Chapter Eleven
SHE WAS GONE. Simon knew it the moment he stepped out of the elevator. Of course he shouldn’t have been surprised; it was well after five. Everyone else was gone, too, except maybe for Stone.
His office was far enough down the hall that Simon couldn’t see if a light was burning under his door. But his own office was dark. He headed toward it anyway. Since he was just returning from a dinner meeting with a client, he had some notes to drop off on his desk.
He pushed open the door and uttered a sigh of disappointment when he confirmed it was empty. It would have been nice had Bette been waiting for him wearing only her naughty lingerie. But just as he’d suspected when he’d stepped off the elevator, she was gone for the night.
If she’d been there, he would have felt her presence in the tingling of his skin and quickening of his pulse. When she was around, he was always aware of her and the attraction that sizzled between them.
But attraction was all it was. She’d confirmed that this afternoon when she’d confessed that she wasn’t falling for him, that it had all just been a con.
Was that the only one she’d run on him? Or was there another one—a far more dangerous one—at least to the practice and to his pride?
The guys didn’t understand how a con worked. That she would leave even though she was making money off them. She’d do that if she was as smart as he’d known she was. Quit before you get caught—that was what had kept him out of prison while he’d been growing up.
His father hadn’t been able to say the same.
The other part of a good con was to disarm the mark’s suspicions with a confession—but only to confess something innocuous, like her pretending to fall for him. That way the mark wouldn’t suspect there were any more secrets.
He suspected Bette Monroe had many, many more secrets than what she’d confessed. And he intended to learn them all. But when he set his briefcase onto his desk, he found an envelope sitting on his keyboard addressed to him. He immediately recognized the artistic handwriting as Bette’s. She’d already turned in her letter of resignation. What was this?
After today he knew it wasn’t a love letter. She didn’t love him, had laughed at the possibility of ever falling for him.
Because she had someone else? Someone who was willing to support her? He could. Hell, he would if she asked. He doubted that was what this letter was about, either.
His hand shaking slightly, he tore open the envelope and pulled out the piece of paper. It wasn’t a letter at all. It was a job description—her job description. And at the bottom of the list of her duties was another, but it was his.
You need to post my position ASAP.
And he knew she wasn’t staying. What the hell had happened to him? He used to be such a good con artist. He hadn’t met a woman who he hadn’t been able to seduce into doing what he wanted. But while Bette had sex with him, she wasn’t malleable. She wasn’t staying.
And she wasn’t revealing any of her secrets.
He needed to turn up the seduction. Despite her claim of knowing him too well to fall for him, he had to make her love him. That was the only way he suspected he would get the truth out of her.
But he was beginning to worry that wasn’t what he really wanted from Bette Monroe. He wanted even more than the truth.
Did he want her love?
Despite all the women who’d claimed to feel that way about him, he’d never really believed it, just as Bette had seemed to doubt the profession of love she’d had. Was it because—like him—he’d felt like none of those women had known him well enough to love him?
Only his friends knew him well enough to love him.
But if he wanted Bette’s love, he would have to let her know him. Really know him. Not just what she thought she knew about him. After working for him for two years, she probably already knew him better than most. And then he’d told her more than he had anyone else.
Damn.
Who was conning whom?
Bette Monroe was far more dangerous than he’d thought. Even if she was the mole, she was only a danger to the firm. Now she had become a danger to him...
* * *
Bette flinched as she felt a twinge of guilt. Maybe she should have waited for Simon to return to the office before she left. But he hadn’t asked her to stay. Maybe he had assumed that she would.
But she’d finished her work. Most important, she’d listed the duties for her job description. He needed to know that no matter how much charm he turned on her, she wasn’t staying. These two weeks were already cutting in to valuable time that she needed to come up with more designs.
Pride coursed through her. She’d accomplished what she’d always dreamed of doing. She had her own line and for the premier retailer of lingerie worldwide. They loved her creativity and innovation.
She could not disappoint them or herself. She couldn’t sacrifice her dream for a man. She had too many friends who had. Her mother and sister had done that and now lived dull lives of quiet resentment. She had no intention of ever winding up like them.
She didn’t need a man.
But she wanted one...
An emptiness stretched inside her, an emptiness she was never aware of until she had started having sex with Simon, until he’d filled her.
Completed her.
She shook her head and laughed at herself. While she loved designing lingerie, she was not some hopeless romantic. She didn’t need a man to complete her. She didn’t need Simon.
She needed to focus on her designs. So she returned her attention to the sketch pad lying across her bed. Tightening her fingers around her pen, she swept it across the page as she designed a corset with, of course, her signature bow. Bette’s Beguiling Bows—that was the name of her line. She put the bow at the bottom, though, so it would sit atop her ass, where Simon loved her bows. Even when she had her clothes on, he skimmed his fingers over her skirt until he found it.
What would he think of this design?
She couldn’t wait to sew up a prototype to get his opinion. But that would take a couple of days and...she only had four before she left Street Legal. That didn’t necessarily mean that their relationship would have to end. But then it wasn’t really a relationship.
She wasn’t sure what the hell it was.
And she didn’t think he knew, either.
Her doorbell rang, and her pen shot across the page as her heart leaped. It could have been a friend. She’d shared her new address, with the ones who hadn’t already known it, when they’d called to complain about being MIA the past week. She’d explained that she needed to finish up things at work before she could leave. But what she needed to finish the most at work was whatever this thing with Simon was.
