Sweet Deal

Chapter Twelve

They made love again, this time in her bed, this time with slow, easy touches and long, lingering kisses, lush licks and soft sighs.

And they talked.

He’d been dismayed when her friends had showed up earlier, and not just because they’d interrupted them. He never usually got to know girls’ friends very well and he didn’t want to, because that just made it into more of a “relationship”. Friends got pissed off when their friends got hurt, which he tried to avoid but which still happened, and he didn’t need every female on the face of the earth pissed off at him. But somehow, he’d found himself wanting Shelby’s friends to like him for some crazyass fucking reason, and then he’d found himself relaxing, liking the way they cared about Shelby and actually—Jesus—enjoying himself.

And now he found himself talking about stupid shit that he never talked about to anyone, telling Shelby more about his sisters and their kids. And she talked about her parent’s marriage and how alone she’d always felt because of their focus—their destructive focus—on each other. And they’d ended up talking about Andrew.

“He’s never done anything inappropriate,” Shelby said, curled against him, rubbing her hand over his chest, over one nipple, in a way that made him tingle.

“But you feel uncomfortable.”

“Yes.”

“Is it possible you misread him?”

Shelby thought about it. “I suppose. I might be a little paranoid.”

“Huh? Why?”

She smoothed her hand over his shoulder. “Because of what happened at my last job.”

“What happened?”

She rolled away from him and flopped onto her back with a groan.

He rolled toward her and lifted up on one elbow to look down at her, stroking hair off her cheek. “Tell me.”

Her eyes closed. “I worked at RBM Pharmaceuticals. As a project manager. It was a really interesting place to work. My boss…”

His gut clenched.

“When I’d been there about five years, I got a new boss. He and I got along great. We did the coffees, the lunches, the business trips.” She licked her lips and swallowed. Her eyes opened and he gazed down into that beautiful liquid blue. “He paid a lot of attention to me and we started seeing each other outside of work. I thought I was in love with him. He was my boss, and I knew it was a bad thing to do, but…”

His belly muscles went rigid, and the hand smoothing her hair back stilled. A feeling of pressure rose in his chest.

“But I fell for him, and I thought he loved me too.” A small smile touched her lips. “Stupid me. People were talking about us. It was quite the gossip fest even though we thought we were keeping it totally on the down low. What an idiot I was. Anyway, it seemed like things were going great. I was working hard, but I didn’t know that Mark was taking all the credit for the work I was doing, with his bosses.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” The tension in his chest built.

“He kept telling me what a good job I was doing, what great ideas I came up with, and how everyone above him recognized it too, and I believed him. And trusted him. And then…the project was going way over budget. I brought it to his attention. He said it must be my fault.” She stopped, her voice thick, and she blinked rapidly. “I looked back through all the project documents and I discovered that he’d screwed up a budget projection. It was a big mistake and it was going to cost the company a lot of money. It was going to look really bad for us. I felt sick about it, but…” She paused again. “But he told his bosses that it was my fault. He saved his own ass and let me take the fall for it.”

“Oh, Shelby Rose.” He pulled her into his arms, rolling again so she was tucked against him.

“It was even worse because I thought I was in love with him. He let them fire me. My reputation was a bit uh, tarnished in the project management world. I didn’t get a good reference. All RBM would do was confirm I’d worked there for six years if anyone called them for a reference.” Her tone was casual but he could hear how hard that had been for her. “It kind of made job hunting hell. And there aren’t that many companies in Rocky Harbor with project management departments. But you know, you can’t let stuff like that take you down, right?”

Many people would. He tightened his grip on her.

“So I was ecstatic when Gold Shield offered me a job. It was less money, but it’s a good company, and it turns out I’ve gotten two promotions already in the last year. But…” She hesitated. “But that’s what makes me paranoid. That Andrew’s only doing that because he wants something from me.”

A noise like a growl rumbled in Jake’s throat. He wanted to growl. Hearing her confession of love for that bastard kind of stung a bit. Huh. But that was clearly why she wasn’t interested in falling in love again, and that was fine by him.

