by Angel Payne
She’d slap you and knee you in the balls, you dumb fuck.
The words were truth. Claire Montgomery, while equally stirred by the physical attraction between us, had clear boundaries for those feelings, proved by all her adorable and awkward efforts to scramble out of my path this afternoon. Hell, the woman had radiated so much tension when I’d sat next to her during the presentation I wouldn’t have been shocked if she’d glowed when the lights went down. She clearly took great pride in being a member of Asher’s team, so letting my lips wander in her direction would be like asking her to cuckold the company. I had no right to proselytize on the subject, either. I was the guy who commissioned artwork for my office instead of my home.
“You had that answer good and ready, didn’t you?” I finally asked. “You have a lot of practice at it?”
She took another sip of the wine. It was damn good stuff, a fact I was grateful for as she sneaked her tongue over her lips to catch every drop. “What? You hoping the Barolo’s loosened me up more?”
“Has it?”
She sighed. “I’m an open book, Mr. Stone. My life consists of work and my dad. And maybe a few favorite pairs of shoes.”
She lifted one of her legs and grinned at the navy platform pump at the end of it. All I saw was a high-fashion death trap for her, but her smile was worth swallowing my opinion. My fortitude doubled in light of the question I wanted to ask next. I waited for her to take another sip before taking the risk.
“I haven’t heard you mention your mother.”
She let her leg descend—along with her grin. “She’s gone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Her voice deepened to a rasp. “Long time ago. I was six. Brain aneurysm. It was sudden, and she didn’t suffer.”
“Shit.” My guttural reaction was the real deal. “That’s still rough.” I meant every syllable of that, as well. “Did your dad remarry?”
Her lips lifted again, but the expression seemed forced. “No. He hasn’t even dated until the last year and a half.”
“So he has somebody now.”
“Yes. I guess you could say that.”
“All right.” I drew it out with a little humor. “I could say that…how?”
Tension claimed more of her posture. Her eyebrows drew together. “What the hell? It’s not like I’m sharing state secrets.” She could’ve convinced me otherwise with the next sip she took, belonging more in the gulp category. “In a couple of months, Andrea Asher will be my new stepmother.”
“Damn.”
“Nothing like a little weirdness to go along with the fourteen-hour work days, right?”
“It’s quite a twist.”
“Sorry for the bombshell. Pretend I didn’t tell you, okay?”
A strange anxiety overcame her face. I bore my gaze into her, yearning for my reassurance to seep through. “The Enigma of the Magnificent Mile, remember? Poker face is an art form when I want it to be.”
“Thanks.” Though she didn’t lose the tension, it took on sardonic edges.
“So how did it happen?”
“Fast,” she supplied. “Dad came to pick me up for lunch one day, and by the next week, he was redesigning Andrea’s new backyard. Two months after that, they sprang the news on me.”
“Goal-driven man.”
“Yep.” She popped the final p with more of her impish sarcasm.
“Unless he knocked her up?” I ventured.
“Oh, God!” She grimaced. “You didn’t just go there.”
“Guess I did. But now I observe where your intensity comes from.”
“Yes, you do.” She pulled in a long breath. “His family, including my grandfather and grandmother, were caught in the paramilitary shit storm in Ireland during the eighties, so he took advantage of a cousin’s sponsorship to escape and come here. He worked his ass off from the second he arrived. After a few years, he was able to start a small business of his own. He specialized in creating new gardens for people that were stunning but tolerant of our dry conditions in Southern California.”
I smirked. “Unique choice for a guy from Ireland.”
“Right?” A mix of humor and pride shone in her eyes. “But my dad’s one of the best at drought-resistant beauty. Before long, a lot of celebrities started using him. The au pair for one of those stars was my mom. They met one day, declared their love two weeks later, and were married three months after that.” She glanced back up and shrugged. “Crazy, huh?”
I shook my head and risked brushing my knuckles on the edge of her shoulder. “It sounds kind of…nice.”
I could’ve sworn she trembled, though she covered for it with a delicate snort. “You going sentimental on me, Chicago?”
I let the jibe pass in favor of risking my touch at the outer curve of her shoulder. “Bet they didn’t wait long to work on creating you.”
“They waited three years,” she insisted. “They wanted to get established, hopefully buy a home. They were finally able to, though it wasn’t much, just a bedroom, a den, and a kitchen on the rough side of town, in an LA suburb.” She smiled around the rim of her glass as she sipped more. I was tempted to join her, but watching her lips play over that lucky stemware had me forgetting to do anything except stare at her. Study her. Be more deeply enraptured by her. “Those were some of the best days of my life,” she said wistfully.
“You were very young,” I argued gently.
“Agreed. But to this day, I can remember those summer days on our tiny front lawn, running through the sprinklers with a homemade ice pop in my hand as Mom looked on. She always had a sketch pad around and enjoyed helping Dad with conceptual drawing of the gardens he was designing.” Another soft laugh spilled from her. “She would always add a little image of me in the pictures too. She told me I was Dad’s ‘wee garden good luck fairy,’ and sometimes she wouldn’t tell me where she’d drawn me in. It became a grand game for me to peer at the drawing, trying to find myself.” Her head bent, and she sniffed. Though she emitted such a quiet sound, her tears were heavy on the air. I turned my hand over in order to squeeze her shoulder. “I’m sorry.” She swiped at her face. “What a morose mess. It must be the wine.”
