CardsNeverLie

by Heather Hiestand

  Melanie shook her head. “No way. All anyone would have to do is talk to you for five minutes. Then they’d know you were a decent person. There’s nothing wrong with trying to keep a family business together, even if it’s not exactly a mainstream society business.”

  Rob grinned and kissed her hand. “Thank you.” He stroked his thumb up her wrist. “Why don’t you come over to my house for a while and play?”

  “Play?”

  “Sure. I’m rusty with this whole dating thing, but how about pizza and a massage?”

  Melanie turned her head to him. “I’m pretty relaxed,” she said with a smile, “but it never hurts to rub a few kinks out.”

  Rob winced. “I created a few holding you against that wall.”

  Melanie punched him. “You’re saying I’m heavy?”

  “Never,” Rob grinned.

  He leaned in for a kiss. Melanie let him take her lips. Her hands stole into his hair, his thick, dark blond hair. The tarot came to mind for a minute, but she dismissed it. His hair would darken as the summer blue skies dimmed to Seattle gray.

  After a moment, Melanie allowed Rob to pull her up from the couch and they left his office. They made their way down the hallway slowly, stopping every so often to kiss. A plan to jump away was in the back of Melanie’s head if someone went by, but no one bothered them and she relaxed.

  Rob’s house was a cheerful little bungalow in the Wedgewood neighborhood. With one thing only on his mind, he pulled her up the steps and into his bedroom.

  “Are you hungry?” Melanie asked.

  “Only for you,” Rob said, his eyes dark with passion. Her jacket had been left behind in his office, so all he had to do was remove her blouse and unhook her sadly sensible bra. She expected his hands to drop to her waistband next, but instead he cupped her neck and tilted up her chin with his thumbs and kissed her until her knees buckled. Luckily, they were close to the bed and she fell back with him on top of her.

  “Ooof,” she gasped. Rob rubbed his face in her neck for a second and pulled back until he kneeled on the floor.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay, I just had the wind knocked out of me for a second there.” Melanie decided she had far too much clothing on and wriggled out of her skirt as Rob took his shirt off.

  Rob looked down at her panties. “You can take those off too, Melanie. You’re too self-conscious for the wild woman I made love to this afternoon.” Rob’s hand snuck to her breast and fondled her nipple.

  “I’d like to be crazy and wild, but maybe I’m conservative at heart,” she gasped.

  “Nah,” Rob said. “I don’t believe you.” He ducked his head to her breast.

  Melanie felt her eyes roll back in her head. After a few moments of the most pleasurable tongue action she had ever experienced, Rob released her torso. She lay back, panting.

  “You want dinner?” Rob asked. “I could order a pizza.”

  Melanie opened one eye. “You have got to be kidding.” When he didn’t respond, she opened the other. He was fumbling in a drawer. “It’s a little late for a condom, don’t you think?”

  Rob held up a bottle. Melanie frowned. It looked familiar, like…oh good grief! It looked like the bottle of massage oil that Tommy Joe had stolen that night in Las Vegas!

  “Where did you get that?” she asked, leveraging herself up on her elbows.

  “There’s no need to get up,” Rob said. “Why don’t you turn over?”

  Melanie obliged.

  “Remember the day we met? You were at Shari’s booth at the trade show. This is one of her products.”

  “Oh?” Melanie said, her voice muffled by the pillow under her cheek.

  “Yeah. It’s supposed to be edible. I don’t know about that.” He waved the stopper of the bottle under her nose. “What do you think?”

  “It smells good.”

  He leaned forward until his breath tickled her ears. “Does it smell good enough to lick off me?”

  Melanie rolled over. Feeling mischievous, she took the slender bottle from Rob’s hand and tilted it until a single drop fell to the back of his hand. She bent her head and touched the tip of her tongue to the stray droplet.

  “Mmmm,” she whispered. “Yummy.”

  In the fading light, she could see his chest still as his breath caught. “‘I start the fire I suffer’,” he quoted as he reached for her.

  “What?”

