Rock Me Hard (The Rock Star's Seduction)

by Thorne, Olivia

  Exasperated, Klaus snapped, “There are too many confidential files, too many sensitive – ”

  “We can call Dave again,” Connor offered. “Or… you can come in and get the files for me yourself.”

  There was a long pause on the other end. Klaus was obviously thinking about his options: avoid a potential reaming from Westerholtz, or perform a little CYA.

  “The CEO has instructed me to give Mr. Brooks whatever help he requires, Lily,” he finally said. “So do whatever he asks.”

  “Anything?” Connor asked.

  “Anything.” I could almost hear Klaus’s teeth gritting together as he said it.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “Have a nice – ”

  “Is that all, Connor?” Klaus cut me off.

  I wanted to throw the phone across the room. I might have, too, if it were mine.

  “No, it’s not,” Connor said, crossing his arms. “That was very rude what you just did to Lily.”

  I looked up in shock.

  Stanley shook his head like, Here comes Jaws again.

  “W– what?” Klaus asked, equally astounded.

  “Apologize to her,” Connor demanded.

  “That’s really not necessary,” I said in a squeaky little voice.

  “Yes. It IS,” Connor insisted. “Klaus?”

  “This is ridiculous – I’m not – ”

  “Are you always that rude to everyone, Klaus, or just to the people you can get away with it? Employees, waiters, people you can abuse your power over?”

  “I’m not going to take this from – ”

  “I think I might call Dave back,” Connor mused. “I know he’s very nice to his personal secretary Amanda. I think he’d be interested to know how you kiss up and kick down.”

  I was about to faint.

  My very limited life at Everton Consulting was flashing before my eyes.

  Stanley looked like he was watching a train wreck he was powerless to stop.

  There was a loooooong pause on the phone.

  “…sorry,” Klaus mumbled, the way a stylish woman ‘of a certain age’ might say her age in a crowded doctor’s office.

  “What was that? Couldn’t hear you!” Connor shouted.

  “Sorry, Lily,” Klaus seethed. “Is that all, Misssster Brooksss?”

  “It’ll do, I suppose. Have a good night, Klaus!” Connor called out, then reached over, took the phone away from me, and hung up the call.

  10

  I must have been staring at him like he’d grown an extra head, because Connor gave me a mystified expression.

  “…what?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what’? What the hell was that?!” I fumed.

  “My only entertainment on a boring Friday night,” he grinned, then turned around and stuck out his arm. “Stan, a pleasure. Good to meet you.”

  Stanley just nodded his head in stunned silence as he shook hands.

  “Shall we?” Connor asked me as he gestured to the elevators with one hand and put the other on the small of my back.

  Oh.

  My.

  God.

  Just that firm pressure there – the warmth of his hand, of his very large hand pressed in the curve of my back – sent a pleasurable jolt of electricity up and down my spine.

  And his fingers slipped a little farther down as he pushed me gently forward. Just an inch or so.

  He didn’t touch my rear end or anything, but… it was headed in that direction before his hand stopped and his fingertips pressed a little harder.

  My knees got a little weak.

  “Okay,” I agreed feebly, and we walked over to the elevators.

  He withdrew his hand as we moved, and as soon as I felt his fingers move away, I thought about stopping just so he would touch me again to usher me forward.

  I didn’t do it, though.

  The elevator door opened as soon as Connor pressed the UP button, and we stepped inside.

  “What floor?” he asked.

  “23rd.”

  As the doors closed, the last glimpse I had was the marble foyer and Stanley’s stunned face behind the reception desk.

  I realized that might possibly be the spot I was standing when my boss decided to fire me.

  As the elevator began its quick ascent to the upper floors, the anger rose inside me again.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” I blurted out.

  Connor looked over in surprise. “What?”

  “I said, who the hell do you think you are?”

  He broke into a heart-stopping grin. “Did I tell you before how adorable you are when – ”

  “ – I’m angry, yeah, yeah,” I snapped, not about to be put off. “Do you realize you might have just lost me my job back there?”

  He looked at me, studying my eyes, peering deep into them. “Tell me something, Lily.”

  “What?” I asked, exasperated.

  “Do you like Klaus as a boss?”

  He was entirely sincere. No snarkiness or anything.

  I pulled back a little, surprised at the question. “What?”

  “I said, do you like Klaus as a boss?”

  I paused.

  Something in his gaze was asking for an honest answer.

  Against my better judgment, I gave it.

  “Not really. Actually, no. Not at all.”

  He nodded, satisfied. “Good.”

  “Why ‘good’?”

  “Because – ”

  The elevator slowed down rapidly. I wasn’t sure if the butterflies in my stomach were because of the abrupt deceleration, or because of what he said next.

  “ – you seem way too smart, talented, and interesting to be working for a jackass like that.”

  Just then the elevator doors dinged open. He broke our gaze and walked out onto the 23rd floor, leaving me stunned in his wake.

  11

  But I recovered quickly.

  I followed him out into the main lobby, past the receptionist’s desk which was adorned with flower arrangements that would be thrown out by the cleaning staff at night. The receptionist was gone for the weekend, so I buzzed us through the main door using the badge in my purse.

