“Well…I think he had help. I think he was doing it with Terri.” I hesitated a moment, then said softly, “I’m sorry.”
He reached up and cupped my cheek. “Don’t apologize to me. If anybody deserves apologies here, it’s you.”
He pulled me in close, but he didn’t kiss me. His brow touching mine, he simply held me.
* * *
Nerves danced inside me as I followed Lukas into the office the next morning. I was wearing nothing more than a blouse and jeans because I hadn’t exactly packed for a day at the office.
Technically I wasn’t an employee here anymore, and I suspected I could have worn a paper bag for a dress and Lukas wouldn’t have cared, but clothing was armor. I would have felt more secure if I’d been in one of my designer suits, with a pair of Louboutin heels to go with it.
Instead, I was in jeans and a pretty top with a pair of boots that went up to my knees and I was just going to have to fake it.
People slid me sideways looks as I walked along with Lukas up the stairs to his own personal office, and I could only imagine what they were thinking.
I hadn’t been quiet about why I had gotten fired, and I knew that Breanna had been furious so whether or not she had stayed quiet about what Lukas had done, I had no idea.
But that wasn’t my concern right now.
“Are you sure I should be here?” I asked softly.
“We wouldn’t have figured it out as quickly as we did without you,” Lukas said simply. He opened the door to his office and stepped aside, gesturing for me to enter.
I did so but turned back to meet his gaze one more time. “I still feel kind of funny.”
He cocked a grin at me. “As you’ve made it clear several times.”
He indicated for me to take one of the seats by his desk, but I elected to take one in the seating area in the corner instead. “I don’t want to be the first thing they see,” I said, making a face at him when he gave me a questioning look. I already knew he planned on calling Terri and Aaron. “It just seems…weird.”
Lukas let it go at that and moved around behind his desk, pushing the button on the intercom to bring his assistant on the phone. “Good morning,” he greeted her in return. He asked that she page Terri and Aaron and send them to his office.
“I should have gotten some coffee,” I muttered, crossing my legs.
He was waiting in the corner opposite me now, hands in his pockets.
“You’ve probably got a minute,” he said.
“No. I’m fine.” Glancing at the door, I looked back at him and met his eyes. “After this, I might need something stronger than coffee. Like a screwdriver or a Bloody Mary.”
“We can go get brunch.” He jingled the change in his pocket restlessly, but at the knock on the door, his head whipped in that direction.
Terri entered, followed closely by Aaron. She approached him, speaking in a brisk tone, and if she had any nervousness inside her, I couldn’t tell.
“I’m glad you called us in here, Mr. Grayson. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about the account Stella was managing. I’d like to take them over.”
Aaron said nothing. Neither of them had noticed me yet.
I crossed my legs.
Some small sound alerted him to my presence, and he glanced over his shoulder and saw me. His eyes widened and nerves jittered in his eyes. He reached out, his fingers trembling the slightest as he brushed them down Terri’s arm.
She ignored him, her attention raptly locked on Lukas.
“There is one account associated with Stella that I’d like to speak with you about,” he said with a tilt of his head, an expression on his face that might have made one think he was considering Terri’s request. “I’ve got questions…we might need to consider calling Breanna up. With Stella being new, she was supposed to have a senior member go over all her accounts.”
“I’m certain I would know the account,” Terri said, rather quickly. “I made sure to stay abreast of anything she took on.”
“Did you?” Grayson’s eyes were cold. “It’s odd then considering…well, that matter is being kept between accounting and me.”
“What matter would that be?” Terri asked, once again brushing Aaron’s hand off when he went to grab her elbow.
Lukas looked at Aaron instead of answering. “Aaron, did you also try to stay abreast of the accounts Stella worked on? Since you brought her in, one would think you felt a responsibility in this matter.”
Aaron opened then closed his mouth. He shot me another look, his face a dull shade of red. He was caught and he knew it. It was stamped all over his face and instead of responding to Lukas’s question, he just shrugged.
Terri shot him a quick look and that was when she noticed me.
“Stella,” she said, shock in her voice. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s that account Lukas had questions about.” I smiled at her. “I’ve got to admit, I’ve got questions too. So…that’s why I’m here.”
I would have said more but this was Lukas’s show.
Except he seemed to want to turn the ball over to me. His slate-blue gaze slid to me. “Why don’t you tell us more about this account, Stella? What was the client’s name again? Are you familiar with the client at all?”
“I’m familiar with the name,” I allowed, flicking a look at Aaron. “I just don’t think he’s a client. He’s certainly not one of mine. Beyond that…there’s not much to tell. The client isn’t mine. Anything that’s come out of petty cash that has my name on it that’s linked to this…client? Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I didn’t have any expenses associated with him. I didn’t have any dinners with this client. As a matter of fact, there were nights when I supposedly had dinner with this client when I was actually in the office working with Breanna.” I slid a look in Lukas’s direction. Once we’d started breaking down the expense reports, we found two nights where I’d been here with Breanna when I’d supposedly been wooing and wining and dining a client.
As I talked, Aaron’s face got red and redder.