  “The massage oil was my idea and you’re killing me with it,” Rob said in a throaty, earnest tone. “I don’t think I can do this.”

  “I think I’m ready for that pizza now,” Melanie teased.

  “No,” Rob said, pushing her back and putting his leg over hers as he leaned forward. “You’ll just have to sup on me.”

  “I can live with that,” she moaned as Rob’s lips took hers. “I may not be so eloquent, but I feel exactly the same way.”

  “What’s that?” he asked, raising his head.

  “Crazy.” She put her arms around his neck to pull him back to her. “Crazy for you.”

  “It works.” Rob lowered his head back to hers and didn’t raise it again until she had seen stars on the insides of her eyelids.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Melanie dreamed over her embossing tool the next afternoon as she imprinted the K of the word BLACK on a square scrap of black leather. Her idea involved matching the names of colors to that color of leather, such as BLUE on blue leather and then turning the scraps into pillows for the teen set. But now, looking at her sample, she decided she had simply envisioned the idea to play with Rob’s name. What a lush, erotic night they had spent. Rob had made no promises for another night of the same. He had even suggested she leave for her own sake if she was so worried about being caught if they drove in together the next day. She had left at one a.m. In fact, their last moments had been an uncomfortable reminder of their situation, instead of a romantic or erotic goodbye full of promise.

  The phone rang next to her and she jerked her head up. Dropping her tool, she hit the speaker button.

  “Jack O’Brien here,” said an annoyed man’s voice.

  Melanie clenched her fist. The last person she wanted to hear from was another man as rotten as Drew Huntley. “How may I help you?” she asked in her best formal manner.

  “I need to see you in my office. Now.”

  She grimaced. This guy had swept Jill off her feet? Certainly not with his conversational abilities. “What would you like me to bring?”

  “Nothing. We’re just going to chat.”

  Jerk. She couldn’t believe this guy was Rob’s best friend. Maybe he behaved himself when he wasn’t talking to a mere employee, but he certainly hadn’t done well by his lover either.

  She left her office and walked slowly up the stairs and down the hall to Jack’s office. Deep in thought, she opened Jack’s door without thinking.

  “Excuse me?” a man said nastily from behind his desk. The man was conventionally handsome, the type of rugged guy who would look good in a ski ad, but if he had been photographed with an expression like that on his face, the resort he modeled for would soon go out of business.

  Melanie shrank back into the hallway. She had expected a secretary but found Jack O’Brien in the flesh and worse, had caught him with a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand and a glass in the other. “I’m so sorry. I thought you’d have an anteroom, like Rob does.”

  Judging from the expression on his face, the vein jumping in his forehead, she had said exactly the wrong thing.

  “Sit down, Melanie,” he said with a nasty emphasis on her name and an even creepier smirk. “You and I are going to have a little talk.”

  “Fine.” This wasn’t going to turn out well. She had made an enemy without even realizing it. Not that she’d want this conniving, immoral crook for a friend. She sat, glad she had worn her new calf-length red a-line skirt. Melanie didn’t want to expose any part of herself to this man.

  Jack set his glass down and
tucked the bottle into a drawer. Then he leaned back in his butter tan leather executive chair and crossed his hands over his stomach. He had decided he was in charge. “I know about you.”

  Melanie closed her eyes. She knew about him too, after all. He didn’t have any power over her, did he? “What do you mean?” she said coolly.

  He leaned forward, narrowing his eyes until the center of his forehead bent into vertical lines. “Don’t think you can fuck the boss and take over around here, bitch.”

  Uh oh. Melanie sat up even straighter in her chair and clasped her hands together tightly, holding back any defensive words. Sick to her stomach on the walk up here simply from the tone of his voice, she had imagined bad, but this was worse.

  He laughed, a rasping sound that made her flesh crawl. “Give it up, Mel. I can ruin you. I’ll tell Dick Porter you were the saboteur at Professional Massage. You think firing is the worst that can happen to you? You wouldn’t like to get arrested.”

