All Messed Up: Windy City Kink, Book 2 (14 page)

“Wow,” she managed to croak. “That was pretty fierce.”

The violence of their need for each other was almost scary. Her heart knocked against her ribs and Joe’s weight on top of her made her breathing shallow. He dropped his head for a few moments, breathing hard.

“Yeah,” he finally agreed. “Fierce. Holy shit.”

She couldn’t help but smile.

“Sorry, the floor’s probably hard.” He moved off her and she let air fill her lungs.

“I’m okay.”

He went onto his knees and helped her sit up, then stood and pulled her to her feet. He helped her get her clothes off then said, “Into the bed. Christ.”

She staggered on wobbly legs to the bed and pulled the covers down. Slipping between the cool sheets, she sighed with pleasure as she watched Joe strip off his shirt and toss it on the chair. He stood there naked, beautiful, his penis thick and semi-hard, resting on his heavy testicles and surrounded by dark curly hair. Her gaze wandered down his legs, thighs thick with muscle and hard calves, then back up over tight abs and heavy shoulders. Her chest warmed.

And then he was in the bed with her, his body heat enveloping her along with the sheets and duvet. He took a moment to adjust the pillows, then pulled her into him, his rough leg going over hers, his foot nudging her knee up. She pressed her fact to his chest and sank into the toasty embrace.

“Okay,” he murmured. “Now you tell me. What are you trying to forget?”

Chapter Fourteen

Mallory was so relaxed and tingly, snuggled in against Joe, when she thought about work she felt only a faint tightening of her stomach. Maybe she should tell him. Just to get it out. She still hadn’t told her parents, and she was worried about how they were going to take it. But Joe…Joe wasn’t all tangled up with what had happened in the past, all those disappointments and regrets.

“Okay,” she said, exhaling softly. “I have a problem at work. A really big problem.”

“Yeah.”

“When I transferred to Chicago, one of the portfolios I assumed includes a drug we produce for treating depression. It’s a wonderful drug. Felisse.”

“I’ve heard of it.”

She nodded and her fingers slid over the smooth skin of one shoulder. “Yeah. It’s gotten very popular.”

“Is that one that you’re responsible for marketing?”

“Yes.”

“So that’s good, right? You did a good job.”

“I did a great job,” she said. “And we helped a lot of people. But there are side effects to the drug as well. Of course, we always make sure a drug is completely safe and it has to be approved by the FDA before we can even begin to market it. But some of the side effects are actually…desirable.”

“Such as?”

“Well, aside from possible insomnia, anxiety, headaches, dry mouth, nausea and dizziness, some patients report weight loss and increased sexual desire.”

“Ah.” He huffed out a breath. “Is that why it’s so popular?”

“You got it. Like I said, it is a very effective drug for treating depression. But…” She paused, a little surprised at how hard it was to talk about this. “I discovered a while back that our sales team has been marketing the drug for those desirable side effects. They’ve been promoting the off-label uses.”

After a brief pause, Joe said, “So they’re marketing it as a drug that will help people lose weight and have more sex.”

“In a nutshell—yeah.”

“But it’s already FDA approved, so it’s safe, right? Is it bad to use it for those things?”

“It can be.” Her muscles were starting to tense up again, but Joe’s hand smoothing up and down her back helped a little. She swallowed. “Recently, a girl who’d been taking Felisse died. She was anorexic and somehow she convinced a doctor to prescribe Felisse for her for depression. She had a seizure and died.”

“Jesus.”

“I know.” She took in a deep breath and let it out, trying to release some of the tension that crept over her again. “The autopsy didn’t implicate the drug, but I don’t have a good feeling about it.”

“God.”

“So. I talked to my sales team about it. They’d been doing this for a while, under the direction of my predecessor. I was shocked. Of course, I assumed that my superiors didn’t know anything about that. I assumed that if they knew, they would want to put a stop to it right away.”

Joe stroked her back again soothingly. “Not the case?”

“No.” Her voice fragmented on the word and she paused for a few seconds to relax her throat. “I went to Steve—my boss, a man I admire and respect—and told him about it. He thanked me and said he’d look into it. Silly me, I felt good that I’d brought the problem to his attention and that it would be fixed. Then months went by and I never heard another word about it. I talked to him again. He told me that direction for this came from above him, and they were all fine with it. They supported it. He told me I needed to be a team player on this.” Her voice took on an edge of bitterness. “I talked to my sales team about it again, thinking that they would see things my way. That we shouldn’t be marketing it for off-label use. But they didn’t. If they didn’t get different orders from people above me, they were going to keep doing what they’d been told to do. Because it’s making us tons of money.”

