Sweet Obsession: Windy City Kink, Book 1 (5 page)

“That smells sooo good,” she said, nearly moaning. “I’m starving. I just realized I forgot to eat lunch.”

“That’s not like you.” He loved to tease her about her love of food and eating, especially sweets. He gave her a sharp glance. “You feeling okay?”

“Actually…no.”

“What’s the matter? Coming down with something?”

“No. I need a glass of wine.”

“Got a nice Cab right here.” He handed her a glass from a cupboard and she sloshed the ruby-colored liquid into it.

“Thanks.”

“So what’s up?”

She pursed her lips and tapped her fingers on the granite counter. “I saw Jack today.”

“Jack who?”

“Jack, my high school boyfriend.”

Kevin’s head whipped around to stare at her. “You’re shitting me. The guy you…uh…”

“Yup. I shit you not.” Her lips quirked and she sipped her wine. She’d told Kevin a little about what had happened way back then, when he’d been brave enough to tell her about his own unconventional quirks, but she hadn’t told him everything. “He’s back in Chicago.”

“Where’d you see him?”

“Actually…” She ran her fingertip around the thin edge of her glass. “He offered me a job.”

Kevin gaped at her. “A job? Landscaping?”

“Yeah. He just bought a condo and he wants to develop the rooftop into a garden.”

“Oh wow. A rooftop garden. You love doing those.”

“I do.” She nodded glumly. “But I won’t be doing that one.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s Jack. Oh God, Kevin, I totally freaked out. It was awful.”

“Freaked out? How? Jesus, Sasha, spill it.”

She told him about the phone call from Jack’s assistant and how she’d shown up there and been so stunned to learn it was Jack. She told him about the fact that Jack had said budget wasn’t an issue and how gorgeous the condo was and all the possibilities for the rooftop space. And how she’d turned him down.

“So…” Kevin stirred a pot of simmering tomato sauce. “Let me get this straight. You turned down a money-is-no-object job when you’re desperate for work?”

She gulped more wine. “When you put it that way, it sounds stupid.”

“Uh,
yeah
.”

She tapped her fingers on the counter again and Kevin lifted an eyebrow. “You’re really agitated by seeing him again, aren’t you?”

“Not at all.”

He snorted. “Here. Have more wine. You guzzled that down so fast I’m surprised you didn’t choke.”

She couldn’t help but smile as he filled her glass again.

“So what’s bothering you so much? You two were just kids when you were going out. It can’t be that big a deal.”

“It shouldn’t be that big a deal,” she admitted. “But my heart started pounding and my hands got all sweaty and my mind just went blank.”

“Huh.” He eyed her. “He must be quite the stud.”

Jack appeared in her mind’s eye, all dark and scruffy-jawed and intense, and she shivered. She wiped her hand across her mouth and met Kevin’s eyes. “I don’t know what it is,” she croaked. “He terrifies me.”

Kevin frowned. “Did he try something? ’Cause I’ll go kick his ass…”

“No.” She held up a hand. For just a flash, the idea of Kevin in his dress and kitten heels, kicking Jack’s ass amused her, but she shook her head. “He didn’t try anything. He was a perfect gentleman. But…persistent. Kind of aggressive. That he wants me to work for him, I mean.”

Kevin slowly shook his head. “Maybe you should. You need the money.”

“There’ll be other jobs. I looked at one this afternoon that I’m going to do up a proposal for. Big mansion in Lake Forest. And I have a couple more possibilities this week.”

“Okay.” Kevin turned back to the stove and lifted a steaming pot of pasta to drain it in the sink. “Dinner’s ready.”

Moments later they sat down to plates of big chewy rigatoni tubes topped with spicy tomato sauce.

“So do you want to tell me the rest of what happened with you and Jack back in high school that is still making you such a wreck?” Kevin asked.

“Do I have to?”

He almost looked hurt. “No. Of course not. I just thought you might want to talk about it.”

She bent her head. “Maybe talking about it would help. But it’s kind of awful. I was a stupid kid.”

“Somehow I doubt that. But hey, we all do stupid things when we’re young. Lord knows I did.”

She shot him a sympathetic smile, because he’d shared some of those stupid things with her. And they weren’t really stupid, but they’d certainly gotten a bad reaction from people. If anyone would understand, it was Kevin.

“I told you that my parents had caught us…making out,” she began.

“Mmm. And they freaked out. Seems like an overreaction, but whatever, I suppose they were concerned about their little girl’s virginity.”

“It was way too late for that,” she said. “Jack and I had done the deed months before that happened.”

“Did they know that though?”

“I’m not sure. My parents weren’t exactly the type to have open discussions about sex. My mom gave me some books to read and that was about it.”

He paused and his eyes met hers. “Did you get pregnant? Is that what happened?”

Chapter Four

After Sasha left his condo, Jack drove to his office in a high rise just off Michigan Avenue. Anzen Security had settled nicely into their new digs. Most of the staff had accompanied them on the move, but there’d been a few people who’d elected to stay in California, so they’d been busy hiring replacement staff and getting them trained and up to speed. Things were humming along once again and Jack thanked the Lord every day that his best friend and business partner Adam had been agreeable to moving to Chicago. Born and raised in California, it wouldn’t have been surprising if he’d wanted to stay on the coast, but as it turned out he’d just had a messy break up with his girlfriend and was happy to get away.

“Hey, dude,” Adam greeted him. “How’d the meeting go?”

“Not satisfactory.”

“Whoa. How so?”

“She turned me down.” He hadn’t told Adam who Sasha was to him, only that he was meeting a landscape designer.

Adam’s mouth fell open. “What? Turned you down? Isn’t it supposed to work the other way around? They want the work and you decide if you’re going to hire them?”

