by Kat Cantrell
The warehouse manager, a solid Midwesterner named Bob Page, scurried along behind him as Warren barked out questions. “Have you made the changes to the inventory locator software?”
Page nodded. “Last week.”
The man wasn’t scurrying fast enough; he barely kept pace with Warren as they rounded the corner to the main section of the warehouse where the rows and rows of canned drinks sat waiting to be loaded onto eighteen-wheelers. “Thomas gave you schematics on the new layout of the pallets. Done?”
“Almost.”
“Doesn’t count. By the end of the day.” Surely there was something else he could tear apart. “How are contract negotiations going with Chuahan?”
“I...haven’t been updated,” Page admitted.
What he meant was, he hadn’t bothered to ask anyone in Legal about the incredibly important contracts Flying Squirrel had with their main equipment manufacturer. If they didn’t have pallet loaders, forklifts and other various machinery in top shape, distribution would grind to a halt. “Get updated.”
“It’s Sunday,” the beleaguered man pointed out. “Legal isn’t in the office.”
“We are. They should be, too.” Though odds were good no one else working on a Sunday was doing it for the same reason Warren was—to avoid putting undue pressure on the woman he’d married who regretted kissing him on the terrace last night.
Though she had asked him to. That’s what was sticking in his craw as he blasted through a few more areas of the distribution center. By the time he left the warehouse, there was little that had escaped his fine-tooth comb and he’d endeared himself to no one.
Fine. People weren’t his forte and he’d definitely earned his reputation for being remote with the staff. If they didn’t like it, they could find someplace else to work.
When he got home at seven, the house had an empty quality that he’d never noticed before. It was filled with staff, but they usually stayed invisible, as he preferred. But there was a distinct lack of Tilda.
What the hell was wrong with him? She’d only moved in the day before and already he found himself looking for her, wondering why she wasn’t using the solarium to read a book or lounging around the pool.
He ate dinner alone and answered emails on his phone. Same as he did most nights and had for a very long time. It was teeth-numbingly boring all at once.
Was it so bad to be thinking that companionship could be a benefit of having a wife under his roof? Sure, there was the utilitarian purpose. He’d already filed the forms required to petition for a green card for his alien family member, a phrase that still made him smile, and now they were just playing the waiting game until it was approved. Then she’d file for her green card. But, in the meantime, they both lived here, and he was insanely curious about the woman he’d married. Also, he was perhaps still a little crushed about the way she’d backed off last night.
Surely he could do better. Take it a little slower. If she’d just make an appearance.
Nada. At nine o’clock, he was back in his bedroom staring at his Louis Moinet Magistralis. After all, what good was it to have such a precise, gorgeous wristwatch if it wasn’t to mark each painful second of the day as it crawled by?
As he stormed through the bathroom door to shower, he found his wife. Tilda whirled. All the blood drained from his head as the sight of her in sheer white lace axed through his gut. Instructions spurted through his consciousness. Abort. Huge mistake. Get out. He couldn’t move.
Tilda snatched a robe from the counter and slung it over her shoulders, fumbling with the belt, and that’s when he slammed his lids closed. Didn’t help. The vision of her killer body decked out in sheer white lace had been seared into his mind.
And it wasn’t the virginal kind, either. The cups of the bra had scarcely covered her nipples, which mattered hardly at all since the lace had been mostly transparent, begging for a man’s tongue to taste her through it. Little scraps of lace V’d down between her thighs, held in place by three silken cords over each hip and, yeah, he’d had plenty of time to note it was a thong. He’d gotten only a glimpse of one bare butt cheek, but it was enough to know that she had a high, rounded rear that would fit into the hollow of his groin perfectly as he ground into her from behind.
His whole body strained to do exactly that, and he was so hard he couldn’t drag enough oxygen into his lungs.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, eyes still closed as he felt around for the vanity.
He gripped the marble with one hand, mostly to keep himself off the floor, because his knees were in very real danger of collapsing beneath him. All the blood that should be feeding his muscles was currently coiled up in his groin, poised to strike. Hell, maybe he should just let his knees hit the floor, but it was a toss-up whether he’d end up groveling for forgiveness or begging for her to slide that robe off so he could worship that lingerie set the way it deserved.
“What are you doing?” Tilda squeaked out. “You shouldn’t be in here.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” he muttered again. “The door wasn’t locked,” he protested weakly. Stupid. That’s what he should have led with. I’m sorry. By the way, what the hell kind of lingerie is that for a woman who wears boring gray suits every day?
Better question—who are you wearing it for?
“I thought I did lock it,” Tilda shot back. “You have these fancy tumblers that don’t click when they’re turned so I thought it had engaged. We’ve both learned otherwise.”
Her accent had deepened with her distress and that was not helping matters because, God, was it sexy. Coupled with the secrets he’d learned about her—hot kisser being first and foremost in his mind right after hot lingerie wearer—he was about to come apart.
“Are you...covered?” he rasped, terrified that if the answer was no, he’d cop another peek. He squeezed his eyes shut so hard that sparks exploded against the dark of his eyelids. “I’m not sure I can edge out of here blind.”
