The Billionaire Bargain 3 (4 page)

Portia
swept out of the bathroom, leaving me with but one thought in my
severely rattled head:

What
the fuck?

There
were probably dungeons and torture chambers more intimidating than
the executive boardroom, but I’d certainly never come across
any. The dark walnut of the long table gleamed malevolently, and the
dim wall sconces definitely added to the Pit of Despair vibe.

Standing
and sitting around the room were plump, self-important men who looked
as though they’d been born in their thousand dollar suits, they
seemed so at ease with the power they held. The room was long and
narrow, my seat the farthest from the door and thus the farthest from
escape.

And
of course seated at the opposite end of the table, like a king about
to pronounce royal decree, was Grant.

The
second I stepped into the room, Grant’s eyes had snapped
towards me; his head had remained still, as if he were a wolf
tracking me with his ice-blue eyes, not wanting to give away his
intent with movement. His tie matched his eyes, made them seem even
brighter, like lasers that could cut straight through me. I could
feel his gaze burning along the lines of my body as I took my seat,
trying not to feel the flush of heat it awakened between my legs.

Our
eyes met, and again I saw that flicker—of the old Grant, the
one who’d accidentally driven us straight into a duck pond on a
souped-up golf cart, the one who I’d beaten at video games, the
one who’d laughed with me and moaned my name and pulled my hair
and—but then he looked away again, his jaw set, his neck gone
stiff with tension.

“So
you’ve deigned to join us,” he said coldly, without
glancing at me again, even though a peek at my watch told me I still
had five minutes before the meeting officially started. “And
where are we on the projections for the next quarter?”

“Well,
the situation’s growing in complexity because—”

“I
didn’t ask about the
situation
,
Miss Newman,” he cut me off, his voice hard. All other chatter
in the room dropped to dead silence. “I asked about the
projection
.”

“I’m
just trying to explain—”

“Do
let us know when you are actually able to explain, instead of simply
trying,” Grant said, already dismissing me. “In the
meantime, if anyone else has actually prepared for this meeting…”

There
was a sudden flurry of movement and sound as the others began to
address the first item on the agenda, but I couldn’t raise my
head to meet anyone’s eyes, let alone listen to their words and
come up with appropriate responses. Unshed tears stung my eyes, and
my cheeks burned with humiliation. That asshole—he had no
right—I was going to—to—to—

Worse
than the fact that Grant had been so unspeakably cruel I couldn’t
even think of an appropriate retaliation was the fact that some small
traitorous part of my brain—no, who was I kidding, my brain had
nothing to do with this—was actually
aroused.

Even
as I longed to storm off and have a good cry in my office, my mind
was assaulted by mental images of Grant in that dark suit, taking
control, ordering me to my knees…maybe he’d slowly
unwrap that blue tie from around his neck, tease the soft silk fabric
across the sensitive skin at the tops of my breasts, before tying it
tightly around my wrists and—

I
felt myself growing lightheaded, my thighs tensing, and I tried to
shove my thoughts back toward the meeting. I couldn’t think
about this, not now. I couldn’t think about Grant’s deep,
dark voice demanding, about me complying. I couldn’t think
about how I might pay him back for his pleasurable tyranny…

Dammit!
I couldn’t let myself think about that. I had to focus. Baby
steps. People were talking, focus on the people talking. Portia was
talking. Okay, Portia was talking, so what was Portia—

Wait
a minute. Portia?

What
the hell was Portia doing at an executive meeting?

“In
summary,” Portia said, “While our performance in some
areas has been heartening, questions remain. Why have we not made
more payments on the Jankowski Project loan? Why aren’t we
pursuing more cost-cutting measures?”

