CHAPTER TWO
Candace
“Wow, that was crazy,” Stephanie huffed as we folded the cocktail tablecloths.
Crazy awesome.
“Thank God we had enough food,” I answered.
She nodded, eyes wide.
“Thanks again for coming in,” I told her for about the twentieth time that night.
My friend smiled. “No problem. What’s a couple nights a month spent catering? It helps keep me humble.”
I laughed. “What do you mean?”
“It reminds me that I never, never want to go back to waiting tables. Put me in a cubicle any day, thank you very much.”
I laughed, though I didn’t agree at all. As much as some people loathed customer service, I loved it. It was that feeling you got when you worked so hard to get something perfect, be it a dish or a floral arrangement, and then saw the excited look on someone’s face when they got to experience it first hand. The way their eyes lit up when they tasted your scones or the excited gasps that left their lips when they walked into a room you’d spent all day decorating. Those kinds of experiences were irreplaceable.
“Tell me something,” Stephanie softly said, shuffling down the cocktail table toward me. “Who’s the guy that’s been staring at you all night?”
I bit back a smile. “Is he here now?”
“Yep. Don’t look now, but he’s over by the door.”
This time I couldn’t hold the grin back. “Black hair? Gray eyes?”
“Sexy as sin physique? Oh, yeah.”
“We talked earlier. Niall something.”
“If he’s still here he must want to talk to you.”
My eyes flicked up at the rest of the room. The last few guests had petered out only a few minutes ago.
Someone loudly cleared their throat. I turned around to find Niall walking up to us. He inclined his head in Steph’s direction and then set his eyes on me.
Stephanie grabbed the arm’s load of tablecloths. “I’ll go check on the, ah, keg. I’ll see if there’s anything left, you know?”
“You do that,” I agreed, trying to hide my pleased smile.
“Can I take you out for a drink?” Niall asked before Stephanie was even out of earshot.
The guy wasn’t shy.
I liked that.
Having spent way too much time with men who beat around the bush or played games thinking that made them interesting, I’d lost my patience for such things years ago.
“That sounds nice,” I said. “But I don’t know when I’ll finish here.”
“Oh, we’re good.”
Stephanie was back. Or maybe she’d never really left. Maybe she’d been just out of view, spying on my conversation.
“What?” I asked.
“I said we’re good,” she repeated. “Dan, Emily, and I can get it.”
I hesitated. “I’m not going to leave you.”
“We’re almost done. The bar is all cleaned up and the food packed. We just need to carry the stuff downstairs.” She stared me down. I could practically read the message in her eyes.
Having been my friend for over five years, Stephanie knew way more about me than probably anyone else. She knew the only spouse I had was work. She also knew that I dated when I could, but that, for the most part, my dating efforts had all ended in colossal failures. She was always trying to hook me up with her husband’s friends or people from the realty office she worked at.
I tried to go out with guys when I could. I just found dating exhausting.
But Niall… the second I saw him I hadn’t been able to stop myself. I wasn’t even trying to be flirtatious when I talked to him at the bar. The words just came from my lips of their own accord.
Or maybe they came from my lady parts that hadn’t been touched in nearly three months.
I looked over Stephanie’s shoulder. Sure enough, Dan and Emily were already folding up the bar.
“All right,” I agreed, turning back to Niall. “It looks like I can go.”
“Great,” he said, like he hadn’t expected me to give any other answer.
I checked with Dan and Emily to make sure they were good and then grabbed my purse from where I’d stashed it inside one of our big plastic bins.
One drink. That was all I had time for.
Unfortunately.
Niall pushed the door open, and we strolled down the gleaming wooden hallway.
“The cocktail party seems to have been a success,” he commented.
“Says the man who didn’t even want to be there.”
He smirked and pushed his hands into his pockets. “Not at the beginning. The company I found near the end made it more bearable.”
I ground my teeth together so I wouldn’t smile wide. Really, what was it about this guy? Every time he spoke to me I felt an incredible urge to giggle like a school girl. He was hot, that was for sure. And suave.
