Taking Care of Business
Megan Hart & Lauren Dane
Black Lace Series
Virgin Books
1
'I expect you to be gone by the time I get home. You have until Friday.' Leah Griffin paused in the doorway to look back at the man she'd been sharing her life and bed with for the past year and a half. 'Don't forget anything, Mike. Because I won't be letting you back in to get it.'
Mike gave her a confident sneer. 'You'll be begging for me to come back.'
Leah's suitcase hung comfortably heavy from her hand. She hadn't packed her whole life inside, just enough to get her through the next four days, but the simple act of taking what she absolutely needed to live and leaving the rest behind had made all of this ugliness seem much easier to deal with. Somehow knowing she had her favourite nightshirt, her hairbrush, her scented soap, the bits and pieces of her life Mike could never take from her the way he'd tried to take everything else, made walking out the door so much more bearable.
'I don't think so,' she said mildly.
Mike's gaze flickered for a moment. He'd grown cocky and complacent. The fact she'd told him to pack his shit and get the fuck out only twenty minutes ago obviously hadn't sunk in yet. And, she had to admit, it wasn't as though she'd never tried to break up with him before. She knew this time was different, but Mike couldn't be blamed for not knowing. Except she did blame him, for everything, even the parts she knew belonged to her.
'C'mon, honey,' he purred, moving towards her with his hands reaching. 'Don't be that way.'
'I'll be at the conference until Thursday,' she said, not moving towards him but refusing to shrink away either. 'But if your number comes up on my cell I won't be answering it, and I won't be returning your calls either. I meant what I said, Mike. Get your stuff out of here and be gone by the time I get home. You have four days. That should be plenty of time.'
Still reaching, his hand stopped in mid-grasp. He blinked. The mouth she'd once thought so sultry turned sullen. 'Where the hell am I supposed to go?'
'I'm sure you can find a couch to crash on. But, to tell you the truth, I really don't care.' Her fingers slipped a little on the suitcase handle. Despite her calm exterior she was sweating. She was, in spite of herself, a little afraid of him. Of herself. Of giving in to his confident charm.
His hands dropped to his sides and the corners of his mouth turned down even more. He looked around the kitchen he'd never cleaned or cooked in, then back to her. 'You don't want to do this, Leah. I'm telling you, you don't.'
'Oh, yes. I'm sure I do.' She flashed him a smile.
He recoiled as though she'd bared her teeth at him. Who knew, maybe she had. Leah gripped the suitcase harder, watching him warily. Mike put his hands on his hips. His eyebrows lowered to match his frown.
'Nobody will ever love you the way I do,' he warned.
'Oh, God!' Leah cried, her composure cracking. 'I hope not! I hope nobody ever loves me the way you do ever again!'
Her suitcase banged the door frame as she turned. The impact jarred her arm and her elbow hit too. Bright sparks of electric shock reverberated all the way to her shoulder and she bit her lip against the small cry struggling to escape. She wasn't going to give Mike the pleasure of thinking she was crying about leaving him.
He didn't come after her. He didn't even follow her to the door to watch her go. Leah couldn't decide if that made her feel better or worse, but, as she put her suitcase in the trunk of her late-model Volvo and then slid into the driver's seat, she decided she didn't care. He would be gone by the time she came home. She could only hope she wouldn't also be missing anything important.
Belongings could be replaced. Her life could not. She backed out of the driveway and looked carefully left and right before pulling out into traffic, and then she drove away without looking back.
She went to the office first, where she put out a few fires and handled a few disasters, all without breaking a sweat. It gave her something to do, that was all, and Leah appreciated the distraction of a hundred daily tasks to keep her from dwelling too long on what had happened at home.
By midday she had no excuse for hanging around. The Harrisburg Hilton was only a few minutes away from the office. She wished it were an hour. A day. A month's journey. Instead, she found herself pulling into the parking garage before she'd even had time to cycle through a full playlist on her iPod. She didn't get out of the car right away. She sat with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes closed. Listening.
To silence.
Thinking, for the first time in a long, long time, of nothing.
Usually, no matter what else she was doing, she was also thinking of Mike. What to cook him for dinner, what drycleaner to use for his shirts, whether or not she ought to have picked up the black lace bra and panty set or the white one. Her world had revolved around pleasing him. At work she'd been the Empress of Employment, the High Priestess of Human Resources. At home, she'd been a housewife and a sometime-slave.
Her eyes flew open. So much for not thinking about it. The word had never shamed her, but now it felt so . . . wrong. Like it didn't fit and, worse, never had. That the past eighteen months of her life had been a lie.
Hell. Longer than that. If she really wanted to turn on the brights and get out the tweezers to pluck out the splinters left behind by the disintegration of her disastrous relationships, she had to admit that Mike had only been the last in a series of mistakes.
Hopefully, she thought as she grabbed her bag and got out of the car, he would stay the last.