  Actually, everybody had left for the night. The entire floor of cubicles was quiet and half-dimmed.

  “You sure do have it in for Klaus,” I said, picking the conversation back up.

  He grinned. “And you don’t?”

  “I have to work with him every day. What did he ever do to you?”

  “I had to suffer through a couple of conference calls with him.” Connor shook his head in exaggerated regret. “Forty-five minutes of my life I’ll never get back.”

  “Forty-five minutes?! Try six months,” I retorted.

  “Which you’ll never get back. You really shouldn’t be wasting your time as his punching bag, Lily.”

  “That’s all very nice, but a girl’s got to eat.”

  “That she does. But never take bread scraps when you could – and should – be dining out on lobster.”

  “I don’t know what world you live in, Mr. Brooks – ”

  He looked over at me like You did NOT just call me that.

  “It’s Connor. My friends call me Connor. Klaus calls me Mr. Brooks.”

  I couldn’t suppress my smile.

  “Ah, I knew I could make you laugh.”

  “That was a smile, not a laugh,” I said, intent upon not giving in that easily. He was charming, but he was kind of infuriating, too.

  “I’ll get there,” he said confidently, and grinned.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know what world you live in, Connor, but in mine, bread scraps are sometimes all you get.”

  “We either make our own realities, Lily, or we accept the realities others impose upon us. You’ve got way too much going for you to accept a reality that includes Klaus as a part of it.”

  Ooooh, Mr. Philosophy, I thought, annoyed. Mr. Mommy and Daddy Paid For My Education at Harvard and Gave Me My Million-Dollar Busine
ss Contacts.

  As though he could read my thoughts, he stopped on a dime, caught my arm, spun me gently to face him, and stared into my eyes.

  It took me a couple seconds to hear his first few words, because that hand on my arm was making my legs go weak.

  “Did I have a lot of advantages growing up? Yes I did. I’m a very lucky guy, and I recognize that. But part of my upbringing was that I learned my strengths, and I learned what I was worth, and I never let anybody tell me differently. When I look at you, Lily, I see a beautiful – ”

  I almost collapsed.

  Did he just call me beautiful?!

  “ – woman who is poised, very intelligent, in control of herself, doesn’t take any crap – oh, wait, skip that last part,” he said, as though making a mental note. Then he started walking again. “Is it this way?”

  What a JACKASS! I seethed inwardly as I ran to catch up.

  “You know, you talk a big game for a guy who’s here to look at somebody else’s business files on a Friday night after closing hours.”

  “Uh oh, did I touch a nerve?” he laughed.

  God, he could be so infuriating!

  “Why are you here, exactly?”

  He put his hands in his pockets, looked around the empty cubicles, and shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know… thinking about buying the company.”

  I snorted. “Right.”

  He gave a little eh, who knows look. “Maybe one day. Once I save up my pennies.”

  “So you can have a whole company to kiss your ass, huh?”

  Oh man, as soon as I said it, I wish I could have taken it back.

  But he just roared with laughter.

  “I don’t know about other people kissing my ass, but…”

  Here he cast a sly look down at my backside.

  “…I wouldn’t mind kissing somebody else’s.”

  Again – beet red. Fwoosh! All the blood went to my face.

  But this time I stopped dead in my tracks.

  “Hey,” I snapped.

  He turned around with that surprised look again. “What?”

  “You know that’s highly inappropriate, right?” I said, crossing my arms.

  I thought he was going to come back with something even more risqué, but he surprised me by putting out his hands in a conciliatory gesture.

  “Sorry,” he said, his tone sincere. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. You’re just… sorry. I won’t do it again.”

  “‘You’re just’ what?” I asked.

  I wasn’t mildly curious about what he had been going to say next – I was dying to know.

  “Well, you’re – ” He stopped and shook his head. “Never mind.”

  “‘You’re just’ what?” I demanded.

  He smiled, but it wasn’t his normal I’m going to do whatever I want and I’m going to have fun doing it grin. It was more sincere… and almost vulnerable. “I find you very attractive.”

  My heart skipped a beat as he kept on talking.

  “I’m used to being a little more… aggressive, and I forgot the setting and my manners. I’m sorry.” He went back to kidding around, and held up both arms like Don’t shoot! “I’ll stop, just don’t file a sexual harassment lawsuit, okay?”

  I stood there, arms still crossed, and pondered my dilemma.

  On the one hand, his behavior was totally inappropriate for the workplace.

  On the other hand, sexual harassment is, by definition, unwanted sexual advances.

  And I soooo wanted them.

  I’d basically snapped at him because… well… he annoyed me, he flustered me, he got under my skin, and I wanted to hit back. I’m not the most sexual person in the world – at least, I don’t go around making sexual jokes with strangers – and I had no ammo I could fire back at him after the ‘ass kissing’ bit. So I’d gone the route of least resistance.

  I’d had an incredibly gorgeous guy flirting openly with me, and I was about to throw it all away.

  So… keep my dignity and throw cold water on all the sexual tension… or admit I was overreacting and look like I was throwing myself at him?

