LUCI (The Naughty Ones Book 2) (97 page)

I watched from the back of the room as Grant’s tech guy, a young man named Bellamy, talked about the Taurus Tablet and what the company wanted to do with it. I could see blank looks on a lot of faces, and that made me worry about their ability to adjust to this new plan. I slipped out of the room and made my way back to my office. I’d been here until well after midnight last night, but it seemed like there was just as much to do today as there had been yesterday.

I hadn’t been in my chair more than a minute when someone tapped on my office door.

“Are you busy, Ms. Berryman?”

I looked up to find Alicia Collins, one of the secretaries from the secretarial pool standing at the door. She was one of the younger girls—a daughter of my father’s personal assistant, Agnes, I thought.

“Come in, Alicia.”

She smiled when I said her name—surprised I remembered it, I supposed.

“I was wondering if I could talk to you about the new ownership.”

I came around my desk and gestured for her to take a seat in one of the straight-backed chairs. She sat down, tugging her skirt primly around her knees, her eyes on the floor.

“Is this about the new digital record keeping?”

“No,” she said. “I actually think that’s wonderful. And the new computers they said we’d be getting…those are going to be so much better than what we’ve been working on.”

One point for Grant.

“Then what can I help you with?”

“I’m concerned about my mom. When your dad left, they moved her back down to the secretarial pool. But she’s struggling down there. She doesn’t understand how to use the computers, because I guess your dad didn’t make her use the computers up here much.”

I knew that. I remembered talking to him about it a few times, but he didn’t like the computers and didn’t see why we couldn’t do most of the paperwork by hand. He very grudgingly began to use e-mail the last few months, but that was about it. Drove me crazy. It never occurred to me that it might’ve affected Agnes, too.

“Someone approached her about asking for early retirement,” she said. “But my mom, she wouldn’t know what to do with herself if she didn’t have a job.”

“Do you think she’d feel better if someone could give her some tutorial on the computer?”

Alicia shook her head. “She really has no interest in computers. But she’s super organized. Maybe she could do something else?”

I nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you, Ms. Berryman,” Alicia said with a big smile. “I really appreciate it.”

She got up to leave, and as she did, I remembered something.

“Didn’t we play together in your mom’s office sometimes?”

She looked back at me, a smile softening her almost boyish features.

“We did. Sometimes when your nanny was sick, your dad would bring you to the office and we would play together until he was done for the day.”

I nodded, remembering a particularly exuberant game of tag around a desk.

“How are you getting along in the secretarial pool?”

She shrugged. “It’s good work.”

“And everything’s okay with you?”

Her smile widened. “It is. I’m engaged, actually. To one of the guys on the B construction crew.”

“Is that right?”

“He came in one day last fall to ask about an expense report, and we’ve been together ever since.”

“That’s great.”

She hesitated a little, like she wanted to ask something.

“What?”

“There’s a rumor going around that the new CEO was your boyfriend back in the day. I was just wondering if that was true.”

I stood up, smoothing my skirt over my hips. “Does it matter?”

“Well, people think he might be more likely to stick to his promises if the two of you had a relationship, you know?”

That made sense. But it didn’t mean that I wanted to broadcast my personal life over the gossip radio waves. Alicia seemed to understand that.

“Thank you,” she said again, and then she slipped through the door.

I was back behind my desk when Grant stepped into the room, Bellamy behind him.

“Addison, I’d like to introduce you to Bellamy Tilford.”

Once again, I came around the desk and held out my hand to the young man. Young man. I kept calling him that, but he was probably about the same age as me. But he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his hair a bit long and unruly for a business setting. He looked like a teenager looking for trouble, not a business associate.

And he was cute. Blond hair. Green eyes. He looked like a surfer dude from one of those eighties movies I used to like to watch.

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Berryman,” he said, offering a warm, tanned hand.

“You too, Mr. Tilford.”

“Please call me Bellamy. Everyone does.”

“Bellamy.”

“Bellamy is Taurus’s head of development. He’s generously agreed to help us with the transfer of the old files to the new digital format.”

I nodded. I knew that already.

“You wouldn’t have time for lunch, would you?” Bellamy suddenly asked. “I’m starving and we have all this information to go over. Maybe it would go easier if we had some good food to share.”

Grant cleared his throat. “We really need to get this process started,” he said, his eyes moving from me to Bellamy.

“I think a lunch meeting would be fine. And I’m starved.”

“Great.”

I grabbed my suit jacket and Bellamy helped me slip it on as Grant watched through narrowed eyes. We hadn’t had much of a chance to talk since the other night. He was out at the sites all day yesterday and locked up in his office all morning. I wasn’t even sure what I would say to him if I’d had the chance. But I kind of liked the fact that he seemed openly jealous of Bellamy.

“See you around,” I said, wiggling my fingers at him as Bellamy and I slipped through the door.

“So, I’m assuming you know how to work one of our tablets,” Bellamy said after we’d ordered too much barbecue at one of my favorite restaurants.

“Of course. I own like three of them.”

“Then that’s the biggest hurdle. Saves us an hour of conversation.”

I laughed. “Then what will we talk about?”

Bellamy refreshed my glass with a pitcher of sangria the waitress had brought a few minutes ago. “What about Grant?”

I groaned. “Why does everyone always want to talk about him?”

“Who else asked about him?”

“Rebecca.”

He nodded, a grave look on his face. “She’s always been fascinated by him. You’d think she had a crush on him or something.”

“Don’t all personal assistants have a crush on their bosses?”

“Does yours?”

“No. She’s in love with the boss’s brother.”

“Kevin?”

“You know him, too?”

