She knew Kate was right. There were plenty of men who got off on the games she'd played with him the night before. She'd met a few of them. Sissy boys, Mike had always called them, derisive. Mike had never been that good at seeing much beyond the bare black-and-white skeleton of dominance and submission. For him D/S had come straight out of a series of pulpy porn novels and cheesy movies. He'd been very good with the physical aspects of it: the clothing, the equipment, the scenes. But he'd never quite grasped the emotional depths of power exchange that had always so appealed to Leah.
Brandon wasn't a sissy.
Leah busied herself with tidying the already perfectly straight pile of notepads while everyone else got settled. She had to introduce the corporate bigwigs giving this morning's talks and then she was free to go. She needed to check in with the office, make sure nothing had caught fire while she was gone. She'd do that from her room, using the hotel's complimentary wireless connection. She'd have a few hours, uninterrupted, while the morning session went on.
She realised, of course, that she was already plotting how to spend those hours and it wasn't alone.
Her ears burned and she swallowed hard, focusing on her hands performing the useless tasks. He might not even be working today. Or she might not see him. She wasn't going to go looking for him, that was for sure. And he wouldn't know to come to her room unless he came looking for her . . .
He was there when she turned, as she'd known somehow he'd be, like her wishing for him had brought him to her side. 'Leah? Is everything all right for you?'
She didn't dare say his name. It would have come out sounding like a caress and she couldn't have that here and now. Instead, she nodded. 'Yes, thank you.'
Nobody watching them could have guessed what had happened. Not by the distance he kept so carefully between them, or the way she stood, not even leaning towards him. Not even by his smile, which was nothing but professional.
'Maybe I could talk with you about what you want for the afternoon session. In the hall.'
All her fears about him vanished in the thirty seconds it took for him to say that. Leah's insides went straight away to liquid, to heat. To the promise of what was coming.
'Of course.' She turned to Walt Devries, who'd come looking for a pen. 'Walt, could you do me a favour? I have to talk with Mr Long about some arrangements for this afternoon.'
Walt, as usual, looked slightly startled to be spoken to, but nodded. 'Sure thing, dingaling.'
Leah looked at Brandon, who did an admirable job of not laughing. 'Thank you, Walt.'
Walt tipped an imaginary hat and went back to perusing the pens, knocking over the container. Pens rolled across the table and some scattered on to the floor. Leah didn't dare catch Brandon's eye again, just led the way out of the conference room and into the hall.
'Here,' he said, holding open a swinging door that led to a staff corridor.
She could hear the steady thump of machinery and saw a few housekeeping carts lined up along the hall. All the doors were closed. She caught the scent of chlorine. This must be the back route to the gym and pool.
She turned as he let the door swing shut behind them. It had a window in it so anyone could look through. A door down the hall opened and closed as a housekeeper came out with an armful of towels and dumped them on her cart. She then pushed it down the hall away from them without even looking in their direction.
They weren't alone, and somehow that made it all that much better.
She did not ask him to tell her. Asking him would defeat the purpose of having told him to do it in the first place. She waited, silent, her eyes on his face, watching his lips part.
'I was in the shower.' He pitched his voice low. Discreet, which she appreciated. But not ashamed, or nervous, or embarrassed. He didn't lean in to whisper in her ear to force intimacy. He simply spoke. 'The water was really hot. I could still taste you.'
Leah's breath caught in the back of her throat.
'I stopped at the apartment downstairs before I went home.' Brandon moved slightly closer, though not crowding.
His dark eyes locked on hers. 'There's a girl there. She wanted me to go to bed with her.'
For an instant, surprise kept her silent, but then she found her voice. 'But you didn't.'
He shook his head slowly. They both leaned against the wall. Perhaps six inches separated their shoulders. If she spread her fingers and he spread his, their hands would touch. Neither of them moved.
'No. I went upstairs instead, and I got in the shower and I made myself come thinking about how you tasted and how much I wanted to be inside you.'
His voice got impossibly lower as he spoke, and stuttered a little at the end, but his eyes never left hers.
'And now?'
'I want it even more,' Brandon said.
'Are you sure about that?' Leah tried not to whisper but it came out that way.
He nodded, solemn and unsmiling. Their fingers inched towards each other but, before they could touch, the door swung open. The woman who burst through it focused immediately on Leah.
'Leah!'
Leah turned, putting on a cool exterior that belied her inner turmoil. 'Carlina.'
Dix's personal assistant, as usual, wore her skirt just a little too short and tight for a professional appearance, but not quite enough to be reprimanded for it. Her blonde hair had been teased high on the crown and left to fall around her shoulders in perfect, smooth strands. Today her usual thick eye make-up looked smudged, and her lipstick had smeared.
'I need to talk to you.'
