Fistful of Roses (What a Woman Wants, Book 1)

by Lea Griffith

  Chapter 3

  “So how was the conference call?” Gigi asked as they walked out into the Georgia sunshine. Nice lingering warmth in the fall air had her turning her head up to catch the sun on her face.

  “You know I can’t talk about it.” Sophie sighed as she stepped up to the lunch cart vendor and placed an order for a chicken salad sandwich. She absolutely did not want to talk about how she’d almost forced herself on her boss and then found out he had a date tonight. She groaned silently.

  “That’ll be eight dollars, ma’am,” the vendor said. She handed him a ten and told him to keep the change as she took her lunch and walked to a small seating area right outside their building.

  “And you know I’m not talking about that call either, girl. I want deets on your man.” Gigi was nothing if not persistent. Sophie looked at her best friend of almost eleven years and cringed at the bulldog stubbornness on her face.

  She sighed loudly and popped a fry into her mouth, washing it down with ice-cold Coke before she tented her hands and rested her chin on them. “There are no deets, and he’s not my man.”

  “Yet.” There was a taunt in the word that Sophie knew better than to latch onto.

  “You’re so bad. And I’m not discussing Mr. Locke with you. So, what’s the deal for this weekend?” Evade and counter. Sophie was a master at it, and she really hoped Gigi picked up on her reticence to discuss their boss.

  “You talking about Music Midtown? We’re still going right, ’cause you promised me last year you’d never miss again. And guess what? You ain’t missing this year. I paid for VIP passes—your ass is going.” Gigi snorted and bit into her hot dog.

  “I’m there. I have to run by the hospital after work and check on Mama, but tomorrow, I’m yours.”

  Gigi snorted. “I know whose you really want to be…”

  Sophie rolled her eyes. Evade and counter.

  “Where are we going to eat?”

  Gigi shook her head wearily but smiled. “So how’s your mom? How long are they going to keep her this time?”

  Mission accomplished.

  Sophie tossed her napkin down on the table and finished her Coke. “I don’t know. Did I tell you I looked into that place in Alabama for her? I can’t keep doing this. She’s just too unstable, and Gavin isn’t going to help me out at all. Damn. It’s going to about break me financially to afford it, but at least she’ll get the round-the-clock care she needs.” She hung her head, a sharp ache in the region of her heart. Her mother was beyond Sophie’s scope of care anymore.

  She was really beyond anyone but a trained professional’s care at this point. Too many years of abusing drugs and being abused by boyfriends had removed her mother’s ability to reason or function. Brain damage had taken her away from Sophie long ago, and now Sophie’s inability to provide care for her was taking her even farther away.

  “She needs to go, Phie. You can’t keep—”

  “Ms. Hanson! Ms. Hanson!” A shrill voice interrupted Gigi and brought Sophie’s head swiveling around to the front of the building.

  “Oh, great, what’s happened now?” Sophie muttered as she got up and trashed what remained of her lunch.

  “Ms. Hanson, an important call came in from the hospital. Your mother’s doctor needs you there immediately,” Emma, Mr. Locke’s secretary, told her in a rush.

  Sophie closed her eyes, dread moving through her in a tidal wave. Dear God, what else could go wrong in this day? She couldn’t afford to leave work for this.

  “Mr. Locke said for you to take the afternoon off and handle your business, so no worries about that.” Emma seemed to read her mind.

  Well, damn. It was a nice gesture to let her off for the family emergency, but … yeah, leaving work was going to cut into her pockets.

  “Tell him thank you, Emma. I’ll see you Monday.”

  A hand settled on her back, and Gigi hugged her close. “Go take care of your mama, girl. I’ll touch base with you tomorrow and we’ll see if you still feel like going out, okay?”

  “Thanks, Gigi. I just don’t—” Her voice broke and she took a deep breath. She wasn’t about to lose it here, right outside of work. She straightened her spine and headed to get her things and leave.

