"Ah, Tara," Giles said with his usual joviality. "We seem to have a problem."
"The problem is that Mr. Jarvis doesn"t accept we have policies and he has to follow them."
"Ms. Ellison needs to understand that policies, like rules, are made to be bent once in a while. It prevents them from becoming dry and rigid."
She gasped. The way he"d narrowed his gaze at her while he said the words had her suspecting it was she he was talking about, not the company policies. Dry and rigid? She"d show him dry and rigid come Friday night. Why, she"d be so wet and... and pliant, he"d have trouble hanging on.
Giles shook his head at the pair of them. "You know I respect you both, but I wish you could respect each other a little more. Tara, Daniel"s right. Sometimes we need to discount our prices a little deeper to hook a potentially valuable customer."
He held up a hand as she opened her mouth to argue.
"And Daniel, Tara"s right. You can"t take such a deep discount that we lose too much money. You"re a gifted salesman. I think you can talk them up another five percent on the fleet cost. What do you think?"
"I can try," Daniel said stiffly.
"Good. Now, I"m going to insist you two go to lunch together on the company. Get to know each other a bit. You might find out there"s a lot to like."
"Hah," mumbled Tara.
What Daniel mumbled was a lot worse.
"I want to strangle you. And I want to sleep with you," Daniel said over antipasto at a trendy seafood restaurant that seemed to be constructed entirely of gla.s.s and cedar. "No, wait. I"m not into necrophilia. I want to sleep with you and strangle you."
Tara bit into a melt-in-your-mouth-perfect scallop. "Me, too. In our work hours I mostly want to hurt you."
"And outside work?"
She sighed, thinking of their magic night together. "Not."
"Me, too."
He ate another prawn. "You know, Giles has a point. We should try to work together better."
"But how can I work with you when you insist on dumping every other item in miscellaneous?"
"And how can I negotiate a deal if I have to worry about you hanging on to every nickel?"
They glared at each other.
"It"s hopeless."
"Let"s talk about something else."
She sipped ice water. There was something she"d been wondering about since the other night, but it had become particularly relevant since they"d booked a second night together. "Are you seeing anyone?"
He chewed slowly and she had a deep and disturbing desire to lick a speck of melted b.u.t.ter off his lower lip. "I"m seeing you Friday night."
"I mean-" She crinkled her forehead, feeling hideously uncomfortable and wishing it didn"t matter, but it did. "Are you seeing other women? Besides me?" Before he could answer, she babbled on. "I know we"re not exactly seeing each other-it"s just s.e.x, but I suppose what I"m asking is-"
"Am I having s.e.x with anyone else."
"Yes."
"No."
She let out a relieved breath. "Okay."
A pause stretched into eternity. "What about you? Are you having s.e.x with other men?"
"No!" What did he take her for? She was no saint, but she took her relationships one at a time. Not that they were having a relationship, exactly. At least not one that was like any she"d had before.
"Fine."
"Fine."
He helped himself from the bread basket. "So, about Friday."
"Yes?"
"Do you want to make it tonight?"
She felt suddenly confused and disoriented. "Do I want to have Friday tonight? It"s Wednesday."
"Do you want to have s.e.x tonight."
Oh, her body answered that one with a flood of desire so intense she couldn"t speak. So she nodded so enthusiastically her chin bashed her chest.
He dug a sc.r.a.p of paper out of his pocket and scribbled. "Here"s my address."
She pulled out her Palm Pilot and typed in the details then handed the paper back. "That"s a Boston taxi receipt," she said, forcing her tone to remain pleasant. "You"ll need it for your expense account."
"Right." He shoved it back in his pocket. "We should probably swap phone numbers, too."
"Why? It"s the talking that gets us into trouble."
He rolled his eyes. "In case we want to have phone s.e.x."
"Oh." That sounded interesting. "Okay."
She reached into her bag for a notebook and wrote her own address and phone number and handed the page to him. Daniel folded it and slipped it carefully into his breast pocket.
The bill came for lunch and he paid with his credit card and before her horrified gaze, crumpled the receipt and shoved it in his trouser pocket.
"Give me that," she cried, outraged.
He shot her a puzzled glance, then, with a reluctant grin, retrieved the thin piece of now-mangled paper. "Here."
She was relieved her address and phone number hadn"t joined the crumpled bills headed for oblivion or-even worse-miscellaneous!
Chapter Five.
Tara arrived at Daniel"s apartment five minutes early, then dithered outside his door thinking she should have timed her arrival better. She"d rather show up fashionably late than appear too eager.
The trouble was she felt too eager. So juiced she couldn"t stand still, but shifted from foot to foot, images and impressions of the last time they"d been together crowding her mind.
Oh, the h.e.l.l with it. So she was a polite person who showed up on time. He could just get over himself if he liked unpunctual women.
Raising her chin a notch, she rapped firmly on the door.
It opened so fast he might have been standing on the other side of it waiting.
That impression was intensified when he grabbed her and yanked her to him. "What took you so long?"
She had time for a smug smile to half form before his mouth was on hers hot and hungry.
Oh, if she thought she"d been restless and turned on standing in the corridor, that was nothing to the scorching heat that now ignited within her body.
Opening her mouth to him, she began twisting and rubbing sinuously against him, not by design. She couldn"t help herself. It was as though she were trying to climb right into his skin.
