by Maddie James
Mitchell stood there, looking at the closed door. She hadn’t slammed it in his face. It was just closed. A done deal. He stared at the door for a full minute, wrestling with the temptation to knock on it, then he turned and walked slowly away.
Chapter Five
Quiet tapping on the door registered in Jackie’s mind before she even opened her eyes. It’s not like she was sleeping anyway. Leah and Teri had been practically unconscious on the two queen beds which came with the suite when Jackie got back last night. They had been thoughtful enough to pull out the sofa bed for her and leave out some pillows. She sunk gratefully onto the bed at first, but then determined around two a.m. that between the lumpy bed and thoughts of Mitchell, she wasn’t going to be getting much sleep. Now there was a faint light outside the drawn curtains. The tapping became more insistent.
She approached the door cautiously. She wore a sweatshirt over a knee-length nightgown. Not sexy, but her friends forgot to leave her a blanket. Besides, there was no one to impress. It wasn’t going to be Mitchell coming back for more. For sure. If he wanted to see her again, he wouldn’t have walked away last night. That was the sum total and complete substance of all the rationalizing she had done instead of sleeping.
He didn’t ask for her cell number. He didn’t ask the name of her phony cruise line employer. He didn’t ask much at all. The only thing he really knew about her was her first name. Jackie. She knew even less about him.
His first name? Mitchell. His job? No idea. His home? Well, he implied it was here in Key West, but it was still a mystery. No, she didn’t know anything about him. Except he was a Taurus and his first pet’s name was Rocky. She wondered what Rocky was. A kitten? A dog? Hamster, perhaps? Maybe even a fish, but the material point was she would never find out.
Yep, he was a mystery and a complete unknown to her. Except for a few facts like how his eyes slowly roamed over her and didn’t see an accountant who worked in a gray office. Except maybe how those dark eyes turned from fiery passion to tenderness. Except perhaps the exquisite way he touched her and made her feel like she was someone he had been waiting for his whole life. That was all. Not much to go on in the cold light of morning.
Having convinced herself it could not possibly be mystery-man Mitchell tapping on the door, Jackie risked a glance through the peephole. Her bride-to-be friend, Shelly, stood on the other side with a drink carrier and four large cups of coffee.
Jackie opened the door.
“Good morning,” Shelly whispered as she slipped in with the coffees. “I just wanted to run by and see if you all are having a good time. I feel awful about abandoning you during my own bachelorette party, but I just couldn’t help it.”
“It’s okay,” said Jackie. “Believe me, we’re all having fun anyway.” She gestured toward the sleeping bodies of her two roommates and grinned. “Too much fun. I’m glad you stopped by, but go on…take Denny his coffee and enjoy your early honeymoon. You deserve it. See you on the plane tomorrow.”
Shelly slipped back out of the door after leaving three coffees for her friends. Jackie took her coffee and curled up in the chair by the window. She brushed aside the curtain and looked out at the sparkling blue morning water. What a view. It looked like it was going to be a hot Saturday on the island. She had made some vague sightseeing plans for the day with Leah and Teri in addition to planning some serious sunbathing and lounging around.
She took a long slow drink of the hot coffee. She should have waited a few minutes so she wouldn’t burn her tongue, but it was too late now. Waiting a minute and thinking first last night might have kept her from getting burned, too, but she hadn’t even tried to resist. What made her feel so reckless all of a sudden?
Since her miserable breakup with her boss a year ago, she had erected a stone monument to foolishness around her heart. It was handy for keeping out intruders and reminding her how stupid she could be. Sleeping with the boss? Irresponsible. Thinking she was in love with him despite the warnings of coworkers? Stupid. Getting dumped for a newer and cuter employee? Agonizing.
Even moving to Chicago and getting a new job hadn’t made her forget. Duh. She was never going to be that brainless again.
Why had last night been different, then? Man, would her friends be surprised when she told them. If she told them. She knew she would. They’d guess something was up as soon as they looked at her. Six months of close friendship in a small office left little room for secrets.
Jackie heard the bathroom door in the other half of the suite close and then the sound of running water gurgling through the pipes. Leah came through the bedroom door and headed straight for one of the coffee cups on the little table.
“Coffee fairy stopped by,” Jackie commented.
“Shelly?”
“Yep. She feels bad about leaving us on our own. Wanted to know if we were having fun.” Jackie couldn’t help grinning at Leah.
“Are we?” Leah asked. She took a few cautious sips of coffee. “I think there’s a good chance my liver will regret this weekend.”
Jackie nodded thoughtfully. “I think there’s a chance there might be room for some regret. Key West seems to make you…well, it’s not the eleventh floor accounting office, that’s for sure.”
Jackie turned on her laptop and sipped her coffee.
“You’re not working,” said Leah. It was a statement, not a question.
“No. Just checking us in on our flights tomorrow.”
“Ugh. Flying. Not sure my stomach will be up to that,” said Leah. “I had a little too much last night.”
“I thought maybe,” said Jackie. “You can have half my coffee, too, if that’ll help.”
“No, thanks. You probably need it. We gave up on you and went to bed about one thirty.”
