Synergy: New Adult Romantic Suspense (U-District, #1)

by Ashland, Jodi

  “You look great. As long as you like it, that’s all that matters. Besides, I don’t expect anyone to wear formal business attire unless we have a customer visit.”

  Patricia’s shoulders relaxed. “You can grab an extra chair from Timothy’s office. He knows you’re coming down here today.”

  Jade quietly walked into Timothy’s office while he was taking a call. She pointed to one of the empty chairs.

  “No. It would be too risky. I won’t be able to—” He stopped midsentence. “Hold on a minute.”

  “Sorry, can I borrow your chair?”

  “Take it.” He waved her off. “I’m busy.”

  Jade rolled the chair to Patricia’s desk and heard Timothy close the door behind her. It looked like she’d ticked him off again. She didn’t have time to deal with that now. She was eager to get started with Patricia. “So what I would like to do today is ask you questions and get your ideas and thoughts on things. I’m looking for ways to cut our costs without impacting delivery or quality.”

  “Like how?”

  “I don’t know. I’m open for any ideas or suggestions.”

  Patricia glanced back at Timothy’s office. “Well…”—she lowered her voice—“I have vendors that keep increasing their price on us, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re our sole source provider. They have us between a rock and a hard place, and they know it.”

  “You mean they’re the only company that sells the part?”

  “Well, no. They’re the only company that sells us this part.”

  “Have we tried to get parts from other companies?”

  “Stan wouldn’t let us.”

  “Why not?” Stan didn’t even work there anymore, and he was still getting in the way of good business.

  “No idea. But in one case, I do know of two other suppliers, one in the US and the other in Japan. If we were able to get competitive bids and have them re-bid every year instead of every five years, we’d probably save a ton of money.”

  “Wouldn’t re-bidding every year take up a lot of your time?”

  “Well, yes, if we did them all. I’m just suggesting we re-bid the high-dollar items.”

  Jade leaned back, thinking. “Can you contact the two vendors and schedule appointments for you and me to meet with them? I’m assuming the Japanese vendor has a US rep?”

  “Yes.” Patricia’s eyes sparked with excitement. “Do I need to run it by Timothy?”

  “Yes, you should mention it to him. But just between you and me, we’re doing this whether he likes it or not.”

  After spending another half hour with Patricia, Jade stood to leave. “I have a two o’clock meeting. I’ll send you some information about quality practices, and then I’ll touch base with you in a week. If you have any other ideas or suggestions, I’m open to hearing them.”

  “Thanks.” Patricia smiled. “I have to admit I was a bit intimidated about this meeting, and I can’t believe that you’re interested in my ideas.”

  “I am very interested. Anytime. Oh, one more thing… how do I look?” Jade held her hands out and twirled around slowly.

  Patricia checked out her tweed brown jacket, ivory silk blouse, and chocolate brown skirt, stopping just above the knee. Chocolate brown pumps topped off the outfit. “You look fantastic.”

  “Perfect.” Jade smiled. Bryce won’t know what hit him.

  BRYCE COULDN’T AVOID JADE any longer. He had to attend the management meeting. At least with a full room, he’d be safe from his unprofessional behavior.

  Jade stood near the head of the table. He avoided eye contact and wished like hell he didn’t have to sit right next to her. The scent of her strawberry shampoo would be his undoing.

  “Bryce,” Jade said in a low throaty voice as he walked by. “I have something for you.” She put her body between him and the rest of the employees coming into the room and held her hand out to him. “Here, this is for you.” She pressed something soft into his hand.

  “What is it?”

  Jade leaned in close and whispered, “My silk panties.”

  His eyes grew wide and damn if his gut didn’t just light on fire.

  She turned before he could give them back. “Everybody, please have a seat and let’s get started.” She motioned to the presentation screen.

  Bryce shoved the underwear in his pocket. He glanced around the room. No one noticed. The feeling of lace and silk against his fingertips had him cursing Jade in every language he could think of.