“I
sent you the report on cost-cutting,” Grant said dismissively.
“We’re doing all we can to reduce waste and eliminate
expenses without cutting into the quality of life of our employees.
The Jankowski Project loan is due to be paid off within five years,
which is a perfectly acceptable timeline. Of course, if you think you
see other areas of potential improvement, you’re welcome to
send an e-mail to me or the project manager. Moving on—”

“One
moment,” Portia interrupted with an apologetic look on her
face. Her face looked a little uncertain about how an apologetic look
was supposed to go, but she conveyed it pretty well considering that
it was probably the first time in her life she’d ever had to
try it. “I know we were just having an interesting discussion
with Mr. Hines here—” she gestured languidly at
CFO—“about our expenditures. Are the revenues coming in
from the Costa Rican plan really offsetting the costs of the
relocation packages we offered to the employees—”

“It’s
a loyalty building tool,” Grant said soothingly, as if he were
explaining a complicated math problem to a stressed-out child. He
didn’t seem at all concerned that Portia had been chatting up
his chief financial officer behind his back. I frowned. What the hell
was he thinking?

Portia
shot Hines a look I almost didn’t catch, and he nodded. Grant
wasn’t even looking at them.

Where
the hell was his brain today?

“If
I may just ask,” Portia said, a slight nervous titter—ha,
I’d be willing to bet that that nervousness was as genuine as a
street corner Rolex; that woman was up to something—she batted
her lashes. “How you feel the strategic plan aligns with the
newest health insurance coverage increases for the housekeeping
staff—”

“Portia,
I promise Jorge and his mop will never splatter your French silk
again,” Grant drawled, cracking the first real smile I’d
seen all day. Despite everything, the sight of it lifted my heart a
fraction. He could still smile, after all. “I’m not going
take away everyone’s dental because you had to attend a
premiere with a bit of mud on your hem.”

Portia
smiled, but this time the brittleness was plain. She was barely
restraining herself from tearing him a new one.

Grant
went on. “I believe the next item on the agenda is the impact
of the new tariffs…”

He
trailed off, letting one of the division heads leap in and carry the
thread of the discussion. Outwardly he appeared to be paying
attention, nodding every once in awhile at a particular point, but I
could see his eyes glazing over. He was distracted, completely
checked out. What the hell was going on with him?

Maybe
Kate had had a point—

“And
now I’ll be turning it over to Miss Newman,” a voice
said.

I
snapped to attention. “What?”

“Care
to join us, Lacey?” It was no longer the division head who had
been talking when last I checked into the conversation, but Jim
Baker, a guy I knew mostly from the times he had stopped into
Jacinda’s office to bond with her over a discussion of how
terrible I was. He was smirking, but there was no time to get angry
over that as sheer terror flooded my veins—I’d been so
absorbed in the weird Portia thing that I totally hadn’t kept
track of the flow of the meeting.

“Uh,
right,” I said, trying to dart my eyes discreetly around the
table to pick up clues about where the meeting had been. A flow
chart, some notes on the expansion of our Los Angeles office—okay,
okay, I could do this. “Sorry.”

I
called up my PowerPoint on the projector, straightening my back and
trying not to let my nervousness show as I stood and began my
presentation on the publicity aspect of adding a new wing to our
second-busiest location. “I thought we’d set the stage
with some billboards and viral marketing, followed by ten-second TV
spots highlighting job growth and local culture. As you can see, I’ve
based the timeline on the 2005 San Antonio situation—”

“Unacceptable,”
Grant interrupted. “That was a decade ago. It’s a
completely different business culture now.”

“Yes,”
I said, trying not to show how flustered I was as I skipped to the
PowerPoint slide showing my research, “but as you can see,
that’s more than made up for by the commonalities between—”

“What
I can see is that you’ve been entrusted with a position and
failed to deliver,” Grant shot back. “You’re
obviously not prepared.”

“That’s
not true,” I shot back, feeling my voice start to shake with
anger. “I am prepared, and if you’d let me get one word
in—”

“I’ve
let you get plenty of words in, Miss Newman,” Grant said, not
raising his voice a single decibel. Cool disdain dripped from every
syllable. “But we’re short on time, so please, sit.
You’re done here.”

I
sat down, fuming. I could see the others around me shifting
uncomfortably, knowing Grant was out of line but not wanting to say
something to their boss. I couldn’t blame them, not really;
nobody wanted to get caught in the middle of an ex fight, especially
when one half of the fight paid your salary.