Jack laughed. “Right, right. Okay, what’s happening with Michigan Trust?”

“We set up a meeting with them next week.”

“Perfect. What are they looking for?”

“End-to-end encryption, email encryption, key management.”

“Perfect.”

“We have a meeting in five minutes,” Adam said. “To discuss the offer from Clary.”

Jack grimaced. “Great. This isn’t going to go well.”

“Very possibly. Grant is pretty invested in this job.”

“And I have to tell him we can’t do it.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Yeah. I’ve been doing the math on every possible scenario.”

“It’s tough to turn down a big project like that.”

“Tell me about it. Let’s go.”

Executive meetings at Anzen were pretty casual. A few of the team were already lounging in the black leather chairs that surrounded the long, light maple table in the boardroom when Jack and Adam walked in. The wall of windows faced another skyscraper, the sun reflecting off glass back into their boardroom.

“Hey, guys,” Jack said, sliding into a chair where his laptop already sat waiting for him. “How was your weekend?”

They made some small talk while they waited for others to arrive and Jack pulled up the spreadsheet he needed, studying it, although he pretty much knew every number in it.

“Okay,” Jack finally began when everyone was there, seated, cups of coffee or cans of Coke in front of them. “We need to talk about this Clary proposal.”

Grant grinned. “They accepted our proposal.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “But we need to have another look at whether it’s feasible for us.”

Grant frowned. “What the fuck? Of course it is. This is a major project.”

“I crunched some more numbers,” Jack said, hating to do this to Grant. “I’m not so sure.”

“Come on!” Grant laid his palms flat on the table. “I worked my ass off on that proposal!”

“I know you did,” Jack said evenly. “And you know I’m not one to shy away from taking a risk. But this…there are too many factors that make it unacceptably risky. Yeah, we’d make a decent margin after the direct expenses and costs, but the net dollars after factoring in our time to get the project up and running and then maintain it just won’t work for us.” With a glance at his laptop screen, he reeled off some of the projections he’d done.

Grant stared at him, and everyone else shifted in their chairs, casting sideways glances at each other. Then Grant focused his gaze on Adam. “Do you agree?” he demanded.

Adam, thank Christ, didn’t even hesitate. “Yeah,” he said. “I do. Look, things changed in the market since they put out that RFP. We have to keep in mind how the economy is impacting our customers. Ultimately, they’re the driving force behind our business.”

“I fucking know that,” Grant muttered, slumping back in his chair.

“I know this is hard,” Jack said. “It’s painful to pass up a job like that, but it won’t generate enough profit to make it worthwhile. Sometimes it’s better for the bottom line to walk away from a big sale.”

He fucking hated the look on Grant’s face. He was a smart guy, hardworking and talented.

“You did a great job on the proposal,” Jack said to him. “Now let’s move on.”

Grant’s mouth tightened and his narrow-eyed gaze met Jack’s. Jack held his stare unflinchingly.

He was in charge. He made the decisions. Tough as they were sometimes, this was his business.

Grant gave a short nod, and they moved on to other business.

Jack stayed at the office late that night, as he often did, and found himself staring at the illuminated windows of the neighboring office building. He loved his work and he’d busted his ass to make this business successful. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that he’d be worth twenty million bucks at thirty years old. It had been a helluva fun ride.

But tonight, for some reason, he found himself wishing he had a reason to leave the office at a decent time. Someone to go home to, rather than that big, beautiful empty condo.

Huh. Sensei had been right. Maybe he was a little lonely.

He had lots of people in his life. He was back in the same city as his sister. He had Adam and other friends. He had no trouble finding dates or women to even just hook up with when he wanted. He’d never considered himself lonely before. There’d always been that feeling that his single life was a temporary thing and one day he was going to do the traditional thing and find a girl and maybe get married and have kids. And when he imagined his life like that, the girl he married was always the same.

Sasha.

Now that she’d been in his condo it was so easy to imagine her there, waiting for him to come home.

Sometimes he questioned his sanity. She’d been sixteen when they’d been together. Sensei was right. People did change. He’d changed. Sort of. In some ways. But in other ways, he felt like he was exactly the same person he’d been back then at eighteen. He knew more now, and in that classic wish, wished he’d known then what he knew now. Things might have been different. No, things
would
have been different.

He shut down his computer and left the empty, quiet office, taking the elevator down to the parking garage where he’d left his Jag. When he pulled out of the garage and onto the street, he automatically turned left to head for home. But then suddenly he changed his mind. He found a place to make a U-turn and went the opposite direction, away from the Gold Coast and toward Bucktown.

It hadn’t been difficult to find out where Sasha lived. He knew quite a few details about her. And this wasn’t the first time he’d driven past the duplex house she lived in. Owned by one Kevin Chillen. That made his insides burn, that she was living with a guy, but his research had seemed to indicate that Sasha dated other men, so he was going on the premise that they were roommates. It still bugged him though.

Sasha shook her head and stabbed another piece of pasta. “No. I didn’t get pregnant. I knew about safe sex. And Jack was responsible that way too. God.” She closed her eyes, remembering him back then. He
had
been responsible, with her, anyway, even though he’d been a bit of a bad boy at school. He’d had a tough life, with his parents dying and him and his little sister Emma having to move in with his bachelor uncle, who drank and partied a lot and wasn’t much of a parent. Jack had taken care of Emma and he’d taken care of Sasha, always, and she’d thought he loved her the same way she loved him.

“My parents didn’t just catch us making out. They caught us…well, Jack had tied me up.”

Kevin’s eyebrows rose, but he said nothing. Even though she was pretty sure he wouldn’t judge, she hesitated then forged on.