Off Limits (15 page)

“Max,” she breathes, hungry.

I spin around to press her against the kitchen counter and inch my hand up her skirt. But then she groans, louder this time, and twists away from me.

“I can’t. Not right now.” She leans up to kiss me once more, hard and fast on the lips like an apology. “Tonight?” she asks, her eyes boring into mine. “You free after work?”

“For you?” I grin and slap her ass playfully, unable to resist.

She squeals and jumps a little, which is somehow adorable and sexy at the same time. Then she swats my chest. “No, for some boring client dinner. Yes for me.” She sticks her tongue out.

I lean in to lick her tongue. “Hell yes I’m free.”

She grins, then, too. “Good.”

“But we’re going to my place this time,” I tell her, kissing her one more time before she turns toward the door. “I’m running out of work clothes.”

She smirks. “What, don’t want to show up in your birthday suit?” Her eyes roam down my body again, and I grin back at her.

“Somehow I don’t think my boss would approve. Though, Hannah might,” I tilt my head, fake-thoughtful.

She winces. Shit. “Sorry about . . . just ignore whatever I said last night,” she mumbles quickly. “Sometimes I get insecure or whatever. It’s stupid. See you in there,” she adds before I can respond, and the next thing I know, she’s already out the door.

Dammit, Chloe.

Also dammit Davis. Way to mention the girl who’s been stalking you around the office
right after
Chloe mentioned she was insecure about it. Brilliant. I shrug and yank open the fridge. Guess if we’re staggering our arrival times, I might as well enjoy breakfast first.

I
don’t see
Max again until the hallway on my way to the restroom a few minutes before our meeting with the rubbers. I want to pull him aside, apologize for being so weird this morning, but at the same time, I worry that might be even weirder to do.

Besides, my fears are totally justified. We have a non-fraternization clause in our contracts at work. Sure, some people seem to ignore it and are fine, but I don’t like to play with fire. Especially not when I’m on a partner track— and Max seems equally serious about his job too. I’m not sure I believe him when he says he didn’t hook up with anyone at our office ever—I mean, he didn’t seem like he was lying about Hannah, but really, no one ever in all the time he’s been here? Is he not the office playboy I believed him to be?

And if I am his first office fling, why did he seem so cavalier about it this morning? He knows that rumors about him run rampant through this office. He knows that if we start showing up here together, everyone will be gossiping about us in less time than it takes Martha to brew her first cup of coffee in the morning. So why doesn’t he care more about hiding things?

Unless he really doesn’t care about this. Unless he’s lying about me being his first dip into the company ink.

Maybe he doesn’t care what people say about him. Maybe he enjoys the rumors after all. But it’s one thing for guys to be called sluts, and quite another for girls in the workforce, like it or not.

I groan and shuffle through my paperwork, using it as a distraction to avoid meeting his gaze. For his part, Max slows down as he passes me in the hall, one of the guys I see him talking to from time-to-time on his other side, gabbing away about some girl he picked up at a bar the night before. Max doesn’t say anything, yet I can feel his eyes burning through me as we pass each other.
Ships passing in the night
, I think, and then immediately hope that’s not a mental prediction of things to come.

Last night wasn’t just a one-time thing, was it? He said it wasn’t. I don’t want it to be. But what if all the pressure of the work situation turns out to be too much? What if it kills whatever has started to kindle between us before it has a chance to become anything at all?

Calm down, Chloe
, I snap at myself. Christ. I haven’t been this nervous and insecure since my first case in court. I’m even starting to drive myself a little crazy.

I step into the room I’ve reserved for our meeting with Suzie’s “rubbers” and take my seat at the front of the room. I saved Max a chair beside me, so we can both lead the meeting together. But since I’m here first, I prop open my laptop and pull up a fresh word doc to start taking down some preliminary notes. I have an agenda outlined, but I add some comments, more questions I thought of, things to bring up.

Max sidles into the office a couple minutes later, and the moment the door swings shut behind him, we both open our mouths at once.

“Chloe—”

“I brought—”

We both pause, laugh a little, and then he nods at me. “You go ahead,” he says, grinning.

I could stare at his grin all day long. Dimples that sexy should be fucking illegal, dammit. They are hazards to society. “I brought the notes we compiled,” I say. “And I asked Martha to show Suzie’s, er, witnesses up to this room when they get here.”