It
wasn’t really an ex fight, though we were the only ones who
knew were weren’t really exes. We were the only ones who knew
we had barely been lovers.

But
Grant sure was acting like a jilted man.

• • •

Three
hours later, the elevator doors began to close, and I breathed a deep
sigh of relief. That had been hell, but I had gotten through it, and
I was still breathing. I could say that much. And I had seven stories
of solitary elevator-riding to decompress before having to put my
public face back on.

The
walls might have been glass, but being twenty stories off the ground
did wonders for privacy. I scrubbed at my face with the heel of my
hand, feeling the gritty remnants of my makeup. I just wanted to curl
up and take a nap. But there was still so much to do.

I
took another deep breath. Focus on the bright side. The worst part of
today was over, and there was only mindless busywork to fill the
remaining hours. For now at least, it was all over—

A
strong hand caught the door and arrested its movement. A second
later, Grant Devlin slid inside, and suddenly the luxuriously large
elevator seemed a whole lot smaller.

He
insinuated himself next to me as the door glided shut, despite the
fact that there was about ten square feet of rich carpet floor to
take advantage of.

But
he still wouldn’t look at me.

He
pressed a button—five. What the hell did he need to do on
accounting? I wondered if he had just panicked and pressed a button
to not have to get off on the same floor as me. One glance at his
stony face, however, and I had to admit that that seemed unlikely.

The
elevator descended, so slowly that I thought I might scream. I stared
at the changing view of doors and walls, trying not to look at Grant
next to me. Trying not to think of what to say if he spoke to me.
Trying not to count the seconds until I could flee—oh God, what
if the elevator got stuck?

Meanwhile,
Grant stared straight ahead. I watched his face in the glass
reflection. He was doing his best imitation of a statue.

The
floors clicked by with a slowness that would have been a credit to
Chinese water torture. Sixteen…fifteen…fourteen…

“Is
it normal for Portia to be so active in meetings?” I asked just
to break the silence. My voice sounded oddly high-pitched and shaky
in my ears. “She seemed pretty aggressive today. I thought she
was just an advisor.”

“Portia
has occasional delusions of power,” Grant said. He sounded
bored. “She flutters about like a deranged butterfly for a few
days before realizing she’s made no impact, and then she
retires to her house for Valium and white wine. You’d know that
if you knew anything about this company.”

Now
that was completely unfair, and my blood boiled. “Now you look
here—”

Faster
than I could blink, Gant’s hand slammed the stop button,
freezing us between the twelfth and eleventh floors, the glass window
bisecting the view of downtown into two rectangles. He grabbed my
arms and pressed me up against the wall, his lips a mere fraction
from mine as he breathed: “No,
you
look here, Lacey Newman. Why can’t you just leave me alone? You
press and you pry and you pout up at me with those sad little
eyes—what are you looking for when you look at me like that?
Didn’t you get all you wanted?”

“I—”
All my anger had melted away, and along with it all my angry speeches
about his behavior. Hell, I think I’d lost ability to string
words into sentences altogether.

His
full lips were so close to mine, his eyes were the night and I could
get lost in them. He smelled like sweat and cinnamon and aftershave
and I wanted to taste him, his lips and his neck and that patch of
skin just tantalizingly revealed by the undone top button of his
shirt. I wanted to unwind his tie and lick that drop of sweat that
hovered at his temple…

“I—”

Grant’s
eyes grew calculating; he lowered his voice to a rumble, like far off
warning thunder before a storm. “Do you miss me, Lacey?”

His
hands slid up my arms, leaving goose-bumps in their wake before they
wandered over my breasts, his thumb circling my nipple as it grew
hard beneath the silk of my shirt and insubstantial lingerie. I
shivered under his touch, and he leaned forward to whisper in my ear.

“Have
the memories not been enough?”

He
set up a slow, torturous rhythm around my right nipple as his other
hand slid to my waist, fingertips flirting with the top of my tight
pencil skirt. A whimper escaped my throat. His voice deepened, gravel
and whiskey and darkness twining in each syllable.