One-Click Buy: September Harlequin Blaze

by Jo Leigh

  “Of course.” He kissed away the bite mark, feeling the familiar wash of heat and need whenever he touched her. She melted into his arms again.

  “You sure about this party?”

  “I promised,” she said on a groan.

  “How about a quickie?” He nuzzled her neck, loving the way she softened against him, so willing, as eager for more as he was. “There’s always time for a quickie.”

  “Later, Matt.” She sighed. “It’ll have to be later.”

  Every time they made love, his feelings grew stronger. Surely, that would be enough to get them through the troubles to come. Whenever he tried to think past this vacation, his brain shorted out. Wait and see was all he could come up with.

  Weird. He wasn’t a guy who waited for things to fall into place. He knew you made your own luck, but, for some reason, he was content to ride this out. A bad sign, but looking into Candy’s sweet face, he refused to figure out exactly what this meant.

  Inside the fence that marked off the Sin on the Beach party, he waited while Candy signed them up for some mortifying activity or other.

  “Matt!”

  He spun in time for Ellie to throw her arms around him. “Sara told me what happened. I’m so happy for you.” She kissed his cheek. “I knew this would work out.”

  “So this was one of your setups? To get me and Candy together?” Not that he minded a bit now.

  “I always knew you’d be good together.”

  “You never said anything to me.”

  “Would it have done any good?” She put her hands on her hips.

  “No. But, I gotta say, I’m going to let you nose into my business more often if this is what results.”

  Ellie laughed, her eyes shiny with triumph. “I’m glad to hear it. Candy wasn’t easy to convince, either. I had to twist her arm big-time. That Q-E-2 thingie-the personality test? Her results had her flipped out, but I convinced her that if she brought work here she could prove to you what a good team leader she’d make!”

  “Team leader? What?” He stared at Ellie. “What do you know about the teams?”

  “Just what Candy told me. That you have to appoint leaders to a bunch of teams and she wants to be one. Didn’t you talk about that?” She hesitated. “Sara said you’d worked it all out, so I just assumed-”

  “No one’s supposed to know about the teams.”

  “Uh-oh. Yeah, that was a secret. I forgot. Someone told her anyway. Pretend I didn’t say anything. She’ll talk with you, I know. The point is she’ll be great at it, right?”

  “This is not good, Ellie.” His head spun. Candy wanted to be a product manager? That explained her obsession with showing him Ledger Lite and going on about new challenges and her ideas. No wonder she sounded as though she were interviewing for a job half the time. She was.

  The music swelled, irritatingly loud, and bonfire smoke burned his eyes, thanks to the contacts he wasn’t used to yet.

  “It’ll be fine. Just talk to her.” Ellie searched his face, worried, then seemed to notice someone approaching from behind him. “Here she comes. Don’t let me ruin this, Matt.”

  He turned and saw that Candy held a margarita in each hand and wore a big grin.

  This would be bad.

  “You need to go, El,” he said firmly. “I need to talk to Candy alone.”

  “Can I explain it to her at least?” She answered her own question. “No. You’re right. But don’t be blunt, for God’s sake. For once use some diplomacy.”

  “I’ll handle it,” he said, making a shooing motion.

  She turned and left before Candy reached him.

  Candy held out a margarita. “Where’s Ellie going?”

  Matt shrugged off the question. “Let’s find a quiet place.” He put his arm around her shoulder, his gut aching.

  “You bad boy. At a party…?” She glanced at her watch. “We do have a few minutes before the first event. There’s a spot.” She pointed at a cove where the embers of a fading campfire glowed red.

  She thought he was after that quickie. If only. Dread filled him, cold and gray, but delaying the truth wouldn’t help either of them.

  When they reached the spot, Matt smoothed sand from a rock that would hold them both. They sat together and he placed his untouched margarita on the sand at their feet.

  She sipped hers, then looked up at him. Her smile faltered. “What’s wrong, Matt?”