  I tried to chart a course through the middle, but it didn’t come out sounding as good as I’d hoped.

  “I didn’t say stop… just… tone it down a little,” I muttered as I shifted back and forth on my heels.

  He burst into a humongous grin, and I felt my knees wobble again.

  Damn it, I’m not that easy!

  He had the advantage, and he knew it – but he didn’t push it.

  “Agreed. Now let’s go look at those files, shall we?”

  12

  We made our way back to my desk and Klaus’s office.

  The silence was a little uncomfortable.

  They have a saying in sales: the first person to speak, loses.

  Imagine a salesman is making a pitch to an undecided customer. When the salesman finishes his presentation and asks for the sale, he has to stop talking and wait for an answer. If he says something before the customer does, it looks like he’s desperate for the sale, and we all know how attractive desperation is. Whereas, if the undecided customer says something first, there’s this unspoken balance of power he’s bought into and acknowledged. Psychologically, he’s given the power over to the salesman, which usually results in the customer signing on the dotted line. Whoever speaks first, loses.

  In this scenario, I lost.

  “You still haven’t said what’s so important about these files that you have to waste a perfectly good Friday night,” I said, if for no other reason than to get the conversation flowing again.

  “Actually, I believe I did,” he grinned.

  “Oh, that’s right – you’re thinking about buying the company,” I said sarcastically. “How about a real reason?”

  He kept grinning. “Well… if I were Klaus, I might say something about it not being any of your business. But since we’re friends, let me put it this way instead: there are things I’m not at liberty to talk about, but you could say I’m the… advance man on a very important business deal, and I wanted to check out some things before we go through with it.”

  “The LMGK buyout,” I realized.

  He looked surprised. “You know about that?”

  I blushed. I wasn’t supposed to know, but…

  “Everybody’s been whispering about it the last few weeks. And I’ve seen a few things.”

  “Such as?”

  “…such as things I’m not at liberty to talk about.”

  He laughed. “Touché.”

  “But what I haven’t seen is you before.”

  Which was true. In all the hush-hush meetings between Everton and LMGK fat cats, I had never once spied Connor. I definitely would have remembered.

  He gestured to himself. “Now you have. In the flesh.”

  I looked at the tan chest in the unbuttoned V of his shirt and sighed inwardly.

  I wish I could see a lot more of Mr. Connor Brooks’ flesh…

  We got to my desk, and I rummaged around for the keys to Klaus’s office.

  “Hey – ”

  I turned around. I was kind of bent over as I looked for the keys, my rear in the air, and I was half-expecting another comment about my ass.

  I had mixed feelings about whether I wanted to hear it or not.

  But Connor was instead peering intently at the monitor, which I hadn’t shut off when I went downstairs.

  “ – are those the numbers for Teramore?”

  Oh CRAP.

  “Those are confidential,” I said, my chest tightening with fear.

  He gave me a sideways look as he bent over and starting scrolling through the report. “Remember, both Klaus and your CEO said you should give me anything I want – oh, wait, is that an inappropriate remark?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I’ll file it under acceptable innuendos,” I said coolly.

  He laughed. “Acceptable innuendoes… that’s good…” he trailed off as he paged throug
h the document.

  Then his expression grew dour, and he shook his head as he kept staring at the screen. “Bullshit.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked, shocked.

  He looked at me as though trying to make a decision. “Can I trust you with something, Lily?”

  “Uh… I guess…?”

  “Yes or no. I don’t want this getting back to Klaus,” he said, very seriously.

  Ohhhh man…

  I was too curious to say ‘no,’ though.

  And Klaus was too big of a jackass for me to pretend I had some kind of loyalty to him.

  “Yes.”

  Connor ran his hand through his hair. “LMGK already did their own appraisal of Teramore. I told – uh, we convinced Teramore to let you guys make a pass at it, too, to see your numbers and compare how Everton would evaluate the situation.”

  “Wait – you mean, this is a test for Everton Consulting?” I asked as I pointed at the monitor.

  He nodded.

  “It’s not an actual job – it’s just a test?”

  “Well, Klaus thinks it’s a job, and Teramore will actually pay the bill as though it were an actual job. But yeah, it’s a test.”

  “One we didn’t know we were taking.”

  “We didn’t want you to go to more ‘trouble than usual.’ Like how the food critic doesn’t want the restaurant to know when he’s visiting or who he really is.”

  “But why – ”

  And then all the pieces fell into place.

  LMGK was considering purchasing Everton.

  And this report was part of their due diligence.

  “Oh,” I gasped.

  Connor saw that I’d figured it out. “Yup.”

  Wow. Just… wow.

  Klaus didn’t know he was being evaluated. And that evaluation could potentially influence the entire buyout.

  I winced. “I guess we didn’t do so well.”

  “No, you didn’t. Your appraisal of the market is waaay off.” He glanced over at me hastily. “Not you, of course – Klaus’s.”

  “Well, he always does that,” I said in an off-handed way.

  Connor frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve proofed all his reports over the last six months. I have to double-check everything, and, well… he tends to tell the client what they want to hear. Not necessarily reality.”