Tempting the CEO(9)

This guy was quite an education.

He slid up my body and then inside me and, being the lifelong learner I am, I grasped his firm behind as he began a series of slow, deep thrusts.

I sat up in the total blackness. Shit. It was too dark to find my clothes. From memory, I felt my way over to the drawn drapes and opened them a crack, an inch or two of city light allowing me to gather up my things from the floor and creep out of the bedroom without tripping over something, closing the door behind me. I slipped my camisole on and zipped up my skirt, not bothering with the rest of it, underwear and bra in one hand.

Okay, so this was the part I hated about hooking up. The reason I hadn’t bothered for quite some time.

The morning after.

I hated that feeling of sneaking out or having the guy sneak out. The awkward acknowledgment that it was what it was. Luckily, Fred was the one who was conked out by the time I forced myself to go back to my room. The hallway was empty and my key card operational, thank God.

After taking a quick shower, I slept a few hours myself until it was time to get to my morning meeting. I only hoped he wouldn’t knock on my door or we wouldn’t run into each other in the hallway.

And I totally denied my disappointment when he didn’t and we didn’t.

The receptionist at the law firm where I planned to spend another day slugging it out gave me a smile and gestured that I should go right down to the conference room while she patiently assured whoever she was talking to on the phone that she could not give out the direct-dial office number of whatever bigwig she was trying to protect.

Taking a deep breath before I went in, I heard the indelicate tones of the lead lawyer on the other side right through the solid wood door. The guy was such a loudmouth. As if by saying it louder, he could make it true.

“I’m telling you this girl is a real bitch,” he shouted.

No need to guess who he was talking about here.

“She nitpicks everything. Wastes time. She knows nothing about the rules of the game.”

A low voice I couldn’t quite decipher responded to him and the lawyer, Bob, gave one of those hearty guffaws I had learned to detest in one short—well, long—negotiating session. “You’re telling me! I have half a mind to call her client and tell him to shove his fucking little company up his ass and take his smart-ass little lawyer with him.”

Bob was not above mixed metaphors.

Whoever he was talking to calmed Bob down a little. “I know. I know. It’s still at a great multiple, but this contract should’ve been signed in one hour and she’s dragging it out like it’s the deal of the century.”

And getting my client almost double what Bob’s client offered in the first round. Now I had to get the accompanying terms right. Just because Bob’s client was the high and mighty Worth Industries and my client was a lowly tech company from Michigan that Jed Worth wanted to swallow, I was supposed to lie down and play dead? I don’t think so.

I didn’t bother to knock and opened the door briskly, catching Bob in mid-blowhard sentence. “Oh,” he greeted me. “Here she is. Angelina O’Hare, meet Jed Worth.”

His client stood up and held out a hand to shake mine and we both gasped. Meet him? Christ, I’d been in bed with him all night.





Chapter Three

It was Gorgeous Guy, in yet another well-tailored suit, gray pinstripes this time, all red-power-tie and everything. He looked perfectly well rested, even though he’d been rocking my world all night, and I sported near-bruises beneath my eyes to show how I’d spent the time in his bed.

Bob, with his apparent insensitivity to the emotions of others, completely failed to notice the immediate current of recognition between us, sitting down at the head of the negotiating table as his usual flurry of associates and underlings came in to assume their positions.

Jed—I knew he couldn’t be a Fred—recovered first. “Angelina, is it? Pleased to meet you.” He grinned and pulled a chair out for me and I sat, opening my briefcase and calmly gathering my drafts as he took the seat next to me.

“Jed, you’re over here, next to me,” Bob said, indicating a chair, and his client gave him a look that reminded him he was the client without having to say it. “Or you could stay right there. That’s fine.” Blowhard Bob backed down.

Jed Worth. I scrambled to remember what my secretary had printed out for my background files about the CEO of Worth Industries. All I could recall, though, was that he was a little younger than thirty-five, a lot richer than any guy had a right to be, and a hell of a lot smarter than me or Bob or anybody else in this room for sure. He had taken a dwindling fortune inherited from his grandfather and turned it into a modern conglomerate, computers mostly, but what they liked to call adaptable these days. Jed Worth was one smart cookie.