Authors: Manda Collins
“
That,” he said when he'd recovered his breath, “was
amazing.”
Julie pulled up her pants then slid down the
cubicle wall. She'd never even imagined doing something like that
in the office. Much less in the freaking printer cubicle!
Shit, she'd just had sex at work. With the
visiting corporate counsel! What the hell had she been
thinking?
“Easy there, tiger,” Matt said, hitching up
his own pants then sitting down next to her, looking sexier than
ever in his half buttoned shirt. “Nothing to be upset about.”
Julie grabbed her turtleneck and pulled it
back on, feeling the need for some sort of armor against his golden
good looks.
“That's easy for you to say,” she snapped,
pulling her hair out of the tight collar. “You get to go back to
D.C. in two weeks. I have to keep working here. Oh god, if they
ever find out about this can you imagine what they're going to say?
Shit.”
“They're not going to say anything because
it's none of their damn business.”
“You don't understand what it's like,” she
said around the bobby pins in her mouth. “It's one thing for Clay
to screw around with the secretary from Phillips and Mann, but it
doesn't work that way for the staff here. You don't poach in your
own territory.”
She thrust a pin into the loose chignon,
taking a perverse pleasure in its scrape against her scalp, as if
she deserved to be punished.
“You're allowed to have sex, Julie,” Matt
said, trying not to be insulted at being put into the same class as
Clay Parchman. “And what just happened between us has nothing to do
with Clay and his little secretary. We are single. Single people
are allowed to have sex. With each other. We aren't breaking any
rules and I would think the fact that I'm leaving in two weeks
should be a plus and not a minus.”
This gave Julie pause.
“What do you mean by that?”
His blue eyes flashed with annoyance. “Come
on, Julie. I've asked around about you.”
At her startled look, he shrugged.
“I was curious. And what I learned is that
you haven't dated anyone steadily for three years. But that when
you do, it's only for a few weeks and then you cut them loose.”
Before she could protest he silenced her with
a staying hand.
“Which leads me to believe that either a.)
You're a bad lay, which I have just found out to my satisfaction is
not the case, or b.) you're a terrific lay but you're wary of
commitment.”
She folded her arms against her chest, the
defensive stance telling him that he'd gotten it right.
“So,” he went on, “if commitment is your
problem, then I'm your man.”
At his pause, she nodded. “I'm
listening.”
“Since I'll be leaving in two weeks,” he
said, “why not let me be your list buddy?”
“List buddy?”
Stepping closer, he reached down and took her
hands, caressing her palms with his thumbs.
“From your list there, it looks like you’re
going to need a helper for some of those tasks.” When she lifted
her head and met his gaze, he had to stifle a groan. If she kept
looking at him like that they’d finish the whole damn list tonight.
And that wasn’t part of his plan.
“Maybe I’ve got another helper in mind,” she
said huskily.
The surge of possessiveness that coursed
through him took Matt by surprise.
Mine,
his body said.
Not wanting to spook her, however, he merely
shook his head. “No you don’t. If you had someone else in mind you
would never have let me put my mouth on you. In you.”
His coarse words brought a blush to her
cheeks but she didn’t disagree.
“Since you’ve got this list of things you
want to do before your birthday in two weeks, and since I’ll be
leaving town in two weeks, it seems a shame to waste what is
clearly a serious chemical attraction between us.”
Matt paused, holding his breath until he
heard her agree to his plan.
“Come on,” he cajoled. “You won’t get a
better specimen to practice your blow job skills on this side of
the Mississippi.”
She laughed. He’d never been so relieved to
hear a sound in his life.
“All right,” she groused. “I can’t stay up
all night listening to you whine.”
When he pulled her close for a smacking kiss
he was pleased to feel her kiss him back. Definitely some serious
chemical attraction.
“But I need to go,” she said when he released
her. “I’ve got to be back here at 7:30 in the morning to schedule
the Peterson deposition.”
