Her Favorite Rival (11 page)

She stood and turned from the table—and stopped dead in her tracks because Zach was there, standing mere meters away in front of the bread selection, trying to decide between a croissant and a Danish. Images of last night assailed her—Zach kissing her, Zach pushing her down onto his bed, her slipping her hand beneath her pajama pants...

Even though some of those things had only happened in the privacy of her mind, she could feel guilty, revealing heat stealing into her face.

Ducking her head, she hustled past Zach before he could spot her, stopping only when she was standing in front of the elevator bank.

“Wow, you are really worried about not missing the first session, aren’t you?” Megan said.

“I just remembered I need to make some calls,” Audrey fibbed.

She still felt warm, and even though she couldn’t see her face she suspected it must still be pink. Thank God she hadn’t actually gone all the way with fantasy Zach last night. She would have been at real risk of actually self-combusting back there.

The chime sounded, signaling the arrival of the elevator, and she and Megan stepped inside. The doors were about to close when someone called out for them to hold the lift.

Megan hit the open button and they both stood a little straighter as Henry Whitman stepped in. He wore running gear and had obviously been tearing up the streets. Audrey offered him a smile and a bright good-morning before averting her eyes from his bare shoulders, only to find herself looking at his bare legs instead. Really, there was no good place to look when your boss was in workout gear.

She could only be thankful he wasn’t an avid cyclist and she and Megan didn’t have to contend with a padded Lycra butt, painfully outlined man bits and silly shoes.

“Great day out there,” Megan said, super perky. “Sunshine, nice clear skies.”

“Yes,” Whitman said.

Audrey racked her brain for something to say. She’d had precious few face-to-face encounters with him to date—the banana incident, obviously, and the range-review inquisition, along with a handful of smile-and-nod pass-bys in the corridors at work. She’d noticed he wasn’t exactly the master of small talk. Or perhaps he simply preferred not to get too close to the people he would soon squash like bugs.

Either way, it was clearly going to be up to her to initiate conversation.

“Have you had a chance to—”

The lift pinged to a halt, the doors gliding open. Whitman exited after offering them a terse nod.

She and Megan remained silent until the doors closed again.

“That went well,” Audrey said.

“Yes, I thought so. I particularly liked your haiku.”

“Thank you. Have you ever considered TV weather girl as an alternate career?”

They both cracked up laughing.

“Is it just me, or is he super-scary?” Megan asked.

“He’s scary. I think he likes it, too.”

They parted ways at Audrey’s door and Audrey went inside to brush her teeth and make some final preparations for the day ahead. Her gaze fell on the bright Makers-blue of the cover of the analysis as she prepared to leave the room again. Zach would get a kick out of her encounter with the Great Man. She could almost see his mouth curling up into an appreciative smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He’d probably tell her—

So we’re both on the same page here, you know what you’re doing, right? Standing in your hotel room, grinning like a doltish loon over an imaginary conversation with a man who is never going to be more than a friend?

She pressed her lips together and left the room. She was here to work. It would be a good idea if she focused on that fact. Instead of...other things.

* * *

S
HE
DID
HER
best to avoid Zach for the rest of the day and night, but as fate would have it, he was the first person she saw the next morning when she arrived in the foyer. Hard not to notice him when he was standing in the middle of the lobby, talking to Henry Whitman. Shaking his hand and handing over a thick, spiral-bound document with a bright blue cover.

Time literally stuttered to a halt as neurons fired and connected in her brain. The smile on Zach’s face. The manly handshake. The fact that Whitman was walking away with
her freaking analysis in his hand.

No. No, Zach wouldn’t do that to me. He wouldn’t. Not after all the hard work we put into that thing.

They’d written it together. They’d rehearsed their presentation together. She couldn’t believe that Zach would shaft her so spectacularly by robbing her of her share of the kudos. Not now that they knew each other. Not now that they were friends.

