Taking Care of Business (13 page)

'You're such a smart woman but really, so fucking defensive. You're angry, just say so.'

Her blood pressure shot up ten points. 'Don't. Don't you fucking take that smug male tone with me. You're the one who has some crazy secretary ready to boil my damned bunny.' Not to mention the woman totally needed to do her roots. Kate wanted to ask how much he paid Carlina because she needed a raise to go to the salon more often.

A snicker boiled up but she dug her nails into her palm to keep it inside. She'd share it later with Leah. God, Leah was going to shit her pants when she got wind of that scene downstairs.

Obviously caught off guard, he laughed. 'My apologies for any tone taken. I would really like to discuss why you're angry and what happened down there. Because I care about your perception and feelings.'

'All right, your secretary is unstable and if my intuition is correct –my intuition as an attorney –she's going to be trouble. For both of us most likely. Are you involved with her?'

He grinned. 'Would it bother you if I was?'

She narrowed her eyes and bared her teeth at him.

He put his hands up in surrender, laughing. 'I'm sorry about that. I was teasing. And can you blame me? Kate, you're great fun to tease. No, I'm not involved with her. I don't get personally involved with the people I work with. Never a subordinate.' He paused and looked up at her in a rather fetching manner. The gleam in his eye told her he had something of a sexual manner to say next. 'Although, can I say I have had this rather filthy fantasy about you playing my secretary? I bend you over my desk and fuck you so hard all the stuff falls off the top. Yeah, I've had that one more than a few times. Makes it hard to stand up after I've been at my desk for a while.'

A flush bloomed outwards from her gut. 'Can we please get back on topic?' She wanted to laugh but if she did it would only encourage him. Not that the idea of being bent over his desk while he fucked her from behind wasn't alluring but they had to deal with psycho assistant first.

'Yes. I'd say I was sorry but I'm not. I like you, Kate. I'm attracted to you. I enjoy being with you but I also respect you.'

She crossed her legs, pretending to be prim but really she wanted to squeeze her thighs together to ease the ache. 'Thank you for that. Now, back to your assistant. Have you had problems with her before? You're going to need to note today's incident in her personnel file. Talk to Leah about it. You have to document this accurately and carefully for future reference. If you have problems in the future you want to be able to terminate her without any problems. Is she vindictive? Has she had problems with other employees in the past? Does she have access to key files and information?'

Dix had been about to tease her again when it hit him. He stood up. 'Fuck, I'm an idiot. She made a comment about . . . I need to get to a computer and a phone. I need to see if she's accessing any files she's not supposed to.'

'My laptop is here but you'd be better off in the business centre with faster computers and non-spotty wireless.' They headed for the door. 'Did you at least have her sign the new confidentiality and non-compete stuff I sent over last month?' This could be an even bigger nightmare if he hadn't. Thank God she'd sent them when she had.

'Yes. Everyone in legal did.'

They got off the elevator and headed down the hall to the business centre. 'Excellent. That's one problem down anyway. I'm going to look over all this.' She indicated the files and other papers. 'I'll just be in the next room. Let me know if you need my help.'

Leah held her breath when she entered the conference room, but, although there were many people mingling around in it, not one of them was six foot four and still growing with dark silky hair that begged for her fingers to fist inside it. The room itself had been impeccably prepared with a dozen small touches nobody else would have noticed but her: the extra stack of legal pads and container of pens with the hotel logo on the table near the front, the already pulled down screen for the presenters, the extra bowls of hard candies on the tables. Details she hadn't requested yet appreciated.

But no Brandon to thank for them.

Maybe she'd gone overboard last night, she thought as she nodded and greeted men and women whose names she knew, most of whom she'd hired, but had never met in person. Maybe she'd scared him off. Or, more likely, freaked him out.

She knew Kate was right. There were plenty of men who got off on the games she'd played with him the night before. She'd met a few of them. Sissy boys, Mike had always called them, derisive. Mike had never been that good at seeing much beyond the bare black-and-white skeleton of dominance and submission. For him D/S had come straight out of a series of pulpy porn novels and cheesy movies. He'd been very good with the physical aspects of it: the clothing, the equipment, the scenes. But he'd never quite grasped the emotional depths of power exchange that had always so appealed to Leah.

Brandon wasn't a sissy.

Leah busied herself with tidying the already perfectly straight pile of notepads while everyone else got settled. She had to introduce the corporate bigwigs giving this morning's talks and then she was free to go. She needed to check in with the office, make sure nothing had caught fire while she was gone. She'd do that from her room, using the hotel's complimentary wireless connection. She'd have a few hours, uninterrupted, while the morning session went on.

She realised, of course, that she was already plotting how to spend those hours and it wasn't alone.

Her ears burned and she swallowed hard, focusing on her hands performing the useless tasks. He might not even be working today. Or she might not see him. She wasn't going to go looking for him, that was for sure. And he wouldn't know to come to her room unless he came looking for her . . .

He was there when she turned, as she'd known somehow he'd be, like her wishing for him had brought him to her side. 'Leah? Is everything all right for you?'

She didn't dare say his name. It would have come out sounding like a caress and she couldn't have that here and now. Instead, she nodded. 'Yes, thank you.'

Nobody watching them could have guessed what had happened. Not by the distance he kept so carefully between them, or the way she stood, not even leaning towards him. Not even by his smile, which was nothing but professional.

'Maybe I could talk with you about what you want for the afternoon session. In the hall.'

All her fears about him vanished in the thirty seconds it took for him to say that. Leah's insides went straight away to liquid, to heat. To the promise of what was coming.

'Of course.' She turned to Walt Devries, who'd come looking for a pen. 'Walt, could you do me a favour? I have to talk with Mr Long about some arrangements for this afternoon.'

