Negotiation Tactics (2 page)

“Really?” she asked.

Without blinking, Chad watched her.

“Really.” His was a statement not a question and she realized that, yes, he really was going to wait until she spilled the story. She sighed heavily, hoping he would give up.

Damn. The man’s got military training and I’ve got diddly.

“You realize I’m an adult, right? I don’t
actually
need to tell you what I was doing. You get that, right?”

Jennie could have sworn she saw the side of his mouth twitch and wondered for a split second if he was tempted to smile. No. Not Chad.

“I can always let you out and just go home, Jennie. I don’t
actually
need to drive you home. You get that, right?” he mimicked her words.

Jennie narrowed her eyes at him. “You wouldn’t…” she said.

Chad shrugged as if he really might consider leaving Jennie there. They both knew he wouldn’t.

“I was jogging. All right? I jog out here every morning,” Jennie said. She laid her hands in her lap as if that answered everything and then looked back at Chad with what she hoped was her best wide-eyed and innocent gaze. Oh, why did her belly feel like a hundred can-can girls were practicing in there in their puffy can-can skirts?

One tanned, muscled arm rested on the steering wheel of the truck, the other lay between him and Jennie on the seat. Jennie tried not to notice the muscles rippling under his T-shirt or how good he smelled. He had clearly been sleeping when she called him. He’d probably just rolled out of bed, thrown on sweats – and he somehow managed to look like walking sex and smell spicy and woodsy… She licked her lips.

Chad, who’d been studying her face, looked pointedly down at Jennie’s bare feet, then flicked his eyes back up to hers and waited. That earned him another eye roll and a huff of frustration.

“Fine. I jog out here every morning. There’s a house on Prospect Court that has a pool. The guy is never home. He travels a lot,” Jennie explained in clipped tones.

“You know this, how?” Chad asked, but made no move to start the truck.

Jennie could see the small tick in his jaw that sometimes struck when she was really needling him. Sometimes, she could turn the tick into a smile, if she worked hard at it. She wondered if she’d be able to do that now, but wasn’t sure she could risk it. If she pushed too hard at the wrong time, things might go in the other direction and she’d be in for a lecture.

“My friend dated him for a while,” Jennie shrugged. “Can we go now?”

Chad raised an eyebrow but stayed silent.

A frustrated sigh burst past Jennie’s lips, as she shook her head at him. “Anyway, I jog here, let myself in through the back gate, go for a swim, and then jog home. It’s my morning routine. I always peek to see if his car’s in the garage. If it is, I skip my swim. He must have realized someone’s been in his yard. I had just gotten in the pool when I heard barking. The next thing I know, there are two big dogs blasting out of a doggy door and heading my way. They were on the side of the yard with the gate, so I had to go over the back of the fence instead and cut through the neighbor’s yard. I grabbed what I could and ran. My shoes weren’t in the pile of stuff I grabbed.”

Jennie drew her spine up straight and laced her fingers together in her lap. It wasn’t easy to look dignified in the state she was in, but she could damn well try.

Chad stared at Jennie for a few more long seconds. The tick in his jaw continued as his eyes burned into her with an intensity that almost stole her breath. She raised her chin and resisted the very strong urge to squirm.

“Neither was your bra, apparently,” Chad said dryly as he reached for the keys and started the truck. Chad shoved the gear into place and pulled away from the curb as Jennie laughed, wrapping her arms firmly in place over her chest.

***

Over lunch at their favorite café, Jennie told Kelly and Jill about her narrow escape that morning. She told them about the dogs, the fence, losing her shoes and her long ride home with Chad lecturing her about dog bites and what could have happened if the dogs had caught up to her. Kelly and Jill wiped tears from their eyes. The waitress probably thought they were all crazy. They’d been laughing for five minutes straight, with Jennie barely able to squeak out the details of her morning with Chad.

Kelly and Jill were Jennie’s two closest friends, aside from a few high school friends back home that she didn’t see very often.

“I’ll bet you had him grinding his teeth the whole ride.” Kelly laughed, but then groaned and held her pregnant belly. “You have to stop making me laugh. The baby kicks more when I laugh and she’s tap dancing on vital organs right now.”

