Slipperless Series (Book #2)(5)

But no sooner had she finished speaking than a mobile phone began to ring.

“Shit, it’s my husband,” Melissa grumbled. “I need to take this. I’ll explain later.”

Within a matter of seconds, they wrapped up their conversation and exited the restroom, leaving me alone with my thoughts, of which there literally seemed to be millions.

It was at that moment I realized I faced a much bigger issue…

What if their toxic behavior had already spread to the rest of the team? I would have no way of knowing right away. Experiments and lab work can go wrong for any number of reasons. If they were clever, it would be nearly impossible to detect.

My espionage complete, I stood and realized I had no choice about how to handle what I’d heard.



GABE

It had been a few days since Fiona assumed her new position in the lab and nearly a week since I’d been with her. I decided to summon her to my office for an update and see how she was holding up. These were early days, and I had every reason to suspect she’d need my guidance if things got to be too difficult. In fact, as she arrived, Fiona seemed tense—much more than normal, even for her.

After offering her a seat at the conference table, I probed her with a few questions to see if I could coax some answers from her. Yet all she offered to me were a series of curt one and two word responses. In fact, if I wasn’t mistaken, I sensed a bit of hostility from her. At last, my curiosity got the better of me, and as I took a seat at the table next to her, I posed a direct question on the issue.

“Something the matter, Fiona?”

Locking eyes with me, she hesitated for a moment before looking back down at her notes. “No.”

I nodded and leaned back in my chair, interlocking my hands behind my head. “Fiona, you know what I’ve said about lying to me. Don’t do it.”

As I finished, she snapped her head back in my direction. Her blue eyes glimmered with focus, even a hint of anger. “Why am I here, Gabe? In your office? Right now?”

I wrinkled my brow. “Well, I require regular briefings as part of your new position, Fiona. You’re no different from any of my other senior executives in that respect.”

“I see,” she began, as she nodded, her gaze still locked on mine. “And how many of them are you currently sleeping with?”

I smirked. Now we were getting somewhere. After a brief pause, I decided to entertain her question.

“None.”

“Okay, so then what is the purpose of this meeting? Is it business or personal?”

“It’s whatever is required to get the job done.”

After a disdainful blink and quick shake of the head, Fiona turned away from me.

“Mmm, hmm,” she muttered.

I pursed my lips as I looked at her. Something wasn’t adding up. There was no good reason for her to be acting this way. I studied her for a few moments as she sat hunched over the table, hidden behind her hair.

“Do you have something you want to say to me, Fiona? If there’s anything wrong in the lab, we need to discuss it. That takes precedence over everything else. Do you understand?”

Fiona nodded her head, but continued to avoid making eye contact with me.

“Everything is fine,” she mumbled. “There aren’t any problems to report.”

I narrowed my gaze at her.

“I see,” I replied. “So, you won’t mind if I summon say… Amanda or Melissa up here then?”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Fiona placed her palms flat on the table and turned her upper body back to face me.

“Do you trust me to do the job you’ve given me or not, Gabe? Because if you don’t, you might as well give it to someone else. If I’m not the right person, there’s plenty of work I could be doing back in the lab in my old position.”

As she finished speaking, I noticed Fiona labored for breath. Was she bluffing or just nervous? She looked away from me again. My sense was that she was keeping something from me and putting on a brave face to keep me from asking too many questions. If there was a problem with the work, I trusted her to be honest with me about it.

It wasn’t the work. No, it was something else.

Maybe it was still some lingering issues between her and Amanda and Melissa. Or maybe not. Either way, I got the sense she was afraid of something and was putting up a front in the hopes I’d back down. I’ve seen it in plenty of negotiations over the years. It’s a common distraction technique, but there was no reason to call her on it… not yet anyway.

In a way, I admired her resolve. Respected it. At last, she was showing a bit of backbone, and I had to admit, it turned me on. As I looked at her, my mind suddenly drifted back to my conquest of her. I recalled the image of her bouncing up and down on my cock. While my brain conjured the memory, my fingertips curled inward, as they would when I grasped at the crease in her hips. Reaching up to my face, I rubbed my chin as I remembered how it felt when I slid inside of her for the first time. She was so tight, it felt as if my cock might split her in two.