by Rose, Carol
“Yes,” Alex answered with brutal candor.
The look of consternation on his friend’s face prompted him to say, “But you make a very nice lovesick puppy.”
“Thanks,” Bryan huffed.
“So why don’t you ask Lauren out?”
Bryan fussed with the collar of his overcoat. “Well, she’s so busy…what with the single-mom thing and working-- She doesn’t have any time for dating.”
“Bullshit.” Alex smiled at his friend.
“I guess I’m a wimp,” Bryan said after a brief pause. “Lauren is smart and beautiful and she handles everything so damned well. She doesn’t seem like she’s interested….”
He looked up, honesty in his face. “I’m scared shitless she’ll reject me. I know from some of the things you’ve let drop that she was pretty hurt by her ex. I guess I’m just afraid she’s—“
“A ballbuster?” Alex inserted.
Bryan shook his head. “Not really. I’m just not sure she’s interested in dating.”
Alex glanced at his watch and then at the street in front of the building. Eden’s car should be pulling up soon.
“Lauren told me last week that she, in fact, does date. She just hasn’t found anyone she wants to see much of,” he said, switching off his desk lamp and getting his coat out of the closet.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “And even if she didn’t want to date, she ought to. The trouble with you, my friend, is you’re too timid with this sister of mine. You’re not hesitant with anyone else, certainly not in your work or I wouldn’t keep paying you.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” Bryan said with a grin.
“You should.” Alex switched off the office overhead light and pulled the door shut after him.
Proceeding him to the elevator, Bryan said, “So what exactly are you telling me I should do?”
“The same thing you’d do with any other woman who interested you. I’ve seen your smooth moves a few times, remember?”
“Lauren’s not just some woman,” Bryan muttered.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Alex told him as they stepped onto the elevator together. “But she is a woman. Remember our motto? You have to grab what you want in this world. Hell, at least take a shot at what you want.”
Bryan’s sidelong glance was questioning. “You think I should call her and ask her out?”
“Absolutely,” Alex confirmed as the elevator door opened. “Go for it.”
“Okay,” Bryan said, looking a little white around the gills.
“Do it soon,” Alex recommended as his friend headed for the parking garage with a wave.
The building foyer was empty except for the security guard sitting behind his desk reading the paper.
Standing in front of the big glass doors, Alex waited. He’d pumped Bryan up good, but he knew he had a few problems of the heart himself. Things with Eden weren’t simple. Far from it. He couldn’t just grab what he wanted.
Shit, was he supposed to climb into her car and spill his guts? Just flat out tell her what a damned worm he was?
The thought made his chest tight.
It had seemed so simple, six months ago, to arrange a more personal relationship through which to secure her assistance with the take over. He’d never intended an harm. Hell, people got together and disconnected with no apparent emotional entanglement. Hadn’t he done the same himself before.
But what appeared expedient when he was planning the Michele takeover, was now assuming the proportions of a huge betrayal. Just the thought of telling her the truth now—tonight—made him queasy.
Eden was already struggling. He hated the thought that he would make it worse.
Standing there in the drafty foyer, he knew he couldn’t, wouldn’t tell her. Not here and now.
She was already fragile, he rationalized, hating the cowardly clutch in his gut. Eden, stressed to the max by the necessity she faced to work against her one-time mentor, would only be hurt by his admission.
He had to find a way to come clean, at some point. When this damned deal was done, he’d find the words. Maybe they’d take a trip together to some secluded getaway. Maui or the south of France. Then, he’d tell her the truth.
Later, much later.
In the meantime, he’d do his best to get her through this rough time. He’d help her cope. Somehow, he’d make this okay for her.
With this focus, Alex found himself wanting to know more about her. The incident at Natalie and Dan’s party had stirred his curiosity about Eden’s background. How did she end up working for Michele Cosmetics when her uncle was in the same business? Eden had never talked about her family, her childhood, her goals and dreams. The one goal, of course, he knew. She had wanted to make it to the top of the very company he was about to take apart.
With the fierce Chicago winds howling past the door, he acknowledged to himself the hard truth. After her disappearing act the other night, he feared Eden was slipping away from him…and maybe for good reason.
It was at this moment, Eden’s sporty little BMW Z4 pulled up in front of the door.
Waving to the guard, Alex went out into the frigid night. She was here now and he was damned sure going to make the most of it.
“Hi, beautiful,” he said, sliding into the car’s low-slung bucket seat.
“Hi,” she said, her breath frosting from the cold air he’d brought in with him. “Thanks again for the Payday delivery.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, searching her face in the dimly lit car. She was here, but he still didn’t know exactly why. “How are you?”
Eden sent him a quick smile, as thin and glittery in the dim light as a sheet of ice. “Fine. Busy as usual. You were late at the office.”
“Yes,” Alex said, very curious. He sensed she needed comforting, but did she know that? Following her lead, he responded casually, “Bryan and I had a few things to attend to. The work load is a little heavier because one of our staff members is out with a sick mother.”
