Past Midnight

by Jasmine Haynes

  “I don’t know.” She used the end of her spoon to trace the silvery swirls in the Formica.

  “You don’t know if you liked it or you don’t know if you want to do it again?”

  She shrugged, still tracing patterns on the tabletop.

  She was reaching out to him even if she didn’t know it. That’s what she wanted, for him to fix things. His heart ached that what she needed most was something he could never give her. He couldn’t fix losing Jay. He only knew that making her feel emotion, any emotion, was better than letting her go on like a robot. He’d taken her that way because she’d never let him do it before, and her acceptance of it, even as she fought him verbally, her aweinspiring orgasm, was a testament to her desire to push her limits. Force me. Take care of me. They were the same thing.

  Propping her elbow on the table, she laid her chin on her hand and looked at him. “Maybe now that I’ve had it, I need something else.”

  Didn’t she feel the enormity of what had happened between them in that hotel room? Yes, he believed she did. That’s what drove her crazy. She wanted him to help her, fix things for her, take care of her, but she was terrified of actually letting him do it. Wanting desperately yet being equally afraid. He gave, she threw it back. He couldn’t help her with that, couldn’t force her to hold on to any steps forward they made together.

  But he would not give up. He’d push at her until she had to give him something to work with. “Trust me with what you want next then.” He used the word intentionally, specifically, because he couldn’t be sure how much she truly trusted him to provide for her. There was so much difference between what you wished for and what you thought you had.

  Before she could answer—and he was damn sure she was glad of it—their waitress arrived, tray balanced on her hip, and slid their plates onto the table.

  After the waitress was gone, Erin slathered marmalade on her sourdough toast. He picked up a crispy piece of bacon. “Come on, Erin.” He leaned in, dropped his voice. “You know what dirty, nasty thing you want next. You’ve been thinking about it, fantasizing about it, and now you’re crazy with wanting it.”

  She stared at him, toast halfway to her mouth. “You think you know me so well. You think you have me all figured out.”

  He smiled, swallowing the bite of bacon, the smoky flavor delicious. “I do know you, baby. I know exactly what you had in mind last night, what you were trying to do when you blindfolded me, tied me down, and didn’t say a word.” Luckily the noise around them seemed to seal them off, and no one paid attention.

  She snorted. “Oh yeah? You knew? You had no idea.”

  He wondered if she had any idea what she’d been trying to accomplish. “You wanted me to doubt that it was you. You wanted me to think it was some other woman you gave me to, wanted me to say how hot it was doing someone else, just so you could slam me down in the end.”

  She stared at him a long moment. “Yes. You’re exactly right,” she agreed mildly, then added without a missing beat, “can I have a bite of hash browns?”

  He laughed. “I didn’t expect you to be honest about it.” He shoved his plate toward her.

  Chewing the forkful of hash browns she’d scooped off his plate, she wriggled her shoulders. Then she put a finger to her lips, swallowing. “I wasn’t sure about it being a test and all until after I’d done it and I was back in the elevator.”

  “So you were going to get back on BART and leave me up there to spend the night alone?”

  She raised a brow, nodded her head, and smiled. “I thought the whole silence thing was very sexy.”

  It would have been if she hadn’t fucked him silently in the night so many times before. She didn’t have a clue how that tore him apart. “What made you come back?”

  She stabbed a small cube of toast with her fork and dipped it in his egg yoke. His chest tightened. She hadn’t eaten off his plate like this in a long time, not since they used to go down to the corner Denny’s for Sunday breakfast, where kids could eat for free. It used to piss him off how she always stole his food; now, he relished it, wanted to shove his plate at her and tell her to take everything she wanted, everything he offered.

  “I came back because I didn’t have”—she glanced around—“the big O,” she mouthed.

  She’d returned because it hadn’t been enough. She’d needed more than a silent quickie just as he had. But she wasn’t going to admit it.

  He’d learned something essential though. “Delightful as what you planned was, from now on, I’ll be in charge.” They both needed his dominance. That was the simplicity of her greatest fantasy, to let him take care of everything.