Jennie grinned as she sipped her iced tea. “Sorry, Kels. I’ll try to be more serious until you deliver. What’s that, five more weeks?”

Kelly grimaced. “Don’t remind me.”

Jennie and Jill collected themselves for the sake of their friend. “I think Chad thought it was funny, though. He likes to act all tough, but he’s just a big teddy bear.”

Jill shook her head. “Quit poking the damn bear, Jennie. It’s not safe.”

Jennie grinned. “I just hope he doesn’t show up at my house tomorrow morning to escort me on my morning run.”

“He wouldn’t really do that!” Jill said, then looked at Kelly for confirmation.

“Oh, he might. I told him I was thinking of bringing dog treats tomorrow. I’ll bet I can make friends with those dogs and get my morning swim back,” Jennie said.

That started the laughter again and left poor Kelly holding her stomach as they all laughed.

The three of them were like Charlie’s Angels in a way, each with a completely different look. Kelly was the brunette, with a curvy body even when she wasn’t pregnant and a smile that was contagious. Jill was the blonde in the group. She had gorgeous hazel eyes that Jennie was secretly a tiny bit envious of and she was more willowy than Jennie and Kelly. Jennie was a few inches shorter than her two friends, with strawberry-blond hair that hung in wild curls she’d given up trying to tame a long time ago. She’d always thought her brown eyes were plain looking, but Kelly said they were rich and deep so Jennie had decided to believe her.

Kelly was married to Jack Sutton, the Chief Executive Officer at Sutton Capital, where Jennie worked. Jill had just married Andrew Weston. Andrew was Jack’s best friend and the Chief Financial Officer at Sutton. They were a tight-knit group of friends who worked closely together and saw one another almost every weekend without fail. Jennie had a feeling that would change now that Jack and Kelly were having a baby and Jill and Andrew had just married. It hurt to think that her life might be changing once again as her friends moved on to a life that couldn’t include her in the same way.

Sure, she’d no doubt be Auntie Jen to all their children, but it wouldn’t be the same as having her own family and having kids alongside her best friends. Jill broke through Jennie’s thoughts.

“Hey, I keep forgetting to ask you. Where did you go on your last assignment? Anywhere fun and exciting?” Jill asked. She and Andrew had taken care of Jennie’s dog, Zeke, a few weeks ago when Jennie was traveling for Sutton.

Jennie made a face. “To a biotech company in Wisconsin. The people were really nice but there wasn’t a whole lot to do. They were in the middle of nowhere.”

Jennie was sure she had one of the most unusual jobs on the planet. Sutton Capital was a venture capital firm that invested in startup companies and in companies looking to expand or to develop new technologies. Although Jennie had started out as a temporary assistant, she now worked in the security and investigations division. She’d always thought Jack was crazy for promoting her, but Jack didn’t operate like a conventional CEO, and Jennie wasn’t about to question his decision. She loved it more than she’d ever loved any job. Jennie had floated from one temporary job to another after college, finding most of them dull and unchallenging. Her work at Sutton Capital was anything but dull. It just fit her, somehow.

When Jennie wasn’t out of the office on assignment, she worked as a floating assistant helping anyone around the company that needed her. When on assignment, she was sent into a company that was trying to get funding from Sutton. Jennie would typically go in with someone from finance or occasionally someone from legal who was doing due diligence and she’d serve as their assistant, but in reality, she had a dual purpose.

Jennie was tasked with quickly befriending people and getting them to talk to her. She usually acted like an airhead when she was on assignment, babbling on and on and laughing just a little too much at things. It actually reminded her of her days in drama club in high school. She’d played Audrey her senior year in
Little Shop of Horrors
and she always drew from the ditsy portrayal when she went into a new assignment for Sutton.

When she entered that persona, people just opened right up to her. Then, it was just a matter of keeping her ears open for any information that might help Jack make decisions about the potential investment. Sometimes support staff she befriended would tell her juicy bits of gossip that might contain nuggets of information. Other times, executives in the company talked freely in front of her, assuming she was either too dumb to understand what they were talking about or too flighty to pay attention.

