by Lauren Dane
He’d walked in the door tonight and they’d made it this far. No food. No talk. He’d grabbed her hand and walked her to the bedroom, stripping of their clothes as they went. After a day filled with closed-door meetings and never-ending phone calls, here they found silence.
“That made every shitty hour today worth it.” His rough words vibrated under her cheek.
She lifted her head and stared into those deep green eyes. “Ryan?”
“You’re going to need to find some more ass words to describe him.”
“I’m on it.”
Forest brushed her hair off her face and over her shoulders. His fingers trailed down her throat to cup her breast. “But right now I like you right where you are.”
Now that the fire had cooled, she noticed everything. The rough scrape of material against her legs being the most obvious. She glanced behind her before facing him again. “You didn’t even get your pants off, stud.”
“I was eager.” He didn’t sound the least contrite. The kiss he placed on her nipple and sweep of his tongue suggested he was ready to find a new topic.
So was she. The idea was dangerous and scary, but the truth always was. “I sat in the room during part of that meeting. I can be a witness—”
“No.” Forest delivered the decision between kisses.
Much more of that and she’d never get this out. She lifted his head and pressed her palms against his cheeks. “That was a quick answer.”
He looked at her then. “I don’t want you involved. Don’t want him coming after you or threatening your ability to get work.”
To think she’d once viewed this man as shallow and disconnected. Now she saw the real person behind the title and knew the conclusions she’d jumped to about him were dead wrong. Guilt smacked her, but she pushed it away. She’d been taught hard lessons and she applied them to Forest. Unfair but human, and she refused to apologize for that. She’d given him a chance, opened herself up. Now she saw him for what he really was—tough but decent.
Ryan was dragging them all through the mud, but Forest insisted she stay clean. It was hot and sexy and tempted her to spill the secret she’d vowed never to share with anyone but Elle. Her insides shook and a wave of insecurity washed over her. She recognized the sensation for what it was—vulnerability. She’d learned the hard way not to trust. A lesson that got hammered into her over and over. But with him she wanted to dive in and risk it all.
A buzz filled the room as her cell went off. Before she could stretch across him and grab it, Forest had it in his hand and gave it to her.
“Mom, I’m assuming?” He didn’t sound angry or annoyed. More like resigned to the fact sleeping with her included regular check-ins from her mom.
Jordan read the texts, all three of them. “Apparently John continues to be a winner. With her sex life in order, she’s asking how I am.”
Forest’s hands fell to her waist. “How are you?”
“Pretty damn satisfied.”
He nodded. “Tell her that.”
Why not? She typed in the message and hit Send. The response came almost on top of hers. “She wants to know if I’m having sex.”
The woman knew. She always knew.
“What?” He spun the phone around to look at it. “Damn, she did ask.”
“Told you.”
“Do you hide it from her?”
“Why would I?” A strange question for other people, maybe, but for Jordan it felt natural to tell her mom.
“Okay then.” He started typing.
It was her turn to move and shift and try to get a good look at what he was doing. Looked like typing a message was the answer. “What are you saying?”
“I’m giving her my name and telling her we’re in bed. Asking if you can get back to her later.”
The conversation made her smile. The idea of proper Forest Redder talking sex with her mom was almost too weird for Jordan to wrap her mind around it. He should be repelled. Instead, he took it in stride. Just like he did with everything.
She snagged the phone and saw his message. He hadn’t hit Send. She eyed him up. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I plan to be around for a while, so I’m good if you are.”
Wasn’t that the sexiest thing ever? “Done.”
With the message sent and the phone down, she snuggled against his chest and used her finger to trace a pattern over the bare skin of his chest. “Why are you the black sheep of your family?”
The question popped into her mind and hit her mouth a second later. She didn’t intend to ask. The answer pulled at her, but she understood privacy and was all set to honor that. Then she opened her mouth.
For a long minute he held her while his hand rubbed up and down her back. He didn’t stiffen, but he didn’t start talking, either. The coolness of the air-conditioned room settled around them and the lamp burned bright on the nightstand. She’d just decided to sit up and make a flip comment about food to bring the lighter mood back, when she heard him sigh.
“It’s not a pretty story.” He slipped the fingers of his free hand through hers. “My dad was one of the guys you talked about, like the men on that site. Terrible to women and happy to show off a string of mistresses in public, regardless of what it did to my mom.”
Jordan closed her eyes on the wave of pain she heard in his deep voice. She bit back words of reassurance because she knew he didn’t want them. He was a strong man, full of pride, and it sounded as if every word ripped straight from his gut.
“When I got old enough and had a position in the family business—textiles, by the way—I tried to stage a takeover. It wasn’t about me or a power grab. I wanted to knock him off stride and use the time and opportunity to give my mother a chance to get away from him and all his strict, unbending rules about how a Redder should live.”