His hands were rubbing, tugging at her through her jacket, both of them too mindless to take the thing off. With a groan of impatience, he tugged her navy DKNY casual skirt up and backed her against the door.
She was practically climbing his body, so it was an easy matter for him to hook one bent knee and drape it over his arm, then reach for her panties and shove them aside while fumbling with the zipper of his jeans.
She heard the ripping of a condom package and gave him extra points for having one so handy. Then his c.o.c.k was nudging against her.
Except the crotch of her panties was once again in the way.
He made a growling sound in his throat, said, "I owe you one pair of panties," and then she felt the tug almost at the same time she heard the sound of ripping silk.
She was panting, desperate for him, her hips already rocking in antic.i.p.ation. And then he was there, thrusting up and into her and she screamed with the overwhelming pleasure.
He thrust deep and hard and she met him thrust for thrust. Their hands were all over each other, mouths kissing, licking, biting every inch of skin they could reach.
She thought someone was knocking on the door, then realized the sound came from her purse, still hooked to her arm, banging in time to their pa.s.sion.
The door was hard against the back of her head and her spine, but she didn"t care. She used the leverage to grind her pelvis against his, driving them both even crazier. She climbed so high and so fast she thought her lungs might burst, then felt as though they did burst, along with the rest of her as she shattered.
Her cries and the instinctive tightening of her muscles around him were enough to provoke Daniel"s explosion. His thrusts became frenzied, his muscles rigid, and, to her surprise, it was enough to set her off again so they came together in a panting rush.
There was no way she could speak. In fact, she was only remaining upright because she was sandwiched between Daniel and the door.
She leaned her forehead against the side of his neck and found it damp, felt his pulse pound, echoing her own.
He kissed the top of her head. "Hi. Can I take your coat?"
She chuckled. "I got what I came for," she said breezily. "I should be going now."
He rocked gently against her, his c.o.c.k still deep inside causing aftershocks to ripple through her body. "We"ve barely started," he said.
"How"s your account book working?" she asked him later, tucked up against him in bed. Evening had faded to night, but they"d barely noticed, so caught up in exploring each other"s bodies, bringing each other pleasure. Just now, she felt that one more o.r.g.a.s.m might kill her, but there was a quiet pleasure in lying here, his chest hair tickling her cheek, his heart rate slowing beneath her ear.
His hand, which had been idly tracing circles around her nipple, stilled. "Fine."
A certain defensiveness in his tone made her wonder just how much he was using his personal ledger. "Let"s see."
"That"s private," he said with a huffiness that sounded contrived. An interesting possibility occurred to her-that he wasn"t merely disorganized. He didn"t know how to do the most basic accounting.
"Daniel, I know how obscenely overpaid you are. We"ve seen each other naked, climaxed together-I think you could share your account ledger with me."
He shifted, his flesh sliding warmly against hers. "I haven"t started using it yet."
She propped her head on her elbow and gazed down at his face, trying not to let her amus.e.m.e.nt show. "You don"t have a clue how to keep your books, do you?"
His gaze narrowed and went steely on her, a lone gunfighter up against the posse. She didn"t say a word, just raised her eyebrows.
He tried to pull her head down for a kiss, but she resisted. "Do you?"
When she refused his kiss, he must have figured out distraction was hopeless, and gave in. "No."
She kissed his nose and then rolled out of bed in one smooth motion. "Come on. I"ll teach you."
"Are you one of those interfering women who no sooner gets in a man"s pants than she wants to start improving him?"
She grinned at him as she shrugged into the navy terry towel robe hanging on the back of the door. "Yep."
The robe smelled like Daniel, and wrapping herself in it was like getting a hug from him, which the real Daniel didn"t look in any mood to give her right now.
He grumbled, but shrugged into the jeans he"d dumped on the floor. He must feel, as she did, that they were going to wear themselves out if they didn"t take a break from the s.e.x. She"d never been so insatiable before. She no sooner felt him slip out of her body, both of them sated and panting, than she wanted him again.
She forced down the desire that raised its sleepy head when she saw him walk toward her bare-chested, his jeans riding low.
Accounting wasn"t s.e.xy, not even to Tara, so it seemed the safest occupation while they recovered. Besides, her gift of an account book was useless if the man didn"t know how to use it.
She flipped on a light switch and illuminated the glossy walnut dining table she"d coveted herself when she"d seen it in the Ethan Allen catalogue, and seated herself at one of the high-backed chairs. She"d snagged her purse along the way, and pulled out her calculator, then waited patiently while he reluctantly went to a drawer in the matching sideboard, obviously designed to store linens. He eased open the drawer and she saw, not tablecloths and napkins, but a sea of crumpled papers.
The cover of the accounting book was bulging when he dug it out, which gave her hope, but that hope was dashed when she flipped it open to find more receipts stuffed into it and not a single notation in the ledger.
"Right," she said briskly, already sorting the receipts into piles, knowing she had to perform emergency financial CPR. "I"ll need copies of your bank statements, mortgage, taxes, food bills, telephone, life insurance, charitable donations, the works."
She"d given him the book in the frail hope it might encourage him to turn in accurate expense reports, but somewhere along the way it had become her mission to teach him to organize his entire financial life. Including his personal finances.