He hesitated before answering. “The report...”
More unease bubbled up inside Kat. “You got your copy from Tess, didn’t you?”
“Of course. Read it top to bottom. Very exciting.”
“I’m wondering if we could put the merger on hold for now. See if we can scare up additional capital on the strength of Chocolate Magic’s potential.”
“Not a good plan, Kat. We’re still in the same fix. Chocolate Magic isn’t a cure-all.”
“But it could help turn the sales picture around,” Kat said.
“Let’s just cover our bases, sweetheart,” her dad said.
“Right,” Kat said. “It’s not like you could put a merger together in just days. There’s still time. Hey, if you reschedule the Kandy for Kids thing for tomorrow night, count me in.”
“Great. I’ll see if I can get hold of the Denhams.”
The I-love-yous and good-byes finished, Kat hung up the phone. Troubled by what her father wasn’t telling her, she tried to parse out the meaning between the lines. Likely it was just his worry over Roth’s bleak financial picture.
Which she couldn’t do a damn thing about for the moment. Chocolate Magic might have a few kinks to work out, but Kat was bone-deep certain it would be the huge success she wanted it to be. The project just needed a little more time.
Just like Scarlett, she’d worry about that tomorrow. Today, she had the evening’s entertainment with Mark to anticipate. That would soften any hard edges the day threw at her.
Sex with her ex-husband. What a brilliant idea. No muss, no fuss, no commitments. Just an enjoyable romp in bed.
But why Mark? a little inward voice had the temerity to query.
Because, she told herself, he’s there. He’s handy.
Then why not gorgeous Garret? Or the pediatrician? Or that muscle-bound guy from the gym? They’re handy.
But Mark is familiar. Although there was nothing familiar in that little variation at two a.m. He knows what I like.
But I thought you didn’t trust him.
“I don’t have to trust him to have sex with him.”
She didn’t realize she’d said it out loud until Norma poked her head in the door. “Were you talking to me?”
Now Kat felt like that antlered woodland creature staring down an oncoming car. “Just thinking out loud.”
Kat didn’t like that smug look on Norma’s face before she returned to her own desk. It didn’t help that the little voice in her head had that same smug tone when it sneered, Yeah, right.
Chapter 16
At 4:10 that afternoon, Fritz fidgeted beside Phil Roth’s desk, torn by competing emotions. His new joy over recent events with Norma urged him to jig a fancy two-step across Phil’s Berber carpet. His constant companion, doubt, nagged at him to run away and hide before disaster revisited and pointed its finger of blame at him.
But despite the current lack of progress in the Kat and Mark campaign, Fritz felt certain the Roth-Denham merger was exactly the right thing to do. It might not affect Kat’s feelings toward Mark in the short term, but surely given time, Kat would realize she and Mark were meant for each other.
Just as he and Norma were a perfect match. His doubts on that score had vanished somewhere in the night in Norma’s arms.
Fingers drumming on his desk, Phil stared at his phone as if he was willing it to ring. Phil’s gaze would occasionally stray to the thick manila envelope on his desk and he’d stop his drumming to square the envelope on his blotter. When the phone finally bleated, Phil jumped.
“Send them in,” Phil barked into the phone, then dropped it back on its base.
Excitement and alarm burst inside Fritz in equal measure as Ian and Mary Denham stepped inside Phil’s office. They seemed just as edgy as Phil, although Mary smiled at Fritz reassuringly.
Phil lifted the envelope from his desk and held it out to Ian. “This is all of it. The Chocolate Magic formula, every report from day one to the most recent, including an addendum added just this afternoon.”
About to take the packet, Ian hesitated. “You’re sure about this, Phil? The merger isn’t a done deal. It might be premature to reveal proprietary information.”
Phil dropped the thick envelope into Ian’s hands. “To tell you the truth, this merger is long overdue. And the contents of that envelope will boost Roth’s value, so it’s vital all the principals see it.”
“I agree,” Ian said. “Roth and Denham have pretty much been family for so long, it’s time to make it official.”
