Taken by the Raider by Dani Collins (7)

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Aubrey kissed her father’s cheek then introduced him to Griffen.

“Call me Oscar,” the senator said with his election winning smile as he shook Griffen’s hand. “I thought this was going to be a daddy-daughter lunch. We haven’t seen much of you lately. Work seems to be keeping you busy.” His gaze moved between her and Griffen with fatherly curiosity, noting Griffen’s proprietary touch on her elbow. “Or something has.”

Aubrey couldn’t find a smile. She caught the maître d’s attention and pointed to a quiet corner at the far side of the restaurant.

“I’m getting the feeling,” Griffen said in a dangerous undertone as he walked beside her between the tables, “That you chose a public location for a reason.”

“Daddy doesn’t see Drake unless I arrange something like this,” she explained as he held her chair.

Her father stilled as he overheard her, gaze cutting warily to hers.

“Griffen knows,” she confirmed, splaying her painted fingernails on the white of the tablecloth as she waited for the men to settle. She looked at them to ensure she had their full attention. “You need to know that,” she said to her father, “because I’m leaving my position as CEO of Cutting Edge. Effectively immediately.”

Her father was hollow-cheeked, her brother dismayed. Both men looked to Griffen. He kept an impassive look on his face.

“Cutting Edge remains one of Aubrey’s responsibilities,” Griffen said, then sent her a look to emphasize that.

“I’m not taking the promotion.” Her heart shook in her chest as she said it.

Their gazes held. Clashed.

“You’re wasting your potential. Tell her,” he said, glancing at both men then jerking his head toward her. “She thinks it’s nepotism, but she’s ready to do more. Maybe she’ll believe it if it comes from you two.”

“Aubrey, if what I said the other day—” Drake began.

“That wasn’t it,” she cut in. “But the fact you questioned how much my personal life has been impacting work tells me this is the right decision. And since this is the only decision I’m allowed to make…” She aimed that at Griffen.

Griffen swore under his breath. “Is this about moving the company? It makes sense.”

“It does,” she interjected flatly. “Okay? You’re right.” She had to cut herself off and wait for the waiter to take their drink orders.

When he left, she held up a hand, forestalling Griffen’s arguments.

“Listen, if I would rather make a poor business decision to make a point with you, then I don’t deserve to run a lemonade stand. If I can’t trust my decisions, let alone anyone else trusting the ones I’m making, then I shouldn’t be working for you. You?” She said to her brother. “I love working with you, too. I’m sorry to leave you in the lurch.”

*

Griffen put together from that remark that she had overheard him talking to Drake this morning. All he could remember was how exposed he’d felt when Drake had accused him of coming after Cutting Edge to turn Aubrey into a call girl. How low and undeserving.

But that wasn’t what he’d done, was it? He’d orchestrated her coming back into his life, yes. He’d known nature would take its course from there. That was all. Now she was talking about refusing the promotion and leaving Cutting Edge?

“Aubrey, you can’t do this,” he said.

“I know you think I’m a lightweight, Griffen, but my father taught me to make the hard decisions when it’s for the greater good.” She reached to cover her father’s hand. “He thinks he has us both in his pocket, Dad.”

Griffen exhaled, but it didn’t lessen the impact of that jar upside the head.

Her father gave Griffen a look of weary fatalism, but Griffen didn’t protest that he wouldn’t use what he knew. How could he? He already had. Fuck.

“I suppose it was only a matter of time. What are you going to do?” he asked Aubrey. “Take her to your uncle’s?”

Her mother, he meant. Griffen started thinking about cousins out west and his whole body began to cleave with the distance opening between them.

“I’m hoping the attention will pass quickly.” She squeezed her father’s hand. “If Mom agrees, we can quote her in the press release saying that even though Drake’s existence was a shock, and we needed some time as a family to come to terms with it, she doesn’t want to stay silent on his existence. Not when the product he made saved her daughter’s life. We’re all very proud of him.”

Aubrey added the last with a misty smile toward her brother.

Griffen had to hand it to her. When push came to shove, she was absolutely prepared to stick the knife in and turn it hard.

The waiter returned to take their orders and Aubrey used it as a cue to rise.

