GREAT EXPLOITATIONS (Crisis in Cali)
Copyright © 2014
Nicole Williams
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events of persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical without express permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.
Cover Design by Sarah Hansen of Okay Creations
Editing by Cassie Cox
Formatting by JT Formatting
Table of Contents
Title Page
The Beginning
The Meet
The Greet
The Heat
The Sheets
The Sweet
The End...
About the Author
LIFE WAS A dice roll. On rare occasions, a person might win the game, but for every person who won, a dozen others lost. I considered myself, along with billions of others, in the losing category. Sure, I’d won some battles, come out the victor in a few hard-fought wars, but if one added up the sum total of my wins and losses in life, mine would fall deep into the losing side.
So I was one of life’s losers—it wasn’t such a difficult thing to accept. I wasn’t the first, nowhere near the last, and I wasn’t in the minority by any means. My life hadn’t been easy or anything close to effortless. My birth into this world without a family or a name to call my own had introduced me to the losing side of life. The rest that followed hadn’t much improved. I’d enjoyed fleeting moments of beauty, some lasting long enough I almost started to wonder if my luck was changing. But I was quickly reminded that while a person’s perspective might change, the game never does. I would lose, that was a certainty, so instead of trying to fight the odds, I concentrated my efforts on mitigating my losses.
Or at least that was what I’d been concentrating on until I’d let Henry Callahan back into my life. Instead of merely blurring the lines between personal and professional, I’d taken a machete to the lines, hacking them to ribbons and bits until I couldn’t even remember where they had once been.
Which was why I was sitting in the Mustang, parked in the public beach access parking lot early on a Monday morning, watching a small dark spot get bigger as it journeyed along the surf. His four-legged companion was steady beside him. The longer I watched Henry, the more I realized what I was watching was like a metaphor for how he’d come back into my life. At first, he’d been a dot on the horizon that had been so small and inconsequential, I’d barely even noticed him . . . but step by step, day after day, that dark dot had grown until what was in front of me felt like it took up my whole field of vision. I might have been able to see what was around him, but I viewed it through a different lens. The lens of decimated lines, past regrets, and future hopes. The lens of a foolish girl instead of a wise woman.
As Henry ran by the Mustang, I scooted down in the seat just in case. He was a good hundred yards from the parking lot, but on the off chance he glanced in my direction, and on the off chance he recognized my car, I didn’t want the additional off chance of him identifying me watching him. Henry’s and my relationship was already too muddied by confusion and mixed signals; I didn’t need to add another to the murky waters.
Thankfully, he kept jogging, his pace steady and effortless. Even Molly, who’d seemed able to sniff me out from a mile back when Henry and I were together, didn’t pause to lift her nose. At that moment, they might have been in my life, but I wasn’t in theirs. I was a ghost, forced to watch the lives I’d once played a part in go on living while I was lost to the world around me.
With that positive affirmation, I fired up the engine and left the parking lot, promising myself I wouldn’t return. It was a work day, and I liked getting to Callahan Industries before the rest of my team did so I could wash down a cup of coffee or two before the official start of the day. Plus, I got a closer parking spot when I showed up just past the crack of dawn.
Callahan Industries was quiet when I pulled in. Only a few other cars dotted the parking lot. The barista stands situated every ten feet weren’t open yet, which would have put a serious cramp in my get-caffeinated agenda had I not been a plan B kind of girl. I kept a mini coffee pot in my office for just these kinds of situations.
The first thing I did when I powered into my office was prep the coffee machine and flip the power switch over—even before I flicked on the lights. As the coffee percolated and my computer powered on, I realized my thoughts had found their way back to Henry. Again. Thoughts that ranged from how I could close this Errand to how I felt when I caught him looking at me when he didn’t think I noticed. Thoughts that ranged from how he’d betrayed me all of those years ago to how if he asked for every last bit of it, I would have placed all my trust in his hands that very second. Thoughts that swung on a pendulum so far ranging, I started to feel dizzy in my ergonomic office chair.
Thankfully, that was when the coffee machine hissed as the last few drops rained into the pot. I flipped over a clean cup, filled it to the brim, and drained half of it in one long drink. I was sips away from finishing my second cup when I heard the door to the lab open. Several team members came staggering in, bleary-eyed and clutching their own coffees like it was their very lifeblood.
It hadn’t taken me long to figure out that R&D Developers were a special breed, as Henry had warned me back when I’d started. Most lived in a rotating wardrobe of worn jeans and T-shirts, existed with permanent hollows under their eyes, and on any given day, could be seen appraising their computers like they vacillated from wanting to throw them out the window to wanting to make sweet love to them. Their social skills were lacking, their love lives non-existent, and their likelihood of keeling over from a stress-induced heart attack astronomical. But they were a good bunch to oversee. Mainly because they kept themselves on track, didn’t require a hint of micro-managing, and didn’t do drama in the workplace . . . probably because drama required some degree of social skills which, back to the beginning, were in short supply in this corner of the CI campus.
