Knight's Game (33 page)

She ran her finger down his arm. ‘Is this a turn-on for you too? Look how dark you are.’ Standing nude under the bright locker room lights, Dominic’s bronzed skin was even more conspicuous. ‘How pale I am. It reminds me of … do you read graphic novels?’

He grinned. ‘Am I your barbarian fantasy?’

She slid his hand between her legs, looked up and smiled. ‘My real-life fantasy.’

He pulled her close, eased two fingers inside her slippery heat. ‘I have this lurid urge to plunder and pillage when I look at your pale fragileness, baby. And it has nothing to do with fantasy. You’re so fucking small. It’s been tantalizing as hell from the first. Here, look.’ He half turned her so her back was to him, his fingers still deep inside. ‘See?’ His powerful arm slanted across her body, his hand resting on her pubis, his fingers cupping her sex, the two fingers inside her bringing a flush to her cheeks. His skin was shades darker, the black hair on his forearm, the network of veins in low relief faintly visible over his corded muscles in prurient contrast to her creamy skin.

Taking her chin in his other hand, he lifted her face to the mirrored wall. ‘Look at that.’ His tall, powerful body dwarfed hers, their skin tones unfiltered dark and light, the divergent images reeking of hunter and hunted, of liberties taken, of urgency and entitlement. ‘Look how small you are. You’re my unspoiled gift, my sweet relief.’ He smiled. ‘My flame-hot riot of need.’

Her heart grabbed at her ribs because his voice had dropped, as if he were talking to himself. But she knew how little he wished to hear about love so she smiled back, and brushed his arm with her fingertips. ‘The sensation of being overwhelmed by all this heavy-duty maleness turns me on too.’

‘It’s weird.’

‘But nice weird. I like that you’re stronger than me, bigger, taller … all muscle and mojo.’

He circled her with his arms. ‘I noticed the difference the first time I saw you. I felt’ – he blinked, grinned – ‘probably just lust. I’m not good at distinguishing much else.’

She exhaled softly. ‘You scared me that first day.’

‘Hey, remember who you’re talking to.’ He bent his head and nuzzled the back of her ear. ‘You felt something else too.’

She turned her head and smiled at him. ‘I wasn’t sure what. Or if I had a chance.’

Every woman who stood still long enough had a chance with him in those days. ‘I’m glad you decided to stay,’ he said politely, lifting his head. He drew in a small breath. ‘Sometimes I think of how close we came to never meeting and I start believing in fate. I
never
interview. But Max was busy and he was hot on hiring you so he insisted I fill in; he wanted me to see for myself how good you’d be for the company. And the reason I was late getting there was because I was thinking of blowing you off. Until Max called. Like he knew he had to nudge me.’

‘And then I said no to you and you freaked.’

‘I never like no. Although I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to get a no when I fucked you.’

She turned fully in his arms and looked up. ‘I might have had something to say about that.’

He grinned. ‘Did you?’

She rapped him on the chin. ‘Smug bastard.’

‘
Your
smug bastard. Get used to it.’ Although talk of feelings always had a finite time limit for him. Longer now than
before, but it was still not his favourite subject. ‘Need some help finding clothes?’

‘Nah.’ She was learning to read his restless shifts; although what man liked to analyse his emotions?

He waved towards another doorway. ‘I’ll be out there.’ And he strode away nude and beautiful as a god.

Kate flipped through a closet of workout clothes, picked out green shorts and a T-shirt, dressed, then settled on a chaise by the pool and watched Dominic do laps in a smooth, easy crawl. She stopped counting laps after a hundred when he was still going strong and wandered over to the fly machine. Adjusting the seat and weights, she leisurely worked her pecs. The bracelets were loose enough not to be a problem. It felt good to lift. She’d started when Gramps bought her a Harley for her fourteenth birthday. He’d said,
As soon as you can pick it up when it falls over, you can ride it.
Within a month she could bench press 120 pounds. She kept free weights in her apartment in Boston, but this space was a weightlifter’s dream. She moved leisurely down the ranks of machines, testing them out, not killing herself, taking it easy.

Dominic was mentally running through his schedule while he swam. Swimming was his downtime, like meditation, his muscles programmed, his strokes streamlined, automatic, his breathing slow and even. His body moved with mechanical precision, his brain improvised and analysed. There was still a lot to do to prepare for Tuesday; he visualized landing in Rome and started the countdown
again. He preferred not leaving anything to chance. He might take calculated risks, but he was never rash.