“I can’t stay,” she told the server, gathering her purse and coat.

Griffen rose and took her arm. “I’ll walk you out.”

“Please stay.” She touched his chest and her splayed fingers left blisters on his breastbone. Her voice quavered. “I have to go see my mother. You need to work out with Drake how things will move forward. Dad will want to know. There may be financial considerations on his end.”

“You really aren’t staying to weigh in on that.” He couldn’t believe all his leverage with her was gone.

“Why would I?” she asked softly, and there it was. The look that searched for the intangible in him.

All she saw was emptiness. He knew that was all she saw, because that was all he was.

*

His hand wasn’t squeezing her arm, but it was solid. Aubrey sensed that if she tried to peel his fingers open, it wouldn’t happen.

Ask me to have dinner. Ask me for sex. Ask me for anything. If their relationship was more than extortion, now was the time to say so.

Nothing. Just that expression of infuriated disbelief.

“See, if there’s no future—” Her voice was very thin, barely audible to her own ears. “Then there’s no future. That’s how it works.”

His breath hissed like she’d elbowed him in the diaphragm. His touch fell away.

For a moment, she felt guilty, like she’d wounded someone who didn’t deserve it. But the worst she was doing was frustrating an ego that demanded to rule all things at all times.

She still walked away feeling sadistic and masochistic and heartbroken.

*

Aubrey stayed in her old room at her parents’ mansion for the next few days, using her mother’s anguish as a distraction from her own suffering while the press went mad. They moved on when a far more recent case of infidelity was revealed.

By then, Drake had made a very well-documented visit to his father’s house where he was greeted at the door by his estranged father and the senator’s wife, Mr. and Mrs. Hargrave. All very civilized if stilted once he was inside.

“Should I be here?” Drake asked Aubrey when they had a moment alone.

“It’s hard, but she’s had months to accept you exist. This is the next stage and, honestly, I’m glad I can talk about you now. It was awkward while I was at Cutting Edge. Mom would start to ask me how the job was going. I’d start to say your name. Dad would look like he had gas. We’d all pretend you were just some guy who happened to work where I work.” She shrugged. “I can relax now. How is work? I miss it.”

“You mean, how is Woodlock?”

She folded her arms, shrugging.

“I know you overheard us that day.”

She brought her head up.

“I have a camera outside the door.”

“Of course, you do.” He was paranoid about his designs and proprietary information. She should have suspected.

“I was trying to get him to admit he came after you, not Cutting Edge.”

She snorted, blinking once to push back the instant sting behind her eyes. “Good effort, but futile.”

Drake made a noise. “He didn’t stay long at lunch. Did Oscar tell you? The last thing he said to us was that if anything ever happened to you again, and he didn’t get a call, there would be hell to pay. I believed him.”

“Oh, Drake, don’t,” she breathed, trying to suppress the rise of hope that rose in her so big and sharp it strained her bones. “I can’t do that to myself again. I can’t let myself believe and…”

“Sorry,” he muttered, pushing his hands into his pockets. “I keep telling myself not to get between you two.” He made a face of self-disgust. “I want you to be happy.”

“Thank you,” she said sincerely, hugging his arm. “That’s sweet.”

Then she pulled away as she remembered the last time she’d heard him say he didn’t want to get between her and Griffen.

She scowled. “You, my friend, are going to watch Pretty Woman with me. That is not what that movie is about.”

*

She arrived home with a small bag of groceries since her milk would have gone off in the week she’d been at her parents’. It was late. She hadn’t wanted to make it easy for any lingering press and she hadn’t wanted to rattle around in her empty house until bedtime.

Better, she had thought, to wake here and face her blank whiteboard of a life in the morning. She would clean the fridge, dust, start looking for a job…

“Aubrey.”

The rasp of her name made her drop her keys in surprise while shooting a flare of excitement through her entire being.

She bent to catch them up, rattling the grocery bag, instantly as weak as that day in his office when she’d fainted.

“You scared the hell out of me,” she accused, squinting through the dark.

His silhouette slouched in one of the cushioned chairs that sat on her porch. It had to be damp and uncomfortable.

“What are you doing here?”