The day passed like the majority of my days there, quickly and riddled with emails and progress update meetings. I felt like I’d only just finished my lunch when team member after team member started poking their heads inside my office, saying goodnight for the evening. That was at seven, and it was eight by the time I’d managed to get through the rest of my emails.
I was about to check my slew of phones to make sure I hadn’t missed any calls—that I hadn’t heard from G in a few days was strange since she’d been checking on me daily—when I heard the door to the lab whine open. I was turning to see which developer had forgotten their laptop or bus-pass when I realized that no developer in this lab walked with such confident, assured footsteps.
“See, Max, I told you she’d still be here. From the hours she puts in, you’d think she owns the company.” Henry’s voice filled the lab, his half-smile evident in his tone.
I dimmed my smile before spinning around in my chair. “You might own the company, Mr. CEO, but it’s all of us minions who keep it running.” When Henry paused in the doorway, his gaze skimmed down me in a way that made me want to shift in my seat. I sat up straighter instead, crossed my legs, and peaked a brow. I might not have felt like the most confident woman in the world, but he didn’t need to know that.
Henry lifted his own brow, still appraising me in a way that put my every nerve on high alert. “For your informati
on I don’t think of you all as minions.”
“No? Indentured servants?” I suggested, not about to be the first one to break eye contact. Henry and I had had plenty of unannounced staring contests, and I was tired of losing every time. “Spineless lackeys? Dime-a-dozen peons? Wit-handicapped vassals?”
Henry sighed. “Invaluable colleagues.”
“Okay, if you’re not going to make the introductions, allow me. A woman who can put you in your place without batting an eye and keep a team of R&D lunatics on schedule is someone I have to shake hands with.” The guy who I presumed was Max squeezed through the doorway past Henry. In his chinos and wide-rimmed glasses, he looked every bit the techie that Henry did not in his narrowly tailored suit and sanguine aura. “And one day in the future exchange ‘I do’s with.” Max tempered his words with a wink that Henry couldn’t see.
“And I’ll remind you that sexual harassment is something Callahan Industries takes quite seriously, Max.” Henry’s voice wasn’t quite cool, but almost. His easy stance changed so it tipped the rigid scale. “You might be second-in-command, but that honor doesn’t come with being above the rules.”
Max grinned at me, a blend of genuine and goofiness in his smile. “Then what’s the perk to being your number one?”
When Max held out his hand, I stood and shook it. I liked that Max looked me in the eye when he shook my hand and that he didn’t try to break my hand or treat it like it was fragile.
Henry let out a single-noted laugh. “There aren’t any perks. We went over this.”
Max fired off another wink at me before glancing back at Henry. “Excuse me for disagreeing, but this, old friend, is a very big, beautiful”—Max nudged me as he made Henry’s stance more rigid with each word—“perk.”
I worked my tongue into my cheek to keep from smiling.
Henry, however, wasn’t in a smiling mood. “So introductions have been made. You can get out of here now, Max. I’m sure Eve’s got better things to do than tolerate your pathetic attempts at ingratiating yourself to her.”
“Actually . . .” I shrugged.
Max’s grin stretched. Henry rolled his eyes.
“So you’re Henry’s number one, second in command, which would also make you—”
Max adjusted the collar on his polo shirt. “Vice President of Callahan Industries.”
He couldn’t have been any older than Henry or me, but he appeared to have the self-importance of a man twice his age.
“I was going for The Guy Who Came in Second Place to Running Callahan Industries, but I suppose your answer works too.”
Max stuck out his lower lip. Henry laughed.
“I know a hopeless ingratiating case when I see one.” Max pouted a bit more before shrugging it off as he headed for the doorway. “Besides, I’ve only got a few hundred more reports to pull out of my ass before the big meeting in the morning.”
Henry patted Max’s shoulder as he passed by. “I suppose that explains why it always seems like your reports are full of shit.”
“On to me, yes, you are,” Max replied in a Yoda voice as he elbowed Henry in the ribs. “Nice to meet you, Eve. Sorry to greet and run, but the slave driver only lets me out of my cell for a few minutes every day. Just email the date and time, and I’ll be waiting at the altar a minute early. Okay?”
My tongue went farther into my cheek when I witnessed the shadow fall over Henry’s face again. “Nice to meet you too?” I replied, but Max had already disappeared behind the lab door.
“Max, meet Eve. Eve, meet Max.” Henry shook his head as he made the one-sided introductions. “Sorry about that. Max is a bit of an acquired taste.”
“The exact same thing could be said of me, so I can’t fault him for being the same way.”
Henry’s eyes narrowed infinitesimally. “I think you’ve got that wrong. I’m quite positive you’re everybody’s taste.”
The fact that I was alone in a quiet room with Henry became very obvious as he stared at me. I’d dimmed the lights earlier because the relentless glare of overhead fluorescents became too much every day around four o’clock, and I wished I’d left them at full strength. The fact that Henry was stepping closer, purpose sketched across his brow, made me think and feel things I had no right to claim.
