Revenge Sex (15 page)

“Well, if it isn’t Little Miss Muffet,” Ruby
drawled.

Jessica stood her ground. Clay’s office door
had been closed when she trotted by. Behind Ruby, she could see
that Holt’s office was empty.

Maybe Holt was upstairs telling Clay about
the gossip. Maybe Holt was firing Clay.

This couldn’t be happening.

She concentrated on Ruby. The other woman
didn’t bat an eyelash. She looked unconcerned, as if she hadn’t
heard what people were saying. She looked...malicious.

She looked as if she were the one who’d
started it all.

“You did this, didn’t you,” Jessica accused,
soft and low, so that her words didn’t float down the hall to human
resources or out into the front lobby where the receptionist could
overhear.

“What are you talking about?” Ruby’s lip
curled in a slight snarl. She wore a short cream blazer that
exposed too much cleavage. Why did Holt let his secretary get away
with dressing like a slut?

“The gossip,” Jessica stated flatly. She
didn’t know why Ruby would have done it, but it had her grubby
fingerprints all over it. She was angry Clay had walked out, and
this was payback.

“What gossip?” Ruby asked mildly.

“You know every dirty bit of gossip anyone
ever dredges up.”

“For your information, I sit at my desk, mind
my own business, and do my boss’s bidding.” Ruby flipped her hair
over her shoulder. “Is that what you do, Jessica? Your boss’s
bidding?” She stood. Her skirt was halfway up her thighs. Snatching
a file from her desk, she yanked open the cabinet, and stuffed the
folder inside. Then she stood with her hip cocked, her arm resting
along the drawer. “How far would you go to be controller,
Jessica?”

“I do my job well, that’s how far I’d
go.”

“Right.” Ruby stared her down. “And that’s
why you were at the Marriott on Friday. Just doing your job?”

Jessica stepped back as if Ruby had slapped
her.

Ruby rounded the end of her desk, stalking
Jessica. “Oh yeah,” she went on, “Clay told me all about your
little visit there when he came home to me on Saturday
morning.”

“Home to you?” she echoed.

“Yeah.
Home
.
To me
. I told him
to have a fling to pay me back for what I did with Bradley on his
desk.” She smiled. It never reached her eyes. “Now we’re even, and
things will go back to the way they were.”

Jessica’s heart hammered, her hands felt
clammy, and her eyes ached. She blinked. She would
not
cry
in front of Ruby.

“I should thank you.” Ruby went on turning
the knife. “He was so worked up, he couldn’t wait to get his hands
on me.”

It’s not true. It couldn’t be.

“Then why did you tell everyone about
Bradley?” Jessica whispered. “Why did you tell them Clay was
impotent and he paid men to have sex with you because he can’t get
it up?”

Wide-eyed, Ruby stared at her if she’d gone
completely mad. “What are you talking about?”

“The gossip. What everyone’s saying in the
halls.”

Ruby’s jaw dropped. Jessica would have
laughed if the whole thing wasn’t so horrible—from the malicious
gossip to Clay screwing her to pay back Ruby, then returning to
Ruby the next morning.

“
Who
is saying that?” Ruby finally
managed.

“Everyone.”

Something began to smolder in the depths of
Ruby’s irises, then she narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips until
tiny lines spread out from her lip liner like whiskers. “That
bastard. I should have known he’d screw everything up.”

Of course. Jessica should have known, too.
The rumors didn’t have Ruby’s panache. The payback currently making
the rounds of West Coast Manufacturing was Bradley’s.

Chapter Seventeen

Clay hated personal business at work. It
wasn’t the place. But Holt had gone over to manufacturing, and Ruby
was alone. The problem needed immediate attention.

Seated at her desk, Ruby had chewed off her
lipstick, a very unRubylike thing to do. When you stood back and
looked at her, from a purely male perspective, she was an
extraordinarily attractive woman. Hitting forty hadn’t diminished
her sex appeal. She’d come into her own, from her dark hair to her
gorgeous breasts to her gym-trim figure. Not to mention that she
was pretty in a classic Lana Turner sort of way. You didn’t get
much better than Lana Turner in
The Postman Always Rings
Twice
. Yeah, that was Ruby, gorgeous on the outside, rotten on
the inside, though as yet she hadn’t exhibited murderous
tendencies.

