Sleeping With the Boss (8 page)

Five million dollars was a shit-ton of money. Surely there was a valid explanation other than that she was on the take. There was no way she was the spy. No way in hell. He’d ask her about it and clear it up after he spoke with his asshole brother.

He pushed the button. “Okay. What’s on fucking fire, Mikey?”

“Obviously your pants. Chance tells me you’re out with the Maddox woman.”

He shot a look across at Claire and she smiled. “Yeah. Don’t start.” He needed to be careful with what he said so she wouldn’t get the wrong idea—or so she wouldn’t know what was actually being said if Michael came unhinged over his dating a sort-of employee.

“I thought she was our prime suspect?”

Will kept his voice calm and conversational. “Not anymore.”

“Do you have evidence to clear her?”

“Not yet.” He tried to make it seem like a friendly conversation from his side.

Michael’s voice rose even louder. “So you’re fucking someone who might be fucking us over?”

Will turned so his head was between the phone and Claire. “Not yet, but I hope to be soon.” A quick glance at Claire revealed she had pulled her knees together and was sitting upright. He pressed the phone tighter against his ear to muffle the sound in case she could hear, which he knew was impossible over the road noise and soft music playing. “Please keep your voice down.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Will! I gave you one simple task.” Will fumbled with the volume button on the side of the phone, but didn’t find it before his brother shouted, “I told you to find out who the spy was. I didn’t tell you to fuck her.” Will hung up on his brother, but it was too late. From the opposite side of the limo, Claire was shaking, staring at him like he’d sprouted a third eye.

She didn’t say anything for what felt like an eternity. This was bad. Real bad. Like drop-and-cover bad.

“Smooth Operator” started up on his phone again. He ignored it.

He held his palms up and used the most soothing tone he could conjure. “Claire…”

“Don’t.” It didn’t even sound like her voice. It was distant and threatening. “Don’t say a word.” She snatched her bra from the floor and put it on.

“Please let me explain.”

Michael’s ringtone finally shut up and she grabbed her shirt from the seat next to her and struggled to turn it right side out, still trembling. “Some things defy explanation. They defy reason.” She wrapped the shirt around her and tied the bow with a hard jerk. “Or logic.”

His gut burned like he’d swallowed a bottle of Drano. “I’m sorry.”

“Some things also defy forgiveness, Will.” She picked up her skirt and wrestled it over her legs, snapping it closed with a pop. “Tell the driver to pull over and let me out.”

“No.” He couldn’t. Not until he explained.

“I’ll press kidnapping charges. Don’t think I won’t. Let me out.”

Fuck.
“Please. Give me five minutes. If after that you want out, we’ll pull over.”

“How could you possibly expect me to trust you to make good on your word after what I just heard?”

“Because what you heard isn’t what it sounds like.” Only, it sort of was, he realized grimly. “Because it’s important that you not leave thinking the wrong thing. Because what you think and feel matter to me.” He slumped into his seat as the truth hit him. “Because
you
matter to me.”

They stared at each other as “Smooth Operator” struck up again, followed immediately by “Kung Fu Fighting.”

“You have five minutes. Then you’re going to let me out.” She put on her glasses and glanced at her watch. “Go.”

Chapter Nine

Will turned his phone off and threw it on the seat behind him as he moved over to Claire’s side.

“No way. Stay as far away from me as possible.” She pointed to the corner opposite her.

He moved to where she indicated. “It’s not what you think.” He pushed the button to talk to Jacob. “Please drive directly to Miss Maddox’s apartment.”

“Yes, sir.”

She stared at him, unblinking. He looked almost helpless slumped in the seat across from her. Almost. She knew better. She’d heard his brother.

It all made sense now. She never could quite wrap her head around why a man like Will Anderson would want to spend time with her. Well, now she knew. He wanted to pump her for information.
Literally.
A wave of nausea tumbled through her.

“To think I almost…” She couldn’t look at him. “That I let you…” In her peripheral vision, she saw him squirm and she thought about what he was doing to her when Michael had called and interrupted them. Thank heavens he called. “My God. I was about to…” Her sentence fell off into a sob. How could she have been so stupid?

“Claire. Please listen.”

Her shock had shifted to anger—pure and sharp and deep—clawing its way up from her gut and ripping straight through her heart on its way to the surface. She’d been mad at Eric for his selfishness, confused and hurt when she found her mother’s letter, and sad when her grandparents had died, but she’d never been betrayed and used—and at this moment, the only thing she was sure of was that she would never let it happen again. Never.

“You were going to sleep with me to find out if I was a spy? What kind of spy?”

“Someone is poaching clients using inside information.”

A cold chill ran down her spine. He suspected her of spying on his company. “You were on a recon mission, huh? Just a job, wasn’t it, Will?”

He had a stricken look on his face. “No!”

“Why on earth did you and your brother suspect I was a spy?”

“Because you fit the description given by clients. You started work right when the cases began. You have access to the information. You understand the value of antiquities. And you have five-fucking-million dollars in your bank account as of yesterday.”