Walt, as usual, looked slightly startled to be spoken to, but nodded. 'Sure thing, dingaling.'

Leah looked at Brandon, who did an admirable job of not laughing. 'Thank you, Walt.'

Walt tipped an imaginary hat and went back to perusing the pens, knocking over the container. Pens rolled across the table and some scattered on to the floor. Leah didn't dare catch Brandon's eye again, just led the way out of the conference room and into the hall.

'Here,' he said, holding open a swinging door that led to a staff corridor.

She could hear the steady thump of machinery and saw a few housekeeping carts lined up along the hall. All the doors were closed. She caught the scent of chlorine. This must be the back route to the gym and pool.

She turned as he let the door swing shut behind them. It had a window in it so anyone could look through. A door down the hall opened and closed as a housekeeper came out with an armful of towels and dumped them on her cart. She then pushed it down the hall away from them without even looking in their direction.

They weren't alone, and somehow that made it all that much better.

She did not ask him to tell her. Asking him would defeat the purpose of having told him to do it in the first place. She waited, silent, her eyes on his face, watching his lips part.

'I was in the shower.' He pitched his voice low. Discreet, which she appreciated. But not ashamed, or nervous, or embarrassed. He didn't lean in to whisper in her ear to force intimacy. He simply spoke. 'The water was really hot. I could still taste you.'

Leah's breath caught in the back of her throat.

'I stopped at the apartment downstairs before I went home.' Brandon moved slightly closer, though not crowding.

His dark eyes locked on hers. 'There's a girl there. She wanted me to go to bed with her.'

For an instant, surprise kept her silent, but then she found her voice. 'But you didn't.'

He shook his head slowly. They both leaned against the wall. Perhaps six inches separated their shoulders. If she spread her fingers and he spread his, their hands would touch. Neither of them moved.

'No. I went upstairs instead, and I got in the shower and I made myself come thinking about how you tasted and how much I wanted to be inside you.'

His voice got impossibly lower as he spoke, and stuttered a little at the end, but his eyes never left hers.

'And now?'

'I want it even more,' Brandon said.

'Are you sure about that?' Leah tried not to whisper but it came out that way.

He nodded, solemn and unsmiling. Their fingers inched towards each other but, before they could touch, the door swung open. The woman who burst through it focused immediately on Leah.

'Leah!'

Leah turned, putting on a cool exterior that belied her inner turmoil. 'Carlina.'

Dix's personal assistant, as usual, wore her skirt just a little too short and tight for a professional appearance, but not quite enough to be reprimanded for it. Her blonde hair had been teased high on the crown and left to fall around her shoulders in perfect, smooth strands. Today her usual thick eye make-up looked smudged, and her lipstick had smeared.

'I need to talk to you.'

'All right.' Leah looked at Brandon. 'I'm just finishing here. Can it wait?'

Carlina shook her head so that her hair swung. Leah couldn't help thinking the other woman did it on purpose because she knew exactly how she looked. There was no mistaking the assessing look she gave Brandon. With a sigh she kept locked behind her teeth, Leah gestured to the door.

'I'll be right there.'

Carlina nodded. She shifted her gaze around the hall as though expecting to see someone who wasn't there. She gripped her briefcase with one hand, then shifted it to the other. 'OK.'

She didn't move, and Leah realised the woman wasn't going to. Leah gave Brandon a glance and he smiled a bit, moving away from her without making it seem like he'd been standing too close in the first place.

'I need to talk to you privately,' Carlina broke in. Her voice had gone higher pitched than normal and was more than a little shaky. 'Can we go someplace?'

'Carlina, I don't have a place to talk to you that's more private than here.' Leah wasn't about to take Dix's assistant to her hotel room.

'I'll see you later,' Brandon said quietly, edging away, and caught her gaze again.

She didn't miss the flare in his gaze. Didn't have to guess at what it meant. Leah's stomach hit a place somewhere around her toes before bouncing back up.

Carlina, on the other hand, wasn't satisfied with only a quarter of Leah's attention. 'I'm quitting!'

Leah's gaze snapped away from Brandon to look at the other woman. 'What?'

'I'm quitting.' Carlina looked stubborn and ready to burst into tears at the same time.

'OK, this really isn't a conversation we can have in a hallway.'

Before she could even turn to ask him, Brandon held open the swinging door. 'You can use my office. It's private and I don't need it right now.'

'Thank you,' Leah said. 'Come on, Carlina.'

They followed him down a set of back steps. With Carlina following behind her, Leah admired the view of Brandon's long, long legs and lean hips. He glanced over his shoulder with a smile and caught her looking.

He was already inside her, she thought with a sudden hitch-thump-patter of her heart.

His tiny office made Leah feel very privileged to have the space she had at Allied's corporate headquarters. Brandon's desk had seen better days, his chair needed new upholstery and his computer looked as though it would creak with protest if anyone actually tried to use it. But it was private and, by the way Carlina looked, Leah was going to be glad of the space.

'Thank you,' she told him when he pulled out the chair for her, then the other for Carlina.

'No problem. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Hot tea? Water?'

'Nothing for me.' She actually did crave a cup of hot tea but didn't want to bother with sugar and lemon and all of that with a potential crisis on her hands.

'Nothing,' Carlina said. She hadn't put down the briefcase, which seemed strange. She clutched it to her side, though it had to be an awkward position.

Brandon nodded. 'If you do, I'll be around.'

He ducked out of the office. Leah watched him go. No matter what else was going on, he really was good at his job. Above and beyond the call of duty, even. He knew how to take care of business.

Maybe later, he could take care of her too. But for now, Leah turned with a sigh to face a red-eyed Carlina. 'What's going on?'