Zach turned away, heading across the foyer toward the restaurant, clearly unaware that she’d witnessed his little confab with Whitman. She scuttled after him, her heels clicking and skidding on the tiled floor.

“Zach.
Zach
.”

He paused, glancing over his shoulder. “Audrey. Hey.” He smiled the kind of smile that would normally make her lose her train of thought.

Not today.

“Was that our analysis I just saw you hand to Whitman?” She tried to keep her voice calm.

Because she needed to confirm his perfidy before she gouged his eyes out. Maybe he’d given Whitman a different report and the blue cover was a coincidence. Maybe she was on the verge of lunging for his jugular for no reason at all.

Please let that be the case. Please, please let him not have betrayed me like this.

“Yeah. I bumped into him when I was running this morning and mentioned I had it with me and he asked for it.” He shrugged as though it wasn’t a big deal.

“So you gave it to him. Even though we’re scheduled to present it
together
in a couple of days?”

He frowned, clearly picking up on her tone. “I’m getting the feeling that if I say yes you’re going to have a problem with that.”

“Oddly, Zach, yes, I will.” Her voice rose to a sharp peak and a group of Japanese tourists at the reception desk turned to look at them. “We wrote that report
together
. Equally. Which means we should both get credit for the bloody thing.”

“We will. Your name is on the cover, Audrey.”

“Oh, thanks. That’s going to make all the difference when Whitman reads it, after chatting to you man-to-man while you were out running and having you hand it over to him personally. He’s totally going to ignore both those things and read my name on the cover and realize that I wrote half that freaking report, too.”

Zach was starting to look pissy. “What was I supposed to do? Tell him to wait for the report he’d commissioned because I wasn’t sure if my coauthor would approve of him reading it without her being around? That was never going to happen.”

He made it sound so natural that he’d shafted her. As though anyone else would have done the same.

“I’m not an idiot, Zach. Don’t pretend you weren’t using that report to gain leverage with Whitman.”

“Are you telling me you wouldn’t have done the same?”

She took a step back, genuinely astounded. “So you’re admitting that you shamelessly used
our
report to adhere
your
lips to Whitman’s backside?”

“That’s not what I said. Look me in the eye and tell me if you discovered you’d inadvertently scored five minutes alone with Whitman and he’d asked to see the report you wouldn’t have handed it over.”

“I have no idea, since I didn’t go out hunting for him this morning at the crack of dawn. Actually, I
do
have an idea. I was in the lift with him yesterday, just him and me and Megan, and somehow I managed to not even mention let alone
hand over
the report.”

“I run every morning. Rain or shine.”

“How convenient for you.”

“You’re overreacting, Audrey. Go get some fresh air and calm down and we can talk about this more rationally.”

She blinked at him, momentarily lost for words. Wow. Just...wow. First he did her over, then he tried to minimize his betrayal by making
her
look like a drama queen.

“I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for nearly two weeks because of that report. And you just climbed over my body to get what you wanted. So don’t you dare try to tell me I’m overreacting or dramatizing anything. You patronizing asshat.” Her voice was quivering with emotion and she could feel angry tears burning at the back of her eyes.

No way was she going to let them fall, though. No way would she give him that satisfaction.

“I know how hard you worked on the analysis. We both did. And Whitman will know that when we present it to him formally. You’ll say your piece, he’ll realize you know your stuff, he’ll be impressed. You’re freaking out over nothing here.”

He was so sincere. So convincing.

“I can’t work out if you really believe that or if you think I’m a gigantic moron. He’s not going to bother sitting through our presentation now that he’s got the report, Zach. Why would he waste precious time going over something he’s already read? No, you just hit a home run for yourself with
my
work. Congratulations, champ. You’ll go far.”

She turned on her heel and headed for the lifts.

“Audrey.”

She ignored him, stepping into the waiting elevator. The last thing she saw as the doors closed was Zach watching her with a frown on his face. As though he was sincerely baffled by what had happened.

The jerk.

