Working Man (15 page)

“But you know what really makes me happy?” She stopped rubbing and lay on him, stretching her arms out and twining her fingers with his. “
You
make me happy because you complete my soul. I'll never meet a better man if I live a lifetime. I'm a very lucky woman, Nick. I love you.”

They lay without speaking for minutes, until Nick began gently to roll over so he could put her where she belonged, next to his heart. “You're an amazing woman, Dakota. You're smart and beautiful and kind and if I ever meet the sap who let you go I'm going to shake his hand and thank him kindly for doing the single most idiotic thing he'll ever do in his life. I knew when I met you that I was the man for you. I was the one who'd give you the only thing that was missing in your life, the love you needed. And you're going to get all you can handle until the day I leave this earth.”

She was just about to burst into big ol' tears when Cha-Cha decided to join them with a loud purr and a particularly spectacular leap onto Nick's naked thigh. “Damn!”

“I told you to keep that door closed, didn't I?” Dakota was giggling madly and the only way Nick could shut her up was to kiss her senseless, as usual.

T
he weeks flew by and Dakota couldn't remember a time in her life when she was any happier. Nick was everything she wanted in a man and a mate. He was loving, attentive, caring and he made her feel so desired it was like she was a different person with him. There were only two little things that she found disturbing about their relationship. One was the fact that she had discovered that Nick was a world-class workaholic. Even though he'd devoted himself to her at first, as the weeks went by, his tendency to put work above everything else came out. If Nick was involved in a project, he was in it up to his ears until it was over. Period. If he was late for a date, or missed one altogether, his work was always the culprit. The first time it happened she didn't know how to feel about it so she sat him down for a talk. There was no point in her getting upset about it if he didn't know how she felt, she reasoned, so she put all her cards on the table.

They had tickets to a play and she was all dressed and ready to go, waiting for Nick to pick her up. She waited for his knock at the door to no avail. She waited even longer for him to call her and tell her he was running late, and when that didn't happen, she called him on his cell phone and got his voice mail. Two hours after the curtain time, he finally arrived at her door, still in his work clothes. She was beyond angry at this point, she was just livid. She'd changed out of her sexy silk dress and heels and stood in the doorway wearing a pair of ratty shorts and a T-shirt. “What are you doing here at this hour?” She stared up at him with a frown and her arms crossed waiting for his answer.

He didn't give her any of his usual charm, to her surprise. “Look, I know I'm late, Dakota, but it couldn't be helped. Ran into some problems at that new complex and I had to stay there until they were taken care of. I'll make it up to you,” he said as he walked past her into the immaculate living room. He looked at her pristine cream furniture and frowned. “I can't sit down looking like this. I'll mess up your stuff. Let me get cleaned up first,” he mumbled while taking off his work boots. Without another word he went upstairs to the bathroom.

By now she had a couple of changes of clothing at his house, along with toiletries and hair care supplies, and he had the same things at her place. It wasn't unheard of for him to take a bath and change clothes, but it certainly was untimely, as far as Dakota was concerned. She sucked her teeth angrily and followed him up the stairs, prepared to tear him a new one. He was standing in the bathroom butt-naked while he watched the hot water fill the tub. Cha-Cha was sitting on the sink talking to him in a series of purrs and little yips when Dakota entered the room. Nick stepped into the tub and sat down, issuing a deep sigh of relief. “Damn that feels good. I've been at work since five-thirty this morning, baby.”

It was after ten, Dakota realized with a pang. Regardless of whether or not he'd stood her up, Nick had worked an incredibly long day, something he did all the time. She went to the glass fronted armoire in the corner of the room and got a big jar of scented bath salts out. She went to the tub and knelt down next to it, pouring some of the aromatic salts into the water. “Nick, I'm not going to pretend that I'm thrilled to have missed that play. I may hold it against you indefinitely,” she said with a crooked little grin. “But I have to tell you, honey, you work too hard. Way too hard.”

