Revenge Sex (16 page)

But he had no choice. He couldn’t deny her
the job when she’d worked so hard and was the most qualified. That
lacked all semblance of fair play. He couldn’t ask her to quit so
he could have her. He couldn’t walk out on Holt and West Coast
because he wanted her.

Yet she’d quit on him; not outright, true,
but she put him on notice that she was going no matter what he
offered her. And while she’d been pissed, accusing him of making
all the decisions—which he had—she’d opened another door.

He intended to walk right through it.

Chapter Eighteen

This was all Bradley’s fault. No, Little Miss
Muffet was to blame. Damn that woman. If she hadn’t opened her big
mouth to Clay, none of this would have happened, which made it so
satisfying to accuse her of spreading all the horrible rumors. Not
that she expected Clay to buy it. It just felt good in the
moment.

Okay, dammit, Ruby knew she’d made the first
wrong move. But how could Clay run to Little Miss Muffet? Ruby
shuddered behind the wheel of her blue BMW as she drove to
Bradley’s apartment. She was going to murder that boy.

Saturday, after Clay kicked her out, she’d
gotten a hotel room—a very nice one at the very same Marriott he
was staying at and he could pay the damn bill—then she’d gone to
cry on Bradley’s shoulder. She must say she’d done a very good
poor-poor-pitiful-me; Bradley had been willing to do anything for
her.

But he’d screwed it all up. He wasn’t
supposed to start a rumor about Clay and
her
. His job was to
trash Little Miss Muffet. She should have taken care of the
rumor-mongering herself.

So she had to fix his mess, which was why she
was rushing off to his apartment right now.

Holt was great. He didn’t get all worked up
about business being only business. If a girl had to take off a
couple of hours to whack some sense into a nimrod male brain, he
was fine. He wasn’t some soulless workaholic executive type. He
realized people had lives.

Still, she’d let things get out of hand. How
foolish she’d been. Because of that nasty little rumor, she hadn’t
gotten any satisfaction out of telling Jessica Clay had come home
to her Saturday morning. Of course, she hadn’t mentioned that he’d
dumped her.

Bradley had stolen her thunder, put her in
the one-down position, so that she had to apologize to Clay,
instead of the other way round.

Oh God, she could lose him. She really could.
Ruby didn’t cry—well, not for real—but the memory of Clay booting
her out brought her the closest to tears she’d been since high
school. He’d been so calm, so unfeeling. She knew the truth in the
very pit of her stomach, no matter how much she didn’t want to
admit it; she’d already lost him, no
could
,
might
or
maybe
about it.

Bradley had better be home. She grimaced when
she remembered the expression on Clay’s face as he’d asked if she
knew Bradley’s address. She’d been there twice. Or maybe it was
three times. And dammit, Clay had enjoyed the fruits of her labor
each and every time.

Bradley’s apartment complex was rundown, the
paint faded on the siding, weeds growing out of the cracks in the
parking lot pavement. The pathways were uneven where tree roots had
pushed up the concrete, and she got a splinter in her finger when
she put her hand on the railing as she climbed the stairs.

She hadn’t cared before. But her relationship
with Bradley was like his apartment, on the seamier side of things.
His doorbell no longer worked, so she knocked.

He opened almost immediately, wearing a Ralph
Lauren shirt and Tommy Hilfiger jeans. She didn’t mind that his
designers didn’t match. That’s where Bradley’s money went, into his
clothes, his Corvette, and his toys. The 65-inch HDTV with surround
sound was tuned to the Bloomberg network. Sadly, the market was
down. Again.

“Oh baby, I’m so glad to see you.”

He closed the door behind her. Fast food
wrappers littered his coffee table, and he was already one beer
down for the day.

“Don’t
baby
me.” She spread her hands.
“What were you thinking?”

“What?” He attempted to look innocent, but he
couldn’t maintain eye contact long enough to carry it off.

“You know what I’m talking about. All those
lies about Clay.”

“I didn’t lie. I was just talking to the
guys. And you told me you wanted to make him pay.”