“Wishing I still smoked.” He sounded like he’d been smoking. Even looked it as his breath puffed in the faint light from the streetlamps. “Wondering if the neighbors have called the police about the lunatic who spends way too much time casing this house.”

“My number hasn’t changed,” she said, trying to sound dry as she set aside the grocery bag and folded her arms against the frosty air. “You could have called if you wanted to see me.”

Anytime. That’s all I need, Griffen.

“Do you want to come inside?” she asked. “It’s cold out here.”

He snorted. “If I come inside, I’m going to take you to bed. Not that I mind breaking house rules, but I think it would bother you.”

Not here to offer a ring then. How stupid to be so devastated by that. She looked down the street, seeing nothing.

“You know how I really engineered that first takeover from my father?” he asked, not moving from that lolling posture on her wicker armchair. “I was sleeping with his new wife.”

“Of course, you were.” She looked down at her boots, hating to hear about him with other women.

“He married her when I was graduating high school. She was only a couple of years older than I was. I thought about quitting my job, getting my own place… Starting from the bottom. But that was the problem. I hated my old man, but I had climbed high enough I was putting my own deals together. I was making money for the company and myself. So I kept my eye on the prize and stayed a little longer. It wasn’t so bad. At least I was getting laid. She preferred me in the sack, or so she said. Dad was too stoned to get it up half the time, so…”

Aubrey looked at her keys, thought about going inside. It was really chilly out here and the conversation sucked.

“With her help, I was able to clean out most of his accounts in an afternoon. I paid her a nice chunk of change to leave for Miami and never come back. Then I used my father’s money to bribe a few of the holdouts on the board. I took over and Dad crawled into his empty house where he spent what was left of his money on booze and drugs.”

“After he tried to kill you.”

“Yeah.”

“Griffen.” She moved into the shadows to sink into the chair that faced his. “I get that you don’t trust people or…love.” The word stuck in her throat. It was hard, so hard to expose herself to him. He would use it, she knew he would.

“You don’t want to marry this, Aubrey. You can’t love me. Not someone who does shit like that. Can you?”

“Are you really asking? Because what I don’t want is to be the woman you slept with to get my brother’s company.”

He made a noise of bitter humor. “Do you have any idea how much I hated the idea of you sleeping with him? All I could think about was squeezing him until his head popped off. After I realized he was your brother, I cooled down and realized that leveling his company might piss you off a little too much.”

“You think?” she muttered, tucking her cold fingers between her thighs. “You know, you could have just called me. Why go the takeover route?”

He made a choking noise. “I didn’t imagine for one minute you’d come back to me if I called. Why the hell would you want this, Aubrey? I can’t even call myself a first class son of a bitch because I’m definitely third. You’re…you. Look where you come from.”

The shadow of his hand indicated the house. The old money and the woman who had married a senator.

She scratched her cheek. “Um. My dad had an affair while his wife was falling apart over the death of their son. My grandparents inherited from bootleggers. None of us is perfect, Griffen.”

“You are.”

She laughed with genuine humor, loud in the crystal silence of a frosty night. “I regularly do filthy things with my boss. On his desk.”

“Yeah.” His voice became raw and throaty in the way that was intensely sexual. “You do. It’s perfect. Every time.”

She wasn’t feeling the cold anymore, but still asked, “Do you want to come inside?”

“Of course, I do. But that’s not why I’m here. I came to offer you a job. I really do want you to take that VP position. No strings.”

“Really?”

He swore with weary amusement. “Who am I kidding? If you’re anywhere near me, I’m going to make a pass. It’s all I can do not to make one now. Take some work off my plate so we both have more time for each other. If you want to start by just running Cutting Edge, fine. I’ll accept that and grind you down over time for the VP position.”

She had to laugh at how blatant he was with his motives, but her insides were cracked open and yawning painfully.

“Do you feel something for me, Griffen?” She braced herself. “You don’t have to call it love if it’s not that. I just need to know I mean something to you. That I’m not going to get another Marla in the face when I least expect it. If there’s something to build on, then yes, you can come inside.”

“I don’t know what love is,” he said on a heavy breath. “Amassing wealth has been the only thing that has mattered to me for years. You’re right that it has become points on a scoreboard, but there were some tough and ugly times when I was a kid. I don’t ever want to be back at zero ever again.”

