Need You Now (1001 Dark Nights)(8)

“He doesn’t have time to step into my shoes,” she says, “if that’s what you’re worried about. He’s the CEO of Gester’s Golf Club and Resorts based here in the city, which he took over from my brother when he had a stroke five years ago. Today it’s fifty units strong and profitable, with an international expansion in play. That’s what I want for us here and as long as the family fights me, I can’t get us there. I want Jensen to take a consulting role and help negotiate with the family on our behalf. I need you to work with him for the next few weeks.” She stands up. “He’ll be working from the corner office.” The phone rings and she grabs it. My eyes meet Jensen’s, his gaze piercing and intense, his emotions as hidden as his agenda, and my mind spins, tangled in a spider web of options for my next move. Or worse, I’m tangled in his web and last night was no accident, but I can’t assume his intentions. Part of me wants to retreat, to resign and leave, but somehow I ground myself in logic. This could all be a bad coincidence. I need this job too much to simply write it off.

Meredith ends her call. “There’s a package up front for me from the board. Can you go get that for me please, Danny?”

“Of course,” I say.

“Why don’t you walk me to my office before you go?” Jensen suggests.

Blood rushes in my ears. I have no idea what his intentions are. We had a one-night stand that wasn’t even fully realized, but I need to know if it was a mistake or him being manipulative. And I need to know now. “Of course,” I say, quickly checking in with Meredith. “Do you need anything before I leave.”

She presses her fingers to her temples. “Just give Jensen whatever he needs.”

My cheeks heat instantly and the air spikes with the implications of her words she can’t possibly understand. “I’ll show him his office,” I reply, and I have no option but to look at him. “Is now a good time?”

His eyes darken and give a little twist. “Now would be exactly the right time.”

I inhale at the way his words run through me like a jagged-edged rock scraping the bottom of a river bottom running out of control. Like I’m out of control. “Right this way then,” I say, rotating on my heels and marching for the doorway in a slow, steady pace that defies how much I want to dart out of the room. But I won’t let this man see me rattled and I’m good at putting on a mask of calm and cool, no matter how much I feel I am drowning. My mother taught me that with the collage of men and madness that had decorated my teen years.

Stepping into the hallway, I turn, shocked to find him nearly on top of me, so close I’d have to tilt my chin up to meet his stare, which I avoid. Instead, I try to maintain distance, choosing to look at the hard wall of his chest, but my mind is uncooperative of my quest for control, conjuring memories of my hands on his body, while my nose is equally as devious, unforgivingly teasing my senses with the deliciously rich, woodsy smell I’d gone home wearing last night. His scent.

“This way,” I motion, and this time there is no way to avoid the lead spot he’d saved me from last night as I take off down the hallway with him at my heels. And I feel him at my back, stalking me, his eyes on my skin, under my skin. It’s an eternal path to the office door. I stop, and I decide now isn’t the right time for a confrontation after all. There’s too much on the line. I need to think, to have a strategy.

Rotating to face him with the full intention of heading in the other direction, I announce, “This is the spot,” to find him close again. Too close. We are almost toe-to-toe and my gaze lingers on his chest, my mind too easily conjuring memories of my hands in the exact same spot I’m now looking. I need space to pull myself together, and I need it now.




“You don’t think I’m going to let you run again, now do you?”

He hits a nerve and my gaze jerks to his piercing green eyes. “I didn’t run.”

“You ran.”

“I made a choice,” I say, defensive at how he’s turned this around. “That’s not running.”

“We need to talk.” He opens the door, shoving it open without moving otherwise. “Go inside the office, Ms. Woods.”

I consider declining but that’s as good as the resignation I don’t want to be shamed into giving over a simple mistake during my time off of work. He sure isn’t going to resign over this or lose everything. Why should I? Clenching my jaw, I step into the office that is almost an exact replica of Meredith’s. I make it all of two steps when the door shuts firmly behind me, and Jensen—Mr. Miller’s—hand scorches my elbow. I gasp with the electric connection I do not want to feel in every part of me the way I do, and in a blink I am against the wall. He plants one hand on the wall by my head, his other at his waist under his jacket, no longer touching me. Why do I want him to touch me?

“Did you know?” he demands, his voice low, tight as a band about to pop.

I blanch. “What? Know? Know what?”

“Who I was? Did she tell you to seduce me?”

Anger replaces any other emotion. “Seduce you? Me, seduce you? You have to be kidding me. You came up to me at the bar.”

“I was at the bar when you got there.”

“No. No you were not. I’d have—” I stop myself.