The Business of Pleasure

His musings were cut short by the slide of a chain, followed by the snick of a lock disengaging. The door swung open and there she was.

Last night’s seductress was gone. In her place was a fresh-faced ingenue with impossibly wide eyes who looked like she’d stepped out of a laughably wholesome 1960s film.

His gaze slid the length of her body, from the top of her shiny blond ponytail, past her fuzzy white sweater, barely-there jean shorts and down the length of her legs until he reached the tips of her toes, painted bubble-gum pink. Max’s thoughts, however, were anything but virtuous.

Every part of him that she’d touched the night before flared with heat, begging for an encore. He still wanted her. Despite everything he’d found out today. Despite the mounting evidence against her. The heat stirring in his veins iced over at the reminder, and he braced his shoulders against the onslaught of lust. He would not underestimate her again.

“Max?”

Surprised. A little breathless. But no fear. No guilt.

“What are you doing here?”

He ignored the question, shifting his focus over Emma’s left shoulder at the bare, scarred walls of the old apartment. A couple of cardboard boxes were stacked in the middle of the mostly empty room. “If you needed a raise this badly, you should have told me.”

Her forehead creased with puzzlement. “What? Oh.” Her laugh was tinged with embarrassment. “It’s a rental,” she explained, moving out of his way as he stepped past her, onto the threadbare brown carpet. “I never spent much time here anyway.”

Max thought back to the long hours she’d put in at the office. He’d always respected her work ethic. He gestured to the boxes. “Going somewhere?”

She nodded, closing the shoddy excuse for a door, but even as he searched her face for guile, there was none.

“On vacation, actually. Thought I’d see how the other half lives.” Her smile faded at his lack of reaction, and he watched in fascination as her body language grew wary, matching his mood. She’d always been good at reading a room.

“I’m sorry. Where are my manners? Can I get you something to drink?” she asked, heading toward the outdated kitchenette.

Max foiled her attempted retreat by following her, but he stopped at the nearest side of the counter, allowing her to take cover on the far side of it. “Turns out you’re going to have to reschedule that vacation. Something’s come up.” He tossed her contract extension on the counter between them. It landed with a heavy thud. “Sign this.”

That got her attention. She stiffened, a slight frown marring her forehead as she recognized the document. “What is this?”

“Exactly what you think it is,” he confirmed.

“I have a flight to Dubrovnik booked for Monday.”

“Postpone it.”

“I can’t afford—” She stopped herself. Took a deep breath. Then restarted, the way she sometimes did in their project meetings when one of the board members wasn’t taking her ideas seriously. It was the most herself Emma had been since she’d opened the door to him. Well, the most like the Emma he’d thought she was. Ever since Friday night, he wasn’t sure he knew her at all.

“I am not postponing anything. I’ve sold almost everything I own to pay for this trip—my furniture, my clothes, my car. The lease on this place is up on Tuesday, my plane ticket is nonrefundable. I’m going to Croatia on Monday, and you have no say in the matter.”

“Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case. This morning, Soteria Security discovered a spyware program running on your computer.”

She froze at the implicit accusation.

“It was loaded manually and discovered the day after your contract expired. The day after you formally rejected a generous extension of employment. The shallowest of security checks shows that you received an anomalous lump-sum payment of ten thousand dollars and used it to buy an open-ended plane ticket to a country with no extradition policy.”

She paled with each charge, bracing her hands on the counter like she might faint. Or throw up. And despite himself, he wanted to believe in her innocence.

“Do you understand how this looks?”

“What exactly are you accusing me of?” Her voice was small, but she was heartbreakingly brave as she met his eyes.

Why he felt like he’d fallen from grace right then did not bear contemplating.

Max tipped his chin at the contract. “I’m merely offering you a way out of this. Until this security breach is resolved to my satisfaction, you will resume your role as chief analyst of research and development. We will erase everything that happened since you walked into my office and quit.”

She flinched at that, and though he hadn’t been referring to their hot and sweaty desk-fuck, he didn’t correct her misunderstanding. It was best for everyone if they went back to their normal working relationship.

“Report to Vivienne Grant’s office when you arrive on Monday morning. She can draw up an amendment to ensure you’re reimbursed for the wasted plane ticket. And you can let her know if there are any further concerns we’ve failed to address here today. Now, sign the contract.”

“Why are you doing this?”

He would not be swayed by the wounded look in her eyes. He made sure his shrug was dismissive. “It’s nothing personal, Emma. It’s—”

“Business?” she scoffed, her magnificent eyes glinting sharply, like daggers. “Spare me the trite maxims. Just take your bullshit contract and go.”

Max took the centering breath of a sniper setting up a kill shot. “I have millions of dollars and the future of my company invested in the launch of SecurePay. The timing on this is crucial. If the media finds out we’ve been hacked, the project is dead in the water.” Even the prospect of failure, after everything he’d sacrificed over the last five years to bring SecurePay to market, was like a hot poker to his ribs. It was enough to crack his usual icy veneer. “So until this situation has been neutralized and contained, I will do whatever it takes to ensure this launch goes off without a hitch. And that doesn’t include key members of my team fleeing the country in the wake of a goddamn internal security breach!”

Her lips trembled, but she lifted her chin in a magnificent show of bravado. “I don’t work for you anymore, Mr. Whitfield.” His name sounded toxic on her lips. “Keep your money. I don’t want it. I’m leaving Monday morning, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Max respected the rally, the way her dawning anger brought a flush to her cheeks and put the spark back in her eyes.

It was too little, too late, but she didn’t seem to realize that yet. He felt honor bound to make his imminent victory clear. He didn’t want any misunderstandings between them.

“People who’ve been accused of corporate espionage usually have a hard time boarding commercial flights. Or so I’ve heard.”

Her mouth fell open at the threat. “You wouldn’t.”

He kept his gaze level, implacable, until she realized the truth. That he could. And he would. It was best that she understood that from the get-go.

“You bastard.”

Max accepted the epithet with a tip of his chin as he pulled a pen from his inside breast pocket and held it out to her. “Sign the contract, Emma.”

She shot him a mutinous glare as she snatched the pen from his fingers, and his respect notched up again for her ability to know when she was beat. She slashed her signature across the page in black ink and shoved the contract and the pen in his direction.

Despite the heat of the movement, her eyes were ice-cold when they met his. “Get out.”

Always gracious in victory, Max returned the pen to the inside pocket of his suit jacket, then picked up the papers and left.

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