Tropical Tryst: 25 All New and Exclusive Sexy Reads
Page 157
She laughs with genuine delight. “Touché. I can definitely see why you’d think that would be the case, and why my predecessor fell for it. Let me tell you why I disagree.”
She leans forward and pins me with her gaze. “I see before me a woman with great promise. I know you came from a place of economic hardship. That you made it through college on academic scholarships. You graduated with good marks, had a killer reference, and wowed them in the interview.”
While my stomach plunges I work very hard to keep my expression from flickering. “But…” I prompt, because I can see where this is headed, and it can’t be anywhere good.
“But for some reason that early promise has never quite manifested.”
I close my eyes briefly. “Ouch.”
When I open them again, Yolanda is still looking at me with a cool, dispassionate gaze. “My theory going into this week was that you were bored.”
I’m torn between feeling flattered and frightened. “And now?”
“Now, having seen what you’re capable of, I’m convinced you’re being held back in your position.” She smiles. “Which is why I’d like to offer you the chance to go back to school part-time. It would be on Wakefield’s tab, of course. And you would pick the program of study, though from what I’ve seen, you’d do well as a full-fledged engineer.”
I delay my response by going to the mini-fridge for a drink. I really want a beer or a vodka straight from the tiny bottle, but I select a soda after offering one to Yolanda. She shakes her head.
When I’m seated again and have taken a sip of the cola I don’t want, I say, “I’m stunned and flattered, believe me—”
“But you’re going to decline.”
I set the soda down carefully. “I have to.”
“Why?” she says flatly.
Because my credentials won’t hold up to scrutiny. I retreat to the explanation that has always worked in the past. “Because of my mother.”
“You mean her hoarding.”
I exhale. “This is really like a psychological cavity search. You’ve been talking to Finn.”
She inclines her head. “I have. In fact, you should know that I’m here with his permission. He knows this is a big decision for you and he doesn’t want to unduly influence your choice.” Her face softens. “He’s still in love with you, Olivia.” She pauses, presumably to let me digest this, while a rush of emotion forces me to swallow repeatedly. “But that’s between the two of you,” she says gently. “Let’s get back to your mom and the reasons you feel you can’t accept what amounts to a promotion.”
I lean back in my chair. “For one thing, she still depends on me. I’m out there every couple of weekends. If I don’t go, there’s a good likelihood she’ll relapse and lose her home.”
“A worthy goal. But this isn’t exactly news, is it? Where’s the woman who juggled her mom, part-time work, and college, all while getting great marks?”
“Not in front of you, that’s for darn sure,” I say bluntly. “She got burned to a crisp pushing up against those limits you’re so fond of talking about.”
“Fair enough. What if I said we would figure it out?”
I shake my head in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Wakefield maintains good relationships with a number of colleges. You decide the course load you can manage on top of your mother, we find the institution to accommodate you, and we adjust your workload accordingly.”
“I can’t afford to make less money.”
“We’ll figure out the financial aspect, too. A mutually agreeable arrangement.”
It’s impossible, of course, but I can’t resist asking the question. “You’d really do that for me?”
“Yes.”
“Because Finn cares for me?”
Yolanda pulls her mouth to the side. “What do you think, Olivia?”
I think this woman has never let anyone push her into anything she doesn’t want to do, which is both inspiring and terrifying.
“Let me articulate this clearly,” she says, “so you understand my position. It’s to Wakefield’s benefit to have happy, confident employees who are engaged at the highest possible level of work.”
She’s killing me. To offer me everything I long for from a work perspective, plus the chance to have ongoing contact with Finn, plus the news that he loves me? It’s unbearable—it’s unbearable that I’ve forfeited the right to accept. But this is what happens when you make Faustian bargains. You can never anticipate where the ripples of damage will spread, or when they’ll arise and threaten your happiness.
“You can’t know how much I appreciate it,” I say. “Basically I love everything you just said. But I’ll have to decline.”
An expression of defeat crosses her face and she looks away briefly. “Even if it means I have no place in the company for you?”
I shrug. “Even then. I’ll have my resignation letter to you in an hour.”
She holds my gaze for an uncomfortably long time. “You can’t protect him by quitting, you know.”
“Who?”
“Please. Even my predecessor had figured it out, though as long as your arrangement was semi-functional, he wasn’t the type to rock the catamaran.” She takes a deep breath, like she’s girding for something. “I know Tucker drags you to meetings and can’t provide the right technical details without you there to back him up. Then there’s this.” Yolanda powers up her laptop, clicks a few keys, and turns it to face me.
I’m looking at the incident report on the cat reversal that I had prepared for Tucker, and that he signed almost without reviewing. Within the text, the word “ergo” is highlighted seven times.
“Is it any wonder you look like you’re not performing, Liv?” she says. “You’re handling two full-time jobs at once.”
“So my vocabulary has rubbed off on him,” I say, pushing the computer away. “Big deal.”
“And you don’t care that he’s out there, partying in the lounge, while you’re in here doing his work?”
This is one scary woman. I may not agree with everything she does, but I can see why Finn relies on her. She’s driven, and smart, and freakishly observant. She has worked so hard to get me to Yes, I actually feel like I owe her an explanation. How does she do that?