“Chlo, I just wanted to say before we start the meeting, about this morning—”

The office door opens behind him, and a trio of women in velour tracksuits with various company logos scrawled across the chests and down the legs stride into the room, followed by Martha, who waves at me before she closes the door behind the women.

“Thank you for joining us,” I say, rising, but they’ve already locked eyes on Max.

“Well hello, handsome,” the lead woman, whose tracksuit is neon pink and decked out in fruit labels, purrs. She takes the hand he offers and shakes it for at least five seconds longer than strictly necessary, grinning up at him the whole time. “I’m Lena.”

“Mary,” says the woman behind her in a bright yellow tracksuit. She practically elbows Lena out of the way to grab Max’s hand next, and she shakes with both hands wrapped around his, one inching farther up his wrist. “My what a firm grip you have,” she adds with a wink. Max manages to extricate his hand with a polite smile, only to have the third woman grab it.

“Jess,” she says. “I’m absolutely charmed.” She, at least, lets him go with relative ease, and he makes his way around the table to my side with a brief, visible flash of relief in his eyes when they meet mine.

“Thank you all for coming,” he says.

“Please, have a seat,” I add, waving at the chairs, though the women have already started to help themselves. Lena kicks one pink track-suited leg up over the side of her chair and reclines in it sideways, while Jess remains standing at the end of the table, as to better display her purple tracksuit, or the toned, though much older, body beneath it.

“I prefer to stand,” she says, as if in response to a question. Then she pops a sudden squat, leaning against the table. “Helps me keep my muscles active the whole day.”

“You know, sitting and practicing your Kegels would help just as well,” Mary points out, which launches a brief debate over what exercise is the most important for one’s pelvic floor.

“As enlightening as this is, we should probably discuss Suzie’s slogans,” I say, but my voice is lost in the din of bickering. I cast an exasperated sideways glance at Max.

“Ladies,” he says, leaning forward in his chair in what I can only assume is a calculated move, because with the way he crosses his arms and leans his weight onto the front of his chair, bracing himself against the table, his biceps suddenly bulge, visible even beneath his white button down work shirt.

Unsurprisingly, the room falls quiet as all three women turn to gaze at him.

“We brought you in today to talk about your work with Suzie Steel,” he begins. “As you probably know already, there’s a company using her slogans and likeness in their advertising campaigns at the moment—”

“Oh, that commercial made me sick, absolutely sick,” Lena interrupts.

“I couldn’t eat for a week when I saw it,” Jess agrees. “Suzie has been telling me to rub it in since 1993! How dare these people steal her brand like that?”

“Well that’s just what we’d like to put a stop to,” I say. The three of them blink at me as if they’ve only just noticed I’m in the room. Which, to be honest, is totally possible. “We’ll need you to tell us exactly when you remember Suzie first using those phrases.”

“That’s easy,” Mary says, still staring at Max, as if he were the one who asked the question. “She first advised me to start rubbing it in in the summer of 1996. I remember, because I landed the audition to be on tape with her the same day that I came home and found out my bastard husband was sleeping with our neighbor.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Max replies, after an awkward pause.

Mary winks. “That’s okay. Freed me up for plenty more enjoyable pursuits.”

Ugh. She’s old enough to be his
mother
for Christ’s sake.

“That’s great detail, thank you,” I tell her.

“I wasn’t finished,” she snaps with a sideways glare at me. “By the way, can I get a coffee or something? I mean, we came a long way to be here,” she adds as the other women bob their heads in agreement.

I freeze in my seat, dumbfounded. I mean, I’m used to getting this kind of treatment from time-to-time, but normally only from Paul’s external colleagues, the old ones who grumble about how times were better when women understood how to dress sexy and pour a decent cuppa.

Luckily, Max steps in before I wind up giving Mary a little too many pieces of my mind. “Actually,” he says, “If you three would like some coffee or tea, I can grab you some. Chloe is actually the real lead on this case.” His eyes flash to mine. “She’s the one doing the majority of the grunt-work, too,” he adds, in a lower voice, almost like he’s talking to me specifically.

My cheeks flush. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I reply before I can stop myself. “I’ll buzz for an intern.”