The reminder of the case brought him
immediately back down to earth.
“Come with me to get my stuff and I’ll walk
you to your car,” Matt said.
“I come and go from here all hours of the
night,” she protested.
“Just humor me, Jules,” he said, pulling her
by the hand toward the conference room where he’d left his
briefcase.
Ten minutes later, she was waving at him as
she backed out of her reserved space in the garage and heading
toward her apartment in Southside.
As she watched him turn and head back into
the garage to get his own car, she shook her head in disbelief.
She’d just had sex with Matt fucking
Ellis.
Who was going to help her with her Before
Thirty list.
This morning she would have died before she let Matt Ellis see her
Before Thirty List.
Now he’d seen her naked.
Funny what a difference a few hours could
make.
***
Julie had been hard at work for three hours
before she had a chance to take a break. When she stepped into the
tiny office kitchen, she almost turned right back around and left
when she saw Matt and David Walton were already there. But to her
relief, and mingled disappointment, Matt's nod gave no indication
that he'd had that same mouth that now sipped coffee between her
legs the night before.
Pouring herself a cup of coffee and taking it
back to her office, Julie wasn't sure whether to be pleased at his
discretion or annoyed at his indifference. Which was silly, she
told herself. They had agreed that he would keep quiet about the
two of them, hadn't they? The last thing she needed was for Clay or
Daniel to get wind of an affair between them. Her office reputation
would be shot. It was one thing for the lawyers themselves to screw
around with one another or the staff. They had the status to
weather the storm. For someone like Julie, whose ability to get
along with the rest of the office hinged on her earning their
respect, it was different.
She was sipping her coffee as she checked her
email, when Alicia Holby, Fred Lutz’s secretary, knocked on her
open door.
“Hey Julie,” she said, her perfect bob
bouncing as she carried in a file box and set it carefully on
Julie's paper strewn desk. “Matt asked me to bring you these. He
said they're the discovery documents for the Ryan case.”
That was odd. The Ryan case hadn't even gone
into the discovery phase yet. But a sixth sense made her keep that
fact to herself.
“Are you doing something different with your
hair?” Alicia asked, pausing in the doorway.
“No,” Julie replied, her hand automatically
reaching up to smooth her tightly wound chignon. “Same old me.”
“Well, you're looking great,” Alicia said
with a smile. “Whatever it is, I need to get me some of that.”
Since “that” was Matt, Julie highly doubted
that Alicia's husband Earl would approve.
Out of an abundance of caution, she waited
until Alicia was long gone before she took the box and lifted the
lid. It was filled with file folders. A quick look revealed they
were just duplicates of documents from another case. Anyone who
looked in it would assume someone had just mislabeled the box.
Except, of course, for the sealed envelope
placed on top with her name and “Highly Confidential” scrawled in
red ink across the front.
That idiot! she fumed even as her heart began
to beat faster. What if someone had found this?
But, the odds of that were slim since no one
would be looking for the Ryan case, and it was marked with her
name. The people in the office were nosy, but opening a sealed
personal envelope was a definite no-no.
Grateful that her end of the hallway was calm
this morning since the Bookkeeper was out today, she slid a finger
under the envelope flap and drew out a typewritten note.
Meet me at Apt. #27, the Bankhead Building,
at noon. Bring sunscreen.
Chapter Four
When Julie knocked on the door of number
twenty seven in the Bankhead Building, she was surprised to have
the door opened by a stylishly dressed older lady.
“You must be, Julie,” she said. “I'm Vivian
Ellis, Matthew's grandmother.”
Bemused, Julie followed her into the elegant
apartment. Whatever Julie had been expecting, it certainly hadn't
been a lunch date with his grandmother.
As if reading her mind, Mrs. Ellis laughed.
“Don't you worry, I'm off to the country club for an afternoon of
bridge. Matthew is putting the finishing touches on your lunch. Why
don't you have a seat out on the patio and he'll be out in just a
minute.”
