Show and Tell

by Jasmine Haynes

  Thank God the Green facility came up on the right. Poor Grace was obviously uncomfortable alone with him, filling the time with any inane conversation. He hadn’t noticed her difficulty with small talk before, probably because their discussions were always business. Except for the time she’d told him about her divorce in the sparest of details.

  Ron Rudd was in the lobby when they entered, and Dave Skid-man, the engineer, jogged in behind them. The president’s secretary arrived shortly thereafter to guide the group up to the boardroom for the meeting. An older woman with a gaze of steel, she handed out badges, then led them from the lobby entrance.

  At the end of the procession, Rudd grabbed his arm on the stairs. “I sent you an e-mail.”

  Holy shit. Rudd sent him those damn pictures? He hadn’t received one in weeks. He’d thought it was over. Now his heart pounded, and for a second he had the unconscionable urge to beat the man’s face in.

  “I outlined two scenarios for improving the bottom line.”

  The red haze faded from his vision. Damn, he had a one-track mind. Jezebel, making love to Jezebel in his office, tasting her on a hotel room floor, watching her give herself the best damn orgasm. And photos someone took of the two of them.

  “I haven’t seen the e-mail yet,” he managed.

  “I want profitability up, Sinclair.” Unspoken was that Rudd wanted it done at any cost, ethics be damned.

  Scott kept his voice low as the others moved ahead up the stairs. “It’s the eleventh hour, Ron. The auditors want to sign off the beginning of next week. Nothing changes now.” Stepping back, he pulled his arm free. “We know all the reasons why it happened. The sales forecast was overstated, and we put the M4 out too early. The warranty costs screwed us last year.” They were still experiencing the fallout, but at least they’d learned the lesson. New product introduction would go more smoothly now, as evidenced by today’s meeting and the rigorous qualification they’d put this supplier through. Last year, however, was sunk. “Let’s table the rest of the discussion for later.” A vendor’s office was not the optimum place.

  “Our jobs are on the line. You need to find something.”

  Correction. Rudd’s job was on the line. He’d pushed for the M4’s early release in order to boost sales to meet forecast.

  Scott gave the man a last critical look. Would he try blackmail to save his ass? Could he be responsible for those pictures? If he was, then he was taking a damn long time to make his demands. Time was running out. They had only a couple of weeks left to finalize the SEC’s 10K reporting.

  No. Rudd would have clearly stated his demands already. The man didn’t pussyfoot when he wanted something.

  Grace waited at the top of the stairs, her glance flicking between them as if assessing the potential impact the secretive conversation might have on her.

  To her right, the ladies’ room door opened, a blonde stepping out. For a moment, she reminded him of Jezebel. He’d never stop thinking about her, never stop wanting her . . .

  The blonde’s sharp inhale audible, Grace moved aside.

  And the bottom of Scott’s world fell away, a chasm yawning at his feet. Jesus. Her blue eyes locked with his, Jezebel backed up against the restroom door. He scented her perfume on the air, a mixture of sweet and citrus. Maybe it was her shampoo, her lotion, her smooth gorgeous skin. Jesus, he had to touch her to see if she was real.

  “This way, gentlemen, ma’am.” Herman Green’s secretary tried to herd the group down the hall.

  Only Ron Rudd at his back got Scott’s feet moving.

  He wanted to make a fucking scene. He wanted to drag her back into the ladies’ room, lock the door, find out who the hell she was, why she left him, then shove her up against the door and take her, claim her, fuck her, and show her she was his.

  Instead, like a lamb, he followed the secretary. At the boardroom door, the last to enter, he stopped her.

  “The woman back there, I recognize her from somewhere.”

  The woman assessed him with sharp gray eyes. “She’s Mr. Green’s daughter. Perhaps you know her from the country club.”

  Holy hell. She couldn’t be his Jezebel. “I don’t belong to a country club.”

  “Then you don’t know her,” she said, speech clipped, a flare to her nostrils. Like Mama Bear protecting Goldilocks from the Big Bad Wolf—except that he was mixing fairy tales—or as if he weren’t good enough to lick the bottom of fair Goldilocks’s shoe.

  “But she works here,” he insisted.

  “They’re waiting for you, sir.”

  Yeah. He’d be meeting Herman Green, who would reveal his daughter’s name if Scott had to use every trick in the book.

  “CLOSE your office door.”

  Scott’s voice over the phone made Trinity’s knees quake, and she wasn’t even standing up. “I’m sorry, sir, do I know you?”