I cleared my throat. “So that’s the guy who would run Callahan Industries if you were assassinated, keeled over from a stress-induced stroke, fell off the grid in that private jet of yours, or had an unfortunate encounter with a blow dryer tumbling into your bathtub?”
The skin between Henry’s brows wrinkled. “That, or when and if I choose to step down.”
“The day you step down will be the day you die, Henry.” I gave him a knowing look. He hadn’t committed his life to creating his company to just up and quit it. Entrepreneur titans didn’t just walk away from multi-billion dollar businesses.
“Or it won’t be,” he replied with a shrug.
His suit was slightly rumpled, indicating he’d had just as long a day as I’d had. His five o’clock shadow had set in a few hours earlier, and though the rest of him looked tired, his eyes didn’t. They looked alert and alive.
I was nervous being so close to him with his eyes looking like that. We were alone and both so deep into our days that strength and willpower were in short supply. To G, he was an Errand, our Ten, the most important case of both of our careers, but to me, Henry Callahan had ceased to be just another Errand weeks ago and had morphed into something far more. When I looked at him while he was looking at me like that, I was a college girl again, falling for the college boy who was so out of her league, they weren’t even playing the same game.
“I was just getting ready to head out when you and Max came in.” I eyed my purse and jacket hanging on the hook. “I’ve really got to leave now, or I’ll be late—”
“You just said you didn’t have anything better to do than have Max try to ingratiate himself to you.” Henry raised a brow as he stepped closer. “Has that changed now that it’s me trying to do the ingratiating?”
He wore a half-smile, but I knew enough of our on-and-off game to accept that he was only jesting. “That’s because I didn’t have anything to do when it was Max doing the ingratiating, but I definitely have something to do if it’s you trying to do the same.” I wished I hadn’t worn a long-sleeved blouse with a black pencil skirt. The air-conditioning had seemed cool earlier, but I felt like someone had cranked on the furnace.
“Why?” Henry continued. “What makes me the exception?”
When he took another step closer, I backed into my desk. Other than crawling onto it, I had no place left to escape. “Because you and I have history.”
“Which means?” He tilted his head, eyeing the few feet between us like he couldn’t decide if it was crossable.
“Which means it’s complicated.”
He thought about that for a moment. “It doesn’t have to be.”
When he took another step closer, only one more keeping us apart, I eyed the door. It was still open. It meant escape. It meant giving me another day to try to work out the feelings I had or didn’t have for him. It meant repeating again and again in front of the mirror that this was an Errand, Henry was a Target, that it was business and nothing else. It meant beating the image of him with another woman into my head until the only thing I saw when I looked at Henry Callahan was a cheating bastard who needed to be brought to his knees.
That door seemed so far away.
When he took that final step, his hand dropping to the bend of my waist, I knew it was too late. His touch made me feel the exact same way it had years ago. When his other hand curved around the side of my neck, its warmth seeping into my skin, I sucked in a breath and grabbed the edge of my desk. Him touching me was bad enough; I wouldn’t allow myself to return the favor.
“Henry, don’t,” I warned, my voice too low, too labored. His eyes locked on mine, but I diverted my gaze.
“Give me one good reason why not, and I won�
�t.” His voice was lower than normal, tight where mine was shallow. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t do what both of us have been tiptoeing around for weeks, and I’ll leave and won’t say a word to you again unless it’s Callahan Industries related.” His thumb stroked the curve of my neck, pausing on my pulse-point. A smile curved into place when he felt the pace of it. “Put the past behind us for long enough to see if we could have a future.”
Without another word, Henry lowered his mouth to mine, pausing when they were barely brushing mine—allowing me a chance to slap his face before shoving him away. But I didn’t slap him, and I didn’t shove him away. I tore my grip from the desk and lifted my hands to his chest. When I dropped them against him and pressed my body hard into his, it felt like he trembled. Before I could be sure, his lips touched mine, and the whole world outside of us froze.
Henry’s mouth moved against mine slowly, so purposefully it was like he’d planned and waited for that moment for decades. His hands stayed on my waist and neck, but his fingers curled deeper into me, almost like he was trying to find a grip. He was controlled, patient, and so careful it was as if he was trying to hold onto a wild animal.
But nothing felt controlled or careful inside me—I felt the opposite. I wanted to pull him hard against me and kiss him until I was breathless and all my energy had been spent. Instead of our lips being the only parts connected, I wanted every other part to join in.
I’d known from the beginning that if I let him kiss me, I’d be in trouble. I knew I’d feel the same kinds of things I had when we’d first been together, but I hadn’t expected to feel other things. Different kinds of emotions and desires. As Henry kissed me, very little of the college boy I remembered making out with was still around. Instead, he was a man who exuded confidence and made no qualms about his desire.
The first few times Henry and I’d “made out” in college, he tried to keep me from feeling or noticing his arousal, almost like he was ashamed . . . but the man making out with me now wasn’t trying to hide or disguise anything. He wanted me to know what he felt and what he was ready for.
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