She knew the type. A nasty hypocrite. “The same rules he didn’t follow.”
“Exactly.” Forest hugged her a little tighter. “He was pious and judgmental and thought the rules just didn’t apply to him.”
“What happened?” Her voice came out scratchy and raw when she felt Forest kiss the top of her head.
“People in the company feared him and I was young. They wanted a sure thing and he got a warning in time to build a defense.” Forest cleared his throat. “My mom sided with him.”
Jordan sat up then and faced him. “What?”
“They’ve been married for more than thirty-five years now. She is the dutiful wife. He is the philandering husband.”
Forest held her gaze with an intensity that ripped away the last of her defenses. “And you got left behind in the fallout.”
“Something like that.”
“You did the right thing.” She kissed him then, quick and chaste. Not to rekindle the excitement, but to give some sort of comfort. It was her way of stopping the words that raced up her throat. The ones about being sorry. They sounded like pity and he didn’t need them.
She didn’t feel that, anyway. She mourned his loss of family, but what overwhelmed her was his personal strength. His sense of right and wrong.
“We all have family issues.” He said the words, let them hang out there.
She knew he was asking without asking. “I didn’t know my father. He was one in a long line of men my mother used to support her. See, that’s her career. She uses sex and whatever other skills she has to hold men who should be home with their wives or anywhere without her.”
His hand slipped to the back of her neck and his fingers started a gentle massage. “You’re nothing like her.”
Jordan wasn’t sure they knew each other long enough for him to make that leap, but she accepted the compliment because it meant everything. “Most men in your position would run after being told something like that.”
“No ‘like mother, like daughter’ concerns?” The question hovered there until she regretted asking it in a moment of insecure weakness.
“Do you think I’m my father?”
She didn’t hesitate. “No.”
On some level she knew that was the truth. A man torn apart by his father’s antics wouldn’t run headlong into the same trap. And with his firm question, he answered hers. There was a strange comfort that came from having it all out there and meeting on a certain level of understanding.
Well, not everything was out. A huge secret stood between them and the internal battle over telling him or keeping it quiet had her head pounding.
“My fiancée left because I lost my position in the family firm.”
Looked like there was more than one item still outstanding. This was her last question for him. The one Jordan wanted to ask, but couldn’t put into words because with the information she held back she didn’t think she deserved to know the answer to this one.
But now she had it. “Men aren’t the only ones who can be idiots.”
“Very true.” His finger danced over the tip of her chin. “We have something else we need to talk about.”
She tensed, waiting for him to launch into a series of questions. If anyone could figure out her secret, it would be Forest. But that didn’t mean she had an answer prepared and ready to go. “Go ahead.”
“If we’re going to keep seeing each other, and I hope to hell that’s the case, we need to think about your temp position.”
Relief shot through her. This was about appearances and propriety. “I’ll tell my office Thursday is my last day.”
He frowned at her. “I don’t want to cost you work. It’s just that—”
“I get it.” Decent until the end. “I’d rather see you outside work than in.”
The wrinkled brow didn’t ease. “Are you sure?”
She let her hand wander down his chest and keep going. “Very.”
* * *
FOREST SAT IN his office three days later in the middle of a Saturday afternoon and stared at the information piled in front of him. He’d coaxed some of it out of the assistant in his office who he knew was a Need to Know member. Then there were the bits and pieces he collected from fellow businessmen and some stray comments on websites.
He’d taken it apart and put it back together three times. It was all circumstantial, but it fit. The timing of when Jordan started her temp jobs, the locations, the men she worked for and how that coincided with the information confirmed by the Need to Know staff.
Jordan might not run the site, but he’d bet the contents of his money market she was involved in some way.
Since that first night together, he’d stayed there every night. Between quick runs home for clothes, he visited her. They ate, talked, had incredible sex. He’d shared things with her about his family and his ex that he never told anyone. From the second he met her, he’d been falling for her—something unexpected that he didn’t try to fight.
And the whole time she’d been hiding a huge piece of information from him. He understood her motivation at the beginning, but she knew he had Ryan on his ass and spewing out lies. She did nothing to step up and help.
He let his head drop back against the chair. No, that wasn’t true. She offered to assist him by telling what happened in that meeting. She just failed to tell him all the information he needed to know about everything else.
And how fucking ironic was that?
“Forest, you okay?”
Her voice cut through the quiet room. He opened his eyes and slowly lifted his head. “Hey.”
She smiled at him from across the room. Between that face and the trim dark jeans his mind sputtered. He wanted to be furious, but in some ways he was more numb than anything. He needed her to say it, to open up and confide in him.