  Sophie passed by Ryan’s office, and his bright blue gaze caught her quick glance. His face was, as usual, unreadable, but there was a definite look of concern in his eyes, which she did her best to ignore as she kept walking. Her heart sped up, but she kept moving. Once in her office, she grabbed her briefcase and purse. She put his suit jacket over her arm, fully intending to return it to him, but he was gone when she came back down the hall.

  She tucked it under her arm and told herself she’d return it Monday. Maybe she could spend the entire weekend wrapped up in his scent. Who was she kidding? She would spend her whole weekend on the couch, his suit coat wrapped around her as she moped. He was going out to a huge party for a local museum with someone else. She had no right to the feeling, but it stung, made her want to rub her chest to ease the ache that settled there. The closest she’d ever get to Ryan Locke was his coat.

  She was pathetic she had it so bad. When a man’s smell had the potential to get you through a long, lonely weekend, you were hopeless. Still, she hugged the coat close and made her way out of the office, alternately hoping she didn’t see him so she had to give it back and praying she would see him because, well then, she’d be seeing him, and that was the only thing that could trump smelling him.

  * * * *

  Ryan watched her leave the building from the confines of his blacked-out Suburban. He had a meeting downtown but instructed his driver to wait just so he could watch her leave.

  She was stunning. It almost hurt to look at her. She wasn’t classically beautiful, but her features, combined with her flawless skin and kick-ass body, made her the complete package. Gold sunlight glinted off her midnight hair and kissed her ivory skin. Hayden was right—he had it bad. But something about her, not just her beauty, but her, drew him in, forced a protectiveness he’d never felt for a woman before. It wasn’t the fragile slenderness of her frame or the elegance of her features—it was Sophie. Everything about her called to him on the deepest level. Having never experienced the peculiar feeling before, he had no idea what to do with it.

  He certainly couldn’t bed her as he wanted to. She was worth more than a quick fuck and he doubted this insane need would be relieved by a quickie anyway. Plus, he wanted her, everything about her. He wanted to be stuck to her like glue. Inseparable. But she was meant to be kept, and he’d never been a keeper.

  His body hardened as he again watched the flex and play of her ass underneath her neat blue-black skirt. Her stiletto heels tightened her legs, made them seem a mile long, and all he could think about was her wrapping them around his waist as he pushed into her liquid heat.

  His body hardened in a rush, and he had to adjust himself. She was still wearing a white sweater, but it didn’t stop his brain from imposing the picture of her soaked-through silk shirt and the bounty beneath it in place of the sweater. She was slim and short, but curved in the most delicious of ways. His mouth watered at the thought of having her skin under it. His fingers tapped restlessly on his legs, seeking the softness of her skin and encountering the wool of his slacks.

  She’d stepped almost beyond his view, and he instructed the driver to go ahead. He’d set Hayden on the task of discovering what was wrong with Sophie’s mother that she’d had to leave so suddenly. Another employee, and obviously one of Sophie’s friends, Gigi, had mentioned her being at the hospital last night with her mother. The call at lunch requesting Sophie back to the hospital had been a surprise, and he found himself wanting to know everything about her.

  “We’ll be there shortly, Mr. Locke,” the driver said in a pleasant voice.

  Ryan didn’t respond, so wrapped up in thoughts of Sophie he couldn’t concentrate on the upcoming meeting with Jonah and Carver White. Hayden was meeting them all at Ruth’
s Chris Steak House where’d they’d eat and discuss the handing over of the security portion of ATC to the Whites. But the meeting was so far at the back of his mind that all he could see, all he knew at that moment, was Sophie.

  His phone rumbled in his pocket.

  “Yeah.”

  “Her mom’s a druggie. She’s been in and out of rehab for years and has brain damage that causes seizures. She went from a room at a local hospital facility to the ER at Emory last night for difficulty breathing related to those seizures.” Hayden could teach sharp to the point of a sword. He had Ryan beat to a pulp.

  “What’s happened today that Sophie had to leave work so suddenly?”

  “Mother had a stroke.”

  Fuck. Poor Sophie. “Who’s on her case? I want the best routed from Emory for her, Hayden. Can you call and see if you can pull some strings?”

  “I could, but why?” His friend’s voice was rough and belligerent.