  “You can do nothing of the sort,” she managed to say, though not in as strong a voice as she would have liked. What a monster. How could he try to pin Jill’s acts on her?

  “That’s what you think. I’ve got a memo from your lover telling me to do whatever I must to make sure the sale with Professional Massage gets cancelled. I’m sure he must have had the same conversation with you. And don’t think John Black will keep his grandson around when he hears what Rob has been up to.”

  Rob had certainly felt passionate about saving his company, but how could he have ever trusted this man? “Rob would never have hurt Professional Massage to save LeatherWorks. His grandfather will never believe you.”

  “Yes he will.” Jack pulled his bottle of liquor out of the drawer and poured another drink. “When he hears the woman Rob is sleeping with is none other than porn star Honey Luscious, poor Grandfather will cut Rob out of his life. This will push all his buttons.”

  “I’m not Honey Luscious,” Melanie said, standing up. “You’re crazy!”

  Jack grinned over his glass. “Rob told me the truth himself.”

  Melanie took a deep breath. “Rob knows the truth now. He had some bad information before.”

  “I don’t care about the truth! I’m not going to let you take what’s mine!” Jack shouted, standing too, with one fist against the desk and the other clutching his glass. “This is my company, my father’s company. He could have been CEO, would have been if he hadn’t died. It’s my turn, dammit.”

  Melanie turned to the door. Surely someone in a neighboring office could hear them, but it was late, after five p.m. “I won’t listen to this.”

  “Yes, you will,” he said softly, malevolently. “You’re taking Rob Black down for me. You’re going to march over to John Black’s house and tell him my version of the story. He’ll fire you both. Maybe if you do that, I won’t give Dick Porter a call. He’ll probably want to prosecute, but I might feel merciful. Here.” He thrust a copy of the Rob’s email at her.

  Melanie’s stomach tensed. She took the piece of paper and ripped it up. “You’re crazy. This email proves nothing. John Black knows Rob is against the sale. Jill caused the damage because she loved you.”

  “And she’ll back me up.” He clapped his hands to his face. “I was so worried. I saw my boss changing the temperature, but I didn’t know whom to tell. I need my job.”

  Melanie matched his evil smile. “You aren’t seeing each other anymore.”

  Jack pulled down the collar of his white shirt. An ugly purple bruise showed there. “Check this out, bitch. We’re back together.” He licked his lips. “And you know Jilly girl will do anything for me.”

  Melanie felt her entire torso begin to shake. She couldn’t think straight. She’d only had four hours of sleep the night before, it didn’t help.

  “The company is going to be sold,” she protested. “You won’t end up with the job anyway.”

  Jack shook his head. “John Black is dying. Once he’s dead, I’ll stop the sale. LeatherWorks will be mine.”

  “You’re sick!” How could this be happening? She had to think.

  “I’m smart,” he contradicted. “Now get out of here and get busy, bitch.” He said the foul word with such pleasure it made her stomach ache. Without looking at him again, she left the office.

  After she shut his door, she leaned against the wall a few feet away and knocked her head against a sharp object. Holding her cry of pain to a whimper, she rubbed her hand against her head.

  She’d hit her head against one of the photographs of LeatherWorks products, a black and white shot of a beautiful catsuit photographed on a slim brunette wearing a mask. She tipped the picture into place, knowing she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t let Jack destroy this company, destroy Rob. But in doing so, she would also protect the truth about Honey Luscious’s identity. Ethan was too young to learn about his mother’s troubled past.

  Surely, the truth about the sabotage would come out. She wasn’t the saboteur. Jill had already been acting like a wreck, she would break down during questioning, wouldn’t she?

  Melanie sagged against an empty part of the wall. She winced, clutching her stomach and ran for the bathroom.

  A few minutes later she stood in front of the bathroom mirror, attempting to finger comb her hair. Her mouth felt sour and her head ached, but she couldn’t worry about that now. What could she do to protect everyone? She thought over several options, but she could see only one plan of attack. She had to tell Rob and end their relationship. Even if she beat Jack in the end, Brisa could still get hurt in the crossfire.

