by Audra North
She could draw him in her sleep now. Could trace the outline of the hard muscles in his forearms in her dreams. She was drowning in him. Working side by side had been a terrible, awful mistake. Because while she was nearly melting into a puddle under the table, he was completely unaffected. Business as usual, that’s what it was for him, while that black dress kept calling to her from inside the closet.
It had taken longer than usual for her to work through the statements from the fund. Not just because her mind was wandering all over thoughts of Andrew and how it would feel to wear that gorgeous gown tonight. What she was seeing in the numbers was getting more and more confusing, even without those distractions.
“What is it?” He rose from his chair and came to stand right next to her, leaning down to look at the computer.
Oh, my. The way he was standing, her shoulder was nearly brushing his thigh. If she leaned just slightly to the left, she would feel those hard flanks against her arm…
“Meredith?”
She shook off her thoughts and tore her eyes away from his legs, turning her attention back to the screen, scrolling down in the report. “See here? Until four months ago, there was actually more than the necessary amount in the fund. But between that period and the next, the balance drops by half a million dollars and the line item only says, ‘Fund transfer to account 6623-841.’ But at the same time, the Christmas Bonus Fund line item disappears from the Harbor Technologies monthly portfolio report, which is why it didn’t even occur to me that something was wrong until I received the fund statement yesterday. And I can’t find this account number in any of the financial tracking systems.”
“How is this possible? My approval is required for this kind of thing, but I didn’t sign off on any of these changes.”
She nodded. “Exactly. So if you don’t know about this, and there is no other record of this mystery account, then the next step is to call the bank and see who did open the account.”
She managed to keep her voice calm, but inside her gut was churning. This looked bad. Like embezzlement bad. Sloppy embezzlement, sure, but even if that was the case, it had still worked. The former CFO would be the likely culprit, and he could be anywhere by now.
“I’ll also call Bob,” she said, referring to her predecessor.
Andrew stiffened, but gave a tight nod. Meredith felt awful. When she had first interviewed for the position, Bob had just left the company. Andrew had spoken so highly of the elderly man. Any hint of wrongdoing must be difficult for Andrew to consider.
But they had to at least ask, even if the older man turned out to be completely innocent.
Andrew let out a ragged breath and straightened up next to her. “It’s late afternoon on a Friday. Go ahead and call the bank, but I have a feeling we’re not going to get any solid answers from them until at least Monday.” He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “In the meantime, let’s just do all we can to work with what we’ve got and assume we’ll never recover that half million. And hold off on calling Bob until we have answers from the bank, okay?”
He looked so weary all of a sudden that she didn’t even think. Her heart simply took over, and she reached out a hand to touch him in comfort. Except, because of their positions, instead of her hand landing on his shoulder in a gentle squeeze, her fingers ended up curling around the back of his thigh.
Ohhhh, that was a mistake. A horrible, hard, flexing mistake.
And yet her traitorous hand refused to move. She simply stared at it, pale skin on pin-striped trousers, and thought about how good it would feel if his clothes simply fell away, changing the sensation from slippery wool to coarse hair and firm skin. She would skim her fingers up, up, until she stroked the curve of his ass—
“Oh, my God!” She tore her hand away just as it started snaking its way upward. It felt like she’d had her hand on his body for an eternity, but it couldn’t have been more than a second that now had ended in awful, soul-gutting humiliation.
“I—I am so sorry. I cannot apologize enough. Clearly I wasn’t thinking. I thought it was your shoulder. I mean, obviously that wasn’t your shoulder. But that’s what I meant, to just give you a quick squeeze. On your shoulder, of course! Oh. Maybe I shouldn’t have come into the office today,” she finished, her voice weak with embarrassment.
Sometimes she wished Andrew’s nickname were something more sinister than the Santa CEO. At least then, it would be more reasonable to hope that he had built a trapdoor in the floor in front of his desk that would whisk her into a dungeon and instantly, completely out of his sight. Heck. She’d even settle for covering her face with a folder.
But almost everything at Harbor was digitized. The table was completely empty of folders, or brown paper bags, or—
“Meredith,” he said, his voice soothing. Placating.
He crouched next to her, his hands on the armrest of the chair as he looked up at her from where he was squatting on the floor. It should have been ridiculous, the CEO of a major corporation kneeling before her, but her heart started beating so fast, she thought she’d explode. Something in his eyes made her feel like she was a goddess that he was about to worship. Preferably with his tongue.
You couldn’t just let that thought go, could you?
She snapped her posture upright, arming herself against the feeling of being completely exposed to him. No one else had ever made her feel quite this naked, even though his expression was completely neutral. His voice came out low and quiet. “What do you think would happen if you had meant something inappropriate?” he murmured, not taking his eyes off hers for a moment.
At the responding images that rose up in her mind, she could almost feel her panties disintegrating beneath her skirt. This was so wrong. She forced herself to look away from him, to be professional. “I—you would have to report me, of course,” she whispered, directing her words to the wall, focusing on the blank whiteness while she composed herself, then turned back to him, clearing her throat. “Luckily, though, that’s not the case.”