No. They could not continue seeing each other once she left. She would be too busy. And he was too...Simon. He would grow bored soon, if he hadn’t already.
The doorbell rang again, as if someone was leaning against the button. And she knew that he hadn’t grown bored yet. Smiling, she headed toward the door. A quick glance out the peephole confirmed her suspicions regarding the identity of her visitor.
It wasn’t one of her girlfriends.
Her pulse quickened, and her skin tingled. As she opened the door, she asked the question she’d wondered the last time he’d shown up at her apartment, “How do you keep getting past security?”
“I know the doorman,” he said, his face flushing slightly as he looked away.
“You dated someone in the building,” she guessed.
He nodded.
“A model?”
A model had recommended the building to her. Her friend Muriel also had an apartment in it.
He nodded again. And his face grew a little redder. But she realized he wasn’t embarrassed when he held out a crumpled-up piece of paper to her. He was mad.
She sighed and stepped back as he strode into her apartment. “I already know you crumpled up my resignation,” she reminded him. “It still doesn’t change the fact that I’m leaving.”
“You made that clear when you left this on my desk,” he said.
And she saw what the paper was. “Ah, my job description,” she said. “I figured that would help you when you post the job, which you should have done last week.”
“Bette...”
“Unless you intend to just hire someone through a temp agency,” she continued. “That’s your prerogative.”
“Yes, it is,” he said. “It’s my business. Isn’t that what you keep saying to me?”
She smiled at his grumpiness.
“This isn’t funny,” he said.
“You really aren’t used to it, are you?” she asked. “Your charm not getting you your way.”
He tensed and stared down at her as if he’d just realized that was the case. “It’s not exactly like you’re immune to me,” he said as he stepped closer to her. And as if he’d once again taken her words as a challenge, he touched her, sliding his thumb across the fullness of her bottom lip.
Her breath escaped in a gasp as desire raced through her. But he sighed wistfully, as well.
“I’m not immune to you, either,” he said. “You make me forget...”
“What?” she asked.
But he just shook his head.
“To post my job?” she teased.
“How can I forget that?” he asked. “When you keep nagging me about it?”
She took the crumpled-up piece of paper from his hand. “You didn’t like my job description?”
“I think some things are missing,” he said.
“Like what?”
He slid his hands over her ass. “Like ‘must look good in a tight skirt.’”
She’d been so eager to start working on her designs that she hadn’t changed yet. She’d only taken off her cardigan. The camisole she wore beneath it was silk and so thin that it was evident that her nipples had tightened. They pushed against the fabric as his fingers traced the bow on her underwear.
“And ‘must wear lingerie under those tight skirts.’”
She was on board with that. She needed to sell out her line to impress the retailer and extend her contract with them. “Might be kind of hard for a man to find skirts and corsets big enough.”
He chuckled and lowered his head to hers, pressing a quick kiss against her lips. “I never knew how funny you are, Bette Monroe,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m quitting Street Legal to devote myself full-time to my stand-up act,” she said.
He chuckled again but then sighed. “Hell, maybe you are.”
It would probably be more believable to most than finding out she was a lingerie designer.
“I feel like I barely know you at all.”
It was true. He barely did. But she’d done that to protect herself. She didn’t want to get too close to him. She didn’t want to really fall for him.
“What are you going to do once you quit?”
She tensed.
And his grumpiness returned as, his voice gruff with irritation, he asked, “How can that still be none of my business?”
“What do you think has changed?” she asked.
“I’ve seen you naked.”
She smiled and shook her head.
“I haven’t?” he asked with an arched brow. “Do you have a body double I’ve been having sex with, then?”
She laughed and said, “You’ve definitely seen me without my clothes. But you haven’t really seen me naked.” Telling him about the hopes and dreams she had worked so hard to pursue would have truly been the way she would have lain herself bare to him. And she wasn’t ready to do that with someone she couldn’t trust.
His brow furrowed as if he was confused.
So she added, “I haven’t seen you naked, either. Not really. I don’t know much more about you than Allison McCann has put out in the press releases for Street Legal.”
He cocked his head and studied her face, skepticism on his handsome one. “Really? After working for me for two years...”
“I know how you’ve been the past two years,” she said. “About how hard you work...” She smiled to soften her next words. “How hard you play...”
Because the conversation was getting so serious between them, she wanted to play now. She was far more comfortable with that than with the conversation heading where it was—into very personal and private matters of hearts and souls.
She wasn’t ready to let him see either her heart or her soul. Not now—not when they had so little time left to be together and not when she was beginning to feel so damn vulnerable with him.
She stepped closer to him until her body pressed against his. Arching her hips into his, into the erection straining against the fly of his suit pants, she teased, “I love how hard you play...”
He narrowed his eyes as if he was completely aware that she was trying to distract him and he wondered why. But he couldn’t resist her any easier than she could resist him. Those narrowed eyes darkened as his pupils dilated, and his chest began to rise and fall as his breathing grew faster and shallower.
Her pulse quickened even more than it had when he rang the bell. He excited her so damn much with his touch and his kiss.
But he didn’t touch or kiss her. He just continued to stare at her. And she knew she wasn’t the only one who was afraid of being seen naked—truly naked. Simon wasn’t any more comfortable about laying himself bare to her.
She’d once thought that he didn’t have a heart or a soul. But now she knew he had them. He just hid them to protect them, like she did.
And knowing that about him, knowing that they had something in common, scared her even more. She could not fall in love with Simon Kramer.