A booty call, ha. Speaking of things that had been elusive…
Harlow stretched, her body slowly awakening, sending warm, tingly feelings to places that had been far too neglected lately. God, physiology was a traitorous bitch first thing in the morning. Or maybe just uncaring that she didn’t have a partner readily available to indulge the sudden arousal blooming between her thighs.
But you don’t really need one, came the whisper from the back of her mind. The realization sent a dirty thrill through her that only served as encouragement, and she slid a hand over her belly, then lower. She didn’t waste any time on pleasantries, even though her nipples had hardened beneath her short satin nightgown, aching to be touched. But what she really wanted was to come, fast and hard, and she wasn’t going to waste any time getting there. Pushing her fingers inside her panties, Harlow’s breath caught at the wetness that had already gathered there. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a true, man-made orgasm, much less been this turned on, this fast, and she let her thighs fall wide.
Man-made. The thought pulsed through her, making her pussy clench. She imagined that her hand belonged to someone else, allowing the fantasy to fill her mind as she stroked her clit in firm circles.
There. Oh, right there. The man in her fantasy wasn’t gentle, and she didn’t want him to be. Harlow conjured strong hands. Purposeful, powerful touches. Tenacious. Dirty. Taking what they wanted, yet giving her more.
Good, good. So goddamn good. She pressed harder. Faster through the slickness, and oh, God. Oh, God, ohGOD… “Yes. Connor, yes.”
Harlow heard what she’d said too late. Her orgasm sparked through her with so much intensity that she cried out, and she had no choice but to give in to the release. Her inner muscles contracted, the soft, sensitive skin trembling under her fingers. But as soon as the sensation began to recede, her chest went tight. Yes, she’d been caught up in a moment of pure fantasy, and yes again, nearly all fantasies were harmless. Normal. Healthy, even.
But fantasizing about Connor Bradshaw, a.k.a. the man she had to work with (strike one), whose family history linked him directly to the city’s biggest criminal (strike two), and who she was certain would fight her business-heavy business plan to save the clinic (strike three)? Was she insane?
No, Harlow decided, shaking her head against her pillow for emphasis. It had been a mistake, some sort of crossed wiring between the primal part of her brain that wanted sex and the part that felt extreme irritation. Both reflexive. Nothing more.
And this was why she never let herself feel emotions. They were messy, and unpredictable, and they only led to bad, bad, things. She’d already made a huge error with regard to Connor.
She damn sure wasn’t about to make another.
She had business to take care of.
Sixty minutes, two cups of coffee, and one subarctic shower later—after all, a girl couldn’t be too careful—Harlow made her way through the clinic’s parking lot. The sun hadn’t even considered reaching for the horizon yet, and as a result, the path to the clinic was illuminated only by the streetlights overhead. The quiet of the normally bustling block was calming, though, despite the near-freezing chill in the air. Harlow ordered the tasks in front of her, forming a strategy for her morning as she got the keys in the lock. The alarm code wasn’t set, she realized with a frown, and she’d have to talk to whichever physician’s assistant had locked the place up last night. Their jobs weren’t easy, but being too rushed or too tired to remember to set the alarm was still a serious oversight.
She locked the door behind her for safety. “That’s better,” she murmured, heading through the lobby, past the intake desk, the curtain areas and exam rooms—
Someone was in her office.
Harlow’s breath crashed to a halt in her lungs. The door had been locked. Hadn’t it? She’d been so preoccupied thinking of the alarm not being set that now she couldn’t be sure it had been locked when she’d turned the key. But the light in her office was definitely on, the muted rustle of movement telling her with certainty that at least one someone was in there, looking for something. They didn’t keep any cash in the clinic on principle, but the codes to the medical lock boxes were stored back here, as were thousands of dollars’ worth of office electronics.