She was full of secrets and smoldering
sensuality. Jessica was the girl next door dying to be naughty for
the bad boy down the street.

“What’s wrong with you?” Ruby said.

“What could possibly be wrong, my dear?”

“You were just standing there, staring at me.
It’s unnerving.”

He reached back and closed the door to her
annex outside Holt’s office. “So I hear it’s being bandied about
that I’m impotent and I pay men to fuck you.”

She shot out a breath. “That’s not my
fault.”

He raised one brow at her, then folded
himself into a chair at the side of her desk. “So you have no clue
how it all started.”

She pursed her lips. “Maybe Jessica Murphy
wants revenge on me.”

He stared at her until she dropped her
gaze.

“All right, it wasn’t her. It was Bradley.”
She looked at him once more, her pretty brown eyes turning poignant
and apologetic. “You were right. I was an idiot. I messed
everything up. I’m sorry, Clay.”

“It was foolish.” He shrugged and decided not
to ride her into the ground. “But he went overboard. Do you have
his address or do I need to get it from human resources?”

She pushed back from the desk, her lips
working a moment before she said, “
You’re
going to see
him?”

“He needs to hear from the heavy.” He’d
squash the guy like a bug.

She held up her hands, her manicure perfect.
“That will make it worse. We need him to start another rumor about
how he made it all up because—” She stopped.

“And why would he say he made it all up?
Because he’s pissed at me? That’s another bad rumor, Ruby. It
all
has to stop.”

“Clay, please,” she begged, and he realized
she was actually in earnest. “I need to talk to him. I can’t have
you do it. I screwed this up, and I need to fix it.”

She was right, she needed to fix her own
fuckups. Then she wouldn’t do it again. “Fine.” He held her gaze
pointedly. “But if it doesn’t stop, then I’m going to deal with
him.”

“I’ll take care of it.” She laid her hands
flat on the desk. “Then everything can get back to normal.”

“Ruby,” he said, “we can’t go back.”

“Oh, oh, I don’t mean that. I know things
have to change.” She tapped her chest. “
I
have to
change.”

It was too late. He’d already done the
changing for both of them, and there was no going back. “Ruby—”

She held up her hand. “Just let me fix this.
Then we’ll talk. Please, Clay?”

He sighed, rose from the chair. “All right.
Fix it.” But there would be no talk. He was done.

* * * * *

Jessica stared at her email inbox. The human
resource rep at the company Vince was contracting for had scheduled
an interview with her for five-thirty. Jessica had sent Vince her
resume last Thursday, and he’d passed it on to his buddy: now this.
What had she done? She’d climbed the corporate ladder, made her
choices all about furthering her career. That came first. Until
she’d seen Ruby in Clay’s office. Then she’d completely lost
control of everything.

Her phone rang, and Jessica jumped. The
readout came up with Clay’s extension. Oh God. She picked it up,
her hand shaking. “Yes?”

“Got a minute? We need to talk.”

His voice actually created a
physical ache inside her.
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll be right
there.” In her crimping belly, she knew whatever it was had to be
bad.

He was seated at his conference table,
binders and folders strewn out before him, one foot propped on the
opposite knee where a pad of paper rested as he made notes. “Shut
the door.”

Yep, it was bad.

With the door closed, she could smell his
aftershave, a subtle aroma that was spicy rather than sweet. The
scent had been on her Friday night as she tried to fall asleep.
When she closed her eyes, she could still smell it, whether he was
there or not.

“I’m sorry I lied on Friday. I didn’t think
of it as a lie at the time, just a fantasy.” She didn’t mention
that she’d stalked him. Essentially that’s what she’d done by
showing up at his hotel.

He tapped the eraser end of his pencil
against the pad on his lap. “I overreacted. You’re not like
Ruby.”

That didn’t make her feel better. It was a
preamble. She could hear the
but
, and more than anything,
she didn’t want him to say it. So she gave him her own speech.
“I’ve been mixed up over the last week, and I did some things I
wouldn’t do under normal circumstances.” She cleared her throat,
then allowed herself a deep breath. “Especially since I work for
you.” Her eyes ached and her chest hurt, and suddenly it was hard
to breathe.