“You have to understand,” I eventually say in a voice I’m working to keep level. “Besides Finn, Tucker was the only person who ever stuck around when they saw where I lived. And there were a lot of nights he was the difference between me eating Hamburger Helper or going hungry.” Or eating dog food, though I won’t tell her that. I won’t tell her that when it came to a choice of feeding people or animals, my mama often picked wrong. “And I haven’t even gotten into how he protected me from predatory men.” The gropers he kept at bay with a few well-placed threats, and so on.
Her eyes have grown understanding. “Honey, I might not look like it now, but I grew up LA ’hood poor. I understand the survivor mindset. But did you not learn anything from the exercises this week? Loyalty is fantastic, but blind loyalty will get your ass fried.”
I shrug.
“What are the chances he’ll manage without you?” she says.
Not great, in my opinion, but that’ll be up to Tucker. Because if there’s one thing I do believe after this conversation, it’s that Yolanda will give him a fair shake, even if that means protecting him against Finn.
That comes as a huge relief.
What is also a relief, and bizarrely amusing—and I can’t believe I can find anything to laugh at tonight—is Yolanda’s face when I offer to clear out my onsite desk, so to speak. I pull out my giant spare suitcase and wheel it to her. It is filled to the brim with Wakefield paperwork and the borrowed laptop. Apparently she had the concept right, but drastically underestimated the quantity of work I brought with me.
“What a waste that you’re quitting,” she says, shaking her head at me as she zips the suitcase back up. “What a criminal waste of potential.” Her shoulders slump.
“At least promise me you’ll come to the debriefing tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, I’m coming,” I say. “I want to hear the official explanation for this afternoon. And I’m hanging around for the closing festivities. I figure I’ve earned that much.”
“Fair enough,” she says.
“I need a promise of my own. Keep tonight between the two of us.” I’ll have to figure out the time and place to break the news to Tucker, and I don’t want to deal with the inevitable questions from my coworkers.
She cocks her head. “Finn needs to know.”
“That’s why I’m going to see him.” I look down at my pajama bottoms. “Right after I change. But Tucker, the other coworkers? I tell them in my own time.”
She shakes her head, shakes it some more. “Yes to the coworkers. But goddammit, you’re going to break Finn’s heart.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“Goes to show how much you know about men. They might be lousy at expressing it, but the good ones are every bit as invested as we women.” Somehow I end up in her arms, held fast in a hug. “Remember that, Liv,” she whispers. “I don’t know what’s holding you back, but he wants to do right by you. Give him a chance.” Then she lets me go.
I hold the door as she wheels out the suitcase, effectively ending one era of my life.
I’m not sure what to think of her anymore. She’s imperious and over-confident and demanding, and I seriously question her ethics. But she is also kind, and loyal and fair-minded. In the end, I think I would have liked working for such a fearsome woman.
Now to go appease a fearsome man.
CHAPTER 18
FINN
“ No joy,” Yolanda says when I snatch the phone up from the table in the villa’s kitchen. “She resigned rather than take another arrangement. I’m sorry,” she says after a pause. “I did try.”
“I know you did.” Yolanda isn’t capable of giving less than a hundred percent, and her voice is weary. She thinks she failed me. “Any idea why?”
“Well, after the way I presented it, we know she doesn’t see this as a choice between Tucker and you—though FYI, she is immediately defensive when I bring up his name. Pounding on him won’t help your cause.”
“Might help me.”
She laughs. “That’s an entirely different matter.”
I hesitate before asking the next question, because despite her effectiveness—or because of it—I try to keep a boundary between the work Yolanda does for the company and my personal life. I don’t want to put myself on Yolanda’s couch—or Liv, for that matter. But at this point, it’s not like I have a lot to lose. “So if it’s not Tucker, what is it then?”
“Not the job, either. She definitely wanted that. Definitely.” Yolanda sighs. “No…if I had to guess, it’s something bound up in a sense of honor. When she was packing her work stuff up, she used the word ‘fraud.’ I can’t remember the context, but it just struck me as strange at the time. Does that make any sense to you?”
“God, no.” I wash my face with my hand. I have no idea what to do with that information. Do I need to be worrying about things like embezzlement now? With Tucker on the scene, maybe, but at the moment my mind doesn’t even want to go down that route.
“So how do I get her back, Y?”
“How’d you win her the first time?”
“Patience. Lots and lots of patience while I deliberately kept things light.” And I’d cared for Ada, despite her obvious oddities, and just been generally supportive.
“Then I’d go that route again. Stick with what works.”
It’s sound advice except for the obvious problem of logistics. It’s one thing to court Liv while living in the same residence day in and day out. But in roughly twenty-four hours, the retreat will be over and Liv will be winging her way back to Columbus, while I’m expected in Milwaukee. And if she goes home to Stonybrook, to her mom, my access to her will be even more restricted.
How can I compress a slow courtship into less than one day?
At this point, I’m drawing a blank.
CHAPTER 19
LIV
O n the way to see Finn, I keep waiting for the panic to strike. I’m without a job, with a mother whose fragile mental health depends upon access to her therapist and expensive medication. If I am to continue helping her, my meager savings won’t last long.
