Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 79963 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79963 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
“Oh, Max,” I whispered.
Maggie was wrong.
It was not just sex.
I felt him deep inside my body. He was like an unexpressed pain because I knew I could not have him. Perhaps no woman could. No matter how deep our sexual connection was, one thing was clear, he didn’t allow me into his head. When I thought back to our conversations, he had hardly revealed anything about himself.
The phone rang and I picked it up.
“Is my son there?” Mrs. Frost’s haughty voice demanded.
My spine straightened. “Uh… no. He’s not here, Mrs. Frost.”
“Where is here?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”
“I recognize your voice… where do I know you from?”
“Um… we met the last time you were in New York. We had dinner together.”
“Lillian?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing in his office while he isn’t there?”
“I’m his PA.”
“You work for him?” she asked incredulously.
I closed my eyes. “Yes.”
“And you sleep with him?”
“Yes.”
“It’s completely inappropriate behavior. I would have thought my son would know better,” she said disapprovingly.
“Would you like me to pass on a message if he calls?” I asked politely.
“Yes. Tell him to call me. Tell him I’m disappointed in him.”
Then the line went dead. Ouch!
I leaned back against the leather chair and swiveled around.
Well, that was that.
At lunchtime, my sister texted me that she would be at Mom’s place and asked if we could meet there for coffee. I said yes, glad to have something to do after work. The less time I spent with my own thoughts the better.
I drove straight to my mother’s house and found that my sister was already there. I raised an eyebrow in surprise. Rose was never early for anything. I parked my car and headed to the front door. Rose answered the door, her face breaking into a wide grin.
“Hello stranger,” she said as we hugged each other.
“You’re wearing perfume. That’s a huge change. Usually, you smell of bread and spices.”
“And dirty diapers,” she added, wrinkling her nose.
I laughed. “Never that.” I followed her into the house to the kitchen where Mom was nursing a mug of coffee.
She smiled when she saw us. “It’s been so long since I saw you two girls together. It reminds me of when you were little and I would dress you in similar outfits.”
“Yeah, please don’t remind me of that. We hated it, didn’t we, Lillian?” Rose said, sliding onto a stool.
“Well, you hated it. I didn’t mind.” I served myself some coffee and sat down with my mother and sister.
“How was your trip to North Carolina?” my mother asked.
I tried to keep a neutral face as I told them how productive it had been for the company, and how my boss and I had bonded professionally. All the while, an ache wedged itself in the middle of my chest and sat there, refusing to move or melt away.
Damn Max Frost.
Chapter 31
Max
It had been one hell of a week… and it wasn’t over yet.
Pure torture. Keeping my need for Lillian reigned in when all I wanted to do was go back to her apartment and fuck her senseless, or until her wobbly bed broke. I kept thinking of the way she was at the beginning, cool as a cucumber, unflappable, her eyes more serene than a frozen blue lake… until I put her on my desk and opened her legs.
But I’d promised myself to keep away, and no matter how hard it was, that was what I did. The distance did help and I managed to clear my head enough to come up with a workable plan of how to trap my competitor. I realized that whoever was behind the bugs was an amateur.
Only someone who didn’t have any real business sense would try to copy another businessman’s idea in such a way. Also, the fact that they had moved so quickly on the idea showed they had done no research of their own and had relied solely on Chris’s findings. Who did that?
But something also told me this was personal.
Whoever it was knew me.
It could even be someone seeking revenge.
I planned to go back to work as if nothing had happened and let the bugs pick up my conversations with Chris. The conversations would signal my intention to acquire a company that we had, in reality, already acquired recently through a shell company. The moment the people behind the bugs tried to acquire that company they would show their hand.
And then I would find out exactly where Lillian came in.
The plan was simple, but the execution would not be.
When I arrived at work, Lillian was not in. I glanced at her chair and realized that I hated seeing it empty. She brought life and animation to that dead space. The day she left would indeed be a sad day.
I had barely sat down and turned on my computer when I heard her come in. I couldn’t stop my legs from jumping up and walking over to the door.