Sweet Rivalry (1001 Dark Nights)(27)
“Semantics.” I feel his mouth spread into a smile against my shoulder. “But okay. I guess we can say, may the best woman win.” There’s a pause. I can all but hear his mental gears click into place. “Wait. That’s bullshit. There’s only one woman bidding.”
“Exactly.”
Chapter Fifteen
Ryder
“You’re looking damn chipper this morning,” the security guard in the line says with a smile when I pass him by.
“Because it’s a damn good morning,” I say. And night. And hopefully day. “Have a good one.”
The elevator is empty, my arrival to the office quick; all the while Harper’s on my mind. Everything about her. Every minute of last night. Each sound she made. Each smile she gave me. Every ounce of hunger that remains to have her again.
How stupid was I to tell her this was just about last night. One night. There’s so much more there, it’s blaringly obvious. But first we need to see how today goes.
Then reward sex.
Gotta love a woman who rewards herself with sex. That’s so damn hot.
When I push open the door to the war room, I’m surprised to find Patrick here already.
“Christ, Rodgers,” Patrick all but yelps, causing us both to jump, equally startled by each other. I hiss as my coffee sloshes over and scalds the skin of my hand, and when I look back over to him, Patrick is on his knees, picking up the papers he knocked to the ground off of Harper’s desk.
I should help him since I’m the one who startled him, but I’m more concerned with what Harper and I did or didn’t leave here last night.
“I thought this place would be dead,” I say, eyes homed in on seeing if Alan’s desk remains as unscathed by our sex as I remember it being.
Whew. We’re in the clear.
No condom wrapper in sight. Papers are stacked neatly.
Let’s hope there are no grip marks from her hands…or boob marks, from where she held on.
“You scared the shit out of me,” he says with an audible exhale as he puts the last of the fallen papers back on to Harper’s desk before focusing his attention on the floor model in front of him.
I can’t help but laugh seeing Mr. Smooth and Asshole look so damn startled. “Yeah, well, I wanted to get a jump on finalizing a few things. You?”
Shit. Her panties. Those are her panties.
On the floor.
Just beneath the leg of the desk.
How did we forget those?
“Same here,” he says, preoccupied with the model, allowing me to stoop down, casual as can be to pick up and then stuff a very pink, sexy-hot scrap of lace into my pocket. “This was a brutal one, wasn’t it?”
I stare at him, relieved he doesn’t give me a second look before he bends back over to take notes on the trickiest building in the bid package and wonder if that hung him up like it did me. “Definitely. There’s so much security and electronics in that building it’s hard to not feel like your numbers are high when you think they are as low as you can go.”
“Exactly. Perfectly said.” He nods, crosses his arms over his chest, looks back to the model, and then back up to me. “It’s going to be a close one, I think.”
“Always is.” I sit down at my desk and start up my laptop. “Good luck.” You’re going to need it.
“You too. You too.”
Chapter Sixteen
Harper
“How’d it go?” Ryder murmurs from behind me as I bite back the yelp from not knowing he was there.
“Good. Great.” I nod my head, the adrenaline rush ten times stronger than I’ve felt in forever, and it feels incredible.
To be back in the game.
To be confident in my numbers.
To know reward sex is a definite.
And to know said reward sex is with Ryder.
“You? How do you think your presentation went?” I ask, my hands still trembling and the look on the board’s faces still etched in my mind. I’ve got a few hours to kill so I’m sure I’ll overthink what exactly those expressions meant a couple of thousand times while we wait.
“It went well,” he says with a nod and a tone to his voice that sounds exactly like I feel: negatively optimistic and positively pessimistic.
“Good. I’m glad.” We walk a few more steps back to the war room where lunch is being catered, the last meal before they decide our fate, and wonder how we will handle whatever happens next.
And if I get to keep my job.
Or lose it.
At least I have last night to relive over and over while I sit and wait.
Those memories will definitely pass the time.
No complaints here.
Chapter Seventeen
Ryder
“Good luck.”
I look over to Harper sitting at her desk where this whole thing between us unknowingly began and nod my head with a smile. “See you on the flip side,” I say as Mason Van Dyken’s assistant waits at the door to usher me back into the conference room.
I try to play it cool, like being called back in a second time is a normal thing in this situation, but it’s not. The furrowing of Harper’s brow when they called my name says she thought the same thing.