Authors: Nadia Lee
“Charlie…”
Elbows on knees, head held in his hands, he looked at her from under his eyebrows. “You have to help me, Nat. Please.”
Natalie’s insides turned cold. “If you’re asking me to give you confidential information from DDE, the answer is
no
.”
“Just this once. We have to win this defense contract. I know Damon’s bidding too. And you know the details of the bid, don’t you?”
“Obviously, Emily did send you here. Get out.”
“Come on. How long have we been friends?”
Natalie began to tremble. “
Friends
? I don’t know. A friend wouldn’t ask me to give up my self-respect and compromise my ethics.” She pointed at the door. “Get out.
Now
!”
Charlie stood up suddenly and came toward her. Natalie started to get to her feet as well, but he crossed the distance between them, grabbed her arms, and began shaking her. “Goddamn it, Nat!”
She pushed against him, trying to get away, and instead tipped her chair over. It fell with a loud crash. “Charlie! Let me go!”
“No! I need to know the—”
“Take your hands off her, Rodale.”
Oh my God. Alex.
His eyes were blazing, his hands clenched so tightly his knuckles were white. The custom-tailored suit he was wearing seemed a size too small, and his normally erect posture had deteriorated into a feral crouch.
Charlie turned his head. “And if I don’t?”
Alex gave him a very tough grin. “I’ll break your face with your leg.”
Charlie shoved her behind him, making her stumble and fall onto the couch. “Oh
good.”
They launched themselves at each other. “Stop it!” she yelled, but she might as well have been a mosquito for all the attention they paid her. Fists connected with flesh, skin broke, blood oozed. Her first impression of Alex had been right. The veneer of civilization was exactly that: a façade. He was savage in his violence, and she flinched as he landed blow after blow on Charlie’s body.
Charlie kneed Alex’s thigh, and she suddenly remembered that Charlie had studied Muay Thai for over ten years. Alex landed a retaliatory elbow on Charlie’s jaw.
Out of options, she tried to get between them. “I said
stop
!”
Something hit her in the temple, and she pitched forward. A large hand caught her before she fell to the floor. Stars flashed before her eyes; she felt like a truck had run into her.
“Good God, Nat! Why did you get in the way?” Charlie said, his voice hoarse.
Alex’s body shook. “You moth—!”
She moaned and tightened her grip on the hand, which she now realized was Alex’s. “Just stop,” she whispered.
“Are you okay?” Alex said.
“I…think so.”
That was a lie. She felt nauseous, shaken. Why hadn’t she let these two testosterone-laden idiots bash each other to a pulp?
“Charlie…leave,” she said. “Please.”
He hesitated but walked out when she gestured weakly at the door. She sagged against Alex.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Alex said harshly. “You almost got yourself killed.”
She tried to laugh, but she ended up sounding like a moaning hyena instead. “I don’t think a punch is going to kill me. Anyway, at least my furniture’s safe now.” Her upper lip was swollen, and she touched it lightly. Then she looked at Alex, inspecting his damage. “You’re bleeding.”
“Yeah, but Rodale’s going to have a hell of a shiner tomorrow.” Alex looked pleased with himself.
She rolled her eyes and tried to stand straight, but her legs wouldn’t support her. Alex carried her to the couch and laid her there.
“If he touches you again, I’ll kill him, and no one’s going to stop me. Not even you.”
“Yes, Og,” she muttered. “What are you doing back so early? I thought you weren’t coming until dinner.”
“I thought we’d spend some time together before going out. What was he doing here?”
Natalie didn’t want to talk about her conversations with Emily or Charlie with anyone, most especially Alex. In his current mood, he would probably go after Charlie if she told him everything. She didn’t want to think about the consequences.
“He was in the neighborhood.”
“Obviously. My question is why.”
“It’s not important.”
“Isn’t it?” He shook his head, his eyes hard. “I don’t want you seeing the Rodales anymore.”
“What?” Natalie jackknifed into a sitting position, then immediately put a hand to her temple and moaned. “Of all the foolish, arrogant…” Her lips tightened. “In case you don’t know, Emily’s my godmother, and Charlie’s a good friend of mine.”
