Chapter Four

Carrie

I wake Monday morning to sunlight and the memory of Reid Maxwell between my legs that has me throwing aside the blanket and pressing my hands to my face. I hate that man. He took everything from me, even the damn orgasm I didn’t want him to have. I let out a very unladylike growl and climb out of bed, resolved to survive this day. Today will be my last day at West Enterprises, the company my father founded and took public. He’s already gone, in a Reid Maxwell driven hostile takeover. It’s all Reid. He did this, but in truth, this was coming anyway. I already knew from my father that I was going to be phased out and quickly. I already knew we were going to fumble the ball before we did. My father took risks that were out of character, and dangerous.

After my date with Reid Maxwell, I might be on a job hunt sooner than I might have been, but at least I leave on my terms, and after showing that man he was human. I will not go down a slave to Reid Maxwell and his investors.

I shower and dress in my lucky pale pink dress with a perfect pencil skirt, right along with the black Jimmy Choos my father bought me when I graduated Yale law school and then claimed my own office in his company. I was to be legal counsel for the company, overseeing the brokering of some of the biggest real estate investments our company booked. In the past ten years, I became so much more; he checked out on day-to-day operations. I ran this place, I brokered deals. I became, I am, the face of the company, when my father often was not.

I leave my apartment, which is mine, all mine, thanks to a huge real estate deal I brokered for a downtown Denver complex halfway across the country. It’s not big, only two thousand square feet, but it has a gorgeous city view, and the right payments for me on my own. Now, nothing is certain, and the payment feels large, so very large. I step onto the street, only a few blocks from the office, which was another reason I chose my apartment. There was never going to be a time that I wasn’t living my work at West Enterprises. Until today.

Overtaken by emotions I rarely allow myself to feel, I stop at a coffee shop just to slow down the day. I order two of my favorite hazelnut lattes and skip any food. I don’t know if I can even drink the coffee, let alone eat. The second latte is for my assistant, Sallie, who not only loves this drink as well, but who I adore. We aren’t really friends—work and friends don’t work—but maybe we will be now. I won’t be her boss.

I enter the offices and wave to the receptionist before walking down a long hallway to cut left and then right to the executive offices. Once I’m on the other side of the glass doors, Sallie, who is a beautiful blonde with an equally beautiful personality, gives me a beaming smile. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” I say, setting her cup on her desk. “Thank you for everything you do.”

“I love what I do,” she assures me. “Thank you.”

I head to my office door, but I pause just before entering to stare at my father’s dark office and the empty desk in front of it. Jessie, his assistant, is on a two-week vacation he granted her. I’m going to have to call her tonight. I enter my office and scan the photos on my desk; me with my father, me with the staff, me at Yale graduation when I felt this journey started. Me with Kiki, my dog, my best friend, who is gone now, and that’s still really raw. I want to scoop them all into the box next to my desk, but as I round it and set the box on top, I resist. I don’t want to scare the staff, but what is going to happen when I leave?

I need to do something, so I stuff my stapler into the box on my desk, preparing to be walked out any minute, and yeah, it’s a stapler, but Reid Maxwell doesn’t get my office supplies. He’s getting everything else and then some. I have a flashback of my dress hiked to my waist, that man on his knee, his hands on my hips, and his mouth—well, everywhere. I swallow hard with the memory as I’ve had too many times in the last few days. I never planned to actually have sex with the man, which technically I didn’t, but Lord help me, I might as well have. And the truth is, had he not given me the opportunity to cuff him when I did, I would have. I don’t know how I could want a man the way I wanted him when I hate him the way I do. He’s just so—

That thought is cut off by a commotion in the hallway. “Sir!” I hear my assistant Sallie shout. “Sir!”

I stand up, certain this is where I get escorted out. I thought I was ready. I thought I could handle this, but my hands are shaking and my heart is in my throat and—Reid walks into my office, and I can barely breathe. He’s here, not some random person he sent to get rid of me. That’s how pissed off he is about those cuffs. He stops just inside the door and scans the space, taking in my conference table and sitting area before refocusing those ice blue eyes on me, and just that easily he consumes the room, power radiating off him. Tall, broad, and devastatingly, arrogantly male in a perfectly fitted gray pinstripe suit, his long legs eat up the space between the doorway and my desk, those damn eyes of his pinning me in a stare.

“Hello, Samantha,” he says.

I lift my chin, not about to cower. “I’m surprised you came,” I say, “but then that’s the point, right? To take me off guard?”

“Actually, you came,” he points out. “I didn’t have that pleasure.”

Heat rushes over me and before I can form a reply, Sallie appears at the endcap of my desk between us. “I’m sorry, Carrie. He just charged in and—”

Reid looks at her. “You need to leave myself and Ms. West alone now.”

She gives me a desperate look. I nod. “It’s okay, Sallie. Mr. Maxwell and I have company business.”

She doesn’t look convinced, but she slowly backs up and heads for the door. “Shut it behind you,” Reid orders, his eyes focused on me, sharp, hard, and somehow intimate, like he’s thinking about where his mouth has been and wants me to do the same.

I am.

Lord help me, I am.

The door shuts, and he flicks a look at the box on my desk. “Going somewhere?”

“Isn’t that why you’re here? To personally fire me, maybe even walk me out of the door?”

He leans forward, his hands on my desk, his eyes, those ice blue eyes, fierce, while his woodsy male scent reminds me of how much I smelled like him when I left that hotel room. “I’m not the kind of man that sends someone else to do a job I can do better. And I can do this one better.”

Anger flares in my belly. “Bring it on,” I say, leaning on the desk toward him, my intent to square off with him, but it’s a mistake I can’t back away from. He’s close, so damn close. “Whatever you have planned,” I add fiercely, “no matter how bad it is, will be worth leaving you in that room in those cuffs.”

“And every second I was in that hotel room, I tasted you on my lips, Samantha. You left a lasting impression.”

We stare at each other and Lord help me yet again, my nipples are tight and I’m wet. Ridiculously wet by way of a man that has destroyed my life. “Do what you’re going to do,” I breathe out.

His lips twitch again. “Oh, I will and I am.” He pushes off the desk and only then do I even realize he’s brought a briefcase that he apparently sat in the chair next to him. I quickly straighten while he grabs a folder and tosses it on the desk. “You have six months to buy back the business. The conditions are outlined in that contract. I’ll summarize. You will produce a certain level of revenue in that timeframe which allows my family and the panel of investors I used for this transaction to leave feeling adequately compensated. They’ve all agreed, for one reason and one reason only. I’ve agreed to take control. I’ll be here on-site.”

“Why would you even take your time to do this?”

“I have my reasons that I don’t intend to share. Study the document. You have one hour to decide. If you don’t sign the deal, it’s over and you’re done here.”

I flip open the folder and start reading. He’s made it to the door when I read the ridiculously large figure I have to earn in six months. “This is just a game to you,” I say. “A way to taunt me or fuck over one of the investors, or whatever it is. I’m not playing.”

He turns to face me. “You based that assessment on what?”

“The profit you want me to produce. I can’t do this. It can’t be done.”

He walks back to me and leans on the desk again. “The woman that not only seduced me into following her to her room, who managed to get me to give her an orgasm, and then cuffed me and left me to think about her, wouldn’t say can’t. You even paid for that orgasm with a company check.” He straightens again. “Be Samantha or fail. She doesn’t think the number is too much. Your father made you feel that number was impossible. It’s not. If it were, I wouldn’t have put my name on this deal with my investors. You have one hour to get from ‘can’t’ to ‘can’. I’ll be in your father’s office, which is now mine.” He turns and walks to the door again, and this time he doesn’t stop. He leaves.