  Jade remained standing and walked around the table as she spoke. “Please take a look at the sales figures before you.” She was watching him out of the corner of her eye, and damn if she didn’t just catch him checking out her legs. Was she wearing anything under her very short skirt? “As you can see, Bradley Industries has triple the sales we do, while Stellar Technologies has almost double.”

  Bryce’s collar cinched tight around his neck. He knew what Jade was doing, and despite his knowing it, she was succeeding. All he could think about were her long legs and her bare skin under that short, short skirt.

  Jade walked to the whiteboard and picked up the blue pen. She stood on her toes and reached up as high as she could to create two graphs. Her skirt rose up until—

  He took a sharp breath.

  Another inch of bare leg was revealed, but nothing else. Jade drew in the y-axis, labeling it with a dollar sign and then drew in the x-axis without labeling it. She did the same for the other graph, drawing an upward trend line on both of them. When she turned, he caught Timothy glancing away from her legs.

  Heat stung Bryce’s eyes, which now bore into Jade’s. Timothy shouldn’t be looking at her like that. Hell, Bryce himself shouldn’t be looking at her that way either.

  Her gaze held his, and she gave him a crooked, devious smile. He could almost hear her thoughts. Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it?

  Yeah, it is.

  “Bryce, could you tell us your theory as to why our sales are nearly one third of what they could be?” Jade waited a moment. She glanced at Roz, who was grinning.

  Hell, does she know too?

  “Bryce?” Jade asked again.

  The managers were patiently waiting for his answer.

  Get your mind out of the gutter. You’re the one who crossed the line. You deserve what she’s dishing out. Bryce cleared a Sahara-like dryness from his throat. “Uh, yes, well, that would be because of two reasons.”

  Jade shifted her feet.

  His eyes darted to her legs, then back to her eyes.

  “And those reasons would be?” Her smile made him think of a sly cat with feathers hanging out of its mouth.

  He had to look away from her to think. He focused on Timothy across from him. “First, our quality isn’t what it used to be.”

  Timothy nodded.

  Bryce could focus on the task as long as he didn’t look at Jade. “We used to have the highest reputation for quality. Our customers were willing to pay more. That’s no longer the case. Bradley has taken the lead in quality now.” He looked around the room at the other managers. “Second, our deliveries are not on time. Stellar beats the delivery schedules of both Bradley and Synergy.”

  “Precisely.” Jade beamed at him.

  He was sure that smile wasn’t for the answer he’d given, which of course had been accurate, but for his hesitation to begin with. She knew what she was doing to him. Damn her.

  Jade turned to the whiteboard and filled in the x-axis with quality on one graph and on-time delivery on the other graph. Then she picked up the red pen and drew in an upward trend line on both graphs showing that as quality or on-time delivery increased, so did sales. “And this”—she tapped the red line—“is why we’re going to become known as the company with the highest quality product that always delivers on time.”

  “How do you propose we do that, Jade?” Timothy asked.

  “Well, that’s what our meeting next Friday is
for.” She casually walked around the table. “I want you all to ask yourself that same question. How are we going to do that? We all have ideas and answers to that question if we look at what’s being done and ask our team for ideas.”

  Jade stopped between Bryce and Linda. “For example, Timothy, let’s look at the possibility of moving away from a sole source supplier to multiple vendors.”

  “Yes.” Timothy’s eyes dilated. He appeared a little shocked, but he recovered quickly. “If we were able to multi-source our flat panels, we could reduce our costs by approximately twenty percent and speed up the delivery schedule from multiple vendors so that we could deliver more quickly for our customers.”

  Donald started coughing uncontrollably.

  “Are you all right?” Jade asked.

  Donald waved his hand. “Just sucked coffee down the wrong pipe.”

  Jade smiled. “Great, Timothy. Keep those ideas coming.”

  Bryce was pretty sure Jade had come up with that one on her own. But she was willing to give Timothy credit, this time. She was learning.

