Is she not cooperating?"
If by "not cooperating" Tag meant she was "not having sex with him," he was spot-on. Like Reese, Tag dated often, only when Tag dumped his date it wasn't with a curt conversation and delivered flowers. Tag did it with a wink, a smile, and a playful bump on the jaw, and the line that worked best for him: Let's save ourselves the trouble. The blow-off matched his easygoing attitude, so girls most often left with a matching smile.
"Meaning?" Reese asked.
"Meaning is she bitching at you all the time? You two have this volatile energy." He wiggled his fingers in front of him. "Combustible. If you're not screwing it away, you have to be arguing." He shook his head curtly. "Not good for the public."
Hmm. Great point.
"We'll manage."
"I didn't come in here to razz you, believe it or not," Tag said. "I wanted to suggest you come with me to play racquetball. Burn off some of your rage before you climb this building and start swiping at low-flying planes."
"Racquetball." The idea of pounding a little blue ball into the wall sounded like a great way to forget about his own pair. At least for a few hours. "You're on."
"Was that a yes?" Tag put a hand over his heart and pretended to have a heart attack.
"Don't make me change my mind," Reese said, instantly feeling his mood lift.
It'd been a while since Reese had walked away from his desk on a weeknight.
He was overdue.
* * *
By eleven o'clock, Merina was uncharacteristically beat. Typically, she'd just now be getting going. A day running the Van Heusen pulled her attention in nineteen thousand different directions, so it was during the late hours she was able to catch up.
Car window rolled down, she opened the gate via fingerprint, a detail set up this morning before she'd left for work, and parked in the massive garage next to Reese's fleet of billionaire-mobiles. She sneered. Those cars were like the women he used to date. Ridiculous, silly excuses for attention, only to be discarded or replaced the moment he tired of them.
Wow. Along with being beat, she was grouchy too. Purse on her shoulder, she stepped from her non-flashy sedan and moved to the side entrance to the mansion, which she was pretty sure opened to a cloakroom…or the kitchen? She couldn't remember. She'd had a hurried run-through of a tour twice now and determined that the house was a maze.
Before she could open the door, it popped open before her, revealing a portly, smiling woman wearing a black uniform, a white shirt, and a tired smile.
"Magda," Merina greeted, fingers mentally crossed that she'd gotten the woman's name right.
Mrs. Crane." Magda's accent was pure Chicago. "Late night for you. Were you able to work the gate and the garage door okay?"
"Yes, thank you. Everything hums like a well-oiled machine around here."
"Thank you for saying so." She pointed over her shoulder to the kitchen. "Your dinner is in the oven. Tamales, or if you don't care for those, a small tray of spinach lasagna."
Yum.
"I'll probably have both," Merina said. She could get used to coming home to dinner. Typically, she ate room service in her office, and as good as the food was at the Van Heusen, there was only so much spring-mix salad and seared ahi a girl could eat.
"Good night, Mrs. Crane."
"Good night."
Magda left via the open garage door and Merina punched the button to close it. She ended up opening the wrong garage doors twice before figuring out what buttons to push to close them again.
"Pull it together, Mrs. Crane," she chided herself as she walked inside. She set the alarm code on the door and strolled through the kitchen, the smells as tantalizing as promised. And, as she'd promised Magda, she sat down to a healthy portion of both lasagna and tamales before rinsing her dish and fork and depositing them into the empty dishwasher.
"For my next trick, I'll find my room." She'd been trying to be funny, but it wasn't so funny when she got turned around in the staircase that led from the kitchen to the opposite side of the house, and then in attempting to reroute to the other hallway, ended up in an upstairs office instead.
Tall, rich mahogany shelves lined the walls, books clogging them. An arched window faced the lake, taking up half the wall. A desk dominated the space, and the man facing the window dominated the desk. She couldn't see Reese's face, just the back of his head, chair turned, hand propping up his head. She had no idea if he'd heard her approach until he spoke.
"Evening."
"I'm lost. I was on my way to the bedroom and made a wrong turn in Albuquerque."
"How do you think I ended up in here?" He turned, dropping his elbow and facing her. He was in his signature dark suit, this one with a subtle pinstripe design visible thanks to the moonlight, and his tie knot had been loosened, his top button opened. His scruff was short, his hair perfectly styled, and that crooked tie was about the sexiest thing she'd ever seen him wear. It bespoke of his loss of control, and she was quickly learning "uncontrolled" was the way she preferred him.
"So you gave up?" She walked to the desk and Reese's eyes dropped to her feet before skimming up her pencil skirt and lingering at her silk shirt. That's when she remembered his comment about her tattoo. Was that why his eyes so often strayed to her chest?
"I thought if I sat awhile, it'd come to me." She liked his dry sense of humor, but beneath it was another emotion. One she couldn't place. He wrenched his eyes to hers when she came closer.
"You really want to see it, don't you?" she asked, her voice husky.
He rested his palms on his suit pants, fingers splayed, chin up as he kept his gaze fused with hers. He did. She could feel that need vibrating from him.
"You might be disappointed." She fingered a delicate button on her shirt and watched his fingertips dig into his legs. "It's not much."
"I'll be the judge of that." Purposefully, slowly, he leaned back in his leather chair and watched as she undid first one button, then the second. One more open button over the center of her bra gave her enough clearance to show him.