t condone his behavior, but I’m not going to lecture him on it, either. He’s a grown man. He’ll have to live with the guilt that’s sure to come when things don’t work out with Jess, and I can’t imagine they will. Rebound relationships never do.
We come to Mike’s office, and he reaches in and flips on his light then pops back out, stopping me. “You’re still coming tonight, right?”
Mike and I belong to a cycling club that meets twice a week. I’ve been too busy renovating my house for the past two weeks to meet up with them more than once, so I’m overdue for a ride.
“I’m not sure I’ll make it. I’ve still got painting to do before the flooring guys come tomorrow.” I’m starting to wish I’d hired professional painters, but I’m almost done. A couple more hours, and I can write this project into the finished
column.
Ed joins us. “I can do the painting if you want to go.” I think he’s trying to suck up, because he knows I don’t like what he’s doing with Jess. And maybe part of his offer is to make up for the fact that I’m allowing him to stay with me while he works out a separation agreement with Anabel.
“Yeah,” Mike says, “let Ed do it. You come riding with us. You’re getting out of shape.” He bats my stomach with the back of his hand.
I laugh. “Out of shape, my ass.”
But I really do need to work in a ride. I can only get so much out of my gym workouts. I rely on my outdoor workouts to provide the something extra I crave. Something that adds fulfillment and enrichment to my life. Everyone needs to get outside to experience total health, and I thrive on the outdoors. I wouldn’t be a good CEO for a sporting goods company if I didn’t.
I turn toward Ed. “You sure you’re up to painting my living room?”
“Yeah, sure.”
I address Mike. “Okay, fine. I’ll be there. But I won’t be able to stay after for dinner.” We always finish a ride by hitting this little Italian place down the road from where we meet up. The food can’t be beat, and neither can the atmosphere.
“No problem. I can’t either. Andi and I are meeting with the caterer, and I think Emmet and Jones both have something going on at their kids’ school tonight, too.”
Emmet and Jones are the two most committed riders in our group. It sounds like we should probably just cancel this evening’s ride, but these are hardcore riders, so of course they’ll squeeze in a few miles whenever they can.
I take a pair of backward steps in the direction of my office, lifting my coffee cup in farewell. “Sounds good. I’ll get with you later. Right now, I’ve got to call Brent.” My brother is going to want to know how things went last night. For all he knows, I still met with Robert, despite his surprise retirement. He needs to know the players have changed.
As I unlock my office and switch on the light, I think about the implications of just how much the players have changed.
Am I ever going to catch a break in sex and romance? Or am I destined to be alone the rest of my goddamn life? Because if Katherine doesn’t show up Friday night, that just might be what happens.