I really don’t understand.
So I ask. “Before you go, can you tell me what just happened?”
She stops to look in the mirror by the door, straightening her tousled hair while she answers me. “What do you mean? We fooled around. It was better than the first time. And now I’m leaving. Does that about sum it up for you?”
“Well…” No, it doesn’t. Because there has to be something between the “better than the first time” and the “now I’m leaving”. It just doesn’t make sense.
She seems to guess what’s going through my mind. “What? Did you think this made us a couple or something? You can’t be a stranger to the term sex-without-strings.”
Ouch. Is this what it feels like to be on the other side of that line? ‘Cause it kind of sucks.
I play it cool though. Or I try to. “No. I’m not expecting that we’re a couple now. Of course not. Sheesh.” Okay, maybe the thought crossed my mind.
“Good. We’re on the same page then.”
“Right.” Except I have no idea what that page is. Is it a page where we still get to see each other and bang? I don’t want to be on any other page than that.
Somehow it seems that’s exactly not the page we’re on, because next thing I know, I’m holding the door open for her as she leaves.
The air crackles around us as she passes me, and I swear she feels it because she narrows her eyes and glares at me. As if the electricity between us is my fault. “Nobody calls me Genny,” she says, her voice terse, before bustling off to the elevator.
“I do,” I call after her triumphantly, like that somehow makes me victorious over this situation that I’m pretty sure I actually lost. I don’t even know why I started calling her that. It just came out in the heat of the moment, but it rankles her and that makes me like it. A lot.
Right now I feel like it’s my only weapon against her. My tiny little squirt gun against her death ray. I’m so obviously out of my league with this woman. That hasn’t happened since…well, since Gwen. I didn’t even know it was still possible.
For some reason that just makes me want her more.
6
Genevieve leaves me at a loss. I want more of her—need more of her—but with no idea how to go about getting more of her, I decide to try to put her out of my mind for the rest of the day. Besides, I really should be working. There’s a pile on my desk and a phone call with the finance department that I’ve been avoiding.
First, I head back to Hudson’s office to return the key. I should take the hall elevator and enter through the front doors like a polite person, but what would be the fun in that? I definitely go down the way I came.
He’s sitting at his desk when I arrive. His jaw tenses and his eye twitches, telling me he’s irritated but not really surprised. Which isn’t remarkable—I wouldn’t be shocked to find out he’d known I was there the whole time. That man misses almost nothing.
We don’t say anything, but I whistle as I head to the closet, because I’m an asshole like that.
“I’m going to find a new hiding place, you realize,” he says behind me.
“Or you could just leave it there and trust that I will only use it when absolutely necessary.” I continue with my task, opening the closet and hanging the key back on its peg. I’m not sure whether it will still be here the next time I look. It could go either way. Hudson isn’t very predictable.
Like, I don’t predict when he asks, “Do you want to tell me what you were doing holed up in my closet with Genevieve Fasbender?”
I close the door again and turn to face him. “Not particularly.” Though a part of me is gleeful that he knows. Getting caught with a woman is like getting to brag without being a bastard. It’s a definite win-win. “Do you want to tell me about Pierce Industries’ controlling interest in Werner Media?”
He pauses for a beat. “Not particularly.”
It feels like it might be a dismissal, but shit, I don’t need invitations. I saunter over to the chair facing his desk—the one that Genny sat in earlier when she told me our sexcapade was like bad pizza.
I’m still shaking my head. Though, after the amazingness that happened between us today, even I’d say the previous banging was only mediocre.
Whoops. Need to stop thinking about her before this conversation with my brother gets awkward.
“It’s not the same,” I tell him. “Me not telling you about Genny is because the matter is personal. You not telling me about our holdings is…well, I don’t know what it is. It’s just uncool. I’m just as much of an owner of this company as you are.”
He raises a brow because he actually holds more stock in the business than I do.
I correct myself. “Not just as much in terms of percentages owned, but just as much as…you know what I mean. Stop being a dickwad and give me some answers, will you?”
I prop my legs up on his desk and cross my ankles just so I can be rewarded with another typical Hudson scowl—and I am. God, this could be a drinking game. What fun.
“You’re in charge of our Midwest holdings, and this is a subsidiary holding.” Standing, he reaches over and knocks my feet to the ground. “But I suppose there’s no reason to keep it a secret now.”
“But there once was?”
“There was.” He loosens his tie as he crosses the room to his liquor cabinet. “I purchased the shares through another company that we own so that it wouldn’t be easily connected back to me. I wanted Warren Werner to believe he still had the majority shares.”