“You can open your eyes.”
He did. She’d burrowed so far down into the robe that her face was half covered by the lapels, and somehow she’d managed to get her hair mostly swept up into her trademark twist, but bits of it were falling down into her face, which was nearly as hot as when her hair was down.
Frankly, it wouldn’t matter if she cut armholes in a potato sack and wore a bird’s nest as a hat. Everything about her was a turn-on now.
“So, the problem is that I can’t unring this bell,” he muttered and, no, he should not have spoken aloud. He should have been exiting stage left and ordering diamond earrings that doubled as an apology to his wife. Instead, he was standing there staring at her like an imbecile.
“Sorry?”
Warren shook his head and was a half second from spinning on his heel to flee the torture chamber his bathroom had become when he had a flashback to last night. Tilda had been the one doing the fleeing then—after asking him to kiss her. As a result, he’d spent the day in a crappy mood, and there was too much unsaid.
His wife was a fascinating, maddening mix of temptress and puritan, and he wanted to know which one was the real Tilda Barrett.
“We’re dancing around some things, you and I. And we need to settle them.” Her eyes went wide and, again, there was the flash of distress that he’d noted last night. His pulse stuttered. “Please. I just want to have an honest conversation with you, but not like this. Get dressed and meet me in the solarium.”
Then he left.
* * *
Tilda spent a solid ten minutes after Warren vacated the bathroom getting her lungs working again. He’d been so close and she’d been so aware of how little she had on under the robe—and so very aware that he knew.
Her panic was only matched by the level of wanton heat that the whole scene had generated. If only she could just stop being such a freak long enough to have a simple physical reaction
to a gorgeous man who kissed like a dream, life would be a lot easier. And better. But it wasn’t like she could snap her fingers and change or she would have stuck around on that terrace last night instead of scrabbling away as fast as her scaredy-cat legs could carry her.
And now Warren wanted to have a little chat, did he? Because he’d figured out that she wasn’t being on the square about her demure suits, most likely. He expected her to answer for her deception. Now what was she going to do? If he was angry enough, he’d fire her for being a liar and send her back to Melbourne, wouldn’t he?
Nothing to be done about it now. The cat was out of the bag and, by God, she was wholly sick of sticking her natural personality under wraps. He’d said he wanted a candid conversation; maybe it was time to take him at his word, whether he knew what he was asking for or not.
As such, there was no way she was putting on a suit to talk about why she wore atrocious suits. Tilda slipped into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, one of two sets she owned, tried not to think too hard about what a horrifically bad idea it was to have kept on the lacy white bra and panties under her clothes, then strode to the solarium before she lost her nerve.
Too late. The second she spied Warren sitting in one of the wicker chairs, staring out over the pool through the glass walls, everything inside started quivering. He held her life in his hands and she’d thoroughly messed up, first by kissing him and second by not figuring out the locks to the bathroom better.
When a competent woman had secrets, she didn’t screw up. This was all on her and she needed to fix it.
Her bare feet squeaked on the hardwood floor and Warren’s gaze flicked to her, darkening with something she could only misinterpret if she’d arrived in the solarium blindfolded. Maybe not even then. The awareness that had permeated the bathroom had followed them to the solarium, not at all lessened by the fact that she’d traded her easily untied robe for jeans and a T-shirt.
“I didn’t know you owned any clothes that aren’t brown or gray,” he commented, his voice deep with a color that had only recently become a thing.
She liked it when he let her see that she affected him. It bolstered her confidence in a way nothing else could have in that moment. “Surprise.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around,” he said wryly. “Which is why I shouldn’t be so shocked that you actually showed up after avoiding me all day and then receiving an unwelcome guest in a place that should have been sacred.”
There was a half second when she considered lying, or at least downplaying what he’d already guessed, but in the spirit of the evening’s apparent theme, she surprised herself by nodding. “Me, too. I didn’t know what to say after leading you on, so it seemed easier to stay away from you.”
His brows lifted but he schooled his expression quickly. “You didn’t lead me on. I went too far with that kiss and you have every right to call a halt to something that was making you uncomfortable.”
That was so much the opposite of what she’d expected him to say that she blinked.
“But I asked you to kiss me.” And oh, God, had she wanted him to.
“I don’t care if you asked me to strip you naked and put my tongue between your legs. You’re allowed to say stop at any time. I will always honor that.”
Her eyelids fluttered shut as she internalized the absurdity of a notion like asking him to stop if he was between her legs pleasuring her with that wicked tongue. Uncomfortable and achy all over again, she sank into one of the seats and crossed her arms in hopes that he couldn’t, in fact, see how hard and pointy her nipples were through the sheer bra and thin T-shirt.
“Thank you for that,” she said and, yes, she meant for both the carnal image he’d put into her head and his promise. What else was she supposed to say at this point? Might as well get this crucifixion over with. “You wanted to talk.”
“How are you?” he asked out of the blue, instead diving right into a litany of her sins. His open gaze roved over her face and held nothing of the censure she’d been expecting. “I...missed you today.”