Nick sighed in pleasure as she swirled the soothing minerals into the hot water, releasing a scent that was redolent of pine and balsam. “Dakota, I'm a working man, plain and simple. If I don't work, I don't make money. If I don't make money, I can't afford to live like I want to live. I can't handle not having money in the bank, money invested in case something happens where I can't work or business falls off. I have a lot of people depending on me. I got married men with families on my payroll and I'm responsible for them making a living. This ain't a hobby, baby, this is how it is. If you can't handle it, you need to let me know now,” he said in a serious voice she'd never heard before.

Dakota didn't answer him right away. She was taking handfuls of water and pouring them over his big shoulders, watching the rivulets trickle down the broad chest that brought her so much delight. “Hand me that loofah,” she said as she reached for a bottle of bath gel. She squeezed some of the thick green substance onto the loofah and made a soft lather before applying it to his back. Rubbing it up and down his spine in circles, she smiled as he expressed his enjoyment of her ministrations. Finally she began to speak.

“Nick, I can certainly appreciate your work ethic. You've built a great company and you do amazing work,” she said. “And I know you did this all on your own. Nobody handed it to you and you're very wise to keep your eye on the bottom line. You have a sense of responsibility that's quite admirable. A lot of business owners get the business up and running and then they act like it's going to run itself, like they don't have to see to the day-to-day operations and that's when they go bankrupt,” she added. She was thinking as she was speaking and it was plain from her thoughtful tone of voice. Nick picked up on it at once and prodded her to continue.

“But?”

She looked at him quizzically. “I hear a ‘but' coming, baby. You're saying all these things like you understand, but there's a condition in there somewhere,” he said dryly.

Dakota blushed and leaned over to kiss him. “You know me too well,” she admitted. “All I'm saying, or trying to say is that you work too hard. You have your brother as your partner, you have project managers and site managers and all these other folks that you pay good money to, why don't you let them do what they're supposed to do?”

Nick kissed her back, but he didn't relent. “They're supposed to do what I tell them to do. And that means I have to keep my eyes on everything that has my name on it. Bottom line, Dakota, it's my company and my name on the line. I'm not going to lose everything I've worked for by standing on the sidelines and letting things go to hell while I'm off playing. You should understand that better than anybody, hard as you work.”

Dakota continued to rub the loofah sponge over his shoulders, and then down his chest when she thought about his words. She had always thought of herself as a workaholic, but she was a rank amateur compared to him. When she was writing a book, for example, she spent a lot of time researching it before she started writing. A lot of interviewing and a lot of legwork had to be done before she could even set down an outline. Even when she wasn't working on another book, she did mainly investigative reporting at the paper and she was better able to control the flow of her work. Dakota liked to work early in the morning when her mind was its most nimble and she got up at five without fail Monday through Friday. She wrote her copy then, and now that Nick was spending all this time working, she found herself working in the evenings, too. But she still managed to find time to spend with Nick and she felt that if he tried a little harder, he could do the same for her.

“Yeah, but…” The words died in her throat as she realized what she'd just said and she dissolved into laughter.

“Well, you gotta watch your time,” she returned pertly. “I don't want all of your time, but I have to have some of it. We won't make any more weekday dates, but I want us to be together on the weekends. Can you agree to that at least?”

Nick didn't answer right away; he was staring at her intently. Suddenly he put a wet soapy arm around her and pulled her close to his body for a long, passionate kiss. “Dakota, I don't want to lose you baby. I'm going to do my best to keep all my weekends open so we can be together. I can't make any promises on the weekdays, but the weekends are all yours.”

“I only need one weeknight from you. Remember that award I'm getting? That award for journalism? You promised to be my escort, remember? It's on a Thursday night; will you be able to make it? It's not for a month, so can you pencil it in?”

“You know I will, baby, I wouldn't miss that for the world. I'm proud of you, Dakota, and I can't wait to see you up there getting your due.” His expression changed and he looked lustfully at her now-wet T-shirt clinging to her delightful breasts. “Since you're already wet, why don't you get in here with me?”

Dakota started to protest, but she looked at Nick's long, muscular body and began removing her wet top. “Why don't you let out that water and turn on the shower? I think there're some parts I missed,” she said with a sultry giggle.