His eyes flashed briefly with—was that disappointment? Then it was gone, and he merely nodded, rising, moving away from her and dropping back into his chair with a sigh. “Time to call the bank. And we should put in an order for lunch. You must be famished.”
That was it? She was tying herself up in knots and he dismissed the entire thing as though it had never happened and asked her about lunch?
Definitely not affected. Meredith forced herself to nod. She usually ate earlier than this, but she hadn’t wanted to interrupt for something as trivial as eating. Except that now, between the stress of dealing with the fund and the way her mind and body were playing tricks on her, “famished” didn’t even begin to describe how she felt. Turned inside out, about to self-combust, maybe.
“Lunch sounds great,” she managed.
“Any preference on restaurant?”
She shook her head. Truth be told, she wanted to eat alone, to get some time by herself to regroup. It wasn’t anything personal against Andrew. Being in such close quarters with someone else, especially when she had this many feelings to deal with, just wasn’t something she was used to. But she wasn’t about to say such a thing to him.
This was how her life had been when she’d been fostered, anyway. When there was nowhere she could go in those homes to have a few minutes of quiet. There were always too many kids, too many demands, and to ask for time alone would have resulted in being laughed at, at best. Being punished, even, sometimes. She’d learned to cope as best she could.
He stared at her for a moment. “I hope you know that you should always feel free to tell me what you want without feeling like you’re imposing,” he said.
For a moment, she thought he was talking about her need to have some time alone. But then she remembered that they had been talking about restaurants, and nodded politely. “Thank you. Truly, anywhere you choose will be fine.”
She wasn’t about to tell him what she really wante
d. Him.
Chapter Six
By five o’clock, Andrew felt ready to break something. Or worse, lose his temper and shout out his frustration.
Who had made Meredith this way? Who had beaten down her own desires until she was afraid to voice something as simple as what kind of food she wanted for lunch? He could tell she didn’t really like the Italian place he’d chosen, but she’d simply accepted it as her due. But for what?
Before today, he’d never realized how terrible she was at asking for things for herself, because she didn’t seem to have a problem asking for things for others, or for Harbor. Until today, that had been the extent of their interaction, too. But working in such close quarters like this, he had finally seen that when it came to things that were just for herself, she retreated. Clammed up, disappeared, avoided, as though she were trying to make herself invisible.
Leanne, his executive assistant, appeared in the doorway. “Excuse me.” She nodded to both of them in turn. “The senator is here, Andrew.”
Damn it. He had forgotten about the meeting.
“Of course, Leanne. We’ll only be another minute. Do you mind showing him to the conference room?”
Leanne nodded and walked away, and Meredith jumped up immediately, gathering up her things and stuffing them into her laptop bag. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I should have remembered that you had a meeting. I—I’ll head to my office and try to keep going through the other account statements, since I haven’t gotten anything back from the bank yet. The manager said she’d try to send me information by Monday at the latest, but I was hoping to get something by now.”
What a mess. Poor Meredith looked frazzled, and he didn’t want her to carry the stress into this evening. She was doing him a favor by going as his date, and he wanted her to enjoy herself.
“Don’t bother with the other statements, at least for tonight. Even if you find something, we won’t be able to do anything about it until everything opens again on Monday morning. You may as well get going, anyway, to get ready for the gala.”
Meredith looped her bag over her shoulder and nodded. “Okay, great. I mean, it’s not great that we haven’t gotten any answers! I just meant that sounds like a good plan.” She was speaking too quickly and throwing nervous glances toward the closet as though a bogeyman were going to jump out of it.
Or maybe an evening gown. He wondered if she’d actually take the dress without him offering again. She may have felt daring enough to accept it this morning, but with a full day behind them, would she still be so bold?
Bold for Meredith, that is.
Perhaps it was cruel of him, but Andrew refused to let Meredith off the hook this time. He had watched her work all day long and knew how sharp and assertive she could be when it came to her work and the commitments of Harbor’s employees. There was no way he was going to allow her to shrink away from something she’d already laid claim to.
He told himself it was because he wanted her to be a part of the new company he was trying to launch. In order to make the venture a success, she would have to be capable of reaching out and taking hold of anything she needed. But there was another part of him that knew it was also because he wanted her to reach out and take hold of him.
She walked over to the closet and opened the door. He held his breath, but she merely pulled her coat out of it. Belatedly, he remembered his manners, and rushed over to help her put it on. He could see the dress just inside the dark wood cabinet. Light bounced off the sparkly things in the skirt, making it look like it was giving him a conspiratorial wink.
Take the dress, he willed her. Take the dress and let me see your bare shoulders tonight.
God, was he going crazy? There was no way anything could come of this attraction. He was her boss. They were professionals. He barely knew her.
Except that wasn’t really true. He knew how she took her coffee. He knew how hard she worked and how selfless she was. He knew he wanted to know more.