“I don’t want that to happen again,” she said fiercely.

“That’s why your friends are so protective of you, isn’t it?”

She paused. “Protective?”

He smiled, remembering their interruption. The last thing he wanted was to get involved with her life on a deeper level, when all they had was their little deal, and meeting her friends and getting to know them was bad enough without them clearly concerned about him and what he and Shelby were doing together. “Yeah, protective. They were giving me the third degree.”

“I’m sorry,” she said with a sigh. “You didn’t seem too offended.”

“I wasn’t offended. I thought it was sweet. But…” He hesitated to tell her about his reluctance to get to know them or let them get to know him. Which strangely hadn’t stopped him from talking to them and actually enjoying it. “I just felt a little put on the spot.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll make sure they understand what’s going on. I guess they are a little protective.”

“They’re good friends.” He stroked her hair. “And they care about you. That’s nice.”

“Yeah. You’re right. Sometimes they annoy me, but I love them. Anyway, that’s why it’s so important to me that I keep this job. I don’t want to piss my boss off, though. I just want to keep my job.”

“Just do a good job,” he said, stroking a hand down the curve of her back. “You’ll be okay if you just do a good job.”

“That’s not true.” She lifted her head and gave him a wry smile. “I was doing a good job at RBM and look what happened. There’s more to the business world than doing a good job, and sometimes I think I suck at all that political shit.”

He smiled up at her. “That political shit is one of my strengths.”

Her answering smile eased the burning pain in his chest. “I believe that, you charming devil, you.”

And he rolled her beneath him again, his mouth on hers, his hands on her sweet body, wanting to make her forget any other man, wanting to make her feel so good.

Jake spent the whole weekend with her, not just having sex, although they passed a good part of the time in bed. She’d never had so much fun in bed, making love slow and lazy, talking and laughing, even eating, then making love again, faster, hotter, rougher. But they did things out of bed too, like going shopping for food at the farmers’ market just outside town, walking on the beach, stopping to buy wine and coming across a new little antique store Shelby’d never seen and browsing through it. He’d even installed her new chandelier.

The thought crossed her mind that maybe this was a bit more than they needed to do to convince Andrew, since Andrew never actually saw them. But then, she wasn’t a very good liar and this way, when Andrew asked Monday morning how her weekend was, it would certainly be sincere and convincing when she told him it was the best weekend she’d ever had.

Monday morning was back to reality though, with project meetings and much work to be done on her project plan. She had a team to assemble, deliverables to nail down, and a communications strategy to plan. And that was just a start.

When Andrew called her to his office, she hesitated. What was this meeting going to be like? Another casual chat about anything and everything? Or was he still annoyed about all the invitations she’d turned down last week?

She smoothed her skirt down as she walked along the carpeted corridor between gray fabric panels dividing the cubicles, through the hum of computers, tap of keyboards and low voices discussing business. She smiled at Susan, who waved her into Andrew’s office with a brief smile and not even a bit of attitude.

“Good morning.” She smiled at Andrew too.

“Morning, Shelby. Come on in. Shut the door.”

Oookay. It was going to be a closed-door meeting. Her stomach tightened as she shut the office door and sat in a chair. He moved around from behind his desk and also sat.

“How was your weekend?”

Fanfreakingtastic. She nibbled her bottom lip briefly. “It was good,” she said, unable to stop her smile from breaking free. “Nothing exciting. Jake and I did a little shopping, a little cooking. Went for a walk.” She lifted one shoulder, trying to downplay the amazing time she’d had with Jake, her insides doing a little flip of excitement thinking about him again. “How about you?”

“It was okay.” He paused, watching her. Normally, he’d invite her to go for coffee, tell her about the chick flick Gianna had dragged him to and how bad it was, or how she’d made him have dinner with her parents who he always called the “outlaws”. He hated Gianna’s family and that apparently caused conflict between them. She’d heard it more than once. But he said nothing like that.

“Last week you met with Davis and Bram.”

Okay. On to business. “Yes. Twice.”