She walked over and stood across from him. Only a desk separated them. “You still want to have lunch or are you too busy?”
“I’m working on the Need to Know website.”
Her smile faltered. “What?”
“I want to talk to the owner.”
“How would that help?”
All his suspicions gelled. Her pale face and the way she balled her hands into fists told him something clicked through her brain and she wasn’t sharing. After all those hours in bed, whispering in the dark, she held back.
The reality of her deception nailed him like a kick to the stomach. “I’m thinking a united front against Ryan is the answer.”
She clenched and unclenched her hands. “He doesn’t have any power. You told me that yourself.”
“He’s the squeaky wheel and with other people wanting to dig behind the scenes at the website, men who feel like they’ve been burned, this is hanging around longer than it should.” Forest said anything to get her to admit the truth. He did want to talk with the owner and soon had to put the Ryan mess behind him, but mostly Forest wanted her to trust him enough to tell him.
He wanted their time together to mean something to her.
But he buried all of that under business talk. “I need to move the project forward, but I keep having to deal with this crap instead.”
“What can I do?” For the first time since he met her, her voice sounded small and weak.
Hell, she was right there. So close. “Is there anything you need to tell me?”
“What?”
“I’m asking. Not judging, not demanding. I only want to understand.”
“I don’t...” Her voice trailed off and silence descended.
He laid a hand on top of the legal pad in front of him. Her gaze zoomed in on the writing beneath. “Say anything, Jordan.”
She shook her head. “It’s not that easy.”
They’d at least moved to the same page. “It is.”
“You don’t understand what it’s like—”
“To build something?” He was up and out of his chair and standing right next to her. He grabbed her upper arms, forcing his hold to remain loose so he didn’t hurt her. “I sure as hell do. You know the story. I got kicked out of the family business and had to start over.”
All the blood drained from her face. She rubbed a hand over her forehead as her body started to sway. “I needed somewhere to belong.”
He’d lived that. He got it. He just needed her to say the words. “Tell me the truth.”
She swallowed a few times. Words came out and sentences started. Then she stepped back, breaking the connection between them. “This isn’t just about me.”
“I get that.”
That determined chin lifted. “Frankly, Forest, this is my thing. It’s not about you. It’s not your business.”
Her words hit him like a body slam and his hands fell to his sides. “You’re right, Jordan. It’s about us. Or I thought it was.”
“What are you talking about?”
A mix of anger and confusion pounded off her. He could see the conflicting emotions battling. She wanted to tell and was desperate to keep the information to herself.
He decided to make it easier on her by backing away. It would be hell on him, but if she needed to stay in control this badly, because of her own dating history or her mom, fine. “I’m not sure there is an ‘us’ here.”
Jordan’s eyes narrowed as her anger took the lead. “What are you saying?”
It took every bit of strength in his body to walk away from her and head back to his side of the desk. He dropped onto his chair and picked up the telephone. He didn’t have anyone to call, but he needed something to hold on to.
“I have work to do.” He dismissed her without looking up.
“Don’t do this.”
He refused to look at her and see wha
tever emotions played on her face. He would not give in this time. “When you’re ready to talk, let me know. In the meantime, I’m going to handle this Ryan nonsense once and for all.”
“How?”
This time he did look up. Saw her face ravaged with pain and wide eyes stark with fear. He fought back the wave of caring and the side of him that wanted to fix this for her and focused on her refusal to let him in. “I’m thinking you don’t need to know.”
Chapter Twelve
Subject Request for Allan Heard: Went to his house and looked in an extra bedroom. There was this swing. Thoughts?
Response from Member 2: Honey, he is a genius with that swing. Go for it!
FIVE DAYS LATER Jordan hovered over her laptop, waiting for the link to pop up. The news teased an interview with Forest about the Need to Know website. She should be panicked about exposure, but all she could think about was losing him. Not having him in bed beside her.
She’d dragged around, cursing every hour since that scene in Forest’s office. He stood there, practically begging her to open up and she couldn’t find the words. She’d been tempted and on the verge, but then a lifetime of desperate visions flashed through her head. Her mother depending on this man and that one. The promises they made to her and how she got stuck as each one moved on to someone else.
Forest wasn’t like any of them, but he wasn’t the problem. She was. Fears swamped her and old insecurities rushed over her. The idea of letting him in had the air rattling in her chest and her stomach dropping to the floor.
After all her examples of what not to do and a string of Mr. Wrongs, she hesitated at that final step. Forest offered her opportunity after opportunity. Even now, giving her a daily call that started and ended with one simple question—is there anything you want to tell me? She begged him to come over, but his response was always the same. That damn question.
And Elle wasn’t any better. She was a one-woman cheerleader for Forest’s cause. Even now she paced the small space in front of the window.