Leah was giving Jackie the explain-yourself-for-my-entertainment look, but Jackie pretended to be very absorbed in her coffee and her laptop. There would be time later for the details, and she might as well wait until Teri was there, too.
She checked in herself and her friends for their Sunday morning flight. They had to get back to work on Monday, or tongues would wag about the whole accounting staff and their wild weekend. If they played their cards right, no one from work would ever know all four of them took off for a southern holiday. It would seem tough to get away with, but their company was famously uncommunicative floor-to-floor. It was like crossing an international border to get off the elevator on any floor other than your own.
When she finished with the airline webpage, she moved on to surfing her work email while she was on the hotel wireless anyway. Probably nothing important happened on Friday while they were all partying in Key West, but it might be a good idea to check.
“I think those frozen umbrella drinks must’ve gone to my head last night,” said Leah when she got a few sips of coffee down and started to look a little brighter. She sat on the edge of the sofa bed watching Jackie navigate their work website. “I tell you, I must have been seeing things last night. At one point I almost thought I saw you hanging out on the sand with our boss.”
Jackie’s hands froze over the keyboard.
Time stopped.
She couldn’t breathe.
Chapter Six
“Of course, I thought I saw fireworks, too, so I might have been a little impaired,” Leah continued. “Although I think those must’ve been at least partially real. Seemed like it. Maybe I’m one of those people who dream in color or something.”
Jackie hadn’t moved. The room became much smaller and the quiet hum of her laptop felt like a helicopter in her ears. Only it couldn’t be a real helicopter because she could hear a very loud beating sound over the top of it. You couldn’t hear your heartbeat over a helicopter, could you?
“Our boss,” said Jackie.
“Yeah,” said Leah over the Styrofoam rim of her cup. “Looked just like him. Same dark green eyes, dark hair. Of course, I’ve never seen our boss without a shirt, so I couldn’t tell you if that awesome body w
as like his.”
Jackie searched her memory for a name. She had worked for Ames Worldwide Industries for six months but had never seen the man behind the name. Maybe she had passed by a picture of him somewhere. It never seemed important since he was seldom there and didn’t actually run their part of the company. He just owned it along with a string of other businesses. Her only impression of him was that he was filthy rich and busy running all over the world converting more of his millions to billions. He never even seemed real to her before.
And she didn’t know his first name.
“Had a predatory look,” Leah continued. “Always looks hungry, like he’s on the prowl for the next thing. But I’ve really only seen him once,” she said with a little shrug, “from a distance. I guess I’m thinking of his picture.”
“Picture?” Jackie asked. Her voice came out as a hoarse whisper. She sounded like someone looking all over a desert for a deep cold well.
“In the downstairs lobby, by the big map showing all his properties. It’s somewhere on the website, too, but you have to dig for it. I think it’s buried somewhere in a little company background piece.”
Jackie’s hands shook as she pushed her laptop across the coffee table toward Leah. “Maybe you better find me that picture,” she said.
Leah opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Instead, slow understanding rolled over her face and she brought both hands to her mouth in a look of appalled shock. It was a mirror image of the look on Jackie’s face.
“Damn,” said Teri as she came into the room wearing a white terrycloth robe with a towel wrapped around her head. She stared at Jackie and Leah’s shocked faces. “Did I miss a big announcement? Unplanned pregnancy? Somebody coming out of the closet? Shelly and Denny are calling it off?”
Nobody said anything. Leah reached across and started clicking through screens on their company website. Jackie couldn’t even watch. She stared down into her coffee cup like it was a magical elixir that would wash away the entire weekend so far. She couldn’t believe that of all the men to have the first one night stand of her twenty-five-year-life with, she stumbled across her boss. Another boss.
How could she let this happen? This was a disaster.
Teri was still waiting for someone to say something. “Here’s his picture,” Leah finally said. “It’s small, but you can see what I mean.”
No one moved. Jackie glanced up at Teri. The expression on Teri’s face was more grim resignation than anything else. She did not look surprised.
“See,” Leah prompted.
“You knew,” Jackie said to Teri.
“You…didn’t,” said Teri. It had begun as a question, but came out as a statement. The realization of what happened dawned on Teri’s face now, too.
Jackie shook her head. She forced herself to look at the picture. Until she actually looked, she harbored the hope Leah and Teri had been too drunk and it was too dark for them to really know. There was still a chance the vague familiarity she noticed about Mitchell was just that, a feeling he was similar to someone she might have seen somewhere. Maybe her boss’s first name wasn’t even Mitchell. She took a breath and looked.
The picture was small, but there was no denying it was the face she had kissed every inch of and run her fingers over. The dark green eyes looked dignified, businesslike, and serious. But they were the same eyes. Jackie looked at the name below the picture. Mitchell Ames.
Mitchell Ames. Her boss.
The man who owned the company she worked for, but was never there. A Taurus whose first pet was named Rocky. The man who approached her in a bar in Key West. The man who knew just where to touch her until she begged for more. Mitchell Ames.
That son of a bitch.
Teri sat down on the arm of Jackie’s chair and looked over her shoulder at the picture.
“I was pretty sure it was him last night,” she said.
