Breaking the spell, I spluttered, “I knew it, I’m being Punk’d!”
“Punk’d?”
“C’mon, even people like y’all have heard of that show.”
His lips curved in a challenging smile. “People like me?”
Damn, he was going to make me say it. “You know, Richy Richelieu, glass penthouses, seersucker wearin’, Jim Lehrer
News Hour
devotees…”
“You calling me boring, Miss Greer? Because I assure you, I’m not.” The cuffs at his wrists were undone by deft fingers. My willpower unraveled
.
Sleeves were rolled up his forearms, and I wanted to press my hands to the firm muscle and light dusting of dark hair
.
Taking stock of my untamed eye-fucking, he strode forward and struck out his hand once more. “Reardon Boone. I believe we’ve already met, but you seem to be under the wrong impression.”
My palms gathered in his, he pulled me to my feet. His breath rustled against my ear, his fingers stroking between mine in a firm in and out motion. “I can give you what you need, and you can give me what I want.”
A conference call with my conscience was in order, since we both concurred my hoo ha was a straight-up easy lay, already taking off her clothes and asking,
‘Where do I sign?’
He didn’t back down or back away from me.
Sweet Christ. He was serious.
“But the want-ad said–”
I was pulling the newspaper from my briefcase when he recited the advertisement point-for-point, “Seeking professional, witty assistant for long-term
position
. Full benefits
package.
Fully
binding
confidentiality agreement required.”
I heard his smirk in every emphasized word, his tempting offer holding me in place. But his smug look over quirked lips fired me up in a different way.
I dropped the
Post and Courier
and met him head on. “Actually, Mr. Boone
,
the ad requested a personal assistant to a well-to-do businessman, certainly not
a paid-for paramour.”
He grinned, and against my better judgment, I wanted to kiss the grin right off his lush lips. “Have no doubt, you would be assisting me very personally
.
”
My thighs clamped together, tamping down spiraling need; my lips parted before I slammed them shut over the whimper trying to escape.
He gloated.
I gathered my briefcase. “I came here with honest intentions, and you–”
“I want you.” The sultry slink of his tone stopped me. “There are other qualities I’m looking for. I like a woman who speaks her mind.” His eyes were searing blue coals. “I enjoy a woman with a nice figure.” He held up his hands so I imagined them cupping my bottom, caressing my breasts.
I turned my head aside, trying to erase the sensuality he summoned.
A solitary finger eased down my neck. “You have the most beautiful eyes. Won’t you look at me?”
I shook my head.
Spinning a lock of my hair between his fingertips, he murmured, “Your hair is the color of the sunrise over the river.
Mmm.
I’d love to feel it all over my body. Is it the same color everywhere?”
I wanted to slap him, grab him, have at him. Desperate for space, I plunked back to my chair. I sat on my hands, fists tight beneath my legs, trying not to touch magnificent Mr. Boone. The stormy black clouds of his hair teased me with their wayward curls over his ears. Ears I’d like to tug until his wet mouth skittered against mine, sucking and tasting.
The last shreds of the smarts my momma gave me saved me when I was one inch away from turning my lips to his. I shuttled the chair back with an almighty screech. “I ain’t that hard up.”
Liar
. I hadn’t been caressed or kissed or made love to for so long.
“Really? Why haven’t you left yet, Miss Greer?”
A few steps and I’d be clear of him. I didn’t move. “A mistress?”
“Yes.”
I examined him, quickly working through his tough businessman terms. “And the return on my investment?”
“You’ll be fully compensated financially, and in kind.” His devastating smile was completely at odds with the company words.
My throat was parched as mud flats during a drought.
Savvy as hell, he came in for the kill, holding his lips a hairsbreadth from mine. “I wouldn’t want you in it just for the money.”
Rat Bastard.
Sexy Rat Bastard Reardon Boone with money coming out of his ears. He probably ejaculated thick streams of liquid gold.
Knocking over the chair, I shot up. “But...but...I’m married!”
“I know.” He prowled to me, playing two fingers along the skin of my inner arm.
I jerked away from the brush fire of his touch. “Are you screwin’ with me?”
“Not yet.” Behind the barricade of his desk, he reclined in his chair. He weighed one hand. “There’s business.” He held his other hand aloft. “There’s pleasure.” He clapped them together. “I prefer to conduct all my affairs in an orderly manner, on paper at least.” Being with him in the bedroom would be a whole different matter.
I pursed my mouth, looked at the door, and shook my head.
“I see. Well then, Miss Greer, you’re free to go.” The fire extinguished from his downcast eyes. He pulled a thumb along the thin chain that hung around his throat and disappeared inside his shirt.
“I know that.” My anger flared, but I didn’t move.
Eyes clashing with mine, his cheeks flushed. His lips parted, but he didn’t speak, he didn’t move.
Everything was on the line: my marriage, my future. Something new.
Something borrowed, something blue? My conscience niggled to no avail.
I wanted him. Business transaction or not.
Slowly, he approached. His thumb swiped across my mouth, a mere whisper. “I want to be your lover.”
It’d been so long since I’d been touched. I sought his fingertips with my lips.
Pulling away before I made contact, he inspected me like the tycoon he was, his smile shading into something more proprietary. “Why are you seeking employment, Shay?”
