Hands On (6 page)

She slid from him slowly. Shivers of delight followed the path of her body as she moved over him. She lay close enough to him that he could still feel her heat.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world to turn, cup her face and kiss her gently.

“That wasn’t so bad,” she finally said with a very womanly tone of satisfaction.

“Not so bad?” He mock-scowled, narrowing his eyes fiercely.

She flicked at him with a nail. “Silly. You know you’re amazing.”

Her contented sigh had him hard and ready again. What was it about her that made him sappy and tender one moment, then dying to pound into her the next?

He groaned and turned away.

The thin line of her fingernail traced fire down his side. “You okay?”

He hadn’t had a woman in far too long. “Yeah.” He wasn’t going to push himself on Ginnie. Nor was he going to hug and cuddle with her. Neither of those two courses of action would end well—for either of them.

Harry pushed aside a stab of regret. His reaction was simply a result of long abstinence after the horror of Jaye Rae.

Being alone too long had given him a big, dripping case of the saps.

Harry sat up without looking at Ginnie and reached for his clothes.

Ginnie sat up too. “Something I said? Something I did.”

“Not at all.”

He made himself keep putting on his clothes. “It’s getting late. I imagine that after the day you’ve had, you need to get some sleep.”

She’d pulled the cover up over her body. “I don’t sleep with men like this. Spontaneously. The same day I meet them. Or the same month, even.” She looked at him searchingly. “You have to believe me. I don’t know what came over me.”

“I believe you. And you don’t need to make excuses. It was wonderful. You’re wonderful.” He hesitated, then mentally shrugged. He sat back down on the bed. “Come here.” He opened his arms.

She looked at his open arms, then his expression.

Then she stood, drawing from him an unwilling grunt of appreciation as the cover slid from her body. She swung her shapely legs over the edge of the bed, stood and walked to him.

Ignoring his arms, she leaned over—her breasts tantalizingly close to his face—and kissed him on the forehead. “I have a phone call to make, but you’re right. Sleepy-time for me.” She yawned, pulling her panties and jeans on casually, as if she were alone in the room.

Harry remembered to lower his open arms. “Uh. Very well.” He finished dressing, oddly disconcerted. Now she was acting exactly as he’d hoped she would—casual.

As her nudity disappeared, he pondered what to say. He should say something romantic. Something kind. It wouldn’t be difficult. He liked her. Soft emotions had the words perched on the tip of his tongue.

And yet she’d refused a hug.

Harry shook his head violently. Just as well. It might make him vulnerable, and he’d certainly make himself look foolish offering her affection she clearly didn’t want.

She’d dressed and walked to the bedroom’s doorway by the time he pulled on his sweater. “Hey,” he called after her.

She turned. “Yes?”

Harry thought for a moment. “You can use this room. The bathroom’s right off the hallway. It has overnight supplies.” At her questioning look, he explained. “I keep multiple overnight bags packed for business trips. I hate to pack.”

They stared at each other. “Got to make a phone call,” she finally said.

“You’d mentioned that.”

She took a step backward, then another, a half-smile making her mysterious and alluring. He couldn’t help but smile back.

It wasn’t until he pulled on his shoes and heard her voice in his living room again that he remembered how she’d said she had no one to call except the property management lady. And Ginnie had already made that call.

Frowning, Harry felt the accustomed but oppressive weight of suspicion descend on him again. Ginnie didn’t seem like a schemer. She probably wasn’t calling an ex-boyfriend, or worse.

Probably.

Long ago, he wouldn’t have dreamed of eavesdropping. In a time before Jaye Rae, just the suggestion would’ve offended him.

Harry glided to the doorway, walking lightly. He cursed the soft roar of rain on his roof that made it difficult to hear.

“…not too late. Oh good. Yes. The storm huffed and puffed and blew my house down. Literally.”

Noise came from the phone, loud enough for Harry to almost hear a woman’s words.

Ginnie sighed. “I’m fine, thanks. Oh, it’s a long story. But it’s late and I don’t want to keep you. Just, could you tell me something? Did Helping Hands get that replacement grant?”

Harry could see the whiteness of her fingers where she gripped his phone.