She was shivering convulsively, but only nodded, telling herself she understood. She tried to weigh whether it was enough. She feared she was weak enough to believe it was.

“Then you came along and you were so snooty every time I made a dick move,” he said on a puff of laughter. “I thought it was fun, Aubrey. You challenged me at work and the sex was great and I didn’t see any need to change one damned thing. Then you left and I had nothing to look forward to. ‘If there’s no future there’s no future,’” he quoted, surging to his feet. “I hated you that day. I hated you for being able to hurt me without even touching me. You hurt me so fucking deep. So well.”

“Oh, Griffen, I’m—”

“Don’t apologize,” he cut in. “Christ, have you ever heard me apologize for anything? I owe you so many…” He stood backlit by the streetlights, hands pushed into his pants pockets, a black jacket adding bulk to his silhouette. “But this is who I am. If you want a future with this, then you have one. But understand that if you give yourself to me, that’s it. There will be no take backs. I already know that other women don’t measure up, so it has to be you. If I go inside with you now, I’ll buy you a ring. I’ll even give you babies if you want some, mostly because I know you won’t let me fuck them up the way I was fucked up. But I will never leave.”

“Is that a promise or a threat?”

“Yes.”

She stood and offered her keys. “Deal.”

He wrapped his big hand around hers, leaving the keys in her palm as he tugged her close. He opened his jacket and pulled her into the warmth, folding the edges behind her so she was caged against him, his lips against her temple.

“I feel more for you than I thought I was capable of feeling. More than makes me comfortable. You scared the hell out of me when you fainted. Don’t do that again.”

She smiled against his collar, whispering what had been floating out of her heart this whole time. “I love you.”

He caught his breath, shuddering like it was a blow. His head hung closer to hers, cheek to cheek, lips under her ear, his hand in her hair tightening. “Jesus, Aubrey.”

She clenched her eyes tight, but the dampness escaped onto her lashes. “Come inside,” she pleaded. “I want to make love.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, catching at her mouth with his. Their kiss tasted different. Sweeter. “Me, too.”

But when they entered, they didn’t race upstairs. They didn’t do it on the stairs, as she half expected. They kissed. They barely left off touching each other as he helped her with her coat and she put away the handful of groceries. He poured wine and turned on the fireplace and they stood looking at the flames, sipping, leaning into each other.

“I couldn’t leave you that day,” he said with quiet gravity. “Your mother kept trying to shoo me out like an unwashed tomcat. I knew I had no business hanging around so I could issue ultimatums, but I couldn’t make myself leave. What if something happened? I don’t know what use I thought I’d be, but—Don’t say you were fine.” He scowled at her.

She pushed her chastised face into the hollow of his shoulder and he rubbed his jaw against her hair.

“I kept thinking this house was so perfect, just like you.” His voice was a rumble against her cheek. “And I was such a piece of shit for imagining all the ways I could make it mine. Except they all involved taking it from you and that defeated the purpose if you weren’t in it.”

She set down her wine and wrapped both her arms around his waist, gazing up at him with indulgence. “Mom said, ‘He’s a very determined man.’” She adopted her mother’s finishing school tones. “‘I hope he uses that power for good instead of evil. I’m sure he could accomplish a great deal.’”

“Think of the possibilities,” he drawled.

“So much potential.”

He set aside his glass and stroked her throat. “It’s the thought that counts, right?”

“Mmm,” she agreed ruefully. “Actions speak much quieter.”

“Can you hear what I’m thinking right now?”

“I could make an educated guess.” She pressed her pelvis into the hard shape behind his fly.

“I’m thinking I love you.” He cupped her face in his hands and frowned when her eyes grew misty. “I want to show you. I want to be inside you all the time, but the words in my head are, I love you. Why are you crying? Don’t cry.”

“Don’t boss me,” she said. Maybe she thought it, because he covered her mouth with his.

And a little while later, when they writhed on her bed, sheets thrown back from their damp bodies, his hips moving with slow power between her legs as though every thrust was a vow, she heard him.

“I love you, Aubrey. I love you.”

The End

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