Sliding her bag to the floor, her coat from her shoulders, and her heels off her feet, she crept to the door, but the blinds covering the windows were closed. Pulling a deep breath past her slamming pulse, Harlow forced herself to think. She turned back toward the lobby to hit the alarm’s panic button—she might be brash, but she wasn’t bulletproof, for God’s sake—but the door began to open, and she was standing right there, with no place to go and not enough time to run.
Instinct took over. Since flight was off the table, Harlow balled up her fists and went for her only available option.
Fight.
Every one of her muscles cranked down, and she whipped her arms into a defensive stance. But the intruder looked up from the empty coffee mug in his hand, his own huge body stilling for a half a heartbeat as he looked at her with a set of familiar hazel eyes—
“Easy, slugger,” Connor drawled, his brain clearly better at processing shock than hers. “It’s just me.”
“Oh, shit!” Harlow blurted, jumping a mile off the linoleum at the sound of his voice, and okay, how had her heart managed to beat even faster now that she knew he was the intruder? “What are you doing here?”
Connor gave up a smile that bordered on smirkdom. “I work here, remember? Breakfast sandwich?”
He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing in the direction of the second desk she’d had moved into the office over the weekend, where—sure enough—a brown paper bag sat front and center, filling the air with something that smelled suspiciously like bacon.
“What? No,” she said, her stomach immediately expressing its displeasure at her reply by sounding off in a sharp growl. Focus. “You’re not supposed to be here yet. Nobody is supposed to be here yet.”
“You’re here,” Connor pointed out.
“That’s different. I’m…” Shit.
“The director?” he supplied, auburn brows arched. “Look, I know it’s early, and I’m sorry I startled you.” He held up a hand, his biceps flexing and bunching beneath the sleeve of his scrubs. “We just have so much in front of us that I wanted to get a jump on things. The night security manager let me in once I showed him my ID badge.”
“You have my cell phone number. You could have texted to let me know,” Harlow said, a sudden shot of lightheadedness softening her words to a near-whisper. Whoa. Why was her pulse racing like she’d just spent an hour on her Peloton?
Connor’s stare narrowed, and damn it, looking anything less than thoroughly competent in front of him was not on her agenda.
“I didn’t think you’d be awake, or I would have.” Reaching for the partly open door, he swung it back inward, nodding at her desk chair. “Take a sec. The adrenaline letdown’s a bitch when you’re not used to it.”
“I don’t know what you’re…” She blinked, her traitorous knees buckling just enough to cause a visible sway.
“Yeah, there it is,” Connor said, although, funny, his voice was nearly kind. “A couple of deep breaths will help. Boosting your blood sugar isn’t a crappy idea, either. Plus”—he moved toward his desk, nudging the brown paper bag in her direction—“breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
Harlow sank into her chair, and oh God, that was better. “I’m fine.”
“You’re human,” he countered. Ugh, he was so pushy. “I get that you’re strong-willed as hell, here, but not even you can win a throw-down with your central nervous system.”
She conceded, but not because she had a choice. “I suppose I should trust you,” she said. “At least, with regard to medical advice.”
“Just out of curiosity, how long are we going to do this dance?”
He asked so affably that it nearly threw her. But Har
low was made of some pretty stern stuff, so her bounce-back factor was faster than most.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
He smiled, a disarming gesture caught somewhere in the no-man’s-land between charming and cocky, and her bounce-back factor died a quiet death. “How long are you going to hold it over my head that I’m Duke Bradshaw’s son?”
“You think that’s why I don’t trust you?” she asked finally, shoving her shock aside.
“Isn’t it?” he asked back. “I mean, there is that old adage about the apple not falling far from the tree, right?”
“Oh, I know the adage,” Harlow replied smoothly. Hell, she was the adage. “But the fact that Duke Bradshaw is your father isn’t why I don’t trust you. That you lied to me about it, and that the lie had a huge, adverse consequence for my business? That’s another story.”