Well, if she thought she was mad before, she had to redefine it now. Will had just raised the bar for furious. “Stop the car.”

“Hell, no.”

“How do you know about the money?”

His eyes shifted to his lap before they met hers. “I overheard you talking to Heather on the phone about being rich and leaving the country. About not liking people snooping.”

She thought back over that conversation and saw how in light of the other coincidental things, that could have been misconstrued, but… “I never specified the amount. How do you know how much?” Then she remembered the guy who’d asked Heather about her. And Will knew where she lived even though she had not put it in her Anderson file. Angry prickles shifted up her neck. “You had me investigated. You’ve got some super-spy thing going on, don’t you?”

From the look on his face, she knew she’d hit it on the nose. What she really wanted to do was hit
his
nose. “What else did you find out about me? That I eat ice cream right out of the container and dance naked in my living room?”

“You do?”

“No! I was making that up.”
Sort of.
Actually, she was kind of trying to come off her anger a bit since she could almost see how he would suspect her. It still gave him no excuse to sleep with her if he thought she was stealing from his business. Something was still off.

“You said you’d give me five minutes to explain. So far, I haven’t gotten to do much other than defend myself. Please hear me out,” he said, hands clenched in his lap.

She leaned back and crossed everything she could cross, making herself as closed off as possible. “Five minutes.”

He grabbed his knees and leaned forward. “I came into town at Michael’s request. He had evidence that there was a spy working at the auction house.”

She glanced unseeingly at her watch. “Four minutes left.”

He frowned. “At first, you looked like a good candidate, but then I came to your office—”

“To get evidence and information out of me.”

“No! To get my coat back. But you were cute and funny—and hot. And you have a great ass.”

“You’re pushing your luck. Three minutes.”

“Bullshit. I have not used two minutes.”

She smirked and recrossed her legs. “So you decided you wanted to bang me and find out if I was the spy.”

“Yes…I mean no. I mean, I wanted to get to know you—”

“Bang me and find out if I was the spy.”

“
Date
you. I knew you weren’t a spy the minute I touched you.”

“So your fingers and lips are spy detectors? You should hire out, Mr. Anderson.”

He ran his hands over his hair. She suspected he’d have pulled his hair if it were long enough. “You said you’d hear me out.”

“Two minutes.”

“You are unbelievable!” he said, scooting to the edge of the seat.

“And you used me, Will. You never cared about me. You saw a way to get information, and being military-trained, you selected the most effective weapon in your arsenal, your body. And I fell for it. Hook, line, and sinker. Well-played.”

He slid off the seat and scrambled toward her, then stopped on his knees just short of her. Her heart hammered in her chest as the smell of him filled her nose. Her heart and mind may have been furious with him, but her body was still gunning for a joyride.

He took a deep breath. “Listen to me. From the moment I touched you in your office, I knew you were incapable of doing something underhanded like divert deals.”

“How on earth could you know that by touching me?”

“I’ve spent years of my life relying on instinct to keep me alive. I can tell a lot about a person simply from watching them and even more from talking to them. But when I touch you, there is nothing false. No layers. If you were hiding something, you wouldn’t be like that. Hell, you certainly wouldn’t be walking on the edge by going out with me.”

He almost fell over onto her as the limo swerved and pulled to a stop.

“We’re here, Mr. Anderson,” Jacob’s voice called through the speaker.

“Thank you.”

She gathered her purse and scooted to the edge of the seat to launch. Will put his hand on hers. “Please, Claire. I never thought you were the spy.”

She ached seeing him on the floor of the limo on his knees like that. “Michael does.”

“No, he doesn’t. That’s why he’s frustrated and mad at me. We have no clue who it is.”

Jacob opened the door.

She started to exit the car and Will tightened his hold on her hand. “Don’t. Nothing I said or did was a lie. You know it. We have something. You feel it, too.”

She did feel it. She was falling for this man and it was killing her. She had to end this now before she was in so deep she’d never climb out. She pulled her hand away and stepped out of the car. “I’ll be in the office in the morning to get my things. Consider this my resignation.” She spun on her heel and headed up the sidewalk, hating how dramatic that had sounded. She couldn’t go back to the office, though, knowing they thought she was a thief.

She heard his footfalls on the sidewalk behind her. Why hadn’t he just stayed in the car? This sucked so bad she couldn’t stand it, and prolonging the inevitable was making it worse. She was done.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her to a stop right outside her doors. “Look at me. Really look at me.”

She raised her eyes to his and her heart pinched at the absolute sadness in his expression.

He released her. “I understand why you’re mad. You have every right to be. I’d be mad, too. God knows I’ve been screwed over by someone, and I know exactly how you feel: betrayed and used, and it makes me sick that of all people, I’m the one who made you feel that way.”

She had to look away. It was like slowly ripping a scab off a wound to see the pain in his eyes.