He nodded, his face serious as he took a chair. “How did that go?”

“Well, I mentioned to you earlier in the week that there seems to be conflict between their divisions. But I think after Friday’s meeting, I’ve gotten them more or less on board. Why?”

“Davis came to see me first thing this morning. Both he and Bram are questioning your ability to manage the project, given how short a time you’ve worked here.”

Her mouth fell open and her stomach swooped. Heat swept over her, burning her face. “You’re kidding.”

He leaned back in his chair. “No.”

“Well.” She searched for something to say. “They did mention that in our meeting, but I thought I’d addressed it.” She frowned at Andrew. “Are you concerned about that?”

Geez. He wasn’t going to take this project away from her now, was he? Was this all because she’d turned down his invitations last week?

The heat sliding over her intensified and a flare of anger burned inside her. If that’s what this was about…oh, man. This could not be happening to her. Not again.

“No,” he said, putting his fingertips together. “I chose you to lead this project and I have confidence in your abilities.”

Relief filtered through her, but even so her stomach was still knotted and tight. “Thank you.”

“They also weren’t happy because they think the whole intake process needs to be revised.”

“They mentioned that.” She gazed across the table at him. “That’s not in the scope of this project, though. I told them that, and I told them if there are processes that need to be reviewed, we would make note of them and I can make recommendations for future changes. They seemed fine with that.”

The fact that the two men had gone to her boss behind her back was starting to piss her off. Heat slid through her veins. She felt like slamming her leather portfolio on the table. Repeatedly.

Andrew nodded thoughtfully.

“You don’t think I should include that, do you?” She leaned forward. “You know how scope creep can destroy a project.”

“Yeah. I know. But the intake process is critical. What if it compromises the success of this project because it wasn’t included?”

She gritted her teeth. “Fine. I’ll look at it. But I’m not committing to including it in this project.”

“That’s okay. If you look at it, hopefully it will satisfy them.”

Shelby inhaled a deep breath and met Andrew’s eyes. “What about the bigger problem here?”

“What’s that?”

“The fact that they came to you behind my back, instead of coming to me.”

Andrew’s eyes narrowed and his chin lowered. “Oh. Yeah.”

She shook her head, her mouth twisting. “I wish you had told them to come to me if they have concerns, Andrew.”

His eyes widened and he sat back a little in his chair. He gazed back at her. “I…”

“That’s okay.” She waved a hand and stood, trembling on the inside but wanting to appear confident and in control. She smiled. “I’ll go talk to them about it.”

She walked out of his office, fury boiling inside her, both at Andrew and at the other two men. What kind of bullshit was this?

She wanted to walk straight to Bram’s office while she still had the momentum, but paused outside her own cubicle. Maybe she should let the emotion die down a little and plan what she wanted to say to him before she went storming in there. Yeah.

So she sat at her desk and stared at the dark computer monitor for long moments.

It wasn’t as if she’d never encountered this kind of problem before. In her years at RBM she’d dealt with a whole lot of problems on various projects. She knew what she had to do. Why was she second-guessing herself?

She picked up three squares of sticky notes and stacked them one on top of another in a perfect neat pile. Straightened some files into an equally neat pile. Smoothed some dust particles off the corner of the desk. Replaced a paper clip in the holder.

Was it just because of Andrew and her worries that he was giving her too much responsibility? Or was it her past coming back to haunt her, making her doubt her abilities? Making her too sensitive to things she should be able to easily deal with.

She’d automatically jumped to the conclusion that Andrew was going to pull the project from her when he’d mentioned the problem. She shouldn’t have assumed that, but after the things her last boss had done, she was jumpy and paranoid. She rubbed her aching forehead and leaned her hand into it, elbow on her desk.

The fact that he hadn’t taken the project away from her, had stood up for her, caused her even more confusion. Yes, she should be happy her boss supported her. That’s what she’d expect from a boss. But there was still that niggle of worry about his attention to her and what his intentions were. Although this morning had been completely businesslike.

She’d give it a couple of hours and then go talk to Bram and Davis.