Joe made a noise like a low growl in his throat.

“I had to think about what to do. The next thing I knew, my superiors took my sales staff and a bunch of doctors to the Bahamas for a weekend at a luxury resort. Without me.”

“I’m guessing the reason you’re upset isn’t because you missed out on a trip to the Bahamas.”

“You’re guessing right. I think they were bribing those doctors with a luxury trip to prescribe Felisse. And they didn’t include me because I wasn’t on board with it. Then I had my performance review with Steve and he criticized me for not being a ‘team player’. I am a team player.” She had to pause again. “Nobody ever said that about me before. I always put the team first. I’d never in my life had anything negative come up on a performance evaluation. I suspected this was retaliation for being opposed to the whole marketing plan for the drug, but of course I can’t prove it.”

“Oh man.”

“I talked to a few other people at work about it, trying to be very vague, and the general feeling was that if you don’t go along with what they want, they’ll punish you. Poor performance reviews. Demotions. Or life made so miserable at work you can’t stand it. Eventually you’re out of a job. And when I say you, I mean me.” She paused. “Have you heard of Dr. Jude?”

“The TV guy? Yeah.”

“On one of his shows, he talked about Felisse and told everyone it would make them lose weight and want more sex. We’ve never claimed that. What our marketing really says is that Felisse is less likely to cause weight gain or sexual side effects than
SSRIs
.”

“SSRIs?”

“Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. They work by blocking a receptor in the brain that absorbs the chemical serotonin, which influences mood. There are a lot of different ones used to treat depression. Some of them can cause weight gain and loss of libido.”

“But not Felisse.”

“No, it might have the opposite side effects.”

“You could make millions off a drug like that.”

She pressed her lips together. “Yes, you could. Billions, actually. And yes, Zafir is trying to. Dr. Jude has a huge following, and the whole thing went viral, the fact that this little yellow pill can make you horny and skinny. Nobody ever stepped up to correct that. And the sales reps are using that to sell the drug to doctors. I think they’re bribing and paying doctors to prescribe it to their patients for those reasons. But that’s not what it’s intended for and that’s not what it’s approved for.”

“And people might be dying because of it.”

“Yes.” Her insides contracted painfully. She rolled back a little so she could see Joe’s face. “I’m really struggling, Joe. I love my job. I love Zafir. I’ve worked there for a long time, worked my way up. I feel loyal to them, and now I feel guilty about being so angry about this. I feel disloyal, but I can’t believe they’re doing this. I feel…really, really confused.”

“I can see that, sweetheart.” His hand stroked her hair, coming under her chin to cup her jaw, and his thumb rubbed over her lip.

“I have so much respect for Steve,” she whispered. “Or I used to. But how can I do what he’s telling me to, when deep inside I feel it’s wrong?”

“That sucks.”

She nodded. “And whatever I do could be bad. If I go along with what they want me to do, then I’m as bad as they are. If someone dies, it’s because of me. If there were ever criminal charges, I’d be implicated. The thought of that makes me want to puke.” She paused again. “But if I don’t go along with what they want, I can probably kiss my job goodbye. Probably my entire career.”

“Jesus.”

“Well, some companies make life really difficult for people who blow the whistle. And if you get blackballed in the entire business world, you can forget ever getting a job anywhere again.”

“This is serious shit. I think you should talk to a lawyer.”

“I did. Sort of. A friend of mine from dance class is a lawyer and I ran it past her very theoretically. She talked about some kind of qui tam suit and the False Claims Act. I don’t want to sue the company. I don’t want money. I just want them to stop marketing Felisse for off-label purposes that could be harmful to people.”

“Quit. Quit your job.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Get out before you get involved even more.”

“You have no idea how much I want to do that.” She blew out a breath. “I would love nothing more than to just leave. Find another job and pretend I don’t know anything about it. Just disappear. But I keep thinking about that girl who died. How can I live with myself, knowing that’s going on?”

She gazed at him and watched his forehead crease then his eyebrows draw together above his nose. “Fuck, Mallory.”

“I know. Exactly.” She closed her eyes briefly then leaned forward and kissed his mouth. “I don’t expect you to solve my problem, Joe. I came home to talk to my parents about it, but I don’t expect them to solve it either. I know I have to make a decision about what to do, and I have to make it soon. Nobody else can make it for me. But God, I don’t want…” She closed her eyes, thinking about her parents’ possible reaction. “My parents are so proud of my career and how I’ve…how my life has turned out. I don’t want to let them down.”

