Revenge Sex (14 page)

Jessica couldn’t even look at him. She could
only listen to the sound of his footsteps as he walked away.

* * * * *

Ruby hid in an alcove until Clay had crossed
the lobby and punched the elevator button.

What the hell?

She’d arrived just before nine. She was going
to talk to him, and he was damn well going to hear her out. She
could explain about Bradley.

But there he was, getting off the elevator
with little Miss Perfect Jessica Muffet. They’d been upstairs. With
that sexy black skirt and blouse—not to mention the fuck-me
heels—they certainly hadn’t been discussing the quarterly
financials. Clay was in shirt sleeves and slacks. Where was his
tie, his jacket?

Ruby felt steam blowing out her ears.

He disappeared into the elevator, flanked by
a couple and another businessman. She could follow him. He’d called
her with the hotel and room number, so she knew where he was if she
absolutely needed him.
Absolutely
. His word. Like she’d
better have a damn good reason.

Damn him. She was not going up to his room to
beg. No, the situation called for more planning before she
acted.

All right, so she’d told him to give her a
little payback, fine and dandy. She hadn’t expected him to do it,
but
if
he did, it certainly was
not
supposed to be
with Jessica Murphy. She couldn’t do Bradley because he worked for
Clay, but
he
was allowed to do Jessica? The woman was smart,
good at her job, a veritable paragon in Clay’s eyes. How could he
choose
her
?

Maybe that was the whole point. He’d picked
the worst possible candidate for his revenge fling. The one woman
that would hurt Ruby the most.

Ruby wanted to cry. She wanted to scream.

She wanted to pay little Miss Muffet back
tenfold.

* * * * *

Clay stared at the mess in his room. The
bedclothes were torn apart. Condom wrappers, lube, towels in the
bathroom. And the scent of sex filling the air. Her sex, his sex.
Theirs. Together.

She’d gone to a lot of trouble. She’d set the
scene down to the last detail, thought of everything, even visited
her fuck buddy first to cover herself in come. She’d staged the
pickup, pulled it off flawlessly, and he’d believed.

It had been perfect. He’d never had a woman
put so much thought into providing the scenario she thought he
wanted.

But the lie stuck in his craw. She could have
come to him straight from her fuck buddy. If she lied about this,
she could lie about anything. Like Ruby.

He grabbed the waste basket and began tossing
the detritus of their session. He hung the robe back on its hook.
She’d even run the shower to make it look like her lover had used
it before leaving. Such a painstaking plan, but it was an elaborate
lie.

Yet could he really say she was like
Ruby?

Ruby’s lies were about herself, about what
she wanted. A justification to fuck who she wanted when she wanted
and where, including his desk. She had done it to humiliate him or
one-up him.

Jessica had done everything to please him.
He’d started it all in his office. He’d touched her, wanted her.
And tacitly granted permission to try more. She’d straddled the
fence, giving him what he wanted without compromising herself by
screwing someone she didn’t know. She’d told him she’d had close to
fifty men—far from the truth, he realized now. But as with
everything else she’d done, she’d attempted to give him exactly
what he wanted. Anticipating his needs, she’d said and done all the
things she thought would make it best for him.

It was simple for Ruby; she’d picked up
countless men. And lies were just as easy for her.

Jessica was in a completely different class.
Her solution to the dilemma was better than anything he could have
expected. He would never have known it wasn’t real if the guy
hadn’t approached them afterward.

Yet it could never work for so many reasons.
She couldn’t keep on playing to his needs when it wasn’t in her
nature. He couldn’t ask that of her. She was also his subordinate.
It was compromise they couldn’t make.

Then there was Ruby. No matter what else
she’d done, she’d given him three good years, and he felt like the
total fuck-up in the situation. He’d done things with Jessica he
never should have while Ruby still lived in his house.

There was only one choice to be made. He’d
known it since the day he’d found Ruby and Bradley in his bed.

Actually the truth was he’d felt it in his
gut the moment he first allowed himself to think of Jessica in a
sexual light.