Only then did Julie notice that Mrs. Ellis
did indeed have her handbag over her shoulder.
“You two have fun,” she smiled, her dimples
reminiscent of her grandson's. “Don't get into any trouble!”
Left standing in the foyer, Julie shook her
head. But, deciding to go with the flow, she unburdened herself of
her purse, placing it on the bench of the stout cherry wood hall
tree, and followed the corridor to the French doors leading out
into a New Orleans style courtyard.
It was certainly not what she had expected to
see in downtown Birmingham, but it was lovely all the same. The
split brick patio was enclosed on three sides with tall ivy covered
stone walls. And every four feet or so, tall posts held pots of
abundantly flowering petunias. In the four corners of the walled
outdoor room, stood green leaved ficus trees, giving the area a
splash of green amidst the brick and mortar of the big city. For
all that it was outside, the area had an intimacy that made Julie
want to come out here with a book and a glass of iced tea and
settle down for an afternoon of relaxation.
“So, what do you think?”
Matt's big hands on her shoulders startled
her, and Julie bit back a yelp.
“Sorry,” he said, turning her in his arms and
giving her a light kiss. “Didn't mean to scare you.”
Still processing the fact that she was alone
with Matt Ellis, Julie stifled a giggle.
“Lunch is almost ready,” he said, his ease
with her calming her rattled nerves. “Why don't you have a seat and
pour yourself a glass of wine.”
Before she could protest that drinking on a
work day was a bad idea, he was gone.
Sighing, she stepped out into the courtyard
toward the table. Pulling out a chair, she took the uncorked bottle
of chilled white wine and poured herself a small glass. A little
bit wouldn't hurt. Besides, being around Matt made her nervous. He
was clearly planning to check off the “outdoors” item on her list,
and if last night's encounter in the printer cubicle was any
indication, she was going to need a bit of liquid courage.
Picnic basked in hand, Matt paused in the
open French doors to survey Julie seated primly at the patio
table.
He had surprised himself with the number of
ideas he'd come up with for helping Julie with her list—even before
he made it home last night. It wasn't so much that he thought
himself to be a boring lover. On the contrary, he was pretty
inventive and had the witness testimony to prove it. But there was
something about the idea of bringing buttoned up, brilliant Julie
Streeter to the dark side that brought out the showman in him. He
not only wanted to show her every trick he'd ever learned, he
wanted to teach her a few of her own.
Of course, today's outing owed as much to his
grandmother's decision to recreate a little piece of her native New
Orleans in her Birmingham apartment as with anything else. But as
long as she stayed at the country club for a couple of hours he was
okay with that. Though it wouldn't be the first time he'd brought a
girl home to Grandmother's house, it would be the first time he'd
brought a girl home to fuck her brains out. And he was okay with
that too.
There was something different about Julie.
Something he couldn't quite put his finger on, that set her apart
from his past lovers. Maybe it was the fact that she could hold her
own in a debate over arcane legal precedents. He hadn't been
particularly choosy about the intellect of his past bed partners.
Or perhaps it has something to do with the way she dressed. He'd
always been a little bit of a sucker for a low cut blouse, but with
the way that Julie filled out her turtlenecks, he was definitely
coming to appreciate the wonders of a tight sweater. Today's button
down number was pretty sweet too, though.
Whatever had drawn him to her, Matt was
determined that he and only he would be the one who showed Julie
Streeter just what was possible between two consenting adults. Just
the thought of her with another man made him see red. And he didn't
like to imagine what she would have done if he hadn't been the one
to find her list last night. He'd been at their firm for a little
over a week and he had seen the looks the male attorneys gave her
when she wasn't paying attention. Even the married ones. He had no
doubt that if the wrong guy had found her list he would have wasted
no time getting her to the nearest horizontal surface. And yeah,
maybe it was hypocritical of him to feel that way, but he'd had a
hard on for the woman for almost ten years. And if he didn't miss
his guess, she'd felt the same about him.