She'd made her room reservation just that morning, when Mike was in the shower. Of course, this meant her room wasn't yet ready, though the clerk behind the elegantly polished front desk did offer to take her suitcase while she waited in the Market Street Café. Leah let her take it. She wasn't going back to the office today, and none of the meetings started until tomorrow. She wanted to go straight to her room and have either a hot shower or a good cry. Maybe both at the same time. First though, she had to talk to the conference-services manager about the week's preparations. Leah had emailed the woman for several months and spoken to her once or twice, but now, when she asked to speak to her, the clerk gave her a surprised blink.
'Oh, I'm sorry. Heather is on maternity leave.'
Leah took a long slow breath before she answered. 'I just spoke with her last week. She didn't mention anything about leaving. In fact, I specifically asked her if I'd be working with her on this project.'
The clerk, a tall thin woman with a head of tight braids, gave Leah an apologetic smile. 'Sorry.'
The clerk didn't sound or look sorry, but Leah held her temper. 'Did she leave a replacement?'
'Hmm?' The clerk furrowed her brow and pursed her lips as though Leah had asked her the meaning of life. 'Oh, yeah.
Her assistant will be taking over all her duties.'
'Great. Can I talk to her assistant, then?' Leah managed not to grind her teeth. She even managed a slight smile. Not a big one, just enough to make it look like she wasn't ready to say a dirty word. Or three.
'Oh, sure. He's around here.' The clerk looked around as though expecting him to jump out from behind one of the potted palms. 'I can page him for you.'
'That would be great.' Never let it be said that Leah Griffin didn't know diplomacy.
The clerk picked up the phone and spoke into it, but whoever was on the other end didn't seem to have any satisfactory information for her, because she frowned. 'Uh-huh. Yeah. OK. Sure. OK. Well, when will he be back?'
That didn't sound good. Leah wished desperately for a cup of coffee, a can of cola . . . a good, stiff drink. Hell. A chocolate cheesecake would have done nicely, too. She gave the clerk an expectant look whe
n the other woman hung up the phone.
'He'll be back soon,' the clerk said with a small shrug. 'I left a message on his voicemail and paged him.'
'And my room's still not ready?' Leah peered across the desk, though the computer monitor showing the room listings was indecipherable to her.
The clerk hit a few buttons on the keyboard. 'No, I'm sorry. You could wait in the bar. I'll tell Brandon where you are.'
At least she could get a drink. 'All right. Thanks.'
The bar was quiet this early in the afternoon, though she spotted a few men in business attire seated at one of the booths along the back. Nobody she knew though. Anyone from her office would still be at the Allied Packaging corporate centre. Only those from out of town would have arrived already, and she didn't know any of them.
Her phone buzzed in her purse as she took a seat at the bar, and she pulled it out. 'Griffin.'
'Leah, it's Dix. Just checking that you got the latest updates from corporate.' Charles Dixon, the in-house counsel for Allied Packaging, didn't waste any time.
The head honchos. 'Yes. I got them this morning. Jeanette's making the copies for the packets now and will bring them over with her tomorrow.'
'I've got some other addendums,' he said. 'Want me to drop them off on your desk?'
'I'll be at the hotel, actually. Give them to Jeanette, would you?' Leah's assistant was blonde, young and had an immense crush on Dix. Leah was pretty sure he knew it but, if he had any inclination of going against the company policy of dating coworkers, he'd never shown it in front of her.
'Going above and beyond, huh?'
It took her a bare second to realise he thought she meant she was going to be there early. Dix didn't know she was staying at the Hilton. He wouldn't be. There was no reason for him to, because Dix had a nice house only fifteen minutes away. Well, so did she.
'I'll be at the hotel. I thought it would be best,' she put in smoothly, giving away nothing. 'You know. To keep an eye out in case of issues with anything.'
'Right, right. Well, I'll drop off this stuff with Jeanette then and see you first thing.'
'I'll be picking up Katherine at the station tonight,' she added before he hung up. 'So if you wanted to come early tomorrow morning to meet her . . .?'
'Yeah,' Dix cut in. 'Yeah. Maybe I'll do that.'
With that business finished, Leah disconnected. Her phone rang again almost at once. The small view screen showed a simple black-and-white photo of a rose. Mike's icon. She watched as the words 'missed call' appeared on the screen and the phone stopped ringing. A moment after that it buzzed in her hand like a wasp to alert her she had a voicemail.
'I told you,' she murmured, 'I wasn't going to answer.'
She deleted the call without even listening to it.
2
Charles Dixon looked out the window of his office at the trees lining the walk just outside and picked up his phone. He'd promised himself he'd let her come to him this time but here he was, hitting the button with her name on it. When she answered, the sound of her voice shot through him sexually and emotionally as always. Fuck, he was such a sucker for this woman.
'Hiya, Kate, you all ready to finally meet me all official-like and everything?'
He heard street noise, pictured her trying not to smile. 'Good morning, Dix. As you know it's the highlight of my year. Now, what do you want?'