* * * * *

“What do you mean you’re taking the boys to
Santa Cruz for the weekend?” Ruby’s eyes started to ache. She’d
waited all week for Clay to come home, and when he did, he was
leaving again. “We need to talk about this,” she insisted.

Clay stood in the front hall, his features
resolute. “There’s nothing to discuss, Ruby. You knew how I felt
last weekend.”

She didn’t know what to say, what to do. Men
didn’t leave; she left. They didn’t decide when it was over; she
did.

“But I’m sorry about Bradley.” Did she
actually sound whiny? “How many times do I have to apologize?”

“None,” he said implacably. “I don’t own you.
You’re free to leave whenever you don’t like the constraints I put
on you.”

She put her hand on his arm. Thank God he
didn’t throw her off. A million things to say and do ran through
her mind. She could beg. She could tell him she loved him. She
could accuse him of wanting Little Miss Muffet. But Ruby didn’t beg
any man, Clay wouldn’t believe that she loved him, and he’d accuse
her of spying if she said she’d seen him with Jessica. Mentioning
her would be a huge tactical error.

But, oh God, was he leaving her for the
insipid woman? It couldn’t be. It was his house. Ruby had nowhere
to go, and she liked her life the way it was, where she paid for
her own personal expenses, contributed to the household costs,
bought him generous gifts as a thank-you for everything he did.
Give all that up?

She shut down all that emotionalism, all the
jealousy. What was needed was raw truth. “Clay, I’d like another
chance. What we have is good. I understand how much the rules mean
to you, which I didn’t before, and I won’t make the same mistakes
again.”

Something flickered in his eyes. She was
horrified to think it was pity.

“It was good,” he said. “But it’s over
now.”

Panic rose up, clutched her chest, squeezed
the breath out of her. “It doesn’t have to be.” God, even her voice
quivered pathetically.

“It already is.”

She couldn’t mistake the finality in those
words. Ruby wanted to scream.
It’s her, isn’t it?
But Clay
would only walk out. “Maybe we should take a break for a
while.”

“No, Ruby.” If there had been pity in his
gaze, it was gone now.

The thing she’d always admired about Clay was
his ability to make a decision and stick to it. She’d never been
able to wrap him around her little finger. If she had, well, she’d
probably have been long gone. But it worked against her now.

“I’ll have the boys in Santa Cruz for the
weekend. If you need more time to make alternative arrangements,
that’s fine. Or I can put you up at a hotel.”

Put her up at a hotel?
Well, thank you
very fucking much
. Yet Ruby was too stunned to say a word. He’d
closed the door behind him before she could react. When she heard
his car start, she grabbed the closest thing and threw it. The
vase—something she’d found at a wine festival two years
ago—shattered against the door, splinters flying out, stinging her
cheeks.

Then she stormed back to the bedroom, grabbed
her largest roller case out of the closet, threw it on the bed, and
began cramming clothes inside.

If it was the last thing she ever did, she’d
make that bitch pay for stealing Clay.

Chapter Sixteen

Jessica didn’t know how she was going to face
Clay today, yet another Monday after a momentous event between
them.

She would never learn to play the game
correctly. Clay wanted her only if she gave pieces of herself to
other men. It wasn’t about the sex, because of course she could do
that. It was about feeling that she was good enough only if she did
this for him. It was too much pressure.

This was why you never did your boss. You
screwed up your love life
and
your job.

But dammit, she couldn’t hide in her office
forever. She had things to do and decided to tackle accounts
payable first. She poked her head into the first cubicle. “Hey
Yuan, did you get all the paperwork you needed to put the Wrainger
invoices on the checkrun?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Yuan spoke fluent English, but
her heavy accent made phone calls difficult. She was excellent at
handling issues through email, but the accounts receivable girl at
Wrainger was terrible at responding to anything other than a phone
call. Jessica sometimes had to step in to help.