Mary pinned Fritz with her steady blue gaze. “You really think this will help with Mark and Kat?”
Doubt poked its ugly nose out, but Fritz shoved it aside. “Once Kat gets used to the idea, she’ll come to her senses about Mark.” He figured if he said it with enough conviction, it would make it true.
Mary gestured toward the envelope. “Mark will want to see a copy of this.”
“Absolutely,” Phil said. “But for his eyes only. It might be best not to take it back to the office.”
Ian nodded. “I’ll leave it for him at the cottage. He’ll see it when he gets home tonight.”
The Denhams left and Fritz was feeling pretty pleased with himself at the way everything was turning out. With the Roth- Denham merger in progress and the potential for a Kat-Mark reunion in place, he’d done a good day’s work. And he had tonight to look forward to, when he and Norma would be together again. Life was good.
* * * * *
Damn, life is good.
Turned to face Kat who sat beside him in a vinyl booth at Lulu’s Diner, Mark offered her another bite of banana split and watched her lap it from the spoon. Chocolate syrup smeared the corner of her mouth and whipped cream dotted the tip of her nose. He wiped away the dot of cream with his finger, sucking it clean. His tongue licked away the chocolate on its way into her mouth.
The kiss tasted of chocolate and cherry, with hints of pineapple and strawberry. He felt so hot, he thought he heard the ice cream sizzle, and when he drew back he was surprised to find it still frozen in her dish. Still hard. Just like he was.
They’d been on their way to the Thai place when they passed by Lulu’s with its retro fifties look, all chrome and glass, its giant neon sign flashing red and yellow. Kat had a sudden compulsion for a banana split; to hell with dinner, she wanted ice cream first. Who was he to tell her no?
So now they sat wedged into the booth together, Mark with his back to the diner, Kat facing him, doing her best to drive him wild. She’d started by spooning him bits of banana, telling him she couldn’t wait to eat his, then when he fed her, she moaned with each morsel he slipped into her mouth. If anyone else in the diner was watching, they were getting a hell of a show.
She nudged aside the half-eaten banana split and rested her hand lightly on his knee. With slow strokes, her hand moved to the top of his thigh, then down again. On a leisurely journey back up his thigh, she ran her finger along the seam of his slacks, hesitating at his crotch before meandering down to his knee. Then her trailing fingertip continued back up, to his crotch again, up his fly, over the hard ridge of flesh.
“Okay,” he gasped. “You’ve got my attention.”
She leaned close enough that her breath curled against his ear. “I want you inside me.” Her hand tightened on him. “Now.”
“Oh, dear Lord,” he squeezed out, then decided a counterattack was in order. He wrapped his hands around her upper thighs, his thumbs meeting near their juncture. Turning his head, he whispered in her ear, “I can make you come. Right here. Right now.”
Her hands retreated from his crotch, pushed against his chest. “Out, out.” When he didn’t move quick enough, she shoved so hard he nearly fell over backwards. She extricated herself from the booth, then slapped a twenty on the table and shooed him outside.
They made it as far as her Camry, conveniently parked in a secluded corner of the downtown parking structure. With headlights occasionally strafing the car windows, he
stripped down her panty hose and put his mouth where his thumbs had been. It took all of twenty seconds before she climaxed, screaming.
Barely recovered, she fumbled for his zipper with one hand, pushed her panty hose off her ankles with the other. Grabbing his hips, she urged him to her.
“No protection,” he gasped, then the breath left his lungs when she put her mouth on him. He broke a land speed record as he came, the windows of the Camry rattling with his roar.
He pulled her up and held her, her body a sweet weight against his. When she drew back to look up at him, her mouth curled like a Cheshire cat’s, her cheeks flushed with her heat. God, he loved her.
