He was watching her, and now he looked worried.
Good.
Turning her back to him, she cleaned herself up with angry swipes. He should understand that she wasn’t one of those women he could pin against an office door without consequences.
She knew she was furious with herself, not with him, but it was impossible to keep the anger fully contained. It was just too big.
She gave him a paper towel.
“Haven.”
“We shouldn’t have done that.”
“Let’s talk about it.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“It was—”
“It was a mistake.”
Even though part of her wanted to know what he’d been going to say. It was what? It was—
It was sordid, unacceptable. And a terrible, unprofessional mistake that she might regret the rest of her life. She was a rising star in image consultation, in the biggest city in the United States. She had celebrity clients and great word of mouth. But she’d skirted close to fiasco with the Celine incident, and the circles she moved in were extremely unforgiving. She competed for work against a small group of high-powered women, including the notorious image consultant clique referred to as the Power Girls, who were ruthless and would dismantle her if she gave them the slightest opportunity. They had friends in the highest of high places and they’d happily smear Haven’s own image all over local and national media. The muddle would be just as big as the one she and Mark had just made with their out-of-control lust.
Haven Hoyt. Sex—or what passed for it—with a client. In her office. With her admin in earshot. Who’d want her to rehab an image after that?
No one.
She tossed the paper towel, the evidence of their madness, into the trash and dug in her desk, praying for a Wet-Nap. She needed time to think.
Damage control. She was the queen of damage control, right? The queen of image.
There was nothing to fear here. She’d rescued far more sensitive situations from far grubbier human foibles.
She could do this. She could put it back together again.
But not if she looked at Mark. If she let herself see the tenderness on his face full-on, she’d never be able to clean this up.
“First,” she said. “This never happened.”
“Haven—”
“This. Never. Happened. You have to promise me.”
If he couldn’t promise, she’d move to the next level. Bribery.
Blackmail came after that, but she’d never had to go there before and she didn’t want to start. Her fingers were crossed that he’d be reasonable and she could keep things aboveboard. She prided herself on her ethics, one of the things that differentiated her from some of her sharky competitors. She could clean up a mess without crossing those lines.
“Who would I tell?”
“Pete Sovereign. Jimmy Jeffers. Some buddy you like to brag to. You can’t tell anyone.”