“You, um...what?” Her heart tumbled over itself in an effort to beat and swoon at the same time. Except she shouldn’t be swooning over pretty, bewildering words.
“Honest conversation,” he reminded her somewhat ruefully, which was also unexpected. “I wasn’t kidding about being straight with you.”
Yeah, apparently not. “I was under the impression the honesty you were after was mine.”
“Why would you think that?”
His brows scrunched together in confusion and it was a testament to her utter befuddlement that she was watching his nuances so carefully. This was where things would take an ugly turn, when she wasn’t paying attention. When she let her guard down. Which was why she needed to stay in control of the conversation and not let it get away from her into subjects better left out of the mix.
“Because you ordered me to appear straight away after you saw my underwear. You must feel deceived.”
“That’s...” He shook his head. Hard. “No, I didn’t order you. I said please. It was a request. I’m screwing this up.”
That’s when he did the most surprising thing of all. He knelt by her chair and took one of her hands into his, holding it against his thigh gently as his dark gaze latched onto hers, thoroughly capturing her. It should have been easy to break away if she wanted to. But she didn’t want to, all at once. The sheer beauty of so much masculinity at her feet, particularly when the most commanding man she’d ever met was encased inside, overwhelmed her.
Speechless, she stared at him as he swept her into his orbit without moving at all.
“Tilda, the honesty that needs to be happening is on my side. The marriage was one hundred percent conceived with the intent of keeping you in the country. I want you to believe that. But I was...attracted to you before that.”
He paused to let that bombshell sink in, and when it had reached optimal depth, that’s when he detonated it.
“Now that I’ve kissed you,” he continued, his voice dropping a few smoky degrees, “and seen exactly what I’m missing out on under your clothes, I’m afraid I can’t go back to thinking of you as only an employee. It’s impossible. I’m sorry.”
“You’re, um...what? Did you just apologize?”
She was the one who should be apologizing, and he hadn’t even gotten to the part where it was disingenuous of her to pretend to be a staid matronly type while hiding centerfold wantonness underneath. Bryan had made it clear how men felt about a woman who wanted to express her sexuality. At odd times, in her head, she still heard the names he’d called her.
“I did. And I’ll do it as many more times as I need to in order to get you comfortable with the idea that I can’t unsee you in that lingerie you were wearing earlier. If I’m being completely honest, which is the goal here, I don’t want to forget. You’re an amazingly beautiful woman,” he murmured, and his grip on her hand tightened. “I can’t help the fact that I want to kiss you again, but I totally understand that you don’t feel quite the same way about it. I’m telling you it’s okay. I’ll back off.”
Speechless—again—she worked her throat, somehow managing to swallow several times in a row, a minor miracle since her mouth had turned into a desert. What a patient, saintly man she’d married, speaking of deceptions. He’d sold himself as remote, a banger of a professional. A CEO who brooked no nonsense—look how quickly he’d dispatched Craig and solved her problem in one shot.
This sweetness she had no idea what to do with. Other than return a bit of the honesty that seemed to be what he was looking for.
“Warren, I—” Wow, this was not the conversation she’d prepped for, and when she wasn’t in her element, the words weren’t so forthcoming. The fact that he wasn’t pressing her about her suits was throwing her off. “Trust me when I say my hesitation is not you, it’s me.”
; “That’s what they all say,” he said with a bit of a smile that coaxed one from her, as well. “It’s fine if you’re not attracted to me in return. This is supposed to be a green-card marriage and I will keep it that way despite my earlier statements.”
“Not attra—” She choked on that so hard that she coughed, sputtering around the rest of the syllables until her throat cleared. “That’s patently ridiculous. Please, sit in your chair.”
She couldn’t think with him crouched at her feet like Romeo come to court her. Romance wasn’t a part of her world, nor could it be, no matter how much she yearned to have that between her and Warren.
It wasn’t happening. And he needed to understand why.
When he’d taken his seat, she dragged air into her lungs and watched him as she launched into the short version of how she’d met Bryan. To his credit, he listened without interrupting or asking what in the blazes any of this had to do with him.
She’d get there. “Our relationship was fantastic, at first. He showered me with gifts and compliments. I was so in love. After two months of dating, he asked me to move in with him because he couldn’t stand the thought of being apart. It was too soon, but I walked into that willingly.”
That was the part she couldn’t forgive herself for. She’d had reservations but swept them aside for the romance of a man being so caught up in her that he couldn’t live without her.
The changes had been small, at first. He’d murmured that he loved her so much that a thing like passwords shouldn’t come between them and given her his. Of course she’d reciprocated, and then at odd times her phone wasn’t where she’d left it. Once she’d gone into her laptop’s browser history to find the website where she’d seen a pair of shoes she’d liked and noted several visits to her favorite links that had occurred the day before, when she’d been out to lunch with her mother.
Bryan had been checking up on her, she explained to Warren, and when she confronted him about it, he got angry. Demanded to know what she was accusing him of and then got upset that she didn’t trust him. That was the beginning of the downward spiral that had gotten uglier, but she’d gone along because he always turned it back on her.