Before either of the women can say another word, I lift my phone and dial Rich’s extension. “Hey,” I say into the phone, my back half-turned on the room. “Can you have one of Paul’s interns bring three black coffees to room 512?”

Behind me, the table drifts back into flirtatious chatter, and I hear Lena emit a high-pitched giggle. But when I replace the phone in its cradle and turn around, everyone folds their hands on the tabletop, all business once more.

“1993 was the first time I heard Suzie use the slogan, too,” Lena says. “Actually, Jess and I were friends with Suzie before she started making her videos. She used to say that when we were just working out at the gym or wherever, as a joke. But it was weirdly motivating, all her little Suzie-isms, as we used to call them.” Lena laughs. “When she first got the idea to make a workout video of it, we thought it was nuts. I mean fun nuts, but who would want to watch the three of us work out? But we agreed to help her start it, and pretty soon she had to hire some more professional backup workout people.” Lena grins. “No hard feelings, though. It really worked out great for her. And we’re still her biggest fans.”

My fingers fly across the keyboard as I take down notes frantically. Max glances between me and the laptop, then back to the women.

“That’s really great detail, like Chloe said,” he replies. “If you can give us specific time frames and locations as well, that’ll be even better.”

“And anyone else we might be able to talk to as well,” I add. “Any other, ah . . . fans.”

“Rubbers,” Lena replies with a wink.

I force myself not to laugh. “Right. Any other rubbers who you think would be willing to testify to Suzie’s slogans and the other aspects of her branding—her voice, her style, all of that. It would be really helpful.”

“Whatever we can do to help,” Mary replies, still looking a little bit sheepish ever since Max snapped at her. I can’t help but feel slightly pleased by that. “We just want what’s best for Suzie.”

“And to get these people to stop playing off the brand she’s worked so hard to build.” Jess leans forward, her gaze intense. “It’s not right, when people can just take something that took you so much time and effort to put together, and then profit from it themselves. That is
wrong
.”

“Very wrong.” I press my palms flat against the table. “But don’t worry.” I cast Max a sideways smile, feeling more confident than ever. Not just about the case, but about us, this whole messy thing. Because so far today, it hasn’t been messy at all. It’s been surprisingly simple. “We’re going to solve it,” I say, and for a moment, I’m not sure whether I’m talking about our case or me and him. “Whatever it takes. We’ll make it work.”

* * *

F
our hours later
, I’m no longer feeling as confident as I was in our meeting this morning. I’ve spent the better part of the afternoon engulfed in notes and legwork, putting everything we gathered this week from Suzie’s place in order, along with the notes from our meeting this morning and any additional ideas that have cropped up as potential leads we should follow-up on since then.

But every time I try to focus, nagging doubts keep clawing at me. I picture Max’s face as he stared at me in the meeting room, his expression last night as he poised above me in the dark, his mouth open, face twisted in ecstasy.

I can’t
stop
picturing that every time I see him, every time we walk past each other in the hallway, on the way to the bathroom or the water cooler, or even worse, toward the end of our meeting this morning, when I kept zoning out and imagining a lot more enjoyable uses we could put that meeting room to beyond talking to Suzie’s fan club.

Is he thinking about me this often? Is he feeling the same things I am, like this could potentially be more than just sex? He’s so fucking hard to read, and it doesn’t help that we can barely speak with candor in the office.

Not to mention, he’s already told me once before that he thinks I focus too much on career. He might have a point, but are we compatible in that regard? I know he takes his work seriously, and yet, he disappears at such random hours during the day sometimes, like when he canceled that meeting last minute.

Ugh
. If I thought I had a hard time focusing while working with him before, then between the constant sexy fantasies and the nagging sensation that something about this whole situation is going to crash and burn, it just got about 100 times harder.

I push away from my desk and stand. I need a walk, to clear my head. I grab my coffee mug, even though having a cup this late in the day will almost certainly keep me awake well past my bedtime.

Then I remember where I’ll be spending tonight, and I realize that caffeine will be the least of my problems when it comes to getting no sleep.

My heart beats faster at the thought. There’s almost a freaking skip in my step, as I hurry down the hallway toward the kitchenette where we keep our crappy off-brand coffee machine. It’s fucking terrifying, how quickly he’s gotten under my skin. How little time it took for him to go from a constant annoyance in my mind to the only person I want to spend time with.