Conscious of her slender hands gripping the steering wheel, Alex went on, talking about Leticia’s mother’s surgery and how Leticia’s job impacted everyone in the office. As she drove, Eden glanced his way every now and then.
Without discussing it, she headed toward his apartment. Although she drove with care and skill, she seemed taut and fragile, all at once. Her stress was obvious, but she said nothing other than an occasional response to his words.
For once in his extroverted life, Alex couldn’t think of the right thing to say. Nothing that really mattered, anyway. Pushing hard to disconnect from his awareness of his own responsibility for her distress, he studied her, striving to glean some way to comfort her.
They parked her car and she got out with him, heading up to his place with him without comment. Stepping into the elevator, Eden watched the changing floor numbers without speaking.
Unable to help himself, he glanced at her face several times, still waiting for her to give him a direction. Why was she here tonight? She’d said she needed him to ”feed” her. While he was more than willing, he needed to know if she was talking about Chinese food or the Kama Sutra. A backrub or a shoulder to cry on.
He also wanted answers to the questions in his head about her. In her note the other night, she’d said she needed to sleep alone until the situation with the company was finalized. Yet, here she was, late at night, headed to his place. No comment, no clarifying of her intent. Of course, people could just sleep next to each other without having had sex.
The thought of sleeping next to Eden was both sweet and excruciating.
He had to get her to talk to him. People were generally the best puzzles, but while a certain amount of intrigue made things fun, too much made a relationship crazy. Eden, for all her openness and honesty, was in some ways still a mystery to h
im. It made him crazy and added to his sense of inadequacy. If a man loved a woman, shouldn’t he know what made her tick?
When they got to his apartment, Alex closed the door behind them, automatically clicking the lock into place. Only two days ago, they’d been here in his bed, naked and lost in each other, finding euphoria.
He was okay with just holding her all night long, but she had to tell him what was happening with her.
Following her into the living room, he saw her standing next to the couch. She’d shed her coat and gloves, her slender body clothed in a beautifully expensive, well-cut suit.
“I want to make love to you,” Eden said bluntly, coming toward him, her arms reaching up.
Hardening automatically at her words, Alex received her into his arms, her mouth soft and hungry beneath his. She felt soft and firm, rounded and tempting, but he knew she didn’t need just sex from him. He wasn’t sure if she was aware of the fact.
He certainly needed something more from her.
Allowing himself the softness of her tempting kiss, his heart rate kicking into overdrive, his erection straining its confines, Alex struggled to focus. As the kiss ended, he managed to say in a low voice, “Tell me something.”
He took a breath to slow his rushing blood. ”What was up with that note you left me the other night?”
“You want to talk about that now?” she said, her head tilted up to him, her luscious mouth just inches away from his.
With her arms around him, her breasts pressed to his chest, her hands stroking his ass, Alex struggled to stay clear. “Yes, now. I can hardly wait to make love to you again, but I don’t particularly want to wake up to find you gone.”
Eden straightened abruptly at his words, her movement putting a distance of inches between them. He could see her expression shuttering, the hot expression of arousal being cloaked. As much as he wanted her body at that moment, it annoyed him to be shut out from her mind.
“You said you needed to sleep alone for now.” Alex paused, wondering if he was stupid to remind her. It had to be love. “I took the expression to mean a hold on sex, rather than a statement about actual sleeping.”
“I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice, stepping back from him before she turned and paced several steps.
“So…what’s going on with that?” Alex sat down on one end of the couch, his body protesting fiercely against the changed agenda.
“I don’t know,” she said, lifting her chin and sending him a smile. “I must have been temporarily insane. The stress is getting to me.”
Although her words were said with a tone of humor, he wondered if she realized how true they were.
“Were you still upset with me about what I said at the party? The thing with Keith and his ‘uppity’ employee?”
“No,” she said, “no. Your friend is a jerk and you should have said something to him about it, but I’m not still upset about that.”
Alex wondered if she could hear the note of remembered annoyance in her denial. “I’ve been thinking about that situation. Can you tell me why you were so furious about the remark I made to Keith? I’m not sure I understand why you were so angry.”
“Are you sure you want to talk about this now?” she asked again, a hand resting on the curve of her hip as she waited for his answer.
“I’m sure,” he said, “that I want to understand anything that’s bothering you. You’re not just a piece of ass to me.”
She stood looking at him uncertainly, the wintery look in her eyes fading. “Okay. Let’s talk.”
Alex waited.
”I guess,” she said finally. “I wasn’t very clear. Your comments just seemed like the crap women hear from the Old Boys’ Club. You know, ‘they’re good at typing up our letters and mixing our drinks before we fuck them and go home to our wives, but we can’t let these secretaries get too uppity’.”
“I sounded like that?” He frowned, the image jarring.
With a short sigh, Eden sat down next to him on the couch. “Yes. I don’t know. I guess I’m a little sensitive about that sort of thing. My uncle—the one who’s Beauty by Georgette? He’s always had some of that. It just pisses me off.”