“Then why didn’t you tell me?” asked Jackie. “Some friends, letting me screw the boss without knowing it.”
“You had sex with him? Shit,” said Leah.
“Duh,” said Jackie. “You didn’t think that was where that was going last night?”
Teri and Leah exchanged a look. They looked uncomfortable. “I guess we…” began Teri.
“Didn’t think you, uh…did one night stands,” finished Leah.
“I don’t. Usually.”
“You haven’t even dated anyone in the six months we’ve known you,” Teri said.
“That’s because I was…” began Jackie. She didn’t even want to say it out loud.
“Running away. From your last boss,” Leah said gently. “Crap. You don’t need this.”
Jackie sighed. There was a prolonged silence. Teri reached for the last coffee cup on the table and pulled off the plastic lid. She took a long drink.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
No one said anything. Jackie stared at Mitchell’s picture on the webpage still open in front of her. How could he? How could he use her and not say anything about who he was. That jerk. He probably did it all the time. Flying around in his fancy jet, screwing women all over the world. She would be Key West number seventeen. Her coffee churned in her stomach. How had she gotten herself into this mess? The three friends stared at the small picture on their company website in silence for a long minute.
“Was he any good?” Leah asked.
“Leah!” said Teri.
“Seriously, just asking. If we’re all gonna get fired for calling in sick and then Jackie screwing the boss in Key West, I figure we have a right to know.”
Teri looked at Jackie with a pained, sympathetic expression. Leah looked sympathetic, but curious, too. Jackie wanted to scream or throw something at the incredible injustice of the mess she was in. Instead, to her utter amazement, she laughed. The way Leah put it, it was so ridiculous and so unbelievable, it was funny.
“Maybe he’ll just fire me,” she said. “If he ever finds out I work for him.”
“You honestly don’t think he knows?” asked Teri.
“We didn’t share a whole lot of details about our lives.”
“He didn’t tell you anything?”
“I knew his name was Mitchell. I had the impression he lived in Key West.”
“That’s it?” Leah asked. “I guess that answers my question. So he was good. Right?”
“Well, I do know quite a few more things about him, but I was saving those parts to tell you later. Preferably over a whole pitcher of margaritas.”
“And you don’t think he knows who you are at all?” asked Teri.
Jackie considered that. Could he have any idea who she was? Did he believe her story about the job on the cruise line? When she thought back over it, he was the one who supplied the dancer story. She just agreed to it all.
Dancer? Check.
On a cruise ship? Check.
Had she fallen into his trap? Check.
“He knows my first name and probably the location of any birthmarks.”
“Uh-oh,” said Teri.
“But he thinks I’m a dancer on a cruise ship.”
It was Leah and Teri’s turn to laugh.
“How, in the name of hell,” Teri asked with a huge grin, “did he get that idea?”
“You can’t dance. I’ve seen you,” added Leah.
“I know. We weren’t…dancing.”
Teri took another long swig of coffee and plunked the empty cup down on the table. “Okay, here’s best case scenario: he doesn’t have any idea who you are and has probably forgotten you already.”
Jackie winced. “Ouch.”
“Sorry, but word around the office is that he’s a prize-winning, heartless jackass. So, he forgets your name, we all slink back to Chicago tomorrow, he never comes to our floor of the building, and you never have to lay eyes on him again. You did not officially have an affair with your boss…again…because you didn’t know he was your boss,” said Teri. “It doesn’t count.”
“We go back to
partying and keep it our secret,” added Leah. “We will, however, always revere you as the woman who screwed our boss on a fateful weekend in Key West.”
“He’s pretty much been screwing us all for years, seems like you got him back for all of us, girl,” Teri concluded. “You know that raise we didn’t get? The rumors that he’s going to shut down our whole building because we’re not padding his wallet fast enough? Ha, screw ‘em.”
Jackie absorbed her friends’ words. Could she do it? Could she get pissed off and just view it as a conquest on her part? Just one night of fun which didn’t mean anything? Could it be so easy to just put it out of her mind and file it away like those millions of gray spreadsheets in their gray office?
“So, I just forget about him?”
“Yep.”
“Like it never happened?”
“Well,” said Leah, “It did happen. I might dwell on the good parts every now and then. Chicago gets pretty cold in the winter. Just imagine a different face on him when you review the fun parts.”
“Okay, I don’t even want to ask about your sex life, Leah,” Teri said.
“Just being realistic.”
Jackie looked at her friends. When she landed in Chicago last spring, looking for work and not knowing a soul in the huge city, they had welcomed her like a sister. Over the last six months, she shared so much with Shelly, Teri, and Leah, it felt like they had all been together for years. If she saw Mitchell again and they revealed their true identities, there was a good chance it would end up in disaster. He wouldn’t believe she had no idea who he was and would read the wrong things into it. She’d be in the same boat she was in a year ago. Paying the price for falling for her boss.
She and her friends lied and called in sick to take off for a long weekend, effectively shutting down the whole accounting office, to celebrate Shelly’s upcoming wedding. Where would it leave all of them? Fired? They’d be on the street and Shelly’s wedding would be wrecked. Jackie wanted to protect her heart and her friends. And there was only one way to do that.