  There was no easy way to approach this, so he just said it. “Ellie mentioned that you want to be a product team leader.”

  “I…um…She told you?”

  “She thought you and I had already discussed it. Something Sara said about us working things out. How did you hear about the teams anyway?”

  “I overheard Daisy on the phone and-”

  “Talked her into giving you the scoop?” He smiled, knowing how persuasive Candy could be. “So, this whole working vacation deal was about the promotion?”

  “In a way.” Candy grimaced, seeming embarrassed. “I knew you had a bad impression of me, so this was a chance to show you what I can do.”

  “I know what you can do, Candy. That’s never been an issue. My problem is figuring out which team to put you on-where you and the team would benefit the most.”

  “You’re putting me on a team, not in charge of one?”

  He nodded. “The team leader job is mostly coordination and facilitation. Meetings, planning sessions. Stuff you’d hate.”

  “Do you like meetings and planning?” she asked sharply.

  “No, but-”

  “But you do them because you have to. So can I. The point is that you don’t see me as a leader. Why not?” She was angry now, he could tell, and hurt.

  “You’d be bored in a week, Candy. You wouldn’t be using your strengths.”

  “And what are those?”

  “Creativity, divergent thinking, innovation.”

  “I have other strengths. Leadership, for one thing. And I can do planning. My marketing plan references the strategic plan, for example, and if you’ll look at it-”

  “I’m sorry, Candy. I’ll push your Ledger Lite idea with Scott, and I know you’ll make a great contribution to whatever team I put you on, but-”

  “You won’t even consider me?” She looked utterly bereft. She blinked fast, fighting tears.

  God, he’d made her cry. What a jerk. He had to fix this. “Maybe you have a preference for what team you want to work on? I can’t promise, of course. That would be favoritism and we have to avoid that.”

  She stared at him, swallowed hard, made her hands into fists. She was shaking, too.

  All he wanted to do was give her what she wanted somehow. “Would you prefer the financial products team? That’s where Ledger Lite is. It’s dialed in, though. Not much need for creativity, so I’m not sure you’d like that…”

  He babbled on about the other teams, giving her details he shouldn’t be sharing with an employee-anything to help her feel better about the situation.

  “You never considered me. I can’t believe it. And nothing I can show you will change that?”

  “I know your talents, Candy. You didn’t need to scheme with Ellie to show me.”

  “It wasn’t a scheme. It was a demonstration.” Now she was getting angry. “It’s because of my reputation, isn’t it? Because everyone thinks I play around too much.”

  “Of course not.” He stopped, realizing there was some truth to her point. “It is true that if you were to become a team leader, we’d have to deal with staff perceptions about you, but that’s not the point. The point is-”

  “And what are those perceptions? That I’m a party girl? That I’m not serious about work?”

  “That’s not the issue.”

  “The issue is that you don’t respect me, Matt.”

  “Of course I respect you. I respect you too much to put you in
a position where you can’t shine. Why would you even want that?”

  “Because I want to get ahead, dammit. I want to move to the next level. But you respect me too much to do that for me, right?” Her words dripped with sarcasm.

  “I can’t, Candy. It’s not right for you or for SyncUp. I want to make you happy, believe me, I do. I love you.”

  “Then give me the job. That’s what will make me happy. If you love-” She stopped herself, as if shocked at what she’d been about to say and what he’d actually suggested-giving her the job because he cared about her.

  “That’s exactly why you can’t give it to me, isn’t it? We’re sleeping together. You can’t promote me even if you wanted to. And you don’t even want to.” Her voice caught.

  “Candy,” he said softly, not liking her train of thought at all. “I can’t give you a job that’s not right for you. Our sleeping together has nothing to do with that.”

  She stared at him, her eyes full of accusation, her face full of anguish. “You’re wrong, Matt,” she said softly. “It has everything to do with it.”