He squinted at her. “Well, I get that, but hell, Mallory, I’m sure they want what’s best for you. If they love you, they’ll support whatever you do.”

She wanted to believe that. She really did.

“I probably shouldn’t have told you this. Please promise you’ll never tell anyone else. As part of Zafir management, I should not be talking about confidential things like this. Especially negative things.”

“Of course I won’t say anything. But let’s talk about your options.”

“There are a few options. Like I said, one is that I hire a lawyer and sue them.”

“That could potentially cost you money, I’m guessing. Lawyers aren’t cheap, especially ones that would take on a high-profile case against a big corporation like that.”

“True. Also, I could try to go to the people above my boss, to the executive management. But he says they know about it and support it. So that probably wouldn’t do any good, and would only damage my reputation in the company even more.” She sighed.

“What else?”

“Well, there’s always the option of doing nothing. If I stay, maybe I can eventually make a difference. Or maybe…maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it is okay.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“No.” She bent her head. “I don’t. Unless we were to do actual trials of using the drug and getting approval for those kinds of uses, it’s wrong to promote it for those off-label uses. And if people die… God.”

“What about going to the media? Maybe anonymously.”

She looked at him. “That would be…risky.”

“Yeah. I guess. If you want to keep your job. If they found out, you’d probably be fired.”

“I’d definitely be fired.”

“I really think you should look for another job. You need to look after yourself first.”

She nodded. “I understand that. And believe me, just walking away is very appealing. That’s another option.” And another way to let her parents down.

“I know you have a problem with just letting it go though.”

“Yes.”

“There’s a chance you could blow the whistle anonymously and stay anonymous.”

She pressed her lips together. “Honestly, I think the chances of that are pretty slim. At some point I think it would have to come out.”

“What if you transferred to another department? Or whatever you call it, in the company. A different division that manufactures different drugs. Maybe antibiotics, or something safe.”

She smiled at him. “That’s cute. That is another possibility, except I’d still be ignoring the problem. And I don’t know if I want to work for a company that would do something so unethical, even if I’m not directly involved. And there’s still risk. If things went really bad, say a bunch of people died and there was an investigation, if it showed that I knew about it and did nothing, I’d be implicated too.”

His mouth hardened and his eyes went out of focus for a moment as he thought. “You’re right,” he finally said. “You’re pretty much fucked whatever you do.”

And she laughed, even though she felt like crying. “Pretty much, yeah. Now you know why I’ve been stressed.”

“Ah, sweetheart.” He sighed. “Goddamn. Now I know why you’ve been trying to forget. Hell, I hate it that you’re in such a mess.”

“You hardly know me.”

They stared at each other for a long moment. Pressure built inside her, rising up into her chest and her throat. “Really,” she whispered. “You hardly know me.”

“I think I do,” he said quietly.

A scary feeling crawled through her insides. Because she had a feeling he did know her, the real her, better than maybe anyone else in the world. The real her she’d kept buried deep inside.

He didn’t know everything about her. He didn’t know why it was so important to live her life carefully, responsibly, without scandal or attention. But he did know that wild streak that lurked inside her, the one she kept hidden from everyone else, the one she actually thought she’d eradicated until she’d met Joe in the airport.

That should have been scary. Well, it was a little scary. But since this was some kind of holiday fling and they were going to go back to Chicago to their separate lives, it wasn’t so bad. After this she’d never see him again, and so it didn’t matter if he saw things she didn’t let other people see.

Maybe she’d seen things in him that he didn’t let other people see. And maybe that was okay with him for the same reason—they’d never see each other again after this.

Or maybe it was just because he’d been drunk.

A smile tugged at her lips and Joe’s eyebrows lifted.

She shook her head slowly. “This is crazy.”

“What is?”

“This.” She waved a hand between them. “You and me.”

“Okay, yeah, it is. But that…” He rolled them so she was on her back and pinned beneath him. “…is what you like about it.”

He was right. Mostly right. “Yeah,” she agreed, winding her arms around his neck. “It is. Make me forget more.”

Joe couldn’t solve her problem for her. She was right. And he fucking hated that. He liked to solve problems. He liked to save people. Yeah, he’d learned the hard way that he couldn’t save everyone. A hostage taking gone bad that had ended in a murder-suicide had taught him that. But it was his nature to find solutions, to make bad situations work out for the best.