“And that’s why you won’t work for him?” Alex had known the subject of her uncle was a tender one. Asking questions about that situation hadn’t seemed politic before. “Tell me, baby. I want to know.”
“George won’t let me work for him,” she said sharply. “He has a problem with anything that looks like nepotism. At least, that’s what he says.”
“That’s not what he means?” Alex watched her face, seeing frustration and a tinge of bitterness.
“No,” she answered shortly. “He means that he won’t let his skanky loser sister’s kid work for him.”
“What? ’Skanky loser?’ He thinks that badly of your mother?” Alex’s own relationship with Lauren was so close, the notion of a brother so disliking his sister seemed jarring to Alex. “What’s the matter with him?”
“He…doesn’t have any respect for my mother,” Eden said with another sigh, her hand brushing over the back of the couch in a frustrated gesture. “But in fairness to George, my mother has always been….”
Turned toward her, Alex watched Eden struggling for words.
“My mother,” she said, starting again, “has zero self-esteem. At least, apart from the current man in her life, and the men she chooses always confirm that she’s worthless…but she keeps choosing them, all the same. She’s consistent, my mother.”
Shaking her head slowly, Eden said, “I’ve never let her personal problems warp me, though. That’s been my determination. I decided a long time ago that I wouldn’t be with a man who belittled me the way my father did my mother before they divorced. But I don’t generally carry a chip on my shoulder, either. I try to be very conscious of that.”
“I’ve never seen you as having a chip,” Alex commented, absorbing the information she’d just shared. What a sad childhood to be tied to a parent who continued to put herself into abusive situations. “Your mother had a lot of boyfriends when you were a kid?”
“Boyfriends,” Eden said musingly, “lovers, husbands—not necessarily her own. Whatever. She wasn’t picky.”
Alex felt a surge of gratitude for the loving marriage he’d witnessed before his mother died.
“That must have sucked,” he said, reaching over to capture Eden’s restless hand as it moved on the couch cushion.
“Yes, it sucked.” Her smile was crooked. “But I don’t want to whine. It could have been worse.”
“I guess so,” he paused. “That doesn’t negate the fact that you had a pretty bad time, from the sounds of it.”
She bent her head, picking at the fabric of the couch with her other hand. “Oh…maybe it could have been better.”
With that one understatement, he found a new anxiety. Women who had a parade of men through their lives weren’t always very good at protecting their children. Had Eden been abused by some man her mother had latched on to?
“I was always a grouchy kid,” Eden said with a faint smile. “I got tired of the boyfriends and their various kids. I guess my mother deserved some credit for keeping me with her.”
“Maybe not. Particularly if she liked asshole guys and didn’t keep you safe from them.” Alex’s voice was grim. She was close and warm and he wanted to beat the shit out of anyone who’d hurt her. “Where the hell was your father?”
“In a bottle somewhere. He died in a bar fight when I was still young. And my mother’s rat boyfriends realized quickly that I was too much trouble to mess with. I’d have screamed bloody murder if one of them had touched me.” Her laugh was short and hard. “Look, all this really has nothing to do with anything now. I got angry the other night…hell, I don’t know, because I’ve worked so hard to get where I am. I tried to work for George and he shot me
down, back when I was a kid out of college and just recently when I talked to him.”
She shrugged. “It was maddening, then, to hear you talking like that with your friends….”
“I am not like your uncle George!” Alex said more emphatically than he’d intended as he reached up to take her other hand, drawing her toward him. “You have to know that!”
“No, you’re not,” she said quickly, her hand flying up to touch his face. “It was just those one or two comments—really, I know you’re not—“
The pale curve of her cheek tempted him, as did the soft rise and fall of her chest.
“You sent me Payday bars,” she said, her smile almost shy. “I’ve always loved them.”
“I know,” he said, leaning forward to brush a kiss along her temple. “I’ve found wrappers strewn here and there.”
“Jessica says I need moderation.”
“You need a break,” he corrected. “I know the situation at the company is hard on you, but we’re almost there. We’ve got Thanksgiving coming up and then the board meeting.”
“Yes,” she said, her face subdued.
“This hasn’t been easy for you,” he said again. “But it’s not like you’ve had a lot of other options. Michele hasn’t given you any choice. It’s screw her or let her screw you.”
Alex didn’t know why he felt the need to say all this again. Michele had created this situation. If she’d kept her word to Eden, he wouldn’t have stood a chance to take the company over. Not that it mattered now. The plan was underway. He just wanted her to feel okay about what they were doing.
Looking up at him, she smiled, the expression having the look of being firmly pinned in place. “In a few weeks all this will be over.”
His mood lifting with her smile, Alex said, “Yes. Then we can go forward.”
“In many ways,” she said reflectively, her head tilted back against the couch, “you’re not the man I first thought you were, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
With a pensive expression, she said, “You’ve made an enormous amount of money in a ruthless industry. When people hear that kind of thing, they think it means a man is…heartless. Most men in your position are heartless. Sometimes you seem heartless.”