He was still tapping his eraser on
his notepad
, his expression unreadable. “So
you want to forget what we did.”

She would
never
forget what they’d
done. “The situation looks bad.” She was his direct report. It was
the appearance of impropriety. The controller and the CFO both have
signature authority. They could approve each other’s wire transfers
and commit a host of other collusive activities. Not that they
would, but...

“That’s correct.” He paused long enough to
give her hand a slight tremor. “Unless the candidate we choose as
controller is Greg Spencer or someone from outside.”

Her heart lurched. “Is that what you’re going
to do?”

“No.” He paused, holding her gaze. “I’m
giving the job to you.”

A week ago she would have given a polite
trite phrase.
Thank you for the opportunity. You won’t be
disappointed, blah, blah, blah
. Then she’d have run back to her
office, closed the door, and done a happy dance. Now, she ached. He
didn’t want her. She didn’
t play the game the way
he wa
nted so he’d
gone back to Ruby.
Making
her controller was the consolation prize. It was
crazy, she’d wanted the job badly, worked hard for it. Yet all it
meant was that he didn’t want her.

He gazed at her, his scrutiny intense. “Don’t
you want it?”

She couldn’t see him day in and day out,
remembering what they’d done together. That she wanted it to happen
again and again. She didn’t want him to go back to Ruby. She wanted
everything Ruby had.

But he hadn’t offered her Ruby’s position.
He’d offered only the controllership.

“Holt’s already approved it,” he said.

That was probably why he’d called her up to
his office. It had nothing to do with Friday. He’d already
forgotten it. She embarrassed herself for nothing.

He made a note on his legal pad, God only
knew why. “Maybe you want to know what the salary is first.”

She didn’t care. “Yes. Of course.”

He named a number that was reasonable but not
extravagant.

“You said I was worth three thousand dollars
a night.” She didn’t know where it came from, because she hadn’t
thought about the price he’d given Mitch until this moment.

The room began to heat. His eyes darkened.
“That’s a different job.”

God, she wanted to touch him, to taste his
mouth. To climb onto his lap, take out his cock, suck him.

Jessica swallowed. “As it happens, you’re too
late. I’ve applied at another company. In fact”—she flipped her
wrist to look at her watch—“I’ve got an interview after work.”

For the first time, emotion crossed his face,
a sudden tension along his jaw. “You’re leaving?”

“It’s impossible to stay after what we’ve
done.”

He shook his head. “It’s not impossible.”

She wanted to smack him for being so obtuse.
“We had sex. Now you decide that we have to stop.
You
decide
that I should be controller instead. You didn’t even ask what I
wanted.”

“But you’ve always wanted to be controller,”
he said, mystified.

She leaned down in his face, breathed him in,
wanted to cry. “That was before. You never asked if I’d changed my
mind.”

“Did you?” he murmured softly.

Goddamn him. She didn’t want to beg. She was
afraid he was going to make her. Then he was going back to Ruby
anyway. “What I did was make up my mind that I’m not getting
anywhere
at West Coast. So I’m looking
elsewhere.”

She marched to the door, yanked it open, and
left him.

Back in her office, before she could talk
herself out of it, she dashed off a reply to the earlier email,
accepting the five-thirty interview.

* * * * *

Five minutes later, Clay finally laid his
notepad on the table. He’d done a lot of thinking since Friday
night. About the reasons that he found himself so much more wrapped
up in Jessica over the span of two weeks than he’d been with Ruby
in two years. He’d found answers. Yet Jessica had stunned him with
her announcement.

Of course, it was inevitable. She’d left him
in every way she could, professionally, sexually, emotionally.

It would never be possible to wipe his mind
of everything that had happened between them. He wanted her too
much. He couldn’t sit at the damn conference table without
remembering what he’d done to her on it. He’d had to hold the legal
pad on his lap so she wouldn’t see his erection.

She was worth far more than three thousand
dollars. Right now, he’d pay anything for one more night with
her.