He almost said it out loud, might have if she hadn’t shifted to pull her skirt back into place and wad up her panty hose. Her fingertip grazed his cheek, her gaze dreamy. “Part deux at your place?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Once he was decent, they climbed out of the car in unison, then into the front. As she started the engine and pulled out of the parking slot, a strange dissatisfaction nibbled away at him. He’d just had some of the most incredible sex of his life, should be crowing his triumph, but something was missing. A piece had fallen out of place.
They had the rest of the night. Maybe in the dark hours, with Kat sleeping in his arms, he’d find a way to finish the puzzle.
* * * * *
Her body still shuddering from her last climax, Kat lay in Mark’s bed, waiting for him to return from the bathroom. The only light in the room came from the glow of the usual electronics, the bedside clock, the DVD player, the recharger on the laptop sitting on the corner desk. Peering at the clock, she watched the time blip over to 2:35.
Light spilled from the bathroom as the door opened, then extinguished when Mark flipped it off. She could barely see the lines of his tall frame, the broad shoulders, narrow hips, long legs. As if they hadn’t just had four rounds of sex already, her heart hammered faster, her body at attention. Not even when they’d been married had she been so hungry for him.
He lay beside her and immediately pulled her into his arms, hugging her tightly for several seconds before relaxing. He settled her against him, from shoulder to thigh. His breathing slowed almost immediately.
The rat was about to fall asleep. Here she was, raring for round five and he was halfway to unconsciousness.
She drew her hand along his side down to his hip, his tight rear end, then around to the business end of things. When she wrapped her hand around him, his flesh stirred halfheartedly. A snore in her ear told her the rest of him was asleep.
And here she lay, jazzed-up and wide-awake, ready for action. It had been this way sometimes during their marriage. Sex put him to sleep but stimulated her into full alert. Back then he didn’t mind if she woke him up for one more time, but maybe she’d gotten all she was going to get tonight. She’d let him snore.
It felt pretty luscious lying there with him, his heat coming off him in waves, his arm heavy across her body. Even his snoring, which used to prompt her to give him a good hard nudge with her feet, seemed to soothe with its familiarity.
This had always been the good part of their marriage. They’d yell and shout and fight, angry at the smallest, stupidest things, but if they could just make their way into bed, all the problems seemed to resolve. It wasn’t any way to run a marriage, but the times in bed made the rest of it tolerable.
She should have walked out with the first fight one month in. She should have listened to that little voice in her head, the one she so despised, when it told her people who fought as much as she and Mark did couldn’t stay together. She’d witnessed her parents’ conflicts, had seen them cling to their contentious marriage for seven long years out of deference to Kat. As much pain as their parting inflicted, their battles hurt Kat even worse.
But now Kat had the perfect solution. She’d separate out the good part of her marriage to Mark, the sex, and enjoy that without the commitment that had caused them both so much grief. Certainly Mark wasn’t looking for anything more than a roll in the hay; this physical-only relationship would probably suit him just fine.
She ought to be feeling a little cheerier about this modest proposal of hers. All the sex she wanted, no pesky strings, no more dead-end dating. Their parents would be thrilled at the apparent reunion of their progeny and so preoccupied with drawing up guest lists for Mark and Kat, the Remarriage, they’d quit with the matchmaking. Then when the sexual glow vanished between her and Mark, as it surely would, they’d say their good-byes, the last of the sensual spark stamped out forever.
Kat went up on one elbow and tried to judge just how deeply asleep Mark was. If she made another foray down to that little friend lying soft and relaxed against Mark’s leg, would he wake up? It had been a good fifteen minutes since he slipped off to dreamland; surely that was enough of a nap to recharge the sexual batteries.
Before she could make a move, he growled out another snore and turned over, presenting his back to her. He scooted back into her warmth, but it was pretty obvious Mark wasn’t in a mood to play.
With a sigh, Kat eased herself away from him and out of bed. If she couldn’t get any action here, she’d go raid Mark’s kitchen. A banana split didn’t make much of a dinner.