Terri’s, on the other hand, was getting whiter and whiter. Malice and anger burned in the depths of her green eyes, though, making her gaze snap.
She was angry? Screw that.
Her anger was like a match, setting fire to mine. I met her angry glare with one of my own.
“I will tell you this though,” I said, holding Terri’s gaze with mine. Bite me, bitch. “This...person isn’t even a client.”
“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?” Terri demanded.
Instead of answering, I looked over at Aaron. I could almost hear the ice dripping from my voice as I said, “It’s faked.”
He clenched one hand into a fist.
Terri didn’t get it. Apparently, he hadn’t let her in on the little joke.
“Are you saying the client isn’t real, Stella?” She gasped, the outrage on her face perfect.
I had to admit she was good.
“That is outrageous. It’s insane,” Terri said, her voice shaking.
I didn’t bother looking at her. I simply waited for Aaron to respond.
He didn’t though. He seemed frozen where he stood. Rising to my feet, I rose and walked over, stopping a few feet away. I held his eyes. “Nothing to say…Tad Fikes?”
At that moment, Terry realized she was caught. Turning to glare at Aaron, she demanded, “What is she talking about?”
“I did mention I knew the name from somewhere,” I reminded her, turning to look at her. “He’s used the name since college. Funny, huh?”
Knowledge started to glimmer in her eyes. Terri shifted from one foot to the other.
“You messed up,” I said softly. “You two used the same name back on Valentine’s Day. That’s just one we found…I don’t know if there are more, but if there are…?” I shrugged. Glancing at Lukas, I cocked a brow.
“I’ve already hired an outside team, specialists in forensic accounting. The books will be gone o
ver with a fine-toothed comb.”
Terri’s composure snapped. Whirling on Aaron, she flung out her hand, pointing at him. “You dumbass! This is your fault! You went and messed up everything, you stupid asshole!”
At that, Aaron snapped out of his daze. Turning on her, he demanded, “Me? You’re the one who couldn’t stop having expensive dinners. You’re the one who couldn’t stop using petty cash as her personal piggy bank!” He took a step toward her, his face going thunderous. “Your dad got on you about that so many times and you still found a way to keep doing it. Don’t you go blaming this on me.”
The door opened but neither of them noticed. That was until two uniformed officers approached.
Terri froze. “What in the hell is this?”
“They’re called cops,” I offered helpfully.
Terri ignored me, spinning around to stare at Lukas imploringly. “What’s the meaning of this? You can’t be serious.”
He spoke for the first time in several minutes. Coming around the desk, he stopped in front of her. “You were going to ruin Stella’s career before she even had a chance to really build it. If she’d gotten arrested, you would have just sat by. You did nothing when she was fired. And you want to know if I’m serious?”
“You didn’t have her arrested,” Aaron said, stepping forward. He gestured toward me. I could tell he was trying to sound calm, but he looked like he was about ready to cry. “Is that because you’re fucking her?”
Lukas took one step forward.
Aaron backed up three. “Look, okay…okay. That was uncalled for. I get that. Look, we can pay the money back. And maybe…” His eyes flicked to Terri, then back to me. “Stella’s gone and moved back to New York. I mean, she’s here now, but…you know…” He glanced at Terri.
He said nothing else, but Terri seemed to read his mind as easily as I did.
She moved toward him. “We can make this right.” She laid a hand on Lukas’s shoulder.
I was moving toward them, murder on my brain.
Lukas caught her wrist in his hand and pulled it away, which saved me from committing murder.
Terri didn’t get the point though. “You can’t have us arrested. You can’t be serious.”
“I’m very serious.” He leaned in, his face the cold mask I’d first seen on the mountain. “If you hadn’t tried to paint Stella as the thief, maybe I would have just let you pay the money back. But that’s not what you went and did. So now you get to deal with the mess you made.”
He nodded at the officers. They stepped up, and as Terri and Aaron continued to beseech him, he came to me. “Do you want your job back?”
I considered it for a moment and then I nodded. “I do. But only for a little while. I think I’m going to go back to school. I want to finish my degree.”
And this time, I thought to myself, I was going to find a career that actually made me happy, not just something that would please my parents.
36
“I can’t thank you enough for making this happen.” Holden had a tear in his eye when he glanced past me toward where Lukas stood waiting.
We’d agreed to pick Lukas’s father up at the airport – and he was Lukas’s father.
The paternity test results had come in, proving without a shadow of a doubt that Holden was Lukas’s biological father.
I hadn’t needed the test. Just looking into Holden’s eyes had been proof enough for me.
But Lukas wanted it.
Now that he had it, he was waiting to meet the man who wanted to be part of his life.
Lukas was nervous, though, and looking into Holden’s eyes, I could tell that he was too. Holding out my hand, I said, “Come on. He’s nervous too.”
Holden laughed a little and took my hand. “That makes me feel a little better.”
A few awkward moments later, we were all sitting in one of the bourbon bars in the restaurant.
Lukas and Holden talked stiltedly while I tried to figure out a way to break the ice.
And…I figured out the right way.
