Baddest Bad Boys(40)

“Here’s the drill. We meet at the bank when the doors open. You give me everything from your safety deposit box. From there you go directly to the office, hand in your resignation, and leave the building, and”—he kissed her, a harsh, punishing kiss, wet and open-mouthed—“you keep this luscious mouth of yours shut. You behave yourself, do as you’re told, and we forget this ever happened. You don’t—” He tightened his grip until her breath clotted under his thumb, thick and aching.

When she clawed at his hands, he squeezed harder, his mouth twisted, his face bloated with grim purpose.

Anger beat at Tommi’s panic.

He was enjoying himself. The bastard! The lying, thieving, traitorous bastard!

Abruptly, he shoved her backward into the corner. She stumbled but didn’t fall. When she’d wiped the slime of him from her mouth and drawn enough air into her lungs to allow for speech, she said, “You’re scum, Reid. And dangerously sure of yourself.”

He picked up his jacket, shrugged into it, and walked to where she stood. He grabbed her chin, pinned her against the wall, and ground his body into hers. His handsome face, inches from her own, seethed with malice. “I’m sure of two things. You want to keep this made-for-sex body of yours in one piece, and I don’t intend to let a righteous bitch like you ruin me.” He twisted her chin painfully, dug his nails into her jaw. “And I’m not the only one with something at stake here.” He sneered, let her go. “I’m the gentle one. You might want to think on that.”

He walked to the door, looked back, and slid his gaze from her feet to her breasts. “It’s been fun, Smith. If I have any regret, it’s that I didn’t get between those long legs of yours before you got between me and my money.”

He strode out.

She ran to the door, locked it behind him, and leaned against it. Breathing like a crazed thing, she hurried to the window, waited there and struggled to calm herself.

A few minutes later she watched his platinum Jag power through the rain and turn the corner a half block down the street. Cold to the bone, she released the curtain. When it fell straight to shut out the dark November night, she rubbed her tender upper arms, winced.

He’d hurt her.

Tommi Smith was no innocent. She’d dated a lot of men and made more than her quota of mistakes, but Reid McNeil was the worst yet, and the first one who’d touched her in anger. She didn’t intend to let it happen again.

He’d said there were others. Her nerves spiked and her throat constricted. If there were, she had no idea who they were, or how dangerous. She knew about Reid—and Reid was an embezzler. Tommi had the paper trail to prove it.

She sat on the edge of the sofa, hugged herself, and rocked…back and forth, back and forth…the motion soothing in a useless kind of way. Chilled and trembling, she tried to think, to plan. She’d been a fool and sickeningly na?ve to confront Reid about the files—expect him to put the money back.

Stupid, stupid call!

And dating him? Stupider still. Once again she’d let wishful thinking and a man’s soft words erode her common sense. She was a savvy, capable, thirty-five-year-old woman, and one of the most successful commercial designers and project managers in Seattle, but when it came to men, she acted as if she were a twelve-year-old girl looking for love in poster city.

God! She’d even let the ever-elusive love word skip into her brain. It had skittered away, a rat to its eternally dark hole, when he’d embedded his fingers in her arms and tried to shake her teeth loose, then threatened worse to come.

Disgusted by her own idiocy, she got up and paced her living room, forced her fractured thoughts back to the problem at hand.

She straightened. Maybe she’d been a fool, but she wasn’t a coward—and she was not going to let Reid get away with stealing from Del Design Inc.

Much as she itched to turn the thieving creep over to the police, she just couldn’t. She had to wait for Paul to come back. He was the only one she could trust, and she owed him. But he was out of town for at least a week. Maybe more. Which meant she needed time…

Which meant…she needed to run; she needed to run tonight, and she needed a place to run to. A safe place.

Thank God Reid believed her story about the files being in her safety deposit box; it gave her precious time.

She stopped pacing and headed for her bedroom. There, she sat on the bed and looked at her bedside clock.

Damn! It was nearly midnight.

Her hand shook when she reached for the phone, slipped off the buttons twice as she keyed the telephone number. When she got it right, she lifted her eyes to heaven, prayed softly, “Please, please—let Hugh, not Veronica, answer the phone.” A man’s current woman didn’t thrill over calls from old girlfriends.

He picked up on the second ring.

“Hugh, it’s Tommi. I need to talk.” Her voice quavered, but she got control of it. “No, I take that back. I need your help. Can you meet me?”

The all-night coffee shop had a scatter of customers. Tommi took a seat at a back table and hooked her bag over the chair. Hugh Fleming, tall, and even more good-looking today than he was in high school, set two steaming coffees on the table and took the seat opposite her.

“Where’s Veronica?” she asked, buying time, not knowing where to start this dreaded conversation.

“Away for the weekend.”