With his fingertips, he gently turned her face back to his. “I did not use you, Claire. The only calculation behind touching you was to bring you pleasure. I spent time with you because for the first time in almost a year, I wanted to be with someone. I still want to be with you, but if you can’t, I understand. I’ve been where you are, and it’s a shitty kind of hell.”

He looked away with a defeated shrug. “In retrospect, I should have told you about the investigation, but honestly, it was a nonissue as far as you and I were concerned, and I expected to find out who it was and end the matter altogether. I didn’t want to muddy up our two weeks.”

She really didn’t know what to say. Her mind kept flipping from images of them together, to the horrible sinking feeling of hearing Michael yell about investigating her on the phone, to Will’s explanation just now. She was afraid if she said anything, it would open the floodgates. She needed to rip the rest of the scab off quickly. “Good-bye, Will.”

She barely heard his quiet response. “Good night.”

Determined not to stand and watch him leave, she walked away first, not looking back as the doorman held the brass and glass door and it closed with a
whoosh
behind her. It wasn’t until she had shut and locked her apartment door that she allowed herself to break down.

…

Will didn’t know how long he stood outside Claire’s building. It wasn’t until Jacob cleared his throat that he realized he was standing anywhere at all. He had been lost in his own selfish, inner temper tantrum, railing at life, fate, and himself.

Dammit.
He wanted this woman. He wanted her more than he’d wanted anything ever, and not just physically. That was the real problem; he didn’t just want a two-week fuck-a-thon before she took off. He wanted her to stay.

He had hurt her. She’d trusted him and he’d betrayed her. Not intentionally, but intentions didn’t matter in a case like this. She hurt as much as if he’d done it on purpose, and he was completely helpless to do anything more about it. The ball was in her court now.

Jacob cleared his throat a bit louder this time. “Are you okay, sir?”

Will took a deep breath. Letting her go was the right thing to do. He’d stay away from her and let her heal. “I’m fine, thanks. I’m ready to go home.”

Jacob opened his the limo passenger door. “Not to the office, Mr. Anderson?”

Yeah, that was the original plan and where he’d intended to stay until Michael got back, but he was done now. She didn’t need to worry about him lurking when she came in to clear her office, and he didn’t need to be hiding, either. It was better for both if he stayed away for a day or so. Even if it was the last thing in the world he wanted to do.

“No. I’m going home.”

Less than an hour later, Will wandered from room to room like a zombie. Hell, he pretty much was one. He ran his hand over the polished wood of the kitchen table and fought the urge to slam his fist into something.

Beth had wanted to live in the city and this house had been his compromise. It was a restored historic home in an upscale Long Island neighborhood that backed up to a small lake and gave him the nature and open space he sought with the proximity to Beth’s social scene she had demanded.

Like a sentimental fool, he bought this place before his first deployment and had imagined raising kids here. During that first tour of duty, he had it restored by an old college buddy who owned a remodeling company and then worked side by side with the contractor when he returned in order to complete the job before he was deployed the second time.

Beth had hated it. When he brought her here as a surprise, she made no effort to hide the fact that she would not live here. Her ugly words echoed in his head as if it had happened yesterday, instead of three years ago. For his remaining two and a half weeks in the country, she made him tour every overpriced, sleek, modern apartment in the city. Thank God he hadn’t put money down on one.

“Kung Fu Fighting” chimed from his phone. He pulled it from his back pocket and hit ignore. He didn’t need to talk to Chance right now. For a moment, his finger hovered over Claire’s contact in his recent calls list.

“Dammit!” he shouted. He needed to leave her alone. She’d trusted him. She’d been open and genuine with no artifice and he’d unwittingly hurt her.

He shoved his phone back into his pocket.

That was the key to the attraction, he realized. Beth was always worried about what people would think based on how she looked or what she had, so she cloaked herself in the trappings of success and status. Claire was never anyone but who she was. Genuine and giving.

And now she was gone.

He opened the cabinet above the refrigerator and pulled out the unopened bottle of scotch his now-ex future father-in-law had given him at the engagement party. Will hadn’t gotten shitfaced since he had returned to the States eight months ago and read in the paper that his fiancée had jilted him. After that, he had promised his brothers that he would never drink alone again. His promises used to mean something. But then, so did the words, “I love you,” until Beth had twisted them.

Will pulled the cap off the bottle. Eight months was long enough.

…

Claire rolled over and switched on her bedside lamp. There was no way she was going to be able to sleep, and that really pissed her off. She needed to escape from the jumble of mixed thoughts and feelings duking it out for dominance in her brain. At the moment, her desire to be with Will pummeled her common sense.

She stepped into her slippers, shuffled to her desk, and flicked the mouse to wake her computer. Maybe working on her itinerary would put her to sleep.

After a few minutes of staring blankly at the calendar while images of Will filled her head, she decided if she were going to agonize and obsesses over the guy, she might as well go all the way.

Pages of links to articles from local news sources, as well as tabloids, loaded simply from searching his name and city. Seeing his picture made her heart race faster. So tall and handsome, whether in a tux at an opera debut or in his fatigues for a military shot, William Anderson took her breath away.