Just like that, Connor’s smile became something a hell of a lot more intense. “I get that you don’t like me, and that you probably don’t want to work with me. But I earned this job on merit, Harlow, and I’m damn sure going to get it done.”
“I’m glad you’re motivated,” she said, her steel returning by sheer will. “Because you’re not the only one with a job around here.”
“So, we both want the same thing. But we can’t fix the clinic if we spend all of our time arguing, and we definitely won’t get anywhere unless we can start trusting each other. So, really. What’s it going to take?”
Harlow paused. Connor wasn’t wrong on either count. But for Chrissake, he’d let Marty Mattigan ambush her on camera and made her father think she couldn’t handle this job. He wasn’t getting a free pass for that.
“If you want me to trust you, then earn it. The playing field is level, Connor. I don’t expect you to trust me right now, either. But you’re right. We do have to work together, and I’m not in the habit of failing.”
“Fair enough,” Connor said after a minute, sinking into his chair and looking at her across the L-shaped configuration of their desks. “Once we eat, we can get started.”
Harlow almost recanted on breakfast. She usually never had the time for anything other than buckets of coffee and the occasional banana. But she was still a little shaky. A few minutes and a couple of bites of whatever Connor had brought with him would ensure that it didn’t show, so she’d suck it up for the greater good.
“Where did you get these?” she asked, peering into the bag at the trio of paper-wrapped sandwiches. “I didn’t think anything was open this early.”
“There are a couple of places that open at five. Good if you’re in a pinch. But I made these.”
He moved a few things around on his desk to make room for his breakfast as Harlow’s jaw went full-gainer toward her lap. “You cook?”
“Yep. Turns out, it’s more fun than starving.” Connor’s smirk made another appearance, and she steeled herself against it by taking the sandwiches out of the bag. He said, “There’s a BLT and egg on ciabatta, an avocado, red pepper, and egg on a multigrain roll, and a Canadian bacon, egg, and Gouda. I threw spinach on it for grins. Take your pick.”
Her stomach shrilled for D) all of the above, but she finally went with the BLT. “You’re here awfully early,” she said, unwrapping her sandwich halfway and spreading two of the napkins that had been in the bag across her lap.
“I do work here.” His tone veered right back into defensive territory. But Harlow had liked their momentary truce, and anyway, Connor was right about them not being able to fix the clinic if they spent all their time sniping at each other.
“Of course you do. We can call maintenance later this morning to make sure you get your own key. What I meant was, I don’t usually see anyone here until seven thirty.”
The clinic was an eight-to-eight operation during the week and nine-to-five on Saturdays. Not that Harlow limited herself to those hours. Nor, it seemed, did Connor.
He lifted a shoulder most of the way into a shrug before letting it drop. “You get used to weird hours in the ICU and ED. My circadian rhythms are pretty much a Jackson Pollock painting. What’s your excuse?”
“I work,” she said simply. Connor chewed on that for a second—literally, as he’d unwrapped the veggie-egg sandwich and gotten to business—so Harlow followed suit. The faster they ate, the faster they could—
Holy Mary, mother of God.
“Oh.” Every last thing she had ever learned about etiquette hit the skids as her brain registered the rapture coming from her taste buds. Her second bite was three times the size of her first, and, okay, fine, she might have just made a noise vaguely related to a moan. But seriously… “What did you put in this to make it taste so good?”
Thankfully, Connor didn’t seem to mind her lack of manners. Also, he must be fluent in mumblese, because he’d clearly understood her question even though she’d asked it around a mouthful of food.
“Oh, I kind of messed with that one a little,” he admitted. “But I had extra pancetta, so I swapped it out for the regular bacon, and used arugula instead of lettuce. Put a little mozzarella in the eggs as I cooked them, sliced up a Roma tomato, and…”
“It’s heavenly,” Harlow murmured. After a beat, she realized that Connor was looking at her with both surprise and curiosity, and she lowered the sandwich, raising her guard. Hunger was close enough to emotion to count, and the last thing she needed was to show him anything other than the fact that she meant business.