“Then have some more.”
“No. Really, I—” She huffed as I tipped the bottle over her glass once more. “You don’t like the word no, do you?”
“Astute woman.” To make her feel better, I poured some more into my own glass. “So. Summers in the sun. Ice pops and sprinklers. Magical garden fairies. Sounds pretty good.” Better than good. For a brief, vicarious moment, I was able to experience a childhood I’d never really had. “What about your siblings? Did they enjoy the front lawn as well?”
Her answer startled me. “No brothers or sisters. Wasn’t for lack of trying—or so Dad tells me, much to my horror.” She chuckled again, turning to settle an elbow on a throw pillow. “I imagine it’s a blast to grow up with siblings, though. There was a time when you, Trey, and Lance liked each other, right?”
“Of course.” I forced myself to return her stare, to avoid giving up the lie. The feat was sheer hell, and I had no idea why. By now, the deception had become part of me, like a whore using tender talk on a client she barely knew. A job requirement.
“So what happened?” she pressed. “How did the three of you sail on such separate tides?”
There was another lie prepared for that too. I couldn’t bring myself to use it. Maybe borrowing the truth for an ambiguity would feel better. “We grew up,” I hedged. “It happens fast when one is answering to the Stone empire.”
I took another drag on my wine, disguising the torture of holding back the bitterness from those last three words—another anomaly to this conversation. Normally I evoked the Stone name with reverence. Tonight, it felt like a lead chain around my neck.
“Okay,” she replied softly. “So what about your parents? You’re close to your father, right? And tell me about your mother.”
I kept my stare fixed on th
e burgundy depths inside my glass. “That’s an easy one.” Liar. “I…owe her a great deal.” In truth, the boundaries of words couldn’t contain my gratitude to Willa Stone.
“What do you mean?”
I pulled in a deep breath. Answering that wasn’t a luxury I could afford. Not now, not ever. “The subject of this conversation is you, Miss Montgomery, not me.” As soon as I asserted it, she crossed her legs. Though she remained angled toward me, the new pose was a clear intention to shut me out. Nevertheless, I charged. “Tell me what happened to bring you here. Between the ice pops…and these.”
I pulled on one of her shoes, bringing her foot with it. With my thumb against the top and my other fingers around her ankle, the gesture was meant more as demonstration, not flirtation.
It was a nice attempt at logic.
It was also a complete failure.
Once more, her skin trembled beneath my touch. But this time, she wasn’t only nervous. The fast intake of her breath, the hitch of the pulse at the base of her throat, the heated parting of her lips, all told me otherwise. My breath seized. My cock, hot but obedient until now, pounded in rebellion.
Goddamn, I wanted her.
“Sacrifice.”
The word tumbled from her on half a whisper. I shook my head a little to banish its aroused fog. “What?”
With a wince, she tugged her leg from my hold. “You want to know what happened to get me here, Mr. Stone? A lot of sacrifice. It was my dad doing without so many things so I could go to college. It was him not taking a single day off during my freshman year. He also sold our family home and lived in an apartment so we’d make my tuition payments. You’re amazed at my focus skills? Well, I learned them from an amazing man. Colin Montgomery.”
I didn’t reply to that. The renewed set of her shoulders conveyed how much she didn’t want one. She gave me further confirmation by putting down her glass and scooping up her purse.
I nodded. It would accomplish nothing to tell her that having a glass of wine with me didn’t constitute an insult to her father. After the way we’d just damn near shorted out the electricity in the room with one touch, I understood her anxiety.
I also had to respect it.
“Thank you for the honor of your time tonight, Miss Montgomery.”
Hell. How had my attempt to keep it professional ended up sounding like a line of innuendo?
“The honor was mine, Mr. Stone.”
She didn’t help matters, damn it. Every syllable she spoke, soft and polite, sprouted vines of heat through my blood, winding their way right around my cock. Of course.
“I’ll have the town car brought up to take you back to the hotel.”
“It’s all right. I can call a cab.”
“It’s not all right.” I beelined toward the en suite phone on the kitchenette counter. “It’s late. Freaks are still lingering in front of the building—”
“And I’m a grown woman, capable of taking care of myself.”
“Where? In San Diego, where the worst thing to fear is a sunburn?”
She shot up too. Her nostrils flared a little. Her lips bunched a lot. Just my luck, she was sexy as hell even when pissed. “That’s pretty naïve.”
I snorted. “I assure you, baby girl, I am not naïve.”
Stunned silence weighted the air—hers because of the endearment I’d flung, mine from wondering if I’d ever known a day of naïve in my life. Our gazes wrestled as proxy for our wills. Our bodies tightened as sacrifices for our desires. I allowed a trio of harsh breaths to break free, hoping they’d assuage the craving to stalk over there, yank her into my arms, and kiss her into submission. And yes, the kiss would only be the start. Of so much more…
Fortunately, she was an observant woman. Her eyes widened, reading the heat beneath my stare. Between shaky breaths, she declared, “I—I’d better go.”