She glared at him. She was very proud of her
glare. It made most men cower. Not Clay, of course. Or Holt. But
Bradley was definitely cowering, if the hand wringing meant
anything. Really, what had she seen in him?

“You weren’t
talking
. You were
lying
.”

“No, no,” he pleaded, pacing the small room,
which was completely dominated by the oversize TV. “I was so upset
and I had to get it off my chest.”

“You said Clay was impotent and he paid you
to have sex with me.”

He gasped, wide-eyed, and mouthed, “Noooo,”
his lips rounded in that
O
for a very long time.

“Close your mouth. You look like a fish.” She
jammed her hands on her hips. He was taller, but she was so much
mightier. “Now, who did you tell?”

He shrugged. “Just the softball team. We went
out for a few beers after the practice yesterday.”

“
What?
” She slapped her hand to her
forehead. West Coast sponsored a community team, and several
employees played. From the warehouse, manufacturing, machine
maintenance, customer service. “Oh. My. God.” He’d told
everyone
. “I have never been so angry in all my life. Why on
earth would you do that?”

He screwed the toe of his shoe into the
carpet. Like a little boy. “I wanted humiliate him so you’d realize
I was the better choice.”

She breathed deeply to keep from screeching
at him. “You are twenty-nine, not ten. You’ve messed up your job,
you’ve messed up any chance of getting a decent recommendation”—she
pointed a finger right in his face—“and you’ve screwed any chance
of
ever
getting back in my panties.”

“But Ruby.” There was a distinct whine in his
voice.

God, yes, she had been a complete idiot.
She’d had such a good thing with Clay, and for the sake of a little
boredom and the need to shake things up a bit, she was totally
screwed.

“If you don’t retract this,” she said, “I
will tell everyone that you have a teeny tiny penis, and you’re a
premature ejaculator.”

He hung his head. “Will you give me another
chance if I do?”

“Do not try to bargain with me. Just fix
it.”

“I’m sorry,” he muttered.

He looked so forlorn that for some
inexplicable reason, she took pity on him. “Bradley, you have some
very good qualities that I’m sure some lovely girl your own age is
going to completely appreciate. But I’m far too old for you.”

“What about Ashton Kutcher and Demi
Moore?”

“Newsflash: they’re getting a divorce! For
God’s sake, grow up. You don’t love me. I don’t love you. We had
sex. It was pleasant, but we’re both moving on.”

He sighed. “I might have been rash in
quitting my job.”

“Yes, you were.” She patted his cheek. “But
you know you can’t come back now.”

“I was thinking about moving back home. My
dad’s a CPA. He always wanted me to come into the business. I just
wanted to make my fortune in California.”

Right. Like there were a whole lot of
fortunes still to be made. Bradley was no Mark Zuckerberg. “When’s
the next softball practice?”

“After work today.”

Boy, they practiced a lot, though probably
they were more into the beer afterward than the practice itself. “I
want you to tell them you made it all up.”

“They’re not going to believe me now.”

“They will if you tell them you wanted to see
how gullible they were. The joke’s on them.”

He pulled his head back. “But then they’ll be
pissed at me.”

“That’s the price you pay, sweetie.”

She walked out his door and sighed. Men were
jerks. No, some men were boys and they acted like jerks. She was
certainly old enough to have learned the difference. So why had she
been such an idiot?

* * * * *

Clay knew where Jessica lived, a cocktail
party she’d held for the department a couple of Christmases ago.
Funny that he’d never forgotten his way to her.

H
aving given her an
extra two hours to get through her interview, he now stood on her
doorstep. Her condo was in a small tree-lined complex. Pots of
early spring flowers bloomed on her stoop. He hadn’t thought of her
as a flowerpot kind of woman—too career-oriented—but he’d come to
learn so much more about her in the past week. Some details were
intimate, some were momentous, some were small, like the fact that
she loved flowers.

By the time she opened the front door, his
palms were damp with nerves. A woman had never made his palms sweat
before. But he’d never waited three years to figure out how badly
he wanted her.