  Elbow on the table, she propped her chin on her hand. “You’re free to think you’re in charge.”

  Still feisty, that was good, but she hadn’t challenged him by saying she wouldn’t play at all. Even better. “You’re free to give me suggestions,” he prompted.

  “No. No suggestions.” She stole more of his hash browns. “That way if I don’t like it, I can blame you.”

  Once again, she was being completely honest without even realizing how close to the truth she was about their entire relationship since they’d lost Jay.

  17

  WHAT DOMINIC HAD DONE TO HER FRIDAY NIGHT WAS NAUGHTY and taboo. And completely fantastic. In the heat of the moment, the primitive act was perfection.

  Erin saw things more realistically on a Monday morning, the start of the week, all the work ahead, the shipping preparation, year-end barreling down on them. And she knew she couldn’t keep on expecting perfection. She couldn’t keep on ordering Dominic to find a way to give it to her or they were both bound to be disappointed.

  For now, she would relish Friday night as extraordinary and Saturday morning breakfast at Lorie’s Diner as rejuvenating. But this was Monday and the real world.

  “Hey, Bree, can you do a quick analysis on how many of the through-coat gauges we’ve sold?” Erin wanted some idea of the cost if the patent problem wasn’t resolved. If Dominic found out she’d asked for the report, he’d think she was checking up on him. Erin didn’t care. She needed to know.

  Bree was watering her philodendron. Statuesque, she didn’t have to stand on a stool to water it. The plant was massive, leafy green vines wrapped around the pot, trailing down both sides of the bookcase. The philodendron had been in a five-inch plastic pot when Bree started at DKG.

  “Sure.” Bree didn’t ask when Erin wanted it or why. She would just do the work and have the figures on Erin’s desk, probably before lunch.

  “Thanks.” Then Erin noticed her eyes, or rather the dark circles under them. “You okay?”

  Bree smiled. Somehow it made her look more fragile. “Sure.”

  Wow, she was a fountain of conversation today. Slender and waiflike despite her height, with long black hair and pale skin, Bree was five years younger than Erin. Erin had always thought of her as ethereal and oddly childlike. She’d worked for a big accounting firm before DKG, but she hadn’t liked the pressure, the lack of routine, or the fact that she never had her own workspace. She hadn’t even been embarrassed when she’d revealed that in the job interview.

  Erin wondered if she should push. But if Bree didn’t want to talk, she wouldn’t.

  “Okay then.” Despite feeling that was a weak excuse, Erin backed out, turned, then called across the main room. “Rachel, I’m going out for a couple of hours.”

  Rachel waggled her fingers without saying a word, but Yvonne came to the door of her office. Yvonne wanted to know everything that went on at DKG, whether it concerned her or not, but Erin would be damned if she’d explain her comings and goings.

  Besides, she didn’t want Dominic to know where she was headed. He’d say she was bringing undue pressure to bear.

  Half an hour later, she pulled into the driveway of Leon’s house in the Los Gatos hills above the Lexington Reservoir. The house, workshop, and two-acre property were probably worth a couple of million, but Leon had lived there
forever and she’d bet he paid practically nothing for it, comparatively speaking. Separated from the house by redwoods, pines, and bay trees, Leon’s workshop stood in a clearing. The roll-up door was open, three rows of florescent lights blazing.

  Thin and rangy, Leon’s face was a mass of lines and crevices that signified years spent in the outdoors. Hunched over an inspection lamp magnifying a circuit board, he soldered a resistor. Leon was a ham radio operator, and he built his own amplifiers and other odds and ends of radio equipment. Seated on a metal stool with casters on the bottom, he was surrounded by rolling toolboxes, carts and bins of parts, pieces of test equipment, and two lazy, old mixed-breed dogs he’d rescued from the pound years ago. The black one twitched in his sleep.

  “To what do I owe this pleasure, Erin?” Leon said, his eyes myopic behind his glasses.

  She smiled. “I’m here to talk you out of giving up your sideline.” DKG’s transducers. Though that was only half the reason she’d driven out.