It was something else too though. Something ineffable.
Or it’s because my vagina hasn’t seen a man in eleven weeks.
That last theory was entirely possible.
We stopped at the elevator, and he hit the button for the ground floor. A few seconds passed and then the doors opened, revealing an entirely empty compartment. Niall gestured for me to go first and I went, feeling his eyes on my back with each step.
In the elevator, he leaned nonchalantly against the silver handle bar. “What’s the name of your company?”
“Tesla Catering.”
“Really?”
“Really. My sister named it.”
“So you don’t have any sort of relation to the Tesla?”
“Nope.” Don’t I wish I had some claim to the supercharged Tesla legacy.
“Adoration?”
“Not really.” I laughed. “I know it’s kind of funny. She came up with it one night when we were pretty drunk. I didn’t have any better names up my sleeve, so I figured I’d keep it.”
“And here I thought I’d found my spiritual doppelganger.”
I cocked my hip and placed a hand on it. “You’re a fan.”
His cool gray eyes stared into mine. “Immensely.”
A shiver went down my back. No way had he not intended for that answer to hold a double meaning.
The doors dinged open, and we crossed the lobby and entered the tepid summer night. The evening held that mid-summer stickiness, made more bearable by a slight breeze.
“Where to?” I asked Niall, hooking my purse over my shoulder and stepping toward the curb to signal for a taxi.
His hand on my wrist halted me. A black limo was already pulling up to us. A driver jumped out and came around to open the door that had conveniently landed right in front of Niall and me.
“Oh,” I simply said, feeling stupid.
I climbed into the limo and Niall followed, taking a seat directly across from me.
“Where’s your neighborhood?” he asked.
“Bridgeport.”
“Convenient.”
“You?”
“I have a place near the Loop. We’re neighbors.”
“Semi.”
Like, he lived right in the middle of the Loop, or what? The area mostly contained businesses. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to live there, unless they worked in the area and wanted to be just a hop and a skip away from their office. And if that was the case, how much did a nice apartment there cost?
I’d known as soon as I saw the guy’s suit that he had style. I didn’t figure he had serious money until the limo showed up. Certainly, he hadn’t rented it just for a ride to a casual cocktail event.
Which meant he possessed his own personal driver.
“Anywhere around there sound nice?” Niall asked. Before I could answer, he went on. “Or we could go to my penthouse. It has great views and an unopened bottle of A.H. Hirsch Reserve.”
I didn’t know if that was bourbon, whiskey, or what. But I knew the guy was inviting me over for a hookup.
Which I didn’t do.
Okay, not usually.
Maybe just once in a while.
Not because I wanted to have sex with people only once, but because life often made it too complicated for things to go much further than one night. If I had any shortcomings about a guy, I had to stop the relationship right then and there. I didn’t have time to go out a few nights a week and see if we could come to like each other more.
Niall’s knee brushed mine, the space between the two facing seats unnecessarily short. Electricity crackled where his pants touched my bare skin, then traveled up my leg to fill my whole body.
I couldn’t stop looking at him, couldn’t stop staring into those smoky eyes. He stared back at me, his chest heaving up and down. Shaky inhales and exhales filled the limo, both of us to blame.
Screw the drink. Who could wait through that?
I lunged at Niall. He met me halfway, wrapping his arms around me, and pulling me down into his lap. My knees hit the seat on either side of him, my skirt pushing up in the most unladylike way possible.
Our lips collided, his soft velvet mouth good enough to make me feel woozy. Over my back, his palms ran, up then down, then up again. Each time they went south, they went a latitude farther.
I grasped the shoulders of his suit, digging my nails into the fabric as we made out. One of his hands found the back of my head. He twisted some of my hair into a ball and held me in place. I moaned into his mouth, and he lightly bit my bottom lip in response.
God, the burning… it started between my legs and filled me up. My whole body was on fire, and the only thing that mattered in the world was getting some water to toss on those flames.
I shifted my weight closer to him, feeling the brush of his hardness against the top of my inner thigh.