“Great.” Okay, that wasn’t so bad. She could
do her work despite what had happened Friday night. She moved on,
offering a comment, a little praise, answering a question. She
didn’t micromanage, but employees needed to feel appreciated, that
you were available, and they could come to you with anything.
Otherwise little problems became big issues.

She couldn’t say when she became aware of the
whispering. It was like the previous Monday, when the halls buzzed
with news of Bradley’s resignation, but on a lower level. As if
everyone wanted to hear, but no one wanted to be accused of
spreading this particular gossip. Then she started to get the gist
of it through snatches of conversation.

“You’re kidding. They had sex?”

“Right there in the office.”

She started to feel sick.

“Holy moly, he can’t get it up anymore?”

“He actually pays people to screw her.”

“Who told you that?”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I swear.”

“What a sicko.”

“That’s total crap.”

Buzz, buzz, buzz. How did gossip travel so
fast? It was all over the office. Until she realized it wasn’t
about what Clay had done to her. It was about Ruby and Bradley, and
that Clay was impotent so he paid other men to take care of Ruby.
And he liked to watch.

Oh. My. God.

There seemed to be equal distribution between
those who believed and those who thought it was bullshit. The
problem was that half of what was being bandied about was true.

Huddled around the coffee machine, no one
heard her enter the break room. Roger from engineering—what was he
doing over here in accounting?—her G/L accountant Willard, Grace
who did payroll, Lisa from customer service, and good Lord,
Rochelle from the warehouse.

“What is going on here?” Despite the sickness
in the pit of her stomach, she glared at them. “Don’t you have jobs
to do? Gossip is totally unacceptable, especially malicious,
unsubstantiated stuff.”

Everyone scuttled past her until she was
blessedly alone. Her ears were roaring. She couldn’t think.

All she could she wonder was how it would
affect Clay? Did he know about it? And really, who’d started all
this?

* * * * *

“Jesus Christ,” Clay growled. “Who the hell
would spread
that
around?”

“Your girlfriend?” Holt asked dryly. He
leaned back in a chair, hands behind his head, ankles crossed, his
heels propped on Clay’s conference table.

“Ruby’s not that stupid.” Clay paced in front
of his desk. Christ, he was pissed. “It’s that asshole Palmer. He’s
been talking to someone here.”

“The good thing is,” Holt said, “it’s so out
there that no one’s going to believe it.”

“Except that it’s true.” For the most
part.

“No one’s going to believe you’re impotent,”
Holt snorted.

Clay laughed. “Thanks for the vote of
confidence.”

“Or,” Holt went on, “that you’d actually have
to pay someone to do Ruby.” Ruby didn’t make it a secret that she
loved sex. Or that she was very, very good at it. “I do have to
admit she’s pretty damn bold for having sex right on your desk.” He
ended with a raised brow.

When Clay had gotten wind of the rumors,
there was no way he couldn’t let Holt in on the situation. Now Holt
understood why he was staying at a hotel. The only thing he hadn’t
mentioned was Jessica’s role. He wouldn’t bring her name into it.
It wouldn’t be fair to her. This was about Ruby and him. And that
asswipe Bradley Palmer.

“By tomorrow,” Holt said, “it’ll have blown
over.”

“You’re pretty damn nonchalant about it. I
don’t like this kind of disruption to the work flow.”

Holt put his feet down, slapped his hands on
his knees, and leaned forward. “Face facts, Clay. Gossip exists.
You can’t shut it down. If you tried, you’d feel the hostility
building. I accept that it’s just another outlet. As long as
shipments are on time, invoices go out, we get paid, and the stock
price keeps going up even in a down market, I’m not going to mess
with things.”

“This is worse.” Not because it was about
him, but because Bradley had left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth
since he’d walked out. Now the asswipe was trying to bring Clay
down, but he was damaging West Coast in the process.

“I’ll take care of it,” he told Holt. He
would not let his personal life mess with the company.

That’s why you
never
screwed a
coworker. Or a subordinate. His actions could very well have on
effect on Jessica, too. Christ, he should have listened to himself.
Ruby was not the only screw-up here.

* * * * *