'All right.' Leah looked at Brandon. 'I'm just finishing here. Can it wait?'
Carlina shook her head so that her hair swung. Leah couldn't help thinking the other woman did it on purpose because she knew exactly how she looked. There was no mistaking the assessing look she gave Brandon. With a sigh she kept locked behind her teeth, Leah gestured to the door.
'I'll be right there.'
Carlina nodded. She shifted her gaze around the hall as though expecting to see someone who wasn't there. She gripped her briefcase with one hand, then shifted it to the other. 'OK.'
She didn't move, and Leah realised the woman wasn't going to. Leah gave Brandon a glance and he smiled a bit, moving away from her without making it seem like he'd been standing too close in the first place.
'I need to talk to you privately,' Carlina broke in. Her voice had gone higher pitched than normal and was more than a little shaky. 'Can we go someplace?'
'Carlina, I don't have a place to talk to you that's more private than here.' Leah wasn't about to take Dix's assistant to her hotel room.
'I'll see you later,' Brandon said quietly, edging away, and caught her gaze again.
She didn't miss the flare in his gaze. Didn't have to guess at what it meant. Leah's stomach hit a place somewhere around her toes before bouncing back up.
Carlina, on the other hand, wasn't satisfied with only a quarter of Leah's attention. 'I'm quitting!'
Leah's gaze snapped away from Brandon to look at the other woman. 'What?'
'I'm quitting.' Carlina looked stubborn and ready to burst into tears at the same time.
'OK, this really isn't a conversation we can have in a hallway.'
Before she could even turn to ask him, Brandon held open the swinging door. 'You can use my office. It's private and I don't need it right now.'
'Thank you,' Leah said. 'Come on, Carlina.'
They followed him down a set of back steps. With Carlina following behind her, Leah admired the view of Brandon's long, long legs and lean hips. He glanced over his shoulder with a smile and caught her looking.
He was already inside her, she thought with a sudden hitch-thump-patter of her heart.
His tiny office made Leah feel very privileged to have the space she had at Allied's corporate headquarters. Brandon's desk had seen better days, his chair needed new upholstery and his computer looked as though it would creak with protest if anyone actually tried to use it. But i
t was private and, by the way Carlina looked, Leah was going to be glad of the space.
'Thank you,' she told him when he pulled out the chair for her, then the other for Carlina.
'No problem. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Hot tea? Water?'
'Nothing for me.' She actually did crave a cup of hot tea but didn't want to bother with sugar and lemon and all of that with a potential crisis on her hands.
'Nothing,' Carlina said. She hadn't put down the briefcase, which seemed strange. She clutched it to her side, though it had to be an awkward position.
Brandon nodded. 'If you do, I'll be around.'
He ducked out of the office. Leah watched him go. No matter what else was going on, he really was good at his job. Above and beyond the call of duty, even. He knew how to take care of business.
Maybe later, he could take care of her too. But for now, Leah turned with a sigh to face a red-eyed Carlina. 'What's going on?'
20
Dix eased into a chair in the business centre with a heavy sigh. One-handed, he logged in to the Allied network while he held his cell to his ear with the other. Christ on a crutch, what a mess.
'Yes. Carlina Southam. I want to know what she's been accessing on the network,' he said to the IT guy once he'd answered.
As his assistant, Carlina had the ability to view and print virtually anything. He hoped she wouldn't be stupid. But now that he'd thought on her last comment a while longer, he really wondered just what she'd meant by someone who appreciated her.
When the network tech came back online and told him what Carlina had been into just minutes before and what she'd sent to the printer, Dix cursed violently. Exhaling sharply, he ordered her locked out of the network immediately.
He scrubbed his hands over his face. He needed to find Leah and he needed to find her right away.
'What?' Kate looked up when he tapped on the door to the adjoining room where she'd been working.
'Carlina's been in the system recently. Just minutes ago she accessed and printed out our new distribution plan and the contracts with Nationwide and Point Place.'
Kate's eyes widened. 'Interesting. Let's walk and talk.' She gathered her things and they moved towards their cluster of conference rooms. 'She must have run right to the office after she left here. You know this means she's already had someone in mind. I mean, the woman can't be stupid if she survived being your personal assistant, not if you weren't enjoying her company in other ways. So she's not stupid and she's clearly a woman who feels scorned. That equals big problems.'
He winced and she snorted.
'So it's time to circle the wagons. Do you have a copy of her employment contract with the addendum? Get that and also you need to see just what else she's been printing. Check her emails. Freeze her out of the system immediately. At least you've got the non-compete and the confidentiality agreement.'
He held up a stack of papers. 'I had them fax over the addendum with the non-compete and her basic contract.
I've printed out the printer logs as well so I have back-up of what Carlina's been up to.'