Logic says my top priority must be finding employment in the engineering sector. And with Tucker’s job on the ropes and him being my only supervisor for years, I need to do it urgently, before I lose my one shot at a positive reference.
But I’m not sure I’m going to go the tech route.
While I’ve spent the better part of a decade doing whatever I could to avoid this moment, now that it’s here, I feel strangely…light. Unburdened. Either I’m in a benumbed state of denial or this is what it feels like to be free of guilt.
Imagine that, Liv, I think. Imagine a life where you wake up in the morning and know that your every professional move, every work consideration, won’t be about atoning for the past.
I pause on the path and close my eyes, trying to absorb the immensity of the mental shift that such a change would require. But it’s too big. Like looking at a wrinkly baby and trying to envision the woman she’ll become: politician, hostage negotiator, grocer, rap queen.
Speaking of unfathomable mysteries, how am I to explain my decision to Finn?
When I round the corner, he is waiting for me at the gate. There’s something about his posture which is both resigned and sad. Yolanda called him, then. Or maybe he just understands my heart without the reason for my choices.
I’m expecting a grilling, but the first words out of his mouth seem designed to reassure.
“I hear I’m not your boss anymore.”
“That’s how it looks,” I say, trying to match his even tone. And that’s easier, too, now that there are no Wakefield policies to prevent me from consorting with the boss.
“You want to talk about it?” He latches the gate behind me.
“No!”
He searches my face and nods as if he’s expected this answer, then shocks me by grinning a real grin. “Now I know what I look like when I’ve been through the Yolanda Grinder.”
“That obvious, huh?”
“Oh, yeah.” He reaches out and cups my cheek. His eyes are so tender and understanding I want to cry. “What do you need from me, Liv? Food? Drink?”
You. “Yes and yes,” I say. I’m suddenly starving. I had been about to order room service before Yolanda came, and then after that, my feet only wanted to bring me here.
“Finally a problem that can be easily solved.” He holds my hand until we reach the patio, then he presses me down into a chair. “What can I get you?”
“Surprise me.”
He nods. “Done.”
“Hey.” I catch his hand as he goes behind me and I squint up at him. “This is too easy. What are you up to?”
He leans down and brushes a soft kiss over my lips. “Anything you want.”
How about nine inches and the chance to finish what we started last night?
He throws back his head in a laugh. “Whatever you’re thinking, keep it up. I like the glint in your eyes.”
I sit for a moment, watching as he enters the kitchen and takes two glasses down from the cupboard. When he dips into the fridge, I find myself wandering down to the shoreline.
It’s wrong, isn’t it, that I’ve been in Jamaica nearly a week and haven’t been in the ocean once, except to wet a sponge as part of Yolanda’s contest? But there are twenty-four hours before my flight back home and I have no instrument loops to mark up, no emails to go through, no safety reports to write. I can do almost anything I want.
Maybe I’ll begin with a swim…
I return to the patio and begin issuing a silent invitation to Finn. One shoe goes at the end of the pavement, the next halfway across the lawn, and ha! Aren’t I clever tonight? Both shoes are actually f
rom the same pair.
I discard my pretty buttercup-yellow sundress where the grass meets the sand. Near the edge of the lapping water, I leave two tiny scraps of lace.
The water is like velvet, and I have enough time to dive under and slick my hair back before Finn emerges from the house. He carries two glasses filled with pink liquid, which he practically dumps on the patio table when he spots the clothing trail.
“There’s a siren in my lagoon,” he says as he arrives on the beach. He sounds breathless. His eyes catalog my bare shoulders before spotting the lace at his feet. “A siren without any underwear.”
“Do you mind?”
“Are you insane, woman?” He is already out of his shoes and starting on his belt. “But I warn you. Unless you’ve developed an exhibitionist streak, we have to be out of the water in just over an hour.” His shirt goes flying and his pants and briefs are down in one efficient move. “The hotel’s sending a chef to cook us a special dinner. Jerk chicken.”
“Mmmm,” I say, and I’m not referring to the food, though it sounds delicious. His legs are as thickly muscled as the rest of him. He is all man, and absolutely beautiful. And for tonight, he is mine. “But what makes you think we’ll be doing anything risqué.?”
He wades into the water toward me, preceded by the beginnings of an impressive erection. “History. Ancient and very recent.”
“Well, maybe I’m not in that kind of mood.” I tilt my head and back away from him, parallel to the shore so I don’t drown. “Maybe I’d rather play regular water games tonight.”
He shifts direction to follow me as his eyes grow hotter and darker. “Like what?”
“How about Marco Polo?”
“I’ve got a pole-o you can grab-o.”
My laugh converts to a squeal as he dives abruptly. And then we’re playing in earnest, in the kind of urgent foreplay that in the past always lead to torrid sex. He grabs my ankle here, and I tickle him there, and we chase one another around in the water, moving in ever-tighter circles as the sun dips below the horizon. And we’re laughing harder as Finn’s eyes grow darker until suddenly, unmistakably, something in the water brushes up against my leg. It startles me enough that I let out a squeak and dart backward.