“Well. I’ll see you at seven thirty, then,” she clipped out, and before he could shout, “Just take the damned dress!” her arm reached up, grabbed the hanger as though she were floating in the ocean, clinging to a life preserver in the middle of a raging storm, and nearly yanked it from the wardrobe.
He wanted to cheer. Instead, he nodded. “See you then.”
…
This dress had cost six thousand dollars. Meredith stared at the price tag lying on the bed next to the black dress, and then looked to her left where she’d placed one of her old gowns. As soon as she’d gotten home from the office and seen that abundance of zeros on the heavy stock paper, she’d panicked, draped the dress gently on her bed, and backed away slowly, as though it were some terrible, volatile creature instead of just silk and feathers and beautiful crystals.
She’d hidden in the bathroom, showered, then done her makeup and put up her hair as well as she knew how, but when she emerged she still didn’t feel strong enough to fight the pull of that dress.
Instead, she’d brought out the most attractive dress she could find that was already in her closet and laid it next to the intimidatingly expensive one, trying to convince herself that the difference really wasn’t so great, and that she could look just as good wearing something she already owned, that she had paid a reasonable price for.
It didn’t work. The need to see herself completely transformed into the kind of woman who could ask for something she wanted overshadowed her reservations about the extravagance of spending that much money on a dress she’d likely wear only once. It had already taken every ounce of courage she had to yank that dress out of Andrew’s closet earlier, as though she were shoplifting. But she’d done it. And instead of completely depleting her of courage, the act had only made her feel even more daring. She’d walked home with that dress cradled to her body, and she’d felt her excitement and her pride in herself rising with every step.
Wear the six-thousand-dollar dress. Use that newfound courage and wear it.
Her finger reached out and traced over the too-large number on the price tag. It wasn’t that she couldn’t afford a dress like this. She’d done well at her previous company, and the package that Harbor had offered her had been even better. Even if she couldn’t have paid for it herself, Andrew had said he would. A thank-you gift, to offset the inconvenience he’d caused her.
As if wearing something that looked like dreams and magic to a sparkling, glittering ball was an inconvenience.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” she asked herself, fingering the soft, feathery skirt. It didn’t feel like what she thought real feathers should feel like. But she had no doubt they were real, more luxurious and fine than she could ever have imagined. Is this how everything was? The things she’d wanted for so long—in reality, were they even better than she imagined? If so, then wasn’t it time to finally, finally take them for herself?
“Yes,” she sighed, exactly the same sound she’d made when Andrew had offered her the dress this morning and she’d accepted it. Except now she was offering it to herself.
“Yes, I’ll take it,” she whispered, and reached for dreams and magic.
Chapter Seven
Where was she? Andrew checked his watch again. Seven thirty-six. The limo service dispatcher had called just after seven o’clock to let him know that Meredith had been picked up and was on her way. She should have arrived by now. He was standing just inside the lobby, watching guests arrive and greeting a few on their way in, but mostly he was waiting for her.
The event planner was standing a few feet away, checking in with him every couple of minutes now, eager to get him backstage and miked up for the keynote. Meredith was supposed to have arrived over ten minutes ago. He didn’t want to abandon her to find her own way to their table with people she didn’t know, to have to explain who she was and why she was there. The planner raised her eyebrows again in question, and Andrew was about to shake his head when a car pulled up in front of the building and he knew. It was her.
&n
bsp; The driver opened the door and started walking around the car to help Meredith out, but Andrew was there before him, popping the latch and thrusting his hand forward and—everything stood still for a moment.
It came to him in bits and pieces first. The flash of diamonds in her ears. The loose, curling tendrils of hair that framed her face, falling from a simple upsweep that showed off her pale, slender neck. Lips painted pink, outlining just how luscious and full they were. Big green eyes behind glasses.
He was used to women who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing glasses to a formal event. But Meredith was wearing hers.
He thought it was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.
Those eyes were shining as they stared up at him, as though he were some kind of prince coming to sweep her off her feet. Her look made him feel like a prince, anyway, and when she set her palm in his, he really couldn’t resist pulling her hard against him. Sweeping her up.
She was wearing her heavy coat over her dress, but he didn’t hesitate for a moment. Everything he needed to know, he could see in her face.
“You look beautiful.”
Her eyes went wide and her mouth fell open into a little O. “Thank you,” she whispered, sounding breathless. Her eyes roamed his face and then his body, taking in his black-tie tuxedo. “So do you.” She blushed. “Handsome, I mean.”
He grinned. “Come on, let’s check your coat and I’ll take you to our table. I apologize, but I’ll have to leave you right away. The event planner is already about to kill me for delaying for so long.”
She smiled her consent, and he led her immediately to the coat check, impatient to see her in the gown she’d fought herself so hard for. And when he took the coat from her and she turned around to face him, it was obvious that she had emerged the winner.
Those shoulders. Those slender, strong, sexy shoulders. A small diamond pendant hung from a delicate strand of stones around her neck, setting her face aglow with the reflection of the warm lighting in the lobby. The black silk hugged her breasts, tightened around her waist, then flared again over her hips before disappearing into a tumbling mass of sparkling feathers.