'Just calling to make sure everything was ready at your end. And you didn't yell at me for calling you Kate. Are you feeling well?' He loved that, loved knowing he was the only one other than her friend Leah who got away with calling her Kate during business hours . . . and afterwards.
'It's a losing battle. I give up because you're incorrigible anyway.'
'Where are you? Is that street sound? Kate, darling, are you speaking on a cell phone while walking in public?' He laughed. 'I'm a terrible influence on you. I like that.'
'I told you I'd be in Philly today to do a CLE on non-competes before I head to Harrisburg later tonight. I'm walking from my hotel to the office.'
She'd ducked why she picked up the phone but he knew the reason. Because it was him. And that was enough for now.
'Thrilling.' He quirked up a smile, knowing she was smiling too.
'It is, Mr Dixon. Quite actually. Which is why Allied Packaging pays me and Hargrave and Aaron quite handsomely for my services. And to answer your first question, I've sent ahead all the paperwork I'll need. Leah said she'd take care of getting it to the conference hotel. My assistant won't be coming with me so I'll be solo. Other than that, it's fine.'
Her voice was professional but warm. He'd heard her talk to enough people to know the difference in her tone.
'Good. I've got to talk to Leah again later today anyway to keep her updated. I'll double-check with her on all the paperwork. Have you told her about us?' He lowered his voice. His door was closed but he knew Kate would appreciate his discretion.
'Not yet. I wanted to tell her in person. We can talk later, I'm getting ready to walk into the building now. I'll see you tomorrow, right?'
He wished it was tonight. He'd wanted her in his bed instead of secret meetings in hotels, but she'd balked.
'First thing tomorrow. I'll see you then.'
She broke the connection and he sat back, unable to get her off his mind. From the first time he heard her say hello until that very moment she'd been like a song in the back of his brain and he couldn't shake it. Didn't want to.
Katherine loved the way his voice sounded. The tease layered in innuendo. If any other man had spoken to her the way Charles Dixon did during her business day, she'd have cut him off at the knees. He was that one little bit of dark chocolate she allowed herself in a sea of eating fibre and doing the right thing.
To what extent she gorged on the absolutely sinful man, no one but the two of them knew.
She'd decided to walk from her hotel to Hargrave and Aaron. Normally she would have ignored the call, preferring not to carry on phone conversations on a public sidewalk but she'd seen it was him on her caller ID and picked up. She flipped the phone shut and tucked it into her bag as she approached the glass revolving doors to the building housing the Philadelphia offices of her firm.
The artificially cool air soothed over her skin as she pulled Katherine tight, pushing Kate far away. Here in the midst of $3,000 office chairs and floor-to-ceiling glass and chrome, there was no room for mistakes.
The shiny reflective walls of the elevator showed a confident, cool woman. Feminine, but not too much. Her heels weren't matronly, nor were they sexy. Understated and expensive, chosen with the same deliberate care she put into everything else to do with her career. The suit, a summer weight, was smoky grey. The deep-wine blouse added just enough colour. Not flashy, but it complemented her skin tone and hair. Hair carefully tucked into a sleek chignon at the base of her skull completed the look she wanted to achieve.
Choices. It all came down to choices, and Katherine Edwards made the right ones. The right choices were what it took to get ahead in the savvy and male-dominated world of corporate law. It didn't mean she was a ball-busting bitch, but she'd made her share of attorneys on the other side of the aisle cry, she was sure. A smile touched her lips at that.
Katherine wasn't cold, nor did she hate sex and men. She wasn't a cliché. What she was, was smart and ruthless when she had to be. She knew the difference between how men and women were allowed to act at work. She wasn't one to fret over it, it was what it was so she sucked it up and dealt with it.
She'd nearly lost it all as a result of her wilder days when she was in college. Lost a job, nearly had her future derailed in the aftermath, so she knew the importance of staying on the straight and narrow during business hours.
She saved jello shots and gossip for after six and well away from the office. She kept a firm wall between Katherine, the woman with her eye on the prize of the corner office and her articles in legal journals, and Kate, the woman who wore jeans, ate Doritos and watched rea
lity television while on IM with her best friend Leah.
A flicker of unease shot through her at thoughts of Leah and that stupid fuck she lived with, but she'd have to deal with that later. She'd also have to confess about Dix. Leah would love that one.
The elevator doors opened up to a large reception area and the two women behind the ridiculously large credenza looked up in unison and smiled brightly. Holding her briefcase in her left hand, she approached with a smile of her own and introduced herself.
'Hi there, I'm Katherine Edwards and this is my first day. I'm doing a CLE and I'm supposed to meet someone from HR to get all my paperwork turned in.'
Another surprise she hadn't told anyone about. She wasn't sure how to process any of it. Something big was going to happen one way or another. A sense of expectancy had been building over the last two weeks. Excitement warred with worry deep within her.