Then he heard her sigh. “Yes, I know it’s only been a few weeks. I’ll keep my fingers crossed, then. Yeah, me too. Thanks for your concern. Yeah, I think I’m okay. I’ll see you at the office after I get the house mess figured out. Then we can focus on the grant mess.” Ginnie laughed. Harry heard the effort in it. He wanted to tell her not to worry, he’d take care of the grant, but her next words froze him. “Ah, well. One rich fraud changing his mind doesn’t mean there aren’t other, better fish in the sea. Keep the feelers out and let me know what you find.”

When she hung up, she crumpled a notebook sheet of paper and pitched it at the wall. “Damn him!”

Harry watched her closely. “Damn who?”

“Barrett Sharpe.” Ginnie paused, then knelt to retrieve the balled-up paper. “Sorry. Whenever I think about how that jerk pulled his grant at the last possible moment, making us slash our budget and cancel our biggest shows—disappointing hundreds of kids—I want to hit something—or someone.”

Harry spoke slowly. “That sounds reactionary. If Helping Hands spoke against him the same way you are, it’s not surprising he’d decline to continue funding a grant. I believe Barrett Sharpe was never charged with anything illegal.”

“Yeah.” Ginnie shrugged, distracted. “Maybe not. But he sure is hurting a bunch of kids and a lot of challenged adults with his funding yank. Not to mention damaging my job security. It’s a game of musical chairs there now, with too many people and not enough money. Do you know, he never even returned our calls or bothered to explain.” She turned, her expression both disdainful and a little hurt. “Too busy playing golf or yachting.”

Harry felt again the frustration from all those months of fighting, unsuccessfully, to save his reputation. One embittered woman had done this. One manipulating gold-digger with whom he’d been too infatuated to see clearly.

Well, he saw clearly now.

“I’ll say goodnight now, then.”

Ginnie’s gaze flew to his, startled by his tone. “I’m sorry, I should have waited till morning to follow up on this stuff. You must think I’m nuts to be making business calls at night, after the house crashed down, and also, well, after
.
” Her look would have had him blushing, or perhaps feeling affectionate enough to cuddle the woman he’d just slept with, but he still felt cold inside about the old allegation. It would follow him forever, it seemed.

And yet, guilt stirred in him. He hadn’t meant to hurt anyone, just to perform a forensic public relations analysis on all his beneficiaries, followed by cutting of all ties with those that didn’t pass muster. It was a natural and expected move after severing Jaye Rae’s involvement with his assets. It wasn’t Ginnie’s fault that Helping Hands lost the grant.

He did, of course, have the power to reinstate the grant.

He began to ask Ginnie about Helping Hands, about the organization’s current tax-exempt status under 501(c). Then he noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the way her hand trembled slightly when she went to brush her hair from her face.

“Let’s get you tucked in,” he said instead. Her sweet smile made him want to scoop her up and carry her again, though there was no need. His loins stirred. Well, there was no need he couldn’t control. “Ginnie, Ginnie, Ginnie. What am I going to do with you?”

She surprised him by walking boldly up to him and plucking at his shirt. She grinned at his raised eyebrows. “Do you happen to have one of these I can wear overnight?”

He kept his hands by his side by sheer force of will. There were so many reasons not to get further involved with Ginnie. Lots of really excellent reasons not to strip off the shirt he wore and slide it over her. Slowly. Sensually. Until she begged him to take it back off, along with her panties again.

“In the drawer,” he said, hearing the strangled sound of his own voice. “Next to the bed. You’ll find what you need.” He backed away. Turned. And marched his ass upstairs without looking back, for the good of both of them.

Chapter Four

Harry swiveled in his custom-designed chair at the head of the conference room’s gleaming steel-and-bamboo table, ignoring the others at the meeting, for the moment. The top-floor suite’s view out over Portland’s downtown and to the distant snow-capped Mt. Hood didn’t put his mind at ease. It failed to evoke satisfying thoughts of how he owned large, desirable pockets of what he viewed.

Portland-headquartered Sharpe Development Companies had specialized in commercial and residential real estate. At its peak, the company was number twenty-four on the Forbes 400 list with an estimated worth of 1.8 billion dollars. His company’s holdings had included more than ten million square feet of commercial space in more than eighty-five buildings, eighty-two hundred residential units, and more assets and acquisitions than he could easily track.