I’d married at the age of nineteen. Palmer had been my first and only. Now I was thirty-three, and he treated me like an unwelcome stranger barging in on his life.
I faltered, fingering my wedding band. “So I can leave my husband.”
His grip on the edge of the desk tightened. “Why?”
“Y’all are not privy to my personal details, Mr. Boone.”
Swiping a hand over his face, he grunted something unintelligible. His next look was clean of all emotion except for toe-curling carnality. “It appears we have something in common, Miss Greer. I want a lover with no strings attached, and you need…” His heated stare detoured over every curve of my body, pausing at my lips before settling on my startled eyes. “A sugar daddy.”
Chapter 2
Aiding and Abetting
Sugar Daddy?
What I needed was some bankable greenbacks with a side of sex.
I was in full grumble mode while I gardened the next day. Huh, I guess that translated to the all-inclusive package deal Mr. Boone offered.
I yanked another handful of weeds. In my haste, I pulled out a neighboring clump of plumbago. Crooning to the seedlings, I took care with their roots, patting the soil around the stems as I re-planted them.
In my Blue Garden, I scrambled around the woodsy plot on my hands and knees overlooked by live oaks and southern pines sheltering salvia and monkshood and agapanthus. Blue jays and cardinals and Carolina wrens chirruped and chattered away, keeping me company. The squirrels were especially vociferous as they hung like trapeze artists from the birdfeeders, snatching at seeds.
Yesterday I’d been propositioned for pay by the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen.
And I wanted to curse him more than the kudzu suffocating my salvia.
He wanted me. Was it enough? It was a start. Enough to disregard my marriage vows? I was leaving Palmer anyway…
Taking several deep breaths, I placed my hands on my thighs, leaving filthy handprints in accusation of all that was wrong with me and my marriage, me and Palmer.
Sitting back, I wiped my brow, slaking off the perspiration gathered at my hairline. I shook my head and chuckled. If Reardon could see me now, he might think twice about takin’ me to his bed.
Tarnished with flakes of dirt, grass, and probably a few undaunted fire ants, I slumped.
Fourteen years ago, my momma Letha had told me, “Don’t settle, Shay.”
I was nineteen when Palmer proposed. By then, we’d been on our own without Daddy for three years. She was my role model, my confidante, yet I hadn’t told her word one about this job prospect.
Palmer Greer had been everything
to me. I’d had an innocent’s faith in love back then, when he’d become my beau.
Running round with every crowd from the potheads to the school newspaper’s squinty-eyed squad, I was friends with near about everyone. Not him, though. I’d known of him since I was a freshman and he a sophomore. I was gawky–my curves playing catch-up with my long legs–and Palmer was legendary among the high school girls. Beautiful as only a teenager could be, he wasn’t the proverbial captain of the football team, but the pitcher for the baseball team, the head honcho of the Wando Warriors. My stomach had tightened, my legs weakened, my eyelashes fluttered of their own feminine wile whenever we’d crossed paths.
Did he ever have an arm on him. His muscles rippled under his jersey, the sun hitting each hill and valley. Palmer had been a good-looking boy with long, wheat colored hair straight as a sheaf, and Lord Almighty I’d loved watching him at a game. His arm swinging, the crowd roaring from the bleachers, his wide smile aimed at me alone.
He’d been sweet on me, courting me properly. Showing up at my momma and daddy’s house, he had a posy of wild camellias for me and an introduction for Momma–telling way back when his pop-pop had been friends with my own granddaddy as they’d spent boyhood days along the creek’s edge throwing out their shrimp nets for a light haul. After meeting her approval, he was sent out back to Daddy. I heard later he was won over by Palmer’s knowledge of boats, Bud, and night-gigging.
Did he give me his class ring?
Yes.
Did he put his Varsity jacket over my shoulders?
Yeah.
Were we a steady item?
Inseparable.
Every one of my firsts was with him. His kisses to my lips, urging them open. My thighs splayed by his fingers, which curled inside me one October night just after my eighteenth birthday.
He tickled my throat with raspy moans. “Can I?” His cheeks flushed. “Can I make love to you?”
“I’m ready, Palmer,” I’d whispered, clutching his shoulders.
He was hard, rearing against me. Into me once he’d covered his length in a condom with such shaky hands he broke the first one.
The pain of his entry made me gasp. “Who else have you been with?”
“Shay.” Holding still, he’d eased me with kisses and strokes of his fingertips. “It don’t matter.”
I wouldn’t let him go further. “Who? Was it that Arden-Lee?”
His arms trembling, he moaned, “Shoulda been you.”
“It was her, wasn’t it?” Arden-Lee was his girlfriend before me, in his year, blond, willowy, gracious, and a cheerleader to boot.
Miserably, he’d nodded.
I’d decided right then he would be mine for life and no one else’s. Pulling on his hips, I cried out with his first full thrust.
My bottom in his hands, he withdrew, throwing his head back in blissful agony.
There was the suction of our lips, our hips, our kisses making the windows of his pickup steam with condensation.
Palmer was my first, my only. Palmer used to do me right.
Rat Bastard was another first, first class pain in the ass so far. He’d requested I bring a complete Curriculum Vitae
for his files when I returned to go over the contract. This he’d asked as he stood next to me outside the elevator, seeing me off.