Was I really about to do this? Have sex with a man I only just met, in the back of a limo? It seemed too salacious to be true. But it also felt way, way too right.
Niall’s fingers left my hair to press against the back of my neck at the same time his other hand found and squeezed one of my hips. A guttural moan left my chest and escaped into his mouth. Have sex or not have sex in the limo, it seemed I no longer had a say in the matter. My most primal urges were taking over, and I was tired of working so hard to suppress them. Everyone deserved to go a little wild every once in a while.
I arched my back and pressed my breasts against his chest, teasing us both with the friction. I felt him stiffen against my leg. Our kiss became even deeper, and his hands swirled over my hips and onto my thighs. My skin tingled in anticipation of his touch.
Suddenly the limo came to an abrupt stop, jerking us. My teeth hit Niall’s, and he made a little noise of pain.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“Mr. Lambert.” I jumped at the sudden voice so close to us. I whipped my head around and noticed the small speaker up near the divider.
“Mr. Lambert,” the driver said again. “We’ve hit traffic. Would you like to wait or go the west route?”
Niall hit a button on the console between him and a little bar and spoke into the speaker there. “Let’s wait. We’re in no rush.”
Still straddling Niall, I glanced out the tinted window. The Whole Foods across the street was a familiar one. We were about a fifteen-minute walk away from my apartment. Inviting Niall back there was not an option. And who knew when we would get to his place?
It was nice and comfy in the limo, with his thumbs stroking my thighs.
“So?” he whispered up at me, his voice dripping with every lustful tone possible. “Where were we?”
He buried his face in my neck and bit the sensitive spot below my ear.
“Niall,” I gasped, my eyes falling closed as my head tilted back.
Suddenly, my eyes flew open and my back went rod straight.
Niall… Niall Lambert. The head of Lambert Technologies. Why had I not put two and two together before? Had I really been so distracted by a hot body and a quick wit?
“You’re Niall Lambert,” I said, staring down at him.
A bit of confusion crossed his face. “Yes,” he slowly said.
I continued to gaze down at him. “You own Lambert Technologies.”
His head inclined in acknowledgment. “That is correct.”
Quick as a whip, before I could question myself anymore, I climbed off his lap, pulled my dress down, and got back into my own seat.
I expected him to ask me what was wrong, but he just stared at me, something hot and angry simmering behind those eyes.
I’d heard of Niall Lambert. Nearly everyone in Chicago, whether they were in the tech world or not, knew who he was. It wasn’t even that common of a name, yet I’d somehow managed to miss until now the Niall I’d just made out with in the back of a limo was the Niall Lambert.
A tech tycoon with a, uh, reputation.
Usually, I didn’t pay attention to those kinds of rumors, but I’d heard things about Niall through many grapevines, including a few direct sources. One of them was my friend Melissa, who had an unfortunate weekend with him. According to her, he charmed the panties right off her, an act that included having a hundred roses sent to her office. After two days together and promises to call, he dropped off the face of the earth.
If you believed the stories, which at that point I did, Niall had pulled similar acts on lots of girls.
Not that I was a chaste little prudish nun myself. I had been planning on hooking up with a guy I’d only known a couple hours, after all. But I couldn’t have any respect for a man who did such a thing as what he’d done to Melissa.
And therefore, I couldn’t have much respect for myself if I were to get up with him.
I cleared my throat. “I should go. It’s really late.”
A dark shadow crossed his face. His shoulders bunched, and he went to cross his arms but then stopped himself. “You can’t just walk out into the night. Let me take you home.”
So you can walk me upstairs and seduce me?
As good as that sounded, I also knew it was a bad idea.
“I live right around the corner from here,” I explained, my hand already on the door handle.
Niall’s jaw twitched. He knew something had just happened to change my mind, though whether or not he knew it had to do with his reputation was a mystery.
I expected him to keep protesting, but he just sat there looking furious.
“Good night.” I shot him a quick smile and then climbed from the car.
Once on the sidewalk, I pounded it as quickly as I could, desperate to get away from that limo, desperate to get away from Niall, and desperate to get away from what I craved so, so badly.