  He paused. “I’m the man who went down on you three weeks ago in front of Norman. Isn’t that right, Miss Trinity Green?”

  She gulped and answered his original question. “I don’t have an office.” What would he think of her? She was a lowly office worker, a supervisor without even an office of her own.

  He didn’t seem to care. “I guess you’ll just have to listen to me make myself come.”

  God. She’d known he’d figure out who she was, she just didn’t think it would happen so quickly. The meeting in the conference room had gone on until eleven. She’d walked by to check several times. Then Daddy and Connor, who’d come over for the contract finalization, had given the new customers the grand tour. Trinity hid in the file room, ostensibly looking up old invoices. She’d released a sigh of relief when the bigwigs trooped off for lunch.

  By two o’clock, he’d found her. She wanted to die with mortification, yet cry with relief because God help her, she’d missed him so.

  “Maybe I should call you later to discuss this further.” Anything to avoid the confrontation now. She wasn’t ready. She hadn’t planned her explanation.

  She hadn’t figured out what to do now that he knew who she was.

  “I need it now, sweet Trinity.”

  The unmistakable rasp of his zipper crackled over the phone, as if he held the cell down to his pants.

  “Where are you?” she whispered.

  “In a very secluded park. In fact, I could fuck you in the backseat and no one would be the wiser. Why don’t you meet me?”

  He was crass, crude, even insulting, yet he lit her on fire with a combination of fear and sexual combustion. “I can’t.”

  “I want your mouth on my cock right now.” He groaned, and she covered the mouthpiece as if someone might hear him.

  This was supposed to be over. They’d crossed a line, done things they shouldn’t have, and he was starting it all again. And Lord, how she wanted it. “What are you doing?”

  “You can’t help yourself, can you? You need to know if I’m stroking my cock to the sound of your voice, don’t you?”

  It was like an uncontrollable throb in her chest. “Yes.”

  He lowered his voice, turned lazy and seductive. “Yeah, I’m stroking. I’m so fucking hard, and my briefs are all wet. I had to stop on the way back to work because I couldn’t wait. When I close my eyes, I imagine it’s your hand on me.”

  He made her panties damp, and her heart thumped every time someone walked past her cubicle, yet she couldn’t hang up.

  “Do you want to suck me?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Do you want to swallow my come?”

  “Yes.” Please.

  “Christ, I’ve missed you.”

  And she’d missed him. She could taste him on her tongue, and his words turned her heart over in her chest. God, how good they were. Frighteningly good. She needed him.

  “Meet me. Now. I want to come in you or on you, with you.”

  “I can’t.” Yet the strength of her desire forced her to her feet right there in her cubicle.

  “You have to, y
ou need to. You want my cock so bad you can’t resist. It’s only ten minutes, Trinity, and you can have me. I’m all yours.”

  His voice seduced her. She couldn’t breathe, and her blood buzzed in her ears as if she’d had a powerful orgasm. Or needed one so badly she’d do anything. She wanted to rush to the women’s room and put her hand between her legs. If she’d been on her cell rather than her work phone, she would have.

  That’s why he was so dangerous. Because she would do anything for him. In ways, he was like every other man, making her lose her sense of self. Worse, with him, she craved it.

  “I have to work,” she whispered, almost pleading for him to stop torturing her.

  “I wanna come now, all over you, baby. I want you to stroke me.” His voice quaked, his breathing harsh, then he groaned. “Fuck me with your mouth, please, Trinity, Trinity, Trinity.”

  He came with a sharp, guttural sound she felt right up in her womb, and her name on his lips turned her heart over. She hadn’t realized how good it would be, how momentous. How absolutely, utterly frightening. He’d called her baby.

  The receiver between her breasts, Trinity depressed the hook flash on the phone. He knew her name, held all the cards. She couldn’t resist him. She was obsessed. The next time he called, she’d meet him and do anything he wanted.

  Even if she lost everything in the process.

  HIS car beneath a shady tree at the far end of the park’s lot, Scott leaned his head back against the car seat.

  Christ. He’d cleaned up, zipped his pants, but he still couldn’t move. The orgasm had been hard, heavy, draining him. Simply because she’d been on the other end of the phone.

  Wrong. Her name had done it for him. She couldn’t hide. She was his. All he had to do was make her see that.

  He could be so fucking good for her. She excited him, made him feel aware, all his nerves alive. The next time he called, he’d get her to meet him. He’d almost had her this time, but he figured she hadn’t gotten over the shock of losing her anonymity.

  Glancing at his watch, he saw the afternoon ticking away. He’d made an excuse, palming Grace off on Dave, getting the engineer to drive her back to the office.