Kate was slowly working a leg press when Dominic came up a half hour later wearing a white terry cloth robe. ‘I’m going to take a quick shower. Do you want to come with me or should I see you upstairs?’

‘I’ll be up in a while.’

Leaning over, he gave her a kiss, then walked away and took the stairs at a run.

Fifteen minutes later, Dominic was showered, dressed in jeans and a faded relic-from-his-past
Legalize Pot
T-shirt, and was seated at his desk in his office downstairs, talking on the phone. At a knock on the open door, he swung round to find Patty standing there with a surprise visitor. Charlie was smiling at him like he was expecting her. And she’d dressed in female executive mode as if he cared. Her grey tailored designer suit was couture, her white silk blouse open slightly too much, and she wore enough real jewellery to indicate that she didn’t have to work for a living. Which wasn’t too far off the mark, because he wasn’t sure she actually did much work.

So what the fuck was she doing here?

And how soon could he get rid of her?

But he waved Charlie in and pointed at the sofa and then to the phone in his hand. ‘Uh-uh, Kev, not till next week. No, Wednesday at the earliest.’ He looked at Patty and brought his free hand to his mouth, mimicking drinking from a cup.

Patty nodded and left.

‘Roscoe could help you in the meantime if you have any questions. Sure, we’ll be back on schedule after Wednesday.’ He gave Charlie a polite smile. ‘You got it, Kev.’ Setting the phone receiver in the cradle, he rose from his chair. Skirting the desk, his bare feet soundless on the carpet, he pulled up a chair from the table in the centre of the room and sat.

‘Some problem at the NGO?’ God, let her say yes because the alternative wasn’t anything he wanted to hear.

Charlie offered him a small, bashful smile that might have been effective ten years ago, although even then it would have been a stretch. She wasn’t the bashful type. ‘No, no problem, Dominic. I just wanted to show you the fourth quarter results. They just came in.’

Seriously? Since when did he oversee the NGO? He had people who did that. With a silent sigh, Dominic held out his hand. ‘Sure. I’ll take a quick look.’

‘You can see what we were planning on spending and the actual results. And the new compensation package is a separate document at the end.’

Dominic started flipping through the pages, looked up when Patty came in with coffee, said, ‘None for me,’ and went back to his reading. He asked a few questions, Charlie answered them inadequately and he returned to the earlier pages to look more closely at the graphs showing the expenditure differences from one quarter to the next.

When Kate walked in, Dominic looked up. ‘Hi, baby. Come
sit.’ He patted his leg. ‘You remember Charlie. She brought over the fourth quarter results from Julia’s NGO.’

‘I remember. Hi,’ Kate said, taking in her dressed-to-the-teeth competition. No way Charlie was here on business.

Charlie’s gaze targeted the cuff bracelets and her hello was frosty. ‘Working out, I see,’ she said with equal chill.

‘Not much.’ Kate took Dominic’s outstretched hand and sat on his lap. ‘I’m allergic to exercise.’

Charlie’s eyes narrowed. Dominic’s newest slut looked fresh as a daisy in shorts and a T-shirt, without a speck of make-up. Surely those boobs were silicone. No way they were real. The bitch wasn’t even wearing a bra. ‘I have a personal trainer. Actually, a celebrity trainer,’ Charlie added with the kind of hauteur only seen on the stage. ‘He flies up from LA twice a week.’

Fuck it. She was allowed. ‘Dominic’s been helping me out,’ Kate said, smiling a little, shy smile. ‘It’s so sweet of him.’

Dominic was tempted to laugh at Katherine’s performance art. And he might have if Charlie wasn’t breathing fire. ‘Here, baby,’ he said quickly, stepping in to diffuse the situation. ‘Take a look at the compensation report from the NGO.’ He held it out. ‘You know accounting better than I do.’

Then Dominic asked Charlie a few more questions with no better results in terms of useful answers, and went back to his reading.

When Kate flipped over a page and her bracelet’s diamond
clasp caught the light, Charlie’s mouth pursed, her eyes narrowed to hot slits and she quickly debated the danger in speaking her mind. No fool, Charlie made her voice saccharine sweet when she looked at Kate and said, ‘What lovely bracelets. Such an unusual design. Did you get them here?’

Dominic didn’t speak up in the event Katherine preferred her own explanation. The bracelets weren’t overtly sexual – the wide gold bands simple enough, the diamond clasps could have been costume jewellery. Although two of them were perhaps more suggestive than one would have been.

‘Dominic found them somewhere.’ Kate half turned to smile at him. ‘Did you get them here?’

‘My jeweller had them made.’