  “I want to rebuild those old cars before I die,” he said, raising a shock of eyebrows that were as white as his thick hair. A couple of ancient clunkers rusted out behind the workshop. They’d been there as long as she’d known him, and probably far longer.

  “You’re going to need money for the parts.”

  “I can get damn near everything at the junkyard.”

  The Elvis clock above Leon’s head chimed the hour with “uh-huh-huh,” Elvis’s legs rocking back and forth serving as pendulum. The Betty Boop clock booped, Felix the Cat’s eyes rolled, and the Popeye clock popped a can of spinach. Leon had grown up on the old cartoons, served in Korea and Vietnam, and had more stories than an Internet blogger, but his were real. He was history itself.

  Sometimes she’d brought Jay up here. Most kids would have been bored to death with an old man’s stories and his vintage equipment, but not Jay. He’d been a sponge, absorbing everything. Erin breathed through the sudden ache.

  Leon set down his soldering iron and pushed aside the inspection lamp. “You didn’t come all the way up here to convince me to keep making the transducers.”

  “I was going to offer you a raise.”

  “I don’t need a raise.” He lived simply, and he’d never been married so he didn’t have children to leave a fortune to. “I would have retired last year, but I figured you needed me.” He removed his glasses, his eyes a clear blue without them, not even a hint of cataracts. “Now it’s time I moved on.”

  Erin stepped back, her heart beating too fast at the obvious reference to Jay. On the workbench shelf was a whittled camel. He’d started another, this one lying down, legs tucked beneath it. A standing male and a seated female. Two by two. She knew without a doubt they were for Noah’s Ark. Leon was still whittling for Jay.

  “I don’t want you to move on,” she said without thinking.

  “I know.”

  It wasn’t merely finding someone else, paying the extra it would cost, or moving the work in-house. It was Leon. “I’ll miss you.” Even if she hadn’t been up here to see the old man in a year. He was there, a part of the past, a symbol. The thought of letting him go inspired terror.

  “I’ll still be here when you need to visit.” He hadn’t held it against her that she’d avoided seeing him. He understood, she was sure. And instead of forcing her to talk about it, he dealt with the practical. “Here’s what you do,” he said in the rough, aged voice of his. “Get the kid to make them.”

  The kid was Matt. “His failure rate has skyrocketed. I can’t trust him on this.”

  “Yes, you can. On paper, it probably looks like it’ll cost you more than outsourcing with another outfit, but letting him prove himself will give you back immeasurably. He won’t fail you.” Leon had occasionally come to DKG to drop off parts. He knew all her employees. He was a good judge of character. “Give people a chance,” he added, “and they shine for you.”

  She felt as if he was saying something else, something she wasn’t getting. “But you can’t really mean to spend your time on old cars?”

  He waved a hand over his radio equipment. “There’s all this, and—” He stopped, gazed at her, amazing her again with the clarity of his eyes. “I want to meet some of the old geezers I’ve been talking to on the ham radio. Road trip. Lots of stuff to do, Erin.”

  He had things he wanted to do. He’d only been hanging around because he thought he needed to prop her up. She’d taken him for granted. And she needed to give in gracefully. “Will you send me postcards?” she asked softly, her stomach aching.

  “Course I will.” He smiled, and it was as if the old grizzled face beamed.

  She didn’t like change, and she was going to miss him for more than his parts. Far more, but she’d think about that later. There was something else she’d come about. “Anything odd going on at WEU?” Leon fabbed transducers for them, too.

  “WEU?” He scratched his head. “Odd like what?”

  She didn’t want to tell him that WEU was going to sue them over the through-coat patent. He’d only worry. “I’ve been hearing rumors.” She didn’t get specific. Theirs was a small industry; rumors were always flying.

  Leon cocked his head like one of his dogs. “They’ve been pushing payment out to thirty and forty-five days. A couple of months ago, they tried to push me out to sixty and I cut ’em off till I got my money.”

  Most invoice payment terms were net thirty, but smaller vendors like Leon, one-man shops, needed payment right away. They couldn’t afford to finance big companies. Erin made sure Leon got paid on every weekly check run. Yet WEU had been pushing him out forty-five days and beyond.