She held on to her tears until she was in the safety of her hotel room. Then she paced, her heels biting into the carpet, fingers wiping away the tears as they plopped hotly onto her cheeks.

She’d worked so hard on that report. She’d brought her A-game, and she’d done good work. And now Zach was going to get the credit. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that that would be the case. She knew the way the world worked, the way people worked. Whitman might see her name on the cover of the report—maybe—but he’d remember talking to Zach about it. And she didn’t doubt for a second that Zach had been articulate and smart and sharp as he discussed their findings.

That was what Whitman was going to take away from two weeks of her life—that Zach Black was an intelligent, hardworking young executive with energy and zeal to spare. The kind of guy a CEO should probably promote, if such things were on his mind. Definitely the kind of guy he couldn’t afford to lose.

“You sneaky, underhanded, self-serving asshole.”

Saying the words out loud helped, but they didn’t change how profoundly stupid she felt. These past two weeks she’d done a complete one-eighty where Zach was concerned. She’d gone from seeing him as a well-fed fat cat, a son of wealth and privilege, to seeing the real him—a driven, highly ambitious guy who had worked damned hard to be able to afford the nice things in life. She’d been impressed. Worse, she’d been lulled and charmed by his undeniable charisma and physical good looks into overlooking his razor-sharp ambition. She’d taken her eye off the ball and focused instead on his legs and ass and shoulders. God, she’d been so far gone that she’d almost cast him as the star of her personal fantasy.

And he hadn’t hesitated to sacrifice her for his own means. In fact, she was willing to bet he hadn’t even considered how his actions would affect her. Why would he? He wasn’t stupid.

Like her.

He hadn’t been toying with breaking the cardinal rule of corporate life: don’t dip your pen in the office ink. Nope. He’d been busy keeping his eye on the end game. Looking out for himself and his future.

She paced until the first flush of fury had passed, then spent five minutes repairing her makeup. All the while, she picked away at the problem, trying to find some way to recover at least some of the ground she’d lost. The best option she could come up with was to look for an opportunity for a private word with Whitman. She’d mention the report, let him know she was aware Zach had handed it over, then refer to some facts and figures to let him know she was totally familiar with the content. Force him to put a face to the other name on the front cover.

It didn’t even come close to the hour she and Zach had had scheduled with him on Tuesday morning, but it would have to do, since she was as sure as she could be that the meeting would be canceled. In fact, she’d stake her career on it.

Still steaming, she left her room. There was no time for her to eat before the first session, but that was okay, since her belly was a boiling cauldron of acid and anger and self-recrimination. Food would not be a great addition to that mix.

One thing was for sure: she would not be letting Zach under her guard again. Not in a million years.

* * *

Z
ACH
STARED
AT
the lift door long after Audrey had disappeared behind it. A part of him was tempted to go after her, but then he remembered the cold fury in her eyes and decided to give her time to calm down before he attempted to fix things between them.

Because the last thing he’d intended to do was disadvantage her. The very last. Contrary to her belief, he had not gone out running in the hope of “accidentally” meeting Whitman. He’d been blowing off two day’s worth of rich food, reveling in the clean offshore breeze as he ran along the hard-packed sand at the waterline. He hadn’t given a second thought to the lean, gray-haired figure running toward him until they were only a few meters away from crossing paths. Then he’d recognized Whitman and barely had time to raise a hand in acknowledgment before the other man had swept past.

It was only later, when Zach was on his return journey, that he’d spotted Whitman stretching on the dry sand near the stairs to the street. He’d debated going over to strike up conversation, not wanting to intrude on Whitman’s down time. Then Whitman had called out to him by name, asking him how he was finding his first Makers conference. Zach said all the right things before Whitman raised the competitor analysis. Zach had been surprised the man even knew who’d been assigned to the task. He’d answered Whitman’s questions, made a few observations, and pretty much figured that was that. Then Whitman had asked him to hand the report over at breakfast.