  It was time to leave his fantasy world behind and get back to work. Tonight, however, he’d plan his next assault.

  He’d given up on Katy, let her walk away. It was a shitty thing to admit, but he’d given up on loving her. She didn’t want anything he had to offer, and he’d let her go as if she were a helium balloon floating into the air.

  He wasn’t going to let go of Trinity Green. He wanted the passion she made him feel.

  He would make her feel it, too.

  SHE was going to be sick.

  “He was very interested in you, sweetheart.”

  Her father had insisted she dine at his house. She wanted to go home and hide. Daddy wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  The maid set the plate in front of her, and the wafting scent of meat turned Trinity’s stomach. So did the conversation, which had been entirely about Mr. Scott Sinclair. When she’d stepped out of the restroom and seen him, she wanted the floor to open up and swallow her whole like that Bible story where the whale swallowed . . . somebody. On the phone, she realized resistance was futile. But good Lord, this was infinitely worse. Her father was trying to set her up with a man she’d had sex with, several times, in various naughty locales, and she wasn’t even divorced yet. How could this have happened?

  What if Scott told her father how they met?

  She could only do one thing. Change the subject. “Daddy, we need to talk about Lance.”

  “I’m not talking about Lance.”

  “I want to make sure you know I didn’t send that letter.”

  “I know you didn’t.” He waved his fork at her. “Now eat your chops.”

  She picked at the lamb chops. That’s what Scott did to her— threw her off her food even as she couldn’t stop hearing his groan when he came over the phone. She was so naughty.

  “He’s CFO of Millennium,” Daddy went on as if he were a bulldog with a nice, big fat meaty bone.

  With Scott’s eyes on her this morning, she felt as if she suddenly had a big red S painted on her chest. S for slut. “Who’s a CFO?” She pretended confusion as she struggled for a way to shift her father offtrack.

  “Scott Sinclair. I told you. The new customer.” He waggled his eyebrows. “I think he wants to ask you for a date.”

  Lord. She could not handle her father matchmaking for her. “Daddy, he’s got to be in his midforties.”

  “Ahah!” he crowed, “so you did notice him.”

  She rolled her eyes. “What did you tell him about me?”

  Her father shrugged. “Nothing. He asked who you were, I told him, and that was that.”

  Trinity pursed her lips. “Daddy. The tips of your ears are getting red, which means you’re not telling me the truth.”

  “My ears do not get red.”

  “They do. Just like Pinocchio’s nose grows.”

  He laughed, and her heart turned over. He had such a boisterous, wonderful laugh, and she’d missed it terribly in the last few months.

  “You’re a poet,” he quipped, “and you didn’t even know it.”

  “I’m not letting you sidetrack me.” She gritted her teeth. “What did you tell him?”

  He expelled a gust of air. “He asked who you were. ‘Who was that beautiful woman,’ ” he mimicked. “And I said, ‘That lovely lady is my daughter.’ ”

  “And?” she prompted.

  He grimaced. “This and that, nothing important.”

  God. This and that could be anything from her name to telling a certain interested stranger she wasn’t divorced yet. Men were like that, unable to see the subtle differences between this and that. She hadn’t exactly lied to Scott. She’d just failed to mention the divorce wasn’t final. Okay, she failed to mention that she hadn’t even started divorce proceedings until after she met Scott. Yet from the moment she’d stepped into her bathroom, she knew in her heart she would divorce Harper.

  But what did it matter? This thing with Scott had to be over. He had the ability to turn her inside out and get her to do things she’d never consider in real life. That said it all. Scott wasn’t part of her real life. He was a fantasy.

  She laid down her knife and fork. “Daddy.” She put her hand over his. “I need you to listen very carefully. I just had my marriage end very badly. I do not want you setting me up with another man. Promise?”

  Her father shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry Harper did this to you. You deserved so much better.” His gaze hardened. “You deserve a man who’s going to take care of you.”

  “I’ve got a job, Daddy. I’m taking care of myself.”

  Right. She still had her mother’s trust, and if it weren’t for that, she wouldn’t have the money to cover the cost of her groceries, let alone a mortgage. It was pathetic. She was a spoiled rich bitch. Her father still had to pick out men to take care of her because he didn’t trust her judgment in choosing a winner herself.

  She’d proven her abysmal judgment by taunting Scott into making that challenge with Norman. And she was weak, because the moment she saw Scott again, all she could think of was how damn good he looked. She wanted to climb his body and take his tongue in her mouth. She’d wanted to run to him this afternoon.