'Smart. Now to find Leah. I don't want to scare you, but she's going to be hot about this.' She sighed. 'Too bad it's not just you. Then I could be amused at your expense when she knocked your head off and ate it with some salsa on the side.' She indicated a tall dark-haired man he'd seen around the conference. 'Oh there's Band . . . er . . . Brandon. He's the conference-services manager. He'll probably know where Leah is.'
He'd been about to get her to spill what she'd started to call the conference guy when she caught his attention.
'Brandon, have you seen Leah?' she asked.
'Yes, she's using my office to meet with someone. It looked pretty intense.'
'Let me guess. Blonde? Female?'
Brandon nodded, admirably not showing any lurid interest in the issue. 'Just down that back hall.'
Just then, Kate's cell rang and she looked at the display with a frown. 'That's my office. I need to take this. Come find me if you need my assistance. I think for now it's best I stay out of the immediate situation.'
He agreed. Smart call.
'I'm quitting,' Carlina announced again with a quiver of her lip that didn't seem entirely put on. 'I just thought you should know.'
Considering Leah was the Head of Human Resources for the entire company, that seemed like a smart decision. 'You know you'll need to give two weeks' notice, Carlina.'
'No! No, I don't.' Carlina opened her briefcase and pulled out a sheaf of papers that looked too pristine to be anything other than newly printed. She waved the papers at Leah. 'I have a right of early termination.'
'Let me see that.' Leah took the papers and looked them over. 'You realise you'll forfeit your termination package, including all accumulated vacation hours and bonuses? And that you can't contest this later should you decide to? That means you can't come back and apply for unemployment citing extenuating circumstances or something.'
'Of course I know it! I work for the legal department!' Carlina sniffed.
Leah studied her, wondering what the hell was going on. 'It's very unprofessional to leave without notice. You can't expect to get a good recommendation from me or from Mr Dixon.'
'Oh.' Carlina laughed harshly. 'He'll give me a good recommendation. Not that I need one.'
'You're leaving for another company?'
'I got a new job, yeah.'
Leah sat in silence for a minute, puzzling this through. 'Carlina, I have to ask you. Did something happen?'
Carlina didn't answer at first. Her eyes shifted from side to side and she sniffled loudly. 'Can't a person just quit for no reason?'
Leah didn't have the other woman's file in front of her and couldn't be expected to remember all the details of her employment, but, from what she could remember, Carlina had garnered decent if not exemplary progress reports. Dix had certainly seemed satisfied with her, though Leah had wondered if that had as much to do with Carlina's big chest and blonde hair as her proficiency at her job.
'You've had good progress reports and even got a bonus this last quarter. If something happened to change how you feel about working for Allied, Carlina, it's my job to find out what it is. We don't like to lose valuable employees.' It was a standard mouthful of words Leah didn't really mean, but she had to cover all the bases. If Carlina had a complaint that could come back to haunt them later, Leah needed to document it. It was too bad the world had gotten so litigious, but that was the way things worked.
'Let's just say I got tired of not being valued.' The emphasis on the last word twisted Carlina's mouth into ugliness. 'I'm going to work for a company that values me.
That's all. I don't have to explain myself to you. Or anyone!' 'But you do have a non-compete agreement in your contract.' Leah was glad the woman had brought a copy, though Carlina didn't seem pleased Leah had brought up that point.
'Fifty-mile radius from Allied.'
'Any of Allied's offices, I think.' That was their standard contract.
'I'm fine.'
'Can you tell me who -'
'No.' Carlina shook her head. 'And you shouldn't even ask me that. I'm sure it's not legal.'
It wasn't illegal, but Leah conceded. 'Well, if there's nothing I can do to convince you to stay and you won't share with me your specific issues, I guess all I can do is say good luck.'
Relief washed over Carlina's face the way Technicolor washed over Dorothy when she stepped out of her house and into Oz. Leah didn't understand it, but at least the woman wasn't crying or snivelling, or, thank God, threatening some sort of discrimination or harassment lawsuit. Leah had had a few of those over the past couple of years and they were a nightmare, all around.
She stood to stretch her hand across the desk. 'I'll have to prepare the appropriate paperwork, of course, which I won't be able to get to until I'm back in the office, but I'll call Jeanette to make sure she gets the process started. Should we consider this your exit interview?'
'Yes.'
Carlina's palm was unpleasantly sweaty in Leah's. 'Sure.'
'You realise once I make the call you won't be allowed back in Allied's building without a security officer, right?'
Carlina's expression closed and her eyes went shifty again. 'I already got all my stuff.'
That wasn't necessarily good. When employees quit or were fired, Leah usually made sure to supervise them cleaning out their offices and had security escort them from the building, a fact Carlina, as a member of the legal department, certainly would have known. Yet there she stood with only a briefcase, not a file box full of purloined sticky notes and extra rolls of tape.