  “I gave them notice, too, just like you.” He didn’t want her thinking he’d drop her but keep a bigger company like WEU, but she knew he’d never do that.

  So, it was possible WEU was having financial issues, and that’s why they’d jumped on this patent thing now. They were searching for different avenues of cash. All right, she had a possible reason, but she didn’t know how that helped her. DKG didn’t have overflowing coffers of cash to fight them with.

  “Thanks for the intel.” She gave the old man a hug. “I’m going to do as you suggest and give Matt a chance.”

  He patted her cheek affectionately. “Good girl. And you’ve still got two months left out of me. If you want, I can come down and show the little whippersnapper the tricks of my trade.”

  “You’re a doll.”

  “Say hi to Dominic.”

  “I will. And don’t forget those postcards when you’re on the move.” She didn’t mention the camels.

  The ache of loss burned at the backs of her eyes, but at seventy-five, Leon was moving on. She had no right to stop him, and she had the feeling he was telling her to do the same. He didn’t have kids. He didn’t understand that she’d never move on.

  Back at DKG, Yvonne didn’t even let her get as far as her office. It was just after noon. Yvonne signaled her with a crooked finger, looking in both directions like a spy worried about being overheard. Rachel was most likely out to lunch, and Bree’s door was closed. Dominic’s car had been in the lot, but he was probably in his lab.

  “In here,” Yvonne whispered loudly. She closed her office door when Erin was inside. “Something’s wrong with Bree.”

  “Is she sick? Did she have to go home?”

  Yvonne rolled her eyes and huffed. “I mean weird wrong, not sick wrong.”

  Erin did not sigh. Yvonne claimed she hated gossip, but she was actually the worst gossip in the office. “What exactly is weird wrong?” Erin asked.

  “Well,” Yvonne began to divulge, her eyes gleaming with an avid light, “she and that Rachel girl whisper all the time.”

  That Rachel girl? The term didn’t bode well. In addition, she couldn’t imagine Bree whispering “all the time” to anyone. Bree kept to herself, she was internal, one might even say an introvert. “You’re exaggerating, Yvonne.”

  Yvonne narrowed her eyes. “I see things.”

&n
bsp; Sometimes Yvonne did too much seeing. She was wonderful at her job, friendly and caring with customers, great at solving problems. Getting her nose into other people’s business was her downside.

  “I don’t like it, Erin. Maybe you should talk to her and find out what’s going on.”

  “Yvonne, you need to butt out.”

  Yvonne scowled. “But—”

  Erin held up one finger. Yvonne slapped her mouth shut, but a scowl creased her forehead.

  “If it starts to interrupt the work flow, I’ll talk to both Rachel and Bree. Otherwise . . .” She left the sentence hanging and opened Yvonne’s door.

  She hated being in the middle. If it was work, she could handle it, but sometimes she got so freaking tired of people’s crap. There was nothing going on. Yvonne just didn’t like being out of the loop, or that Bree might actually confide something in Rachel rather than telling her.

  On her desk, Erin found the list of through-coat sales sorted by model number. Whatever was going on, as Yvonne put it, Bree had done exactly what she’d asked her to.

  Erin flipped to the last page, and her next breath nearly choked her.

  Oh my God. She did a quick calculation in her mind. If WEU took them to court and won, the amount of cash they’d have to come up with to pay the royalty would bankrupt them.

  18

  MONDAY NIGHT. TWO DAYS AFTER THAT FANTASTIC EVENT IN THE hotel. Yeah, he considered it an event. Erin rolled again in the bed, this time toward him. Dominic glanced at the clock. A little past midnight. Balls aching, cock hard, pulse racing, he waited for her to reach for him. He wanted it, needed it, her touch, physical, mental, emotional. Brief scenarios ran through his mind, all the kinky things he wanted from her.

  But she didn’t reach for him. Instead, she turned away. He couldn’t stand it anymore. He trailed a finger down her spine.

  Tossing aside the covers, she sat up, keeping her back to him. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m just restless.”