Jennie would never forget the time the two principals in a company sat in front of her and talked about the fact that they had doctored some numbers they had given Jack – as if she weren’t even in the room. She just sat there collating papers at the conference table, keeping her head down while they met over lunch and spilled the whole story. She would have been offended at the way the two men dismissed her so completely, if she hadn’t known how valuable the information she gathered would be. That information ended up saving Jack and his investors a lot of money.

“Never mind that, did you find out anything juicy?” Kelly asked. Jill and Kelly loved hearing the things Jennie discovered during her assignments.

“No. Well, other than the fact that two of the researchers like to play doctor after hours in the lab together.” Jennie shivered and laughed. “It wasn’t something I ever need to see again.”

Kelly and Jill laughed. “It couldn’t have been that bad!” Jill said.

“Oh, but it was. They were not attractive people, to say the least, and I got a real eyeful! I had to go back to my hotel room and scrub my eyes with a Brillo Pad.”

The three women laughed as the waitress brought their meals and then they dug into chips and sandwiches.

“I told Chad I want combat pay for that assignment, but he told me to take it up with Jack, so you need to back me on it, Kels.” Jennie grinned at her friends as they just laughed harder at her.

As they finished up their lunches, Jennie looked at her two best friends and silently hoped they’d be able to stay as close as they were today despite the changes that were coming. Her friends were moving toward a life that she’d already lost. Jennie’s happily-ever-after had ended years ago.

Chapter Two

Chad suppressed a grin as he watched Jennie. At the moment, Jennie and Chad were in the pool at Kelly and Jack’s house, where everyone had gathered for one last party before the baby arrived. Chad stood on one side of a volleyball net and Jennie stood on the other. Somewhere along the way, he’d forgotten what Jennie was arguing about, but he didn’t care. Chad loved to see her fiery eyes sparkle as she fisted small hands on her hips and lit into him. She barely reached his chest, but she should get points for trying. Jennie tossed her head, flinging her strawberry-blond curls out behind her and kept right on going.

Chad loved this side of Jennie. She was bold and brash and confident. She was feisty and fun loving and nothing seemed to frighten her. Not many women Jennie’s size – a mere 5’4” and 115 pounds – would try the irreverent things she did with Chad. At 6’4” and about 265 pounds of pure muscle, there weren’t many people who treated Chad the way Jennie did. Jennie taunted and teased Chad at every turn, as if she were two or three feet taller than him.

Chad knew why she did it. They both felt the wild attraction that sizzled between them and they both worked hard to control it. With so many mutual friends, coupled with the fact that they worked together all day during the week, they couldn’t avoid seeing one another. So Jennie seemed to deal with things by throwing her saucy, cheeky attitude at him all the time. It was almost as if she tried to keep their interactions superficial, never going deeper than the surface. If she was busy yelling at him or taunting him, there wasn’t any room for anything else.

Chad dealt with the attraction by staying in complete and utter control at all times around Jennie. He didn’t allow himself to dwell on the curve of her tiny waist or the swell of her breasts in the bikini she wore as she fought with him now. He focused on her eyes, ignoring her body. Then, he’d spend about five minutes telling himself that her eyes were nothing special. He’d tell himself her eyes weren’t warm and rich like melted caramel. That her eyes didn’t have a mysterious quality to them as if she held a world of secrets waiting for him to explore.

Shit. So much for control.

Chad wondered if Jennie would keep up her tirade if she knew just how sexy she was when she was angry. Or if she’d keep up the nicknames if she knew just how much he liked to see what she’d call him next. Would it be ‘Tank’ today or ‘Little Bit?’

Jennie cupped her hand and splashed water across the net at Chad, pulling him from his thoughts.

Yeah, so much for maintaining control.

“Are you even listening to me, Chad?”

Chad’s grin broke through as he shook his head, willing it to clear. “Sorry, Jen. I tuned out five minutes ago.”

Chad knew that would really get her going and he’d get to watch her fume for a while longer. He loved the way her eyes sparked when she was angry and the way she pursed her lips and balled her fists at him. He could watch Jennie storm at him forever and not get tired of it.

***