“Of course.” Bellamy picked up his wine glass and drank down half of the spiked wine. “Kevin hung out at our office a lot. I think it was the only time he could get with his brother because they both kept such long hours.”

“I thought Grant was just a partner of the company.”

“Grant was the founder of our company. He didn’t know shit about building these handy little devices, but he understood a good idea when he heard it. He sank so much money into it that we were all afraid he was going to end up living on the streets before we had a product to launch. But when we launched…he could have been a multimillionaire, but he shared the profits, insisted that we all take a fair share even though it was his money that made the company possible. And he spent day and night at his desk, putting everything he had into every part of the company.”

“Sounds like Grant.”

“The man’s a fucking saint.” Bellamy poured more sangria into his glass and downed that one, too. “I couldn’t believe it when he decided to walk away so close to us going public. He’d be a billionaire right now if he hadn’t cashed out.”

“That’s what Rebecca said.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Is that why you agreed to come here and help us with this thing?”

“I owe Grant everything.”

He studied me from across the table, his eyes seeming to see right through me.

“What?”

“You’re the one who broke his heart, aren’t you?”

I nearly choked when he said that, and I wasn’t even drinking anything. I picked up my glass and swallowed a little of the sweet wine, unsure how to respond to his question.

“We all figured someone had broken his heart. For four years, he rarely left the office. As far as anyone knew, he didn’t date. We saw him flirt a few times, but nothing serious. So we decided he was being loyal to someone who broke his heart.”

I shook my head. “You got it backwards.”

“Kevin told Rebecca once that he had a girl in Houston before he left, someone who was supposed to come to California with him.”

“I’ve heard that, too.”

He watched me. “You’re nervous. I’ve obviously hit a nerve.”

“There are a lot of people trying to figure out what Grant and I mean to each other. But it’s really no one’s business but ours.”

Bellamy lowered his head, conceding my point.

“But, the thing is, we care about Grant. He’s a good man who did a generous thing for all of us. We don’t want to see him hurt.”

“I’m glad Grant has people like you in his life.”

The waitress arrived just then with our food, plates piled high with ribs. I clasped my hands in my lap and waited until she was done, thanking her politely as she walked away. Bellamy studied his plate for a moment, then looked at me again.

“I guess all I’m saying is that I would like to see Grant happy. And if that’s you…”

“Grant has a mind of his own. He’ll make his own choices.”

Bellamy smiled. “That’s true.”

He lifted his glass and held it up. “Here’s to good barbecue.”

I smiled. “And good friends.”

***

I was at my desk late that night, my eyesight blurring as I stared at my computer screen. Angela had left hours ago, as had most of the office staff. The quiet was nice, but the pile of work that only seemed to grow higher was discouraging.

I sat back and rubbed my eyes, climbing out of my chair to go find some coffee. I should’ve had a machine in my office, but it never seemed necessary before. I wandered down to the break room, but the machine was off and cold.

“I have some in my office.”

Grant was watching me from the hallway, a handful of papers in his arms.

“Do you ever go home?”

“Do you?”

“I don’t know. Not recently. New boss. You know how it goes.”

His eyes moved slowly over the length of me, taking in my bare feet and untucked blouse. I tugged at my blouse, tugging out the wrinkles as though that would make my overall appearance any better.

“Trying to impress?”

“To some extent.”

“I’m sure you’re very impressive.”

“What I am is exhausted and I still have four hours of work waiting for me.”

“Yeah, me too.” He leaned against the doorway, glancing over his shoulder as though looking to make sure we were alone. “What do you say we sneak out of here? We deserve a little break.”

“We do, don’t we?”

He held out his hand and I took it, followed him down the hall to his office. He dropped the papers on Rebecca’s desk and grabbed his jacket. We backtracked to my office so that I could grab my shoes and then left, climbing into his Mercedes and making our way through the silent streets of downtown Houston in the middle of the night.

He lay his hand on my knee and I didn’t see the point in pushing it away. Clearly encouraged, he slipped his hand farther up my leg, squeezing my upper thigh as he turned the car toward his apartment building less than a mile away.

“You have good friends, you know?”

He glanced at me. “Do I?”

“That Bellamy. All he wanted to talk about was what a great guy you are, how you gave up millions by leaving Taurus right before they went public.”

“Hmmm…”

I looked over at him. “Is that all you have to say?”

“What do you want me to say? I made plenty of money on Taurus. I didn’t need to stick around for more.”

“But if you’d stayed just a week or two—”

“Didn’t want to.”

“Why not? Why did you come back here?”

“I’ve already told you,” he said as he pulled the car into the parking garage under his building.

“No, not really.”

He pulled the car into a parking spot and turned toward me, his hand moving to my face. He tugged at my jaw, pulling me around so that I had no option but to look him in the eye.

“I came back for you. I heard about the trouble Berryman Construction was in, heard there was an opportunity to swoop in and be the savior. I couldn’t pass that up.”

“You intentionally came back to buy my legacy.”

“I intentionally came back to prove to you and your father that I’m not a loser. That I can provide for you.”

“I never had any doubt.”

“But your father did.”

“Is that what this is all about? You’re trying to prove something to my dad?”

He shrugged. “I came back for you.”

I leaned into him, pressing my forehead against his. “Okay.”

He kissed me lightly, then climbed out of the car and came around to help me out. We went upstairs without saying anything, walking hand in hand to the bedroom. It was as natural as breathing, I think. Even undressing on either side of the bed, sharing a toothbrush, and curling up together was natural. His touch on my body, the feel of his weight on me, was natural, too. Like this was the way it was meant to be. Like this was how it always should have been.