I managed to avoid him for three days. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, not with my new workload full of meetings, ribbon cuttings, meetings, events networking, and meetings. And then, just to shake things up a bit: meetings! With a chaser of meetings.

Unfortunately, it was a hell of a lot harder to keep from seeing him in my head: the muscles of his arms, the tented fabric over his straining cock, the predatory gleam in his eyes before he buried his mouth in my—

Let’s just say I was spending a lot of time in my bunk, and my fingers were becoming extremely well-acquainted with my underwear.

Which just made it more awkward to come into work and navigate the halls of Devlin Media Corp like it was a game of Pac-Man in the hopes of not running into him.

On the fourth day after our little…rendezvous…I finally ran into a project that needed the official documents from his office file cabinet, the original copies that weren’t allowed to go anywhere else without the security guys going all Defcon 3 on your ass. All of the interns were at their mandatory performance reviews, so I couldn’t foist it off on them, and I needed the data from those documents by the end of the day.

Once more into the breach…

It was looking like I might have to pull the fire alarm and duck into his office when he was out of the building, but then I looked at the charity schedule I’d drawn up and realized that I still had twenty minutes before he was due back from the soup kitchen.

He’d been sticking to his charity appointments even without me hounding him, thank goodness. That meant he really was serious about saving the company, and bonus! It made avoiding him that much easier.

I knew exactly where those files were; I could be in and out in a flash.

I was skipping along in such a happy little cloud of relief and glee at this realization, that I completely failed to connect the voices I was hearing to their source until I rounded the corner into Grant’s office and very nearly bowled over the short, balding middle-aged man with a rumpled suit and twinkling blue eyes behind his half-moon spectacles, who was shaking Grant’s hand.

“Oh, I’m so sorry—”

And then my tongue tripped over itself as I realized that the short, balding man was Jed Jennings, the owner of Librio Inc. And what was Librio Inc., you ask? Oh, only the company that Devlin Media Corp had been desperately pursuing for five years!

“Oh my goodness, Mr. Jennings, I’m so sorry!” Oh God, had I just ruined the entire deal? Bulldozing the owner of the company you wanted to buy seemed like a pretty good way to ruin the entire deal! Damn, if I had just stayed away— “I thought Grant was still out, I’ll come back later—”

“Oh no you don’t, Lacey,” Grant said, deftly stepping between me and the door, and resting a hand on my shoulder. “Our meeting was just finishing up, and I’ve been meaning to track you down to let you know how that soup kitchen event went.”

Ho ho, so this is your handler?” Mr. Jennings boomed, in a deep West Texan accent that seemed to have been designed for a man three times his size and delivered to him by mistake.

“Oh, Lacey is far more than a handler, Jed,” Grant said, slinging an arm casually around my shoulders, stroking my arm gently. Damn, but a girl could get used to—wait, what the hell was Grant playing at? “Lacey’s changed my life. She’s made me turn over a whole new leaf.”

And then, before I could decide whether to thank him, deflect the compliment, or swat away his hand, he kissed me.

It was a sweet, soft kiss, the slightest brush of his lips against mine, only a hint of pressure suggesting a deeper desire. The kind of loving kiss a girl could read a whole novel’s worth of feelings into, if she weren’t careful.

And I fell straight into it, my legs going weak under me.

“Good to know your taste in women is as good as your taste in other acquisitions,” Mr. Jennings bellowed, apparently incapable of a volume below ‘foghorn.’

Thankfully, though, it cut through the lust-haze swirling through my head; I stood up straight—didn’t quite manage to disentangle myself from Grant’s firm grip, and quite possibly may not have attempted to as strenuously as I could have—and tried to smile as professionally as I could, the rest of my face neutral until I could untangle whatever Grant’s endgame was.

Mr. Jennings continued: “I’m relieved to see you really are settling down, my boy. Not that I didn’t believe you—just like to see the lay of the land with my own eyes.”

“An admirable quality,” Grant said. “Lacey has that too. She takes on so many responsibilities; she’s really opened up my eyes to how important it is to be on the ground, digging into the details.”