  She stared at him and he felt the ground shift beneath his feet. They’d agreed not to think through the implications of their affair or of falling in love, but that had been foolish, he saw now. He hadn’t been himself. He’d been lost in the fog of being Fun Guy. And that, he saw clearly for the first time, had been a big mistake. Somehow, he had to fix it for Candy. He had no right to drag her down because he’d been an irresponsible ass.

  14

  THEIR SLEEPING TOGETHER changed everything, Candy saw now. She felt as though she’d been yanked awake, blinking into the dark, her heart pounding, as hard reality replaced her soft and silly dreams.

  She’d practically said it right out: If you love me, give me the job. How sick was that? Maybe at an unconscious level she had believed that having sex with Matt-getting closer to him, anyway-would ensure her promotion, or at least allow him to see her in a more positive light.

  Even if she’d never had that awful idea, even if she had earned the promotion, how could Matt promote a lover, no matter how talented? It just wouldn’t look right.

  But that was a moot point, since he didn’t consider her capable of the job. All her efforts to fix her reputation with him had failed.

  This was all wrong, all terrible. She dug her nails into her palms to keep from crying. She didn’t know which bad angle to examine first.

  “Don’t catastrophize, Candy. Our being together makes things complicated, but we can figure it out.” She could see he was flailing for a solution, but his eyes told her he knew it was hopeless, too.

  “How? Just because we want to keep the personal separate from the professional doesn’t mean we can.”

  He looked at her, letting her words sink in.

  “How could we behave normally at SyncUp? How could you evaluate my performance? You’d be too strict or too lenient, and I’d wonder which and why. And what would people think? They would find out, you know. It’s inevitable. And I hate the idea of them gossiping about how we got together and why and what it means.”

  “We’ll handle it,” he said stubbornly, but she could see he was as troubled as she was. “Day by day.”

  “And when we break up? How will that be?”

  “You expect us to break up?” Matt asked.

  “People do. What makes us special? What do we have in common really? Sex and our taste in junk food. You said yourself, you need common goals and a routine to stay together. We’d drive each other crazy, disappoint each other over and over. Of course we’d break up.” She stopped, feeling hysterical, crazed. So hurt and disappointed and scared she didn’t know what to do.

  “You’re giving up before we’ve even started,” he said. “Look, you’re hurt about the team leader thing. Okay…” He swallowed hard, breathing raggedly. “What if I assigned acting managers. I could put together teams on a temporary basis. You could try it out and if it didn’t work, no harm done. I’d make the permanent appointments and no one would be the wiser. I think I could sell that to Scott-”

  “Stop it, Matt.” She hated that he was trying to appease her this way. “You can’t give me the job to soothe my feelings. You wouldn’t do this for anyone else and you know it. Let’s cut to the chase. Isn’t that what you prefer? Our relationship is a mistake. It wrecks everything.” She jumped to her feet.

  He stood, too. “What are you saying?”

  “That it’s over. We’re done. We should have stuck with the original deal. This is all wrong. I have to go. Tell Ellie and Sara I’m sorry, but I can’t stay for the party.” Her heart felt as if it might explode. She turned and began to run.

  “Candy!” Matt called, but he didn’t follow her and she was glad. Being with him had been a mistake. She’d been weak and stupid and now everything was so much worse.

  She’d never had a chance at the promotion. That made her feel physically ill. Worse, she’d have to go back to SyncUp and work with Matt.

  There were good reasons for those no-sex-in-the-workplace rules, all right. Every time she saw him, the pain would hit again. The pain and the disappointment.

  How could she even stay at SyncUp, knowing Matt didn’t take her seriously? Would the word get out that she’d been turned down? Would word get out about their affair? Would it show in their faces? How could she ever hold her head up again?

  On top of all that, she was breaking up with the man she loved. This was pure agony. She had to escape somehow, stop the pain or delay it until she was in better shape or something.

  “Hey, you’re going the wrong way, lady.” Carter called to her from a few yards away, Radar at his heels. “The party’s in that direction.” He pointed behind her.