She was nothing like his ex-wife, who would
never in a million years consider having a fuck buddy. She was the
opposite of Ruby, too, who had too many friends-with-benefits.
Jessica was gorgeous in faded sweats and a tight T-shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?” The only trace of her emotions
was the tightening of her fingers on the front door.

He enumerated his mistakes. “I asked Ruby to
move out on Saturday. I should have told you. I decided that I
couldn’t ask you to quit your job so that we could be together. I
should asked how you felt, told you what I felt. We should have
made any decisions together.”

Her eyes darkened. It could have been an edge
of moisture pooling in them or a storm building. “It wasn’t like
you owed me anything. All we did was have sex.”

He wanted her to invite him inside, yet he’d
given up the right to ask. He’d allowed her to believe what they’d
shared was merely physical. “It was so much more. I should have
told you that, too.”

She breathed deeply, said nothing.

His next words came from the hollow pit of
his stomach. “Please don’t leave.”

She expelled her breath in a sharp puff. “I
can’t be your controller. Not after everything.”

Christ, he wanted to touch her so badly, his
hands shook, but he was still on the outside looking in. “I’m not
talking about West Coast. I’m talking about me. Please don’t leave
me
.”

She was silent and unmoving so long, he
thought she might end up slamming the door in his face. Until
finally she stepped back. “It would probably be better if you came
inside so we can talk.”

* * * * *

Her heart was pounding so hard she was
terrified she’d misheard him. But Clay stepped inside her home. He
dwarfed her small living room. It was a one-woman place, with only
a loveseat instead of sofa, a small coffee table, one extra chair.
Even the table in the dining area was made for one, unless she
pulled it apart to put a leaf in it.

Jessica didn’t want to be just
one
anymore. But she had to know exactly what
he
wanted.
Don’t leave me
. She was terrified to think it meant
everything
only to find out he merely wanted the same kind
of relationship he’d had with Ruby. Transitory. Until she broke his
rules. She couldn’t stand it if he threw her aside.

Yet she wanted to throw herself into his
arms, take whatever she could get for as long as he offered it.

“I never loved Ruby,” he said.

She swallowed, tried to hide her emotions
when inside she was screaming for him to say those words to her.
“Then I guess it didn’t hurt you when I told you what she was doing
with Bradley.”

He held her gaze. “It didn’t hurt. It only
pissed me off. If it had been you doing what she did, then it would
have crushed me.”

“Why?” she whispered. Honestly, she didn’t
know. He’d touched her for the first time only ten days ago. Before
that, she’d been his employee.

“Sometimes you want someone but put it out of
your mind because you know you can never have her. Until suddenly
you realize that maybe you can have everything you want. That’s how
I felt, and now I can’t stop wanting you, thinking about you,
needing you. It was there all along, only now I know what it
is.”

“What is it?” She couldn’t tell whether she’d
said it aloud or merely mouthed the words.

“Lust, love, need, desire, admiration,
respect.” He held her gaze for long moments. “Everything.”

Love
. She couldn’t believe it, had to
keep questioning. “What about other men? Like what you had with
Ruby?”

“I still love that. I wanted it with my
ex-wife, I liked it with Ruby. With you, it makes me crazy.”

“I know,” she said. Some men were wired
differently, and having another man want what they had made their
desire even greater. Yeah, she’d read that in all the blogs she’d
poured over on the Internet. That wasn’t enough; why did
Clay
want it with
her
? God, she could have everything
if she could just shut up. But she couldn’t; eventually it would
come back to bite her ass. “It still makes me feel like you don’t
really want me, just me, only me.”

He stepped so close she could feel the heat
of his body, smell that indefinable male
something
that was
so him. He touched her hair without actually touching her. “I’d
never really defined it for myself.”

She smiled at him slightly, feeling something
melt inside her as if she’d been in deep freeze, and finally,
someone had found a way to thaw her out. “Yeah, that whole thing
about men not wanting to analyze their emotions.”

He laughed softly. “We don’t even like to
admit we have them. But I knew you’d have to understand it.” This
time he cupped her cheek, held her more tenderly with that small
touch than when he’d been buried deep inside her. “Let me tell
you.”