  Tim nodded to her as she stepped into Rob’s suite. “Is he in?” she asked.

  “Yes, he just got back from the company softball team’s game.”

  “Can I see him?” Melanie’s voice cracked a little.

  Tim stood, the chain on his belt clanking. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Melanie, are you okay? Maybe you should talk to my mother Dagmar. She has a bunch of homeopathic remedies in her workroom if you feel sick.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not that kind of sick.”

  Melanie’s throat went dry when she saw the tableau before her in the inner office. Rob bent over a file cabinet in tight jeans. It couldn’t be legal for him to be dressed like that. It shouldn’t be. He had the backside of a soccer player and the powerful thighs to match. And yes, she knew after the previous night that the muscle was all real.

  “Rob?” she said, already feeling the nostalgic pang of separation through her fear and grief.

  He turned. Melanie was genuinely touched by the brilliant smile that greeted her, but it was a smile meant for lovers and she had already lost him. Melanie heard her own sharp intake of breath.

  “You look tired,” he said. “Tonight we should give each other those massages.” He rolled back his shoulders, biceps bulging under a fitted black T-shirt. “I could stand to work some kinks out.” He reached out and ran a strong-fingered hand down her hip.

  Melanie blinked back tears. “I can’t, Rob. I’m sorry.”

  He grinned and danced his fingers along her cheeks. “Don’t wimp out on me now, honey.” He misinterpreted her expression and said, “Oops, I didn’t mean to call you that.”

  She stepped back until she felt his desk hit the backs of her thighs. “I know. You wouldn’t hurt me deliberately.”

  “Let me touch you. The door is shut and no one is listening.”

  Melanie swallowed. “The walls have ears.”

  “I see.” Rob walked slowly behind his desk. Melanie was certain he had made sure to give her a full view of his assets, the tight ass, the perfectly cupped masculine equipment. LeatherWorks’ advertising had shown he knew how to showcase a hot body.

  She watched him, feeling her resentment at Jack bubble and burn as Rob sat down and steepled his hands under his chin.

  “Are you having second thoughts because you think we were overheard yesterday?” he asked.

  She wasn’t expecting that. “You were th
e one worried last night.”

  “I was trying to be sensitive.”

  “Thank you. But you were right to worry, Rob.”

  He shook his head. “Sweetheart, tell me what’s wrong.” He held out his arms to her, but Melanie stayed on the other side of the desk. For all she knew Jack would walk in on them. With a shudder, she remembered the camera filming that night in Vegas. Before, she had remembered the good part, the part with Rob. But what if Jack got his hands on the tape with Tommy Joe in the LeatherWorks booth? She’d be unable to defend herself without exposing Brisa for sure.

  “I was a fool. You were a devil to entice me.” Melanie swallowed. “I need this job. You don’t bounce right back when you get fired. It marks you. People think you’re capable of any number of bad things.”

  “Aren’t I worth the risk?” Rob asked in a low voice.

  “Circumstances change,” Melanie said, feeling like she would cry. But she pursed her lips and told herself to be professional. “I respect you and our working relationship too much to undermine it.”

  “So you want to forget last night ever happened.”

  Melanie nodded.

  Rob stood in a blur of motion and slammed his palms onto his desk. Melanie jumped back.

  “You’re a coward! I can have relationships outside of work and still be professional. We work well together and we can play together too.”

  “Rob, calm down. It’s not what you think. Someone who overheard us threatened me. He’s going to tell Dick Porter I was the Professional Massage saboteur unless I tell your grandfather you were behind the damage,” Melanie’s voice caught, “and he might tell him I’m Honey Luscious too, just to make your grandfather more upset.”

  Rob’s face went white. “Me, behind the sabotage? That’s insane!”

  Tears welled up her eyes. “I won’t do it, Rob. I can’t.”

  “Of course not. Who is doing this?”

  Melanie knew there were few things more cruel than telling him the truth. She walked around the side of his desk and put her hand on his arm. “Jack. He called me into his office a little while ago.”

  “No,” Rob said in a low voice.