  “Because I asked you to.” Why Sophie was important to him didn’t matter at the moment. The only thing that mattered was helping her even if she never found out about it.

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Hayden hung up, and Ryan looked at the phone in disgust.

  It rang again as he glared at it.

  “Yes?” he barked.

  “Mr. Locke, Ms. Gloria Rhetman has requested you contact her immediately about plans for tonight.”

  The hand not holding the phone tightened into a fist. The last thing he wanted to deal with right now was Gloria.

  “Emma, I know this isn’t your job, but please call her back and inform her I’ll pick her for the benefit gala at eight sharp.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ryan hung up as they pulled into the restaurant parking lot. He rubbed his forehead, exasperation and dread tightening his scalp and making the base of his skull ache. He didn’t want Gloria. He wanted Sophie.

  “Have a nice lunch, Mr. Locke,” the driver said pleasantly.

  Ryan nodded to him and walked in. The smell of grilling steaks hung in the air, and his stomach rumbled in appreciation. It was one of the only things in recent memory that could compete with Sophie’s lavender fragrance. He wanted to eat her too. Bite by scrumptious bite.

  “Mr. Locke, right this way please.” The maître d’ seated him at a table with Jonah and Carver and then left.

  “Where’s Hayden?” Jonah White’s voice was quiet but hard for all that.

  Ryan shrugged. “He’ll be here in a bit. Shall we order? I doubt Hayden will eat.”

  “Let’s,” Carver, Jonah’s brother, responded in a deadened voice.

  Jonah and Carver White were twins. They’d been on Ryan and Hayden’s SEAL team and had just recently retired from active duty. Jonah was married with three small children. Carver had lost his wife in an embassy attack in Libya last year. Both men were solid, or Ryan would have never allowed them to buy in to his business, but Carver had been on a slow decline the past year and it showed. His face was creased with grief, his eyes cold and flat. Emotion never crossed his features and Ryan remembered Hayden remarking on the man’s obvious dissociation from life around him.

  Jonah, worried about his brother, had made the move to acquire the Security division of ATC in hopes of bringing Carver back to life. It didn’t look like it was working.

  “You’ve got good news for us, huh, Ryan?” Jonah asked with a small grin.

  “Depends on your description of good. If by good you mean we’re going to let you take over Securities, then yes, it’s good.” Ryan chuckled as the full import of today’s earlier meeting with the Defence Council settled on his shoulders.

  He and Hayden had done it. They’d climbed up out of the dregs of their childhood and were now big boys in the game of military communications. Big boys on a global scale. Neither of them would ever want for anything again. Relief was a sweet trickle in his belly. Muscles he didn’t even realize had been knotted released as he breathed in deeply.

  “There’s Hayden now,” Carver murmured as he picked up his glass of wine.

  Hayden threw Ryan a look as he sat, which took Ryan’s relief and crushed it into a tiny ball. Something was up. The tightness around his friend’s eyes and mouth didn’t shout happiness. Hayden shook his head.

  “So, Hayden, Ryan was just telling us that we’re in. Shall we discuss specifics?” Jonah got down to business.

  Ryan had lost his appetite, so business was fine by him.

  What followed was an hour of intense negotiation as to controlling entities and monetary disbursement. The meeting ended with Ryan and Hayden still having majority control, but Jonah and Carver having buy-out opportunity at the end of five years with the majority of the income generated by Securities being funneled to the Whites. Sort of a lease, with the option to buy at the end of the specified five years. It effectively prevented Ryan or Hayden from having to operate Securities day-to-day and freed them up to continue to engineer and sell their comm equipment.

  “Gentlemen,” Ryan held up his glass of wine to toast, “to the future of ATC.”

  “To the future,” the men echoed.

  They shook hands and filed out, Jonah and Carver leaving together and Hayden and Ryan getting into the Suburban.

  “She’s got no past, Ryan,” Hayden bit out once he was seated.

  Ryan shot him a look. “What do you mean, no past?” He didn’t bother to ask who the hell Hayden was talking about. He knew.