Then Jaye Rae happened. After that tumultuous year of personal problems made public, he’d sold off part of his company and retired from the public eye, remaining active mostly in a financial advisory capacity. And he’d sworn off women.

Until Ginnie.

He couldn’t get his mind off Ginnie.

Her presence at his home—he found himself looking at the cityscape toward that section of town—tugged his thoughts away from business. A woman in his house. A temporarily destitute woman in his home. In his bed.

Hot images of their joining seared his brain, and he had to shift in his chair. Her body, so beautiful and natural and eager for his. Her odd hesitations when he touched her. Her magnificent release atop him.

“Hey. Boss man.”

Harry snapped his attention to Todd. His best assistant—mid-twenties, fresh from college, already a millionaire and full of a fire Harry well recognized—looked solemn and spoke gravely. “Now that’s interesting.” Todd made a show of peering up and down Harry with a puzzled expression, but couldn’t suppress the mischievous sparkle in his eyes. “Uh-huh. Satisfied but distracted. Morning-after consternation. I’ve seen that look before.”

“In your mirror, every day,” Harry retorted. The others on his team, the half-dozen he’d kept on twenty-four hour call who made up the core of his highly sought-after wealth management business, burst into laughter. Todd’s way with women was the stuff of legends. Harry sometimes envied Todd’s cocky confidence and easy humor. Usually, though, he just worried for his friend. One day, one of his stunning, sophisticated-looking bits of arm candy would take advantage of Todd’s financial success, easygoing nature and fondness for women, Harry was sure of it.

“But enough about all our sex lives, wild as they may be. Or not,” Harry quickly added, deflecting the curiosity he could see on the faces of Andy and Theresa and the others. It wasn’t every day he came into the office, and he meant to make the most of it.

His wealth management team knew the routine and ran down the list of updates in order of potential financial impact, positives first. Harry had Todd handling the Norbert Kenton portfolio for him, so Todd led off with the latest changes—risky transfer requests of Mr. Kenton’s, paired with some marginal investment instructions, as usual—that had Todd ready to throttle the man. Harry took the account paperwork from Todd, flipped through it. Complicated. It would get his mind off Ginnie.

She had such a pure, spontaneous smile. He imagined the smile that would light up her face when she saw what he’d done in the basement after she’d fallen asleep.

“Next?”

Teresa gave them a presentation on the needs and expectations of medium-tier risk capital investors. “In closing, though these clients don’t have the deepest pockets, they’re a stable and growing section of our base.”

Harry’s mind wandered. When Ginnie sank onto his shaft, she’d gasped, a delightful, sharp inhale. He remembered the noises their bodies made when they slapped together.

Silence.

Harry glanced up. He cleared his throat. “Next?”

“Philanthropic activity,” Todd said. He shot a knowing glance at Harry, but his grin faded with his words. “Problematic. It’s past time we got this in order for next tax season.” He stared at his open laptop screen. “The Sharpe Idea Foundation gave in excess of three-quarters of a million dollars last year. But this tax year absorbed some, ah, staff layoffs”—Harry appreciated Todd’s delicate wording for firing Jaye Rae and her friends—“freezing all philanthropic activity pending individual, independent evaluation. It’s taken a while, but it’s nearly done. We really should finalize to defer some tax burden. The question is, how do you want to play Santa Claus?”

It was an unfortunate choice of words. Todd blanched. His voice was low, horrified. “I didn’t mean…”

The room had gone so silent that Harry could hear Todd swallow.

“It’s okay, Todd. I know what you meant.” Harry pasted on a cool, businesslike smile. “Suggestions, anyone?”

Not surprisingly, there were none.

“Fine, then. Give it some thought for next time. I expect everyone here to have a list of ideas.” Harry pushed back his chair, stood. The meeting was ended. Blessedly ended.

But as he headed out, Todd waylaid him. “Harry, I’m so sorry, you know that wasn’t anything like how it sounded. Man, I’m a clod.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Less than a year. That woman should be tossed in jail for what she did.”

“Seriously. It was a long time ago.”

“Yeah.” Todd shook himself, as if throwing off a chill. “Anyhow. She didn’t leave much in the way of detailed recordkeeping. Kept most of it on her own computer. Now that she doesn’t control any of the purse strings, The Sharpe Idea Foundation can be transparent again, the way it’s supposed to be. No more secrets.”