“Funny way of showing his friendship.”
“That was a mistake.”
Her stubborn defense of Charlie Rodale was irritating enough, but Alex went cold as Ethan’s words came back to him:
If I’m wrong, I’ll resign.
Damn it. He couldn’t dwell on what Ethan said. Ethan had to be wrong.
“Mistake or not, I don’t want you seeing them anymore.”
“Alex. We may have slept together, but that doesn’t give you property rights. You don’t get to tell me who I can or can’t see.”
Why was she making it more difficult than it had to be? If she stopped seeing the Rodales, Ethan would back off, and everything would be fine.
“Just do it,” he said, his voice sharper than he intended. “Besides, it’s a conflict of interest for you to see them. Rodale International is DDE’s rival.”
Her jaw dropped. “Don’t be ridiculous. I had friends in other investment banks when I worked for Goldreich.”
He hated this. He couldn’t tell her the real reason and felt like a fraud. “Okay. Then just do it for me. Please.”
“Alex,” she said softly. “No. You either trust me or you don’t, but you don’t own me.”
Wasn’t that the truth. He didn’t own her. And seeing her with Rodale…and how she’d defended him even though the bastard had manhandled her…
Alex’s hands tightened. He should’ve ripped Rodale into pieces.
Was Ethan right? Was he repeating the same mistake his father had made decades ago?
Alex wouldn’t be able to stand it if Natalie turned out to be like Emily. God, he couldn’t bear to look at her right now, not when he was wondering if Charlie and Natalie were more than the friends she claimed they were and whether she was working for Emily.
He had to leave before he did something stupid, like telling her how crazy he was about her and that he would forgive her for anything as long as she confided in him. His weakness and obsession with her was making him sick to his stomach. It made him feel stupid to think he might be making exactly the same mistake as his father. And he didn’t like feeling stupid. Not at all.
He released her and stepped back a pace.
“Put some ice on your…injury. It’s probably going to bruise and swell up. I’ll see you on Monday.”
He left.
NATALIE WALKED TO the small conference room listed on Ethan’s meeting invitation. The bright morning sun streamed through the frosted glass and lit the hallway. Despite his parting remark, Natalie hadn’t seen Alex since the fight, and it had been almost a week. She didn’t know what to make of his mood. Was he avoiding her? She understood he’d been upset about her getting hit, but Charlie hadn’t done it on purpose. To demand that she not see the Rodales over something so relatively trivial was unreasonable. Surely, Alex would have realized that by now.
His attempt to dictate who she could see brought back unwelcome memories of Marcus, who’d always tried to control her social life to make sure she was surrounded by people he approved of. He was ambitious, with political aspirations of his own, and that had been the reason for everything he’d done. She could understand the impulse, even if it seemed somewhat silly. But what was Alex’s reason? That line about a conflict of interest between DDE and Rodale International didn’t ring true. And Natalie was starting to get the feeling that Alex had known about her connection to the Rodales before they’d met in person.
Well, whatever the reason, she wasn’t going to repeat the same mistake where men were concerned. What had her spineless compliance with Marcus’s demands gotten her? Not a single real friend, just casual acquaintances from the right families.
Charlie had been the only one in her original social circle to pass Marcus’s litmus test: the right pedigree. Charles Montgomery Rodale the Third. And hadn’t he always been a good friend to her? Maybe that was why she was so disappointed by his request on Saturday.
Sighing, she brushed her hair back from her face as she walked. As she did so, her thumb skimmed over her right temple, which still hurt a little.
She got to the conference room and paused when she saw Alex in it. Ethan hadn’t said anything about Alex coming to the meeting.
He made her breath catch in her throat, sitting there like a god who owned the world, but his unreadable expression almost made her falter. “Good morning,” she said, flashing an uncertain smile.
“Good morning.” His voice was pleasant, but his face was barren. “Please have a seat.”