“Has she now?” Jennings roared, his face glowing with what I hoped was delight and not, say, an impending heart attack. “Wonderful, just wonderful. I’m relieved you’re settling down, my boy; I’m a traditional fella, you know, I just couldn’t see my company go to someone who wasn’t a family man. I have to know you’ll take care of the things you love.”

“I certainly will, Jed,” Grant said, his arm tightening around my shoulders. Damn, but I liked the way that made me feel, encompassed, protected, sheltered from any storm—wait, what had he just said?

“I confess, I wasn’t always of your viewpoint,” Grant continued. “But Lacey’s turned me around. Who wouldn’t want to settle down with a woman like her? She’s my one in a million.”

Oh hell no. I had to stop this misunderstanding before it could go any further.

“Actually, I’m not—” and then I squealed as Grant pinched my bottom.

“Don’t be modest, Lacey,” he said, mischief dancing in his eyes as he pressed his lips firmly against my cheek. “I won’t have you talking yourself down like that. You’ve made me a new man.”

I gritted my teeth and smiled, trying to simultaneously convey ‘awww, what a thoughtful boyfriend Grant is, you should definitely trust him with your company’ to Jennings, and ‘I will disembowel you with a stapler’ to Grant.

“Whatever you say, sweetheart.”

“I like the way you say that,” he murmured, far too low for Jennings to overhear. Almost gentle, yet there was a fire in his eyes that reminded me of that night when we—

Once again Mr. Jennings’ voice rose to the occasion, saving me from my own lust-filled thoughts by also rising to the volume of a modestly sized jet plane engine: “Grant my boy, you ought to bring this gal of yours to the gala tonight. Nothing like the gala for making a lady feel like the princess she is.”

“A splendid idea,” Grant said. “I only wish I’d thought to reserve tickets—”

“Don’t you worry about that!” shouted Mr. Jennings. I was beginning to wonder if he was deaf. “The wife and I have an extra pair, you’ll be our guests. Glad to have you!”

“Oh, thank you, but I couldn’t possibly—” I started.

“—say no,” Grant finished for me firmly. “We wouldn’t dream of saying no.”

Did I say I was going to disembowel him with a stapler? That would be over way too quickly. I was going to disembowel him with half of a toothpick.

“I’ll look forward to it then,” Mr. Jennings roared. He shook Grant’s hand with an enthusiasm that made it look like it might fly off at the wrist, through the window, and keep going until it broke the sound barrier. Then he swooped towards me and kissed the back of my hand like he was a knight in some medieval romance. “I’ll see you tonight.”

I rounded on Grant the second the door swung shut. “You complete ass, what the hell was that, I don’t even have anything I can wear to—”

And then Grant’s lips were on mine, burning hot, hungry and insistent, undeniable in their urgency as they claimed me, as his tongue plundered my mouth, working a moan from my throat as his fingers tangled in my hair, as my traitorous hands came up unconsciously to grip at his hips—

“We can’t,” I whispered against his lips.

But I was always half persuaded. If he just kept going—

“He’s watching,” he murmured back.

My eyes snapped open and I saw Mr. Jennings through the office’s glass wall, casually looking away. My cheeks burned and my stomach dropped. Of course that was the only reason Grant kissed me again. Of course.

When was I going to stop torturing myself by thinking otherwise?

If he’d wanted more than he’d gotten four days ago, he’d have pursued me by now. Anything that happened now was just a game to him.

“Better put on a show,” he whispered against my neck, and damn him, but that felt good. More than good—it felt like heaven.

I allowed him to reclaim my mouth, and if my heart felt like it was going to burst, at least I had his lips over mine in this moment. At least I had his hard body pressed against mine, strong and warm and as intoxicating as wine. At least I could imagine, just for this second, that there was something more here than a ploy to save Devlin Media Corp…

No. Too dangerous to imagine, too close to wishing and dreaming. Too close to a broken heart, the kind I swore I’d never give myself again, not after all the bastards who’d used me and then left me when I fell too deeply in love. As soon as Jennings disappeared from sight, I pushed Grant away.

He didn’t even looked ruffled, the bastard. He just smiled that infuriating smile.

“I’ll pick you up at eight.”