Emotions showed your weaknesses, all the painful places that could be exploited, and her father had taught her better than that.
“Anyway. There’s no reason we can’t work and eat at the same time.” Taking a much more respectable bite of her breakfast (still so good), Harlow switched gears, snuffing out her feelings so she could focus on what mattered.
“Okay,” Connor said, albeit slowly. “Where do you want to start?”
“With our first hurdle. PR. Although it took a lot of doing, we seem to have nipped Mattigan’s attempt at a media frenzy in the bud.”
In truth, the fallout from the press conference hadn’t been as bad as she’d feared. Then again, she’d spent the better part of her weekend spinning the story to highlight Connor’s reputation for service over his father’s reputation for shady dealings.
Connor nodded, replying around bites as he polished off the rest of his sandwich. “I got a lot of requests for comments. But you don’t have to worry,” he added, at what was probably a look of panic on her face. “I deleted all the emails and sent all the calls directly to voicemail, then deleted those, too. Most of them seem to have gotten the message that I’m not interested in making any comments, because I was able to leave my phone on for most of the day yesterday without it threatening to explode.”
“Good. We’ll probably still have to deal with questions about your father from time to time. Reporters love to push a scandal. But once we start making changes for the better around here, they should be few and far between.”
“Okay, so how about the next hurdle.” He gestured to the papers on his desk, clearly ready to move on from the topic of his father. Which made two of them. “These records are a mess. It’s tough to get a really clear picture of the day-to-day operations from the reports. I’m going to need to observe the staff in action to figure out where the worst of the problems are.”
Harlow nodded. “That will make it easier to decide who to retain when we make cuts.” From there, they could tackle the train wreck masquerading as the payroll budget.
“Whoa. Just because operations are subpar doesn’t mean anyone needs to go,” Connor said, and her disbelief flew out by way of a laugh that held damn little humor.
“Ah, actually, that’s pretty much always what that means.” Cleaning house was the first thing they did when acquiring a company. No exceptions.
Connor, however? Looked less than thrilled at the prospect of streamlining their staff. “You don’t want to, oh, I don’t know, train the people who need it rather than just firing them
and taking away their livelihoods?”
“We don’t have the time or the resources for training,” Harlow argued. They were already so far behind.
Connor shook his head, adamant. “What we don’t have the time for is conducting job searches and interviews for staff to replace people we could very possibly retain.”
“You’re right,” she said, clearly taking him by surprise. But it only lasted until she said, “We need to consider consolidating some of these positions and streamlining the staff.”
“These nurses and PAs are already working long hours. Now you want to downsize so the ones who stay will have to do more? No way.”
Harlow paused. “I understand it’s not ideal. But it’s a smart business move to utilize your best resources to their maximum ability, and it’s one we have to consider. This clinic is operating way over budget.”
“They’re people, not resources,” Connor said through his teeth. “And there are plenty of other ways to balance a budget.”
Great. Now he was going to tell her how to do her job. Arrogant ass. “Not one that looks like this. And without a budget, none of those people have jobs,” she pointed out. “The board feels—”
He leaned forward, his green-gray eyes glinting as he cut her off with quiet, surgical precision. “What do you feel?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said ‘the board feels’. But I’m not working with the board. I’m working with you. So I want to know what you feel.”
She opened her mouth, only to snap it shut a second later. Of all the people she’d ever worked with on business acquisitions, no one had ever once asked her this question. It threw Harlow more than she wanted to admit, even to herself.
But right now, she had to focus on business. “Well, I’m a member of the board,” she started.
Of course, Connor wasn’t having it. Shocker. “You’re a member of the board who’s not giving me a straight answer. And anyway, you’d already given up your seat before all of this shook out.”
Between Me & You: An Enemies to Lovers Workplace Romance (Remington Medical Book 3) Page 8