Leaning forward, elbows on the table, I fixed a smile on my face and cleared my head. “So, Holden…you want to hear how Lukas and I met?”
Both relief and curiosity flashed in his eyes. “Absolutely.”
* * *
Lukas held both of my wrists in one of his hands, keeping my hands trapped on my head. With his other hand, he gripped his cock as he guided it to my mouth. I knelt in front of him, jerking against my wrists, not really in an attempt to break free, but every time I tugged, he tightened his grip just a little and the eroticism of it drove me nuts.
He rocked against me, thrusting his cock into my mouth, a lazy rhythm that set an echoing pulse up in my belly. It spread from my gut up to my nipples, down to my pussy.
There was no urgency to him tonight. The want was there and so was the need but the hard, driving need that so often took the lead wasn’t there tonight.
I moaned as he withdrew, his cock almost leaving my mouth. I tightened my lips and followed, but his grip on my wrists held me in place. Groaning, I tangled my fingers in my hair and waited for him to feed me the inches of his cock again.
He rewarded my patience with another slow roll of his hips.
I took him deeper this time and half swallowed once he hit the back of my throat.
The sound of his grunt was like music, and it was followed by a sharper noise, then a few muttered words that made no sense.
“You’re a little witch tonight,” he said, as he let go of my wrists and gripped my head between his hands.
He knocked the breath from me as he began to move in earnest, pumping his hips back and forth and forcing me to take him deeper and deeper. I loved it. Even the way he bruised and stretched my mouth. But he stopped just shy of coming – I could practically taste it. He pulled me to my feet, hauling me up against him.
“On the bed,” he said. He didn’t give me a chance to do it though.
“Lukas,” I said, aching for him.
He hoisted me up onto the mattress. He caught both knees, hooking them over his elbows as he knelt. “I want to see you,” he said, voice rough, soft, slow. “Look at how pretty you are as you take my cock.”
His words left me floundering. As he thrust inside, he stared down where we joined and I stared at him. Slowly, he slid his gaze up to meet mine and that familiar, wolfish smile spread over his lips. “I still haven’t made you cry wolf.”
“You’re never going to,” I said, a challenge in my tone, despite the fact that my voice was shaking. I shuddered around the cock impaling me. “I want everything you can give me and more.”
“Good.” He thrust his hips again.
I moaned as the head of his cock rubbed over my g-spot, need shaking through me. My cry bounced off the walls, echoing back to us. It was soon joined by another and another as he fucked me with tender, ruthless determination.
I was trembling, sweating and begging by the time he let me come the first time. I would have begged for more, too, begged him to make me come again, but he was already pulling out and flipping me over onto my belly and then urging me on to my knees. He moved his hands down my ass, gripped my hips before driving inside. “I’ll never get enough of you, Stella,” he told me.
I had no breath, no voice to echo the words back to him.
His cock swelled inside me, and I shivered around him, already so close to that edge again. His hand came down on my ass and that first, startling smack was all I needed to push me over again.
Lukas shuddered. He bent lower over me, driving into me harder, faster. I started to come as he groaned my name, a rare loss of control for him. I closed my eyes as wave after wave crusted over me. As strength drained out of me, I dropped down onto the mattress.
His hands tightened on my hips, and he growled, grinding against my ass. His cock jerked inside me, and I shuddered as sensations went dancing through me all over again. Slowly, he sank down next to me. He pulled me into the curve of his body.
>
Long moments of blissful silence.
“I love you,” he murmured against my neck.
I covered his hand with mine and smiled into the darkness. “I love you too.”
37
Fall was coming to Colorado.
It was September, and I’d started school that month.
I’d finally decided what I wanted to do – I was going to get a degree in psychology and work with troubled kids. It was something that had always drawn me, but up until this past year, seeking parental approval had been the most important thing.
I loved my parents, but I had decided months ago that I couldn’t live my life according to what they wanted.
Bent over the paper I was working on, I tuned out the sound of the phone ringing.
It was harder to tune out the sound of Lukas’s voice and I didn’t mind that so much. I’d been at it for hours and could use a distraction.
Standing up, I stretched my arms over my head, groaning as the kinks made themselves known. I turned to see Lukas as he came into the room. He saw me and smiled, mouthing, It’s Gracie.
He turned over an envelope to me as he continued to talk to Gracie, asking her about her parents. They were in the air, if I had my times right, flying in so they could be there for the birth of the baby.
She’d reached out to them not long after finding out that the artificial insemination had worked – letting them know she was pregnant. She’d also come out, telling them what she’d hidden for so long. She’d half-expected them to reject her and the baby, but they hadn’t.
They were still uncertain about what to think, but they’d made one thing clear.
They loved her.
They wanted to be part of her life – and the baby’s.
Paper rattled and I glanced down, saw the envelope in Lukas’s hand. It was a large, legal looking one. Taking it, I eyed the open slit, then glanced at it. He grinned at me and nodded at the envelope. So I reached inside and pulled out the papers.
The sight of what was inside caused a band around my heart to unloosen.
I hadn’t even realized it was there.