Chapter 5 #2
The loud shrill ring of a phone cut her off.
She jackknifed upright and pushed him back. He looked around for his phone, then realized it didn’t sound like his ring tone.
“Damn,” he muttered and sat next to her as she rearranged her skirt and looked around, slightly dazed, as if waking from a dream.
He wanted to pull her onto his lap. He stopped himself from touching her and swept both of his hands though his hair. The phone shrilled again. She gathered herself, eyed her purse across the room on the kitchen counter, and then stood.
He stood with her automatically and put an arm around her waist, not wanting the moment to end with this interruption.
She squirmed from his hold and shot ahead of him, straightening her clothes and hair as she snatched up her purse, rummaged for her phone, and plucked it out.
The leaden feeling of disappointment rose and then sank to his gut, his shoulders tightening with sharp pain as the excitement of the moment drained from him in a spiral of defeat.
She said hello without even checking who was calling, in a desperate breathy voice as if she were being thrown a life raft.
Damn, damn, damn. This was not good. He recognized regret when he saw it and she was going to regret this big time. More than he already was.
As she spoke quietly into the phone, he rezipped his pants.
He retrieved the envelope from the secretary desk drawer in the hallway.
Hopefully she would still accept it. Hopefully she wouldn’t feel like it was payment for services rendered.
He watched her retrieve her panties and hose from the floor.
But then she’d have to be paying him. The thought made him smile. That’s when he knew, although he might regret the particular circumstances, he didn’t regret with even one single cell of his body making love to her. In fact, his body was busy getting back to business with enthusiasm.
He stood next to her, not giving her space, and she glanced up at him like he was an intruder.
He had intruded on her important, orderly life.
He knew this wasn’t her style. Hell, it wasn’t his style either.
He was used to having steady women either living in or close for a while, always at his beck and call—no intrigue, no drama, no secrets.
He’d been a master of the casual affair.
She shut her phone down and stuffed it back inside the bag she was clutching with both hands now. She set it down and bent to pull her panties and hose on.
“Was it important? The call?”
She didn’t speak, at least not with her mouth, but her eyes spoke volumes—her face, her expression told him everything.
She was ashamed, astonished, angry, confused, off-balance, and, most of all, she was still aroused, still had that look that told him the desire was underneath it all.
She finished pulling on her hose then slipped her low black pumps onto her delicate feet.
When she stood and looked at him mute, wearing a rosy glow—he wasn’t sure if it was arousal or embarrassment or both—he saw the honest longing mixed with the regret.
This was not his typical woman. Charline Morneau was one complicated piece of trouble.
He took mercy on her, closed in, and put his arms around her.
She only resisted for a second and then closed her eyes and laid her head on his chest as he caressed her back and hugged her, smelling her messed dark hair.
It felt soft and smelled like baby shampoo and sex.
Her special scent, the one from deep inside her.
He sighed and realized his shoulder was at peace.
Along with the rest of him, even his excitable parts.
Although he knew that wouldn’t last long if he kept holding her and smelling her.
She raised her arms and wrapped them around his back.
“Oh, darlin’. Don’t do that unless you want to cancel all your appointments for the morning.” His voice still rumbled with that deep aroused tremor.
She popped back from him in a quick guilty movement and looked up at him in apology. Nothing but pure forgive me in her look.
“Oh—I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what to say to you. I-I don’t want you to think—”
“No? That you’re attracted to me? That we have some chemistry going? That cat’s out of the bag, Charlie.” No way was he letting her take it all back.
“I—you’re right of course.” She scoffed at herself. “But it’s not like me to be so . . . impulsive.”
“Me either. Call it stress.”
She frowned. “I’m always under stress.”
“Me too,” he said.
She gulped and raised her chin, looking him in the eye like a brave warrior and said, “I’m sorry for . . . I have to go.”
He raised his brows. “Don’t worry, darlin’. No need for an apology. I’ll take a rain check. We’ll pick up where we left off.”
“No—there can’t be a rain check. No next time, no continuation.”
He saw the doubt, misery, and conflict in her eyes, heard it in her voice, so he didn’t press it. Wasn’t he a swell guy? He nodded.
She said, “We have to keep our relationship professional. This won’t work otherwise. There’s too much at stake.”
And he remembered he had to pay her—give her a big fat check. This would not be easy for her—for either of them. There was a reason she was not his usual kind of woman. This was far more complicated within two days than he’d experienced in years of dating dozens of women.
The slimy feeling that rolled inside him had nothing to do with her or their chemistry.
It had to do with the drugs—the EM-HGH-1 serum.
It was flat-out against every rule in the book for him to take HGH in any form—experimental or otherwise.
It didn’t matter that it couldn’t be detected by any of the drug testing.
He’d never done anything like this in his life.
It was the deceit, the secret that filled him with fear and doubt.
He was sharing this secret with her. Trusting her. A cold clammy sweat crept over him like a dark fog encroaching. He clamped down on it. He needed to keep their relationship 100% positive. No drama. No more drama. She could ruin him if she revealed his identity.
She said, “I’m sure you have the self-control. I’m the guilty party here.” She finally turned toward the door. Her confession chased away some of the coldness, but he knew she was right about their relationship. He hoped she was right about her magic serum.
“I can’t let you take all the blame. In all honesty, I moved way too fast. There was no need for me to take it from a kiss to—”
“You’re a good, decent man, Trent Lockheed.” Her outburst sounded like another confession. He softened.
“No matter what anyone else says?”
She laughed. In the research she’d done, most everyone said he was a good, decent man.
She looked at her watch and then at the door again and hoped her regret didn’t show.
But who was she kidding? Of course it showed.
Same way her unforgivable teenager-like attraction showed.
Was she having some kind of latent crush to make up for never having one as a teenager? Time to leave.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
He held out an envelope with her name and Confidential sprawled in large letters. Heat flooded her face as if she were having a menopausal hot flash, which she was definitely too young for.
He chuckled softly and she dared look at him, then shook her head.
“I don’t know what you must think of me at this point, Tre—Mr. Lockheed, but—”
“Oh no you don’t. We may not want to jump into a hot affair, but no way we’re reverting to ‘Mr. Lockheed’ status. Besides, no one calls me that. Not even my agent.”
“Oh. It’s funny, but everyone calls me Dr. Morneau.” It was true. “How about if we try to start over with a professional relationship?”
“Won’t be easy.” He paused and stared at her.
God only knew what he was thinking. She didn’t want to know. A new bout of hot shame washed through her. She was his doctor.
“Okay. I think you’re right,” he said. “We should be professional about this.”
“Well then, Mr.—”
“Call me Trent. I’ll call you Charlie.” He smiled and took a step back from her. This smile had warmth, not that carelessness it previously held.
She nodded, feeling like a too-serious, middle-aged tight-ass compared to his lightness at that moment.
She was barely 35. Too young to be immune to an attraction like theirs.
She’d have to concentrate on other men—she’d call her last fling to invite him for the weekend and go to the dreaded soiree.
She was no old maid in spite of what her boss thought.
But she needed to pull on her metaphorical cardigan sweater in Trent’s presence to keep herself from giving in to her attraction, to avoid that shocking loss of control again.
Before she could say or think or, worse, do another thing, she plucked the envelope from his hand.
She tried not to think about the check inside, not to think of it as payment for illicit services—drugs and sex.
She didn’t bother trying not to rush her steps down the corridor.
Thankfully, he didn’t stop her.
As she stepped outside his door and pulled it closed behind her, she vibrated with the longing wish that he had stopped her.