  “There’s nothing on file for her before the age of fifteen. It just doesn’t make sense. I thought we screened our employees fully before we allowed them in the building?” Hayden raised his eyebrow.

  It pissed Ryan right the fuck off.

  “You know we do. She has a social security number and a birth date. You sure your person didn’t just fuck up?” Why the hell was Hayden doing another background check on Sophie anyway?

  He voiced the question and Hayden’s look turned black.

  “She shows up not even six months ago, fresh, beautiful, and catches your eye. She’s privy to some pretty damn sensitive information as our deal writer, and you’re wondering why I’m nervous about your intense interest in her? Is your dick overriding your mind right now?”

  “You know me better than that. She passed our initial background. How the hell did she do that if she didn’t exist until ten years ago? I think your guy got it wrong and why the fuck are you doing a second-tier check on her anyway? I asked you to contact Hopkins to get a good doctor for her mother. I didn’t ask you to do anything else.” He was slow to anger but it burned for a long time once it got started. And he was getting angrier by the second.

  Hayden continued to look out the window, seemingly oblivious to the heat pouring off Ryan. “You’re my friend. This is our business. This is our future. Don’t tell me who to check and who not to check. She’s got you tied in knots. If you won’t check her out, I sure as hell will.” He turned to Ryan then, looked him in the face. “That’s how we roll, man. How we’ve always rolled. I have your back, and you have mine.”

  He relaxed a bit at that. He may not like Hayden’s methods, but he was right. Ryan would’ve done the same thing he had and not blinked an eye. Still, it was Sophie. Hazel-eyed, body-to-die-for, sweet-smelling Sophie. The woman he could fall for so fucking easily it made his head spin.

  The tension eased from his broad shoulders, and he threw a rueful look at Hayden. “Do what you have to do, but I’m telling you, you’re wrong about her.”

  “Then you can say I told you so, and it’ll be over. But what does it matter anyway? She’s off-limits, or so you said. So there’s no worry about you getting involved, right?” Hayden’s voice was low, a peculiar note in it that Ryan couldn’t decipher.

  “Right.” He wished he could mean it when he said it. Chances were he was already involved with her. The constant thoughts of her and the way he hovered at work to catch a glimpse of her notwithstanding, his dreams were killing him. Involvement was probably just a kiss or touch away at t
his point.

  “So, we’re good. I’ll get my man to run another check. Maybe it was an aberration. We’ll see,” Hayden replied and sat back to look out the window as Atlanta rolled by.

  “You do that. And I hope it doesn’t bite either of us in the ass.”

  Chapter 4

  Sophie was tired. Okay, past tired. Not much after midnight and her brain was on autopilot as the cab driver slowed down. She grabbed her purse and got out.

  “How much, Pops?” she asked as she leaned down to pay him.

  He shook his head. “Not a dime, girlie. You know my Gigi would skin me alive if I took your money. Plus you’re like my kid. No money,” Mr. Graham said.

  “You brought me all the way from Grady. I can’t not pay you.” Weary exasperation abounded in her tone, but she couldn’t stop it from leaking out.

  Life had piled a huge shit fest on her shoulders, and she was slumping under the weight. She sighed as she blew a stray strand of hair out of her face and stretched her back before tugging Ryan’s suit coat tighter around her.

  “Get some rest, Phie-Phie. It’ll look brighter in the morning,” he encouraged her.

  “Sure,” she murmured under her breath as she rolled her shoulders and waved good-bye.

  The street was dark, the lamps barely illuminating what had turned into a foggy night. What little light filtered down to the ground was watery and gave the shadows an even deeper feel. Her heels made a clackety-click on the pavement as she headed up her stairs. Shivers rocketed up her spine as she dug her keys from her purse and went to open the door. Her feet hurt, her head hurt, her heart hurt.

  “You okay?” His deep voice came from nowhere.

  She squeaked and turned, dropping her purse and keys and going into an automatic defensive position as she bent her knees and brought her hands up.

  She saw him then, leaning against the pillar at the end of her porch.

  “Sweet baby Jesus, you scared the living crap out of me!” Her breath sawed in and out as she struggled to keep her heart from pounding in terror.