Grabbing Mark’s DKNY dress shirt from the corner where he’d thrown it, she pulled the still-buttoned shirt over her head. The kitchen light switched on, she opened the fridge and made a quick scan of its contents, shivering against the cold. A few cartons of Chinese sat beside a jug of expired milk. A grease- spotted cardboard pizza box took up the entire shelf below. The apples in the crisper drawer were as wrinkled and wizened as the ones in Kat’s refrigerator, although she didn’t have the sadly wilting head of lettuce rolling around beside them.
Grabbing the least aged apple, she gave it a spit bath in the sink and padded out to the cottage’s cozy living room. A small dining table was set up at the end nearest the kitchen, its surface littered with unopened junk mail and back copies of the Post- Intelligencer.
On the one cleared space on the table sat a fat manila envelope. Munching her apple, Kat sidled over to take a look at the most interesting bit of flotsam on Mark’s table. The illumination from the kitchen wasn’t quite enough to make out the handwritten note in the corner, so she picked up the envelope and tilted it toward the light.
Mark, Read ASAP, then call me.—Dad.
This was none of her business. This was obviously proprietary to Denham and she had no right to nose around. Her burning curiosity over what might be inside was no justification for invading Mark’s privacy.
Besides, the flap was sealed with clear packing tape. No way to check out the contents without tearing the envelope open. Steaming probably wouldn’t release the adhesive on the tape. If she peeled it off carefully then replaced it with a new piece, she might be able to sneak a peek then hide her tracks, but it really wouldn’t be right.
“Kat?”
Mark’s sleepy voice from the kitchen jolted the packet from her hands. She repositioned it back where it had been on the dining table before he stepped through the kitchen doorway.
She gestured with the apple. “I was hungry.”
He smiled, the curve of his mouth sweet and boyish, the jut of his erection anything but. “Come to bed.”
He moved closer, pulling her into his arms. His kiss went from warm to scorching in seconds flat. The apple slid from her fingers and the envelope from her conscious mind as he carried her back to bed, her legs wrapped tightly around him.
* * * * *
It took Mark a week to open the packet from his father. A week filled with so much sex, he thought his nerve endings would explode, leaving him in some kind of mindless nirvana. There wasn’t a free moment he and Kat didn’t fill with one adventurous experiment or another. Intimate lunchtime interludes, pre-dinner bedroom bops, late-night risqué rendezvous.
The day they’d tested two-man kayaks at the paddle sports store had been a mindblower all by itself.
He’d lost count of the number of hours’ sleep he’d forsaken, but by day six, Mark calculated they might have beat their record number of sexual encounters set on their weekend honeymoon.
It wasn’t until this morning he finally got his head reseated well enough to notice the fat manila envelope buried by the week’s mail. Kat had an early meeting and without her to wake him for another round of sex he’d overslept. He was nearly out the door when he caught sight of the thick manila packet.
He had to grab it and go and so didn’t open the envelope until he’d arrived at the office. He took one quick look at the contents and his father’s cover letter and saw red. His blood pressure rising as he stabbed out his dad’s extension, he all but ordered his father to his office.
His mother came as backup. Behind his desk, Mark glared at them both, so pissed he could barely sit still. “Whose idiot idea was this?”
His parents exchanged a quick look, then his father ’fessed up. “Fritz.”
“But we all agreed,” his mother quickly added.
Snatching up the manila envelope, Mark thrust it at his parents. “This is industrial piracy. You’ve stolen propriety information.”
His mother’s eyes widened in shock. “We did no such thing. Phil Roth gave it to us willingly.”
Mark dropped the envelope again. “To bolster Roth’s value for the merger.” He shook his head at his parents’ lunacy. “Kat will go beyond ballistic when she hears about this. It’s a damn good thing the paperwork isn’t finalized yet.”
“The deal is going through,” his father said.
“It won’t once Kat finds out it’s in the works,” Mark told him.
His mother pitched in her two cents. “She won’t know until it’s over.”
“Oh, but she will,” Mark told his mother emphatically.
“Because I’m going to tell her.”
His father crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes, the same steely blue gaze that used to scare the crap out of Mark. “I don’t think that would be a good idea, son.”
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