Nick did so at once, flipping the lever that controlled the tub stopper with his toe before turning the shower on. In seconds they had drawn the pink shower curtain and it was just the two of them wrapped up in each other and a cloud of fragrant suds. “I'm not going to miss even a little bit of you, baby. I'm going to get it all,” he vowed. Her only answer was a moan of contentment.

 

The other thing that made her uncomfortable about her new love with Nick was the presence of his ex-wife in his office. Until she'd found out that Leticia was his ex-wife, she'd just thought the woman was kind of nice-nasty, a person who said all the right things without meaning a single one of them. She was always polite, even cordial to Dakota, but her bright smile never matched the calculating look in her eyes. When Billie was in town she'd commented on it to Dakota. They'd gone to Nick's office and while Billie was taking a tour of the impressive space, she'd given Leticia a long appraising look, but she didn't say anything until they were on their way back to Dakota's house. That's when she'd turned to Dakota and made a pronouncement with a serious face.

“I don't trust that woman in Nick's office. You need to watch your back around her,” Billie had said frankly.

At the time, her words had surprised Dakota. “His office manager? Oh, she's worked for him for a long time, but she's okay. She's not a really warm person, but she's friendly enough,” Dakota had replied. She'd been concentrating more on the traffic as she drove and she wasn't really heeding her sister's words.

“Dakota, listen to me, I know what I'm talking about. I was watching her when you and Nick were talking. Every time he looked at you and especially every time he touched you, little flames would shoot out of her eyes. And when he called you baby and kissed you goodbye I thought that fake ponytail of hers was going to fly off her head she was so mad. Her face turns this ugly color every time you come into her eyesight, how come you never noticed that?”

Dakota had given a little laugh and assured Billie that nothing was going on between Leticia and Nick. “They work together, that's all it is, Billie. How would it look if I got jealous of every woman who worked in his office, or every woman he came in contact with? That's just nuts, little sister.”

Billie made a face. “I didn't say anything was going on with them, I'm just saying that the woman doesn't like you. And she does like Nick. Any fool can see that she has some inappropriate feelings about the man. She's real territorial and it's not because she's a dedicated employee. She wants that man. I work with high-strung beauty queens all day long and I know how women think and act. You've lost your edge because you deal with men all day and you're so busy scouring the underbelly of crime in America you've forgotten some basic girl stuff. All I'm saying is keep an eye on that heifer.”

These words went in one of Dakota's ears and breezed out the other side. She was sure her younger sister was overreacting to the other woman, that is, until she found out that Leticia was Nick's ex-wife. That's when she had to admit that there might be something more to what Billie was saying. She was tempted to call Billie and run it past her, but decided against it because Billie would have been back in Chicago on the next plane getting all up in Dakota's business. She and her siblings had always been close and Billie was overly protective of anyone she loved. No, it was best that she keep her turmoil to herself. Besides, if it was true, it was all wasted effort because no one could come between her and Nick. He made that quite plain every time they were together. Yes, he worked incredibly long and hard hours, but when he was with her, she was the only thing that mattered.

She had to remind herself of that fact the evening she came by Nick's office to pick him up for their Friday night date. They were going to have a quick dinner and attend a set at Singin' the Blues. Then they were going to a nice secluded inn for the rest of the weekend. Dakota was wearing a new dress, one she knew Nick would love. She was also wearing sexy heels and a cloud of Nick's favorite fragrance. Her hair was perfect, as she had just left the salon a few hours earlier. She couldn't wait to see the look on Nick's face when she walked into the office. Smiling in anticipation, she opened the door and went directly to Nick's private office where she was stunned to see Leticia sitting there with an evil smirk on her face. She nodded briefly to the other woman before greeting Nick. She actually didn't have a chance to say anything because Nick got to his feet immediately and came around the corner of his desk to embrace her.

“Damn, you look good, baby. Let me go wash my hands and we can leave. I've been shuffling paper all evening and they feel dry and dusty. I'll be right back,” he said as he kissed her forehead.

Leaving the two women alone in his private office, Nick went to the washroom. Dakota didn't say a word, she just took the seat that Nick had vacated. Resting comfortably against the high, wide back of the custom-made leather swivel chair, she gave Leticia a measuring look without a hint of a smile.