  Jade walked to the head of the table between himself and Donald. Bryce was achingly aware of her standing right beside him. He bit back his anger, or lust, or whatever the hell it was.

  “So,” she said, leaning across the table to draw another chart on one of the agendas for the managers to see. Only this time her legs were right beside him, close enough for him to imagine caressing the soft skin of her inner thigh and gliding his hand under that sorry excuse of a suit. How would Jade react if he slid his fingers between her—

  Roz cleared her throat.

  He glared at her.

  She grinned and winked at Jade.

  Shit. Without uttering a single word, Roz had told Jade he was suffering badly.

  “If we increase sales, we increase our material orders. Larger orders allow us to multi-source for competitive bids on high-dollar items or obtain bulk discounts for consumables.” Jade stood and held up the paper for the managers to see. “We can achieve economies of scale. Thank you. I look forward to many more inventive ideas.”

  “Great idea, Timothy,” Jason said on his way out.

  Jade seemed happy at Jason’s remark.

  Bryce wasn’t happy. He was pissed at himself for reacting that way toward her again. He had a damn hard-on the size of Mount Everest and couldn’t leave the room.

  When the last person left, Jade closed the door.

  He remained seated. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

  “I’m not afraid to be behind closed doors with you. I’m fully capable of handling you,” Jade said as she walked toward him with her hips swaying and her eyes sparkling.

  “So I see. What do you want, Jade?”

  “We need to talk.”

  Finally. He was ready to get this over with. He’d gone too far, and she had ample cause to fire him for sexual harassment. Everything he’d accomplished at Synergy he’d destroyed in a single moment of uncontrollable lust. At least she wasn’t going to fire him in front of everyone.

  She stopped in front of him with her hands on her hips. “Why did you kiss me?”

  His eyes cut to the door. He wanted to be anywhere but here right now, but he needed to take responsibility for his actions. “I shouldn’t have. It was wrong.”

  Anger simmered behind her eyes. “Why, because you have a girlfriend?”

  “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “You don’t?” Her voice softened. “What about Kenzie?”

  “She’s my cousin. That’s it.”

  Before he knew what she was doing, Jade turned his chair and sat in his lap.

  Caught off guard, he clasped her arms, and then he let go and grabbed the edge of the table. Her hip dug into his groin.

  Her eyebrows rose. “Happy to see me?”

  Fuck. “What are you doing, Jade?”

  “I want to call us even and get back to the way we were before.”

  “And how was that?” He was happy to focus on anything but the feel of her body against his.

  “There’s a synergy between us. We’re a team. I need you to help me run this company, and I can’t do it without you. We’re going to disagree sometimes, but we’ll always get through it.”

  That wasn’t the response he was expecting… at all. He drew in a deep breath.

  “I might seem young and frail to you, but my parents and grandmother raised me well. I’ve traveled the world and been to a dozen other companies with my grandmother. I’m not as naïve as most of you seem to think I am.”

  “Don’t lump me in with the rest of them. I’ve always respected what you’ve done here.”

  “Yes, you have.” She ran a finger down his cheek. “And thank you for that.”

  “Okay, we’re even. You can get up now.”

  “Not until you kiss me.”

  His heart slammed against his ribs. “What?” His eyes met hers.

  “I said, kiss me.”

  “I heard you the first time. Why are you doing this?”

  “I’m your CEO, and what I’m asking for is highly inappropriate.”

  “Highly.”

  “And what you did was highly inappropriate. So if you kiss me because I asked you to, we’ve both done something highly inappropriate, and we can call it even.”

  As if a boner digging into the CEO’s hip isn’t inappropriate enough. “We’re even, so you can get up now.” Bryce placed his hands on her shoulders to help her up. The faster, the better.

  “Kiss me, Bryce.” Her voice was low, pleading. Pools of desire swirled in her eyes.