The office suddenly went silent.

Charlie came to her feet in an indignant surge. ‘Why don’t I just leave the report with you, Dominic. It seems I’m interrupting.’

‘I’ll send the report back when I’m finished,’ Dominic said with his usual air of unflappability.

‘Just keep it.’ Charlie’s spine was rigid, each word chafing with affront. ‘We have a stack at the office.’

‘Very well.’ Lifting Kate from his lap, Dominic set her on her feet, moved to the door and shouted for Patty. ‘Patty will show you out,’ he said, turning back and stepping aside to let Charlie flounce past.

A few moments later when Patty’s voice grew faint, Kate
glanced at Dominic who was still standing at the door. ‘Does Charlie do that often? Bring reports to your home?’

‘Never.’ He walked over to the sofa and dropped into a sprawl. The sofa, like so much of the furniture in the house, was comfortable and well used, the wide-wale corduroy, once a deep forest green, now slightly faded from the sun. ‘That was pretty fucking transparent.’

‘You were remarkably polite.’

He sighed. ‘I don’t like scenes. And I had no intention of having her stay long. Thanks, by the way, for coming in. I appreciate it.’

‘I wonder how early in the morning she had to get up to put on all that make-up.’

Dominic smiled. ‘Meow.’

‘I don’t care. I’d never do what she did. Barge in like that.’

‘You don’t have to, baby. Men come after you. Although I’ve put up the electric fence in our contract. You’re off limits now.’

‘I’ll have to let Charlie know you’re out of circulation too.’

‘Be my guest. It’ll save me grief.’

‘Speaking of grief.’ Kate tapped the report with her index finger. ‘I don’t know if I should mention something that’s none of my business …’

He smiled. ‘Since when have you been afraid to speak up?’

‘This is different. It really
is
none of my business.’

He shoved himself up against the sofa arm. ‘Forget the build-up. Just tell me.’

‘I know you pay your employees well, but the compensation
packages for Charlie and her assistant are really way above the norm for those positions. I see a lot of pay plans in my business. Those are premium ones. Especially compared to other managers at Julia’s NGO. I don’t want to make trouble. I’m just saying.’

‘I don’t actually oversee the NGO. Roscoe would know who audits the accounts.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Melanie told me last night I should fire Charlie. I wonder if she knows something I don’t. I thought she was just talking about Charlie’s blatant pursuit, but …’ He shrugged.

‘I’m not saying you can’t afford to throw that money away. You can. But personally, I’d wonder how much it pisses off your other managers. Ones that actually know what they’re doing.’ She set the report on the table.

‘She couldn’t answer a single question, could she?’

‘Not even half a one.’

He grinned. ‘You want a job?’

‘Oh, yeah. I’m just dying to work for you.’

‘One of these days, baby, I’m going to change your mind.’

‘You can change my clothes for me if you want,’ she said with a grin, rising from her chair. ‘I’m going to take a shower.’

‘I’ll help you.’

‘You just took a shower.’

‘Hey, cleanliness is next to godliness.’

‘How the hell would you know that?’

‘I read.’

‘Not spiritual sermons.’

‘Should I?’

‘It’s too late for you.’

‘That’s what I was thinking. But I could wash your hair for you. How about that?’

She lifted her T-shirt up and grinned. ‘How about washing something else.’ Then she dropped her shirt, turned and ran.

He caught her halfway up the stairs and swept her up into his arms. ‘You can’t get away, baby. Don’t even try.’

He was very good at washing hair.

Really excellent.

She almost wanted to ask him where he’d learned to be so gentle, but she thought she might not want to know.

The next few days were perfect, in the same way Ovid’s two-thousand-year-old love poetry was perfect – because he was clever enough to define the indefinable.

Dominic and Kate played chess with the children several times. Once, they ate lunch at Lucia, taking the armoured limo and going in through the back door, although Kate was unaware of the calculated vigilance. And one afternoon, under the same discreet guard, Dominic took Kate to visit Gretchen and then to Tosca Café to sample one of his favourite drinks. They were shown into a back room by the owner, whom Dominic knew, and they drank the house cappuccino, a Prohibition-era brew of chocolate, brandy and steamed milk. On Melanie’s recommendation, Dominic had the de Young Museum stay open late one evening so Kate could see Vermeer’s
Girl with a Pearl Earring
in private. As a major donor, his request was granted without hesitation. And after witnessing Kate’s ecstatic oohs and aahs as she stood
before the small, pristine, almost virginal painting, he was pleased he’d made the effort.