I nodded again. Firmly. “In the town car.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
I expected her escalated wrath. In a warped way, I looked forward to it. This woman, in the throes of rage…damn, it was exciting. I knew what that made me. First-class asshole coming through, kids. She’d been through a flight from California, a meeting ending in my pissing contest with Trey, Wooten’s press conference, and retrieving her phone charger on all fours. Yet selfishly, I still reveled in how gorgeous she was, marching back toward me with a stabbing finger. How alive she was. When was the last time I’d felt anything close to alive?
“Okay, look. During business hours, you can play dictator as much as you want with me. I even went along with your game tonight, trying to be nice.” She stopped in place and straightened her shoulders. “I’m not going to be nice anymore.”
“And I wasn’t playing.” Fascination gave way to irritation. I imitated her defiant stance. “I’m still not. Your safety isn’t a goddamn game, Claire.”
She jerked up her chin. “I’m calling a cab.”
That did it. Chafing against my arrogance? Alluring as hell. But shoving aside her wellbeing to make a point? Unacceptable.
I approached her with firm but slow steps. Luckily she didn’t know me well enough yet to decipher my intent—or the level of my ire. When I was a foot away from her, I stopped. Slid my hands into my pockets. Touching her wasn’t going to happen this time. Spearing her with the force of my glare was another matter. From the sizable gulp vibrating down her throat, I was certain she’d gotten the point.
“Go ahead. Call your cab,” I murmured, serene as a Tibetan monk. “Only, when you hop in, tell the driver to take you all the way to the airport.”
Her mouth formed an O.
“You’d throw me off the project for this?”
“I don’t tolerate stupidity in the name of pride, Miss Montgomery. My patience for that game has been tapped dry by my brother.”
She snorted again. “Maybe all the rumors about you are true, Mr. Stone.”
Touché. She’d landed a good stab beneath my armor. But like hell would I let her see that. “There are many rumors spread about me. Can you be more specific?”
She gave a false smile. “My pleasure. All the ones involving the words overbearing bastard.”
I rocked back on my heels. “Hmm. Sounds about right.”
She blinked as if that surprised her. Before she stepped completely away from me, I could have sworn another look crumpled her features behind it. A grimace of sadness?
“I’ll go get my things from the conference room. Tell your driver I’ll be down in ten minutes. Good night, Mr. Stone.”
“Goodbye, Miss Montgomery.”
My gut had nagged me to use the more permanent words. Giving her closure on this—whatever this had been—would assure her I had no intentions of inviting her down the hall for wine sampling every night. Restoring boundaries was my expression of respect.
Though I doubt the woman presently agreed with me.
Want to punch me that bad, San Diego? Get in line behind the two dozen people who were there before you.
In this case, I’d gladly pay the penalty of her fury. At least she’d be safe to wield it.
So why did those parting words still taste like shit in my mouth?
Chapter Four
Claire
My phone alarm went off at five thirty a.m. I shut it off in a morose haze, wondering if there was any chance at all that yesterday had been a dream. If so, I wouldn’t be a speck sorry.
My head throbbed. Strangely, so did my heart. I’d never had any trouble disengaging from a project before, especially just one day in. Margaux’s ultimatum on Killian should’ve made this one a no-brainer, though Andrea discouraged serious client mingling as a large unwritten rule. The woman set a daunting example for us all too. She could eat, drink, joke, flirt and do coy with a source for hours, all the while sharpening a knife for their evisceration. Dad even knew this. He thought it was “savvy and sexy.” When he’d confessed it to me, I’d been left wondering if the woman’s blowjobs were that
good.
“Ew,” I whispered.
The thoughts waiting for me on the other side of the exclamation weren’t much better. How had this happened? I’d only spent seven hours at Stone Global yesterday—time that included the train wreck of last night.
Damn it.
What the hell had I been thinking? And doing? Letting him haul me down from the conference table. Clinging to him like a newborn colt. The gut spill in his private sitting room. And the clincher, the brat act I’d given him about a stupid issue like my ride home, sparked by feeling so out of control around him.
Because I was out of control around him.
If the day were a fish, I’d throw it back.
Remarkably, a smile bloomed on my face. Dad had the expression hand-painted on a little plaque in the potting shed in his backyard. I always looked at it and groaned, calling him a maudlin Irishman. Yesterday had sure proved me wrong, hadn’t it?
I sat up, switched on the light, and peered around the room as a distraction for my aching chest. Already, I was way off my game. Normally I would have all my suitcases unpacked, my toiletries lined up on the vanity, and relaxation candles out—in short, moved in and ready to start my day as if I were in my little house back home, on the hill overlooking Old Town. Instead, I got up and had to paw through my luggage, searching for the least-wrinkled blouse and skirt I could find.
In the shower, yesterday’s events came barreling back again. Humming Maroon 5 didn’t help, either. Nothing had moved like Jagger from the second Stone paralyzed me with my ass in the air on that table before dragging me into his private hidey hole, the perfect setting for spewing my life story after three sips of wine…
I groaned.
Was I that much of a lightweight?