  She wanted him to kiss her, and dammit, he wanted nothing more. But the last time he had, that last time… he’d hurt her. He couldn’t do that to her again. “I can’t, Jade.”

  Hurt flooded her eyes as she started to pull away.

  He couldn’t say why he gripped her arms so she couldn’t leave him. It was as if instinctively he knew what to do before his brain could work through his confusion. He had hurt her before. He’d seen it on her face when he’d pulled away from the angry kiss. And now, when he wouldn’t kiss her, the same hurt was there. How could she be upset when he’d kissed her then, and now when he wouldn’t kiss her? It didn’t make sense. He’d apologized, he’d said he was… sorry.

  That’s it.

  She’d kissed him back. She wasn’t hurt because he’d kissed her. She was hurt because he’d apologized for it.

  “Let go of me.” Her cheeks grew red.

  Bryce slid his hand behind her neck. “If you want us to be even”—he gently ran his thumb along her cheek—“you need to kiss me.”

  Jade’s eyes softened. She tugged on his tie and pulled his lips to hers.

  Heat flashed through his central nervous system. He gripped the back of her neck and balled his other hand into a fist to counteract the way her warm lips caressed his. Should he pull away after a moment and risk upsetting her again, or should he kiss her back?

  He was still haunted by the way she’d looked after he’d assaulted her lips. He’d always stayed clear of passionate women, and yet here she was, thrust into his life, and he had no way to distance himself from her. With every step he took back, a stronger pull tugged him forward. Could he have Jade, and still obtain the goals he’d set out to achieve? It was a huge risk. She wasn’t part of the plan, far, far, from it. But damn, he wanted her like no woman he’d wanted before.

  She caressed his lips until he could no longer ignore her, then she bit his bottom lip and smiled when a guttural moan came from deep within him. Parting her lips, she invited him to taste her.

  He would no longer think about why he couldn’t or shouldn’t be with her. She was here, now, where he could put his arms around her, where he could smell the light perfume on her neck and the shampoo in her hair. He let her tongue and lips set the pace. He wouldn’t push himself on her again. Her slow lazy kiss caused a deep ache in his chest, one he couldn’t lose. He could no longer deny himself what he wanted. H
e would change his plans. Find a way to make it work so he could have her too.

  He let her pull away despite a primal tug to take what his body craved.

  She pressed her cheek against his chest. He remembered another time when she’d rested her head against that very spot. She’d been almost unconscious. That was the day he’d become protective of her. That was the day his feelings for her had grown into something he couldn’t be without.

  But what if this was only to undo the damage he’d already done? Jade was a beautiful, sensual woman who could have any man she wanted. What if this was just to make them “even,” as she’d said? So that he could stop avoiding her, so that they could work as a team to run the company. What if what he so desperately wanted now from her wasn’t what she wanted? “What are we doing here?”

  Jade lifted her head from his chest. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, are we even now and we go back to being co-workers, or is this more? There’s something between us I can’t ignore, but you’re my boss. If things don’t work out between us…”

  “Then let’s take it slow.” Jade smoothed out his tie. “Let’s see if things can work between us, and let’s agree to end it amicably if we don’t think they will. How does that sound?” Her eyes drifted down to his lips.

  He resisted the urge to kiss her. “It sounds perfect. Now we better get out of here before someone walks in on us and you really do have to fire me.” He helped Jade up and placed his hands in his pockets to avoid touching her again.

  His fingers brushed against something silky in his pocket. Her panties. He suppressed a groan and closed his eyes. She was killing him.

  If she wanted to take it slow, he’d take it slow. If she wanted more, he’d give her more. And if she strictly wanted to keep it professional… well hell, he’d have to change her mind.

  CHAPTER 20

  NEAL THOROUGHLY RESEARCHED Stan Templeman to prep himself for the interview. He preferred doing interviews at the person’s home or place of employment, whenever possible. This helped give him a sense of who the person was, how they lived, who they worked for.