Natalie swallowed and took a chair across from him. She noticed with surprise that her hands were trembling and placed them on her lap. “So how are—”
Ethan’s entrance interrupted her, and their meeting began. She could barely concentrate. This was one of the few rooms that had real walls instead of frosted glass, and she began to feel suffocated as the minutes ticked by. There was some kind of odd tension—and understanding?—between the two men, and she felt left out. It didn’t help that Alex was abrupt and Ethan bored. Maybe they had argued. Or maybe Alex was taking his frustration with her out on everyone.
Finally the meeting ended, and Ethan walked out, leaving Natalie alone with Alex. When Alex rose from his seat, Natalie said, “Wait!”
“Yes?”
“We need to talk.”
He remained standing. “Do we?”
“I know you’re upset about what happened on Saturday, but Charlie didn’t mean to hurt me, and I’m fine.”
That wasn’t one hundred percent true. It still required a little makeup to hide the bruise, but Alex didn’t need to know that.
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“So…are we all right?”
He raised an eyebrow. “
All right
?”
She nodded. There was something awful in his eyes, but she couldn’t tell what it was. She wanted him to look at her with warmth and heat, the way he had before. Natalie wished she could erase Saturday from his memory.
The silence stretched. Two heartbeats turned to three…then four…
“Is that all you had to say?” Alex’s voice held no inflection.
She bit her lower lip. What more did he want? A promise never to see the Rodales again?
He glanced at his watch. “I’m sorry, but I have another meeting. Excuse me.”
* * *
So…are we all right?
No,
Alex thought savagely. He wasn’t all right. Not since Saturday. Not since Ethan had reported her meeting with Emily.
He’d told himself he wasn’t like his father, that he was too smart, too careful, to be conned by a beautiful woman. But when Natalie walked in, his mind just…stopped somehow, and all that existed was an image of how good she looked, a feeling of how much he wanted her, and a wish that she wasn’t who she was.
He paused in the hallway and gazed sightlessly through the hazy glass panes. Why couldn’t he purge her from his mind?
His father had told him something once, on his way down. It had been as much an apology for the failure that ruined him as passing advice from one generation to the next.
The truly important decisions are made somewhere beyond logic and reason.
Alex, whose favorite game was chess, hadn’t believed it when he was younger. But now… Thinking things through didn’t seem to help. It was as if there was a huge elastic band around his chest, and the other end was attached to Natalie. The farther he got from her, the greater the pressure, and the more difficult it was to breathe.
The more it hurt.
The truly important decisions…
His legs carried him back to the conference room of their own volition. Natalie was just gathering her documents. Her eyes widened when she saw him, but he didn’t give a damn as he kicked the door shut. A primal instinct to mark her as his overwhelmed him, stripping away all restraint. He grabbed her and covered her mouth with his before she could protest. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted her unconditional surrender.
Total acceptance.
She tensed, her lips refusing to part and let him in. That only made him more determined. She finally yielded, shuddering as his hands caressed every inch of her body, bringing out the sensuality buried deep inside her core. He tunneled into her chignon with his fingers until her hair came loose and swept around her head. He pushed her skirt up and almost lost control when he saw the racy garter belt holding her thigh-highs. He ripped her panties off and went down on her, drinking in the heady scent of her desire.
He couldn’t get enough of her. Her every moan, the slightest twitch of her muscles as she inched closer to climax, whipped his desire to the brink of madness. When she came against his mouth, he didn’t stop. He wanted her to remember this. Remember she was his.
When he could no longer wait, he entered her slick depths. Her breath hissed, and her back arched. She held on to him as if she couldn’t bear to let him go. If she screamed, the entire would office would hear her. And he didn’t care.
He pounded into her, drove her to another climax and exulted in the expression of tortured ecstasy on her face. As he emptied into her, the only thing his brain could register was how much he still wanted her.
As they lay recovering on the beige carpet, it suddenly hit him.
You love her.
He inhaled sharply. Where had that come from?
No matter how much he wanted to deny that he loved her, he couldn’t. Not when her seminude body still lay next to him, her eyes glazed with the aftermath of passion. A woman who planned to betray him simply could not have responded to him like that. He didn’t care what Ethan said or had seen. Natalie couldn’t be the traitor.
Alex gathered her in his arms. She felt weightless, as light as balsa wood. She burrowed into his chest.