  “I’m not up for a party right now,” she said. “I’m feeling too blue.” The understatement of the century.

  “Blue, huh? Then what you need is a martini to match your mood at WHIM SIM. Better yet, a bunch of us are playing darts for shots. You can be on my team.”

  “Darts, huh?” She liked darts. She liked Carter, too. He was the kind of fun-loving guy she always went for, back when she’d been content to be who she was, not struggling to get all serious and work-obsessed.

  Radar whined up at her, but he sounded more anxious than eager for her to join them.

  “Do you get festival points?” At least she could earn something for the competition to help her friends.

  “Yeah, I guess. I think I saw that posted.”

  “Then let’s go,” she said. “We’re wasting time and blue booze.”

  “Girl after my own heart.” Carter slung a friendly arm around her shoulder and led her toward the bar. She tried to smile, but it hurt. She was grateful for the distraction, for the escape of noise and liquor and laughter.

  “Come on, boy,” she called to Radar, but he stayed where he was, watching her, tail low, as if he were worried about her.

  “Forget it then,” she said, a stabbing feeling low inside her. She was worried about herself, too.

  This was better, though, she tried to tell herself. For a while there, she’d forgotten who she was. She was at the beach on vacation, dammit. She was a party girl. If she’d stuck with that, she wouldn’t be fighting tears this minute.

  This was a lesson, dammit, and she would learn it.

  MATT STOOD ROOTED to the spot, his insides churning, his mind frozen, until Candy was out of sight. She was right and wrong, but it would take him a bit to sort out which was which. He shouldn’t have offered her the job to make her feel better. She was right about that. That was bad for her and SyncUp and no way for a vice president to behave.

  She was right that being together would change things at work. He was no good at secrets, how he felt about her would show. Ellie said he was transparent as glass.

  Would staff respect him less? And what about Candy? Already, employees thought her wild. Would being with him hel
p or hurt her reputation?

  The affair had been irresponsible. He should have known better. He had an obligation to be discreet. He should be fired. He would have to resign. Not right away, of course, because he wouldn’t strand Scott and he’d make sure Candy was in good shape first. She’d been so hurt about the team-leader issue.

  He was suddenly exhausted by the whole thing. What was he doing standing here, his heart burning with loss? He was an idiot, dressed like some surfer dude, blinking to see through these stupid contacts. He needed peace and quiet, time online and his damn glasses back. If he’d stuck with who he was, none of this would have happened.

  At his place, the quiet didn’t help the way he’d expected it to. He missed Candy as if something had been cut out of him. He stayed clear of the bedroom where the sheets were tangled from all their lovemaking, but he could still smell her perfume everywhere.

  He fought the urge to chase her down, kiss away their doubts, make love until it all made sense again.

  What about when we break up? She’d said it as though it were inevitable, just part of the package. It angered him that she could be so casual about something that was so big to him.

  That was the point, wasn’t it? To Candy it was casual, not life-altering.

  She was Heather all over again. Crazy fun, then the crash that hurt like hell. Maturity would not lessen his pain. How had he even thought that?

  He’d been an idiot. He knew better. Stick to your strengths, don’t take chances. If you had too much fun, there was hell to pay-like that Tsunami for Two he’d paid for with a hangover. He was paying again, all right. This time, the lesson would stick.

  CANDY WOKE THE NEXT morning to a fuzzy brain and the sound of someone snoring. She turned her head and saw two big, sand-streaked feet sticking up from beneath the sheet.

  Whoops. She whipped back the covers and found Carter asleep on his belly, stark naked, his head at the foot of her foldout bed.

  Omigod. Had she? She looked down at herself, relieved she still wore her dress. She would have remembered sex, of course, regardless of how much alcohol she’d drunk. They’d had winner shots of tequila after they’d won the darts contest and she’d downed a blue martini to further numb her sadness.