Beg for It(42)

“Yeah, me too,” Reese said from behind her. “I’m suddenly dying to eat out. I can’t think of anything I’d like better.”

Sandy gave them both a curious but not suspicious look. “All right, well…if you’re both going out too, I’ll make sure to lock the office.”

Corinne managed to keep herself together long enough to close the door behind the older woman, but then there was no holding back the flurry of half-hysterical laughter that surged up and out of her. Leaning against the door, she let it out, aware that more than a few of the chuckles were sharp-edged and almost sobs. She got herself under control quickly, though, and straightened.

“Bad boy,” she told him. “Bad, bad boy.”





Chapter Twenty-Three



Reese had ordered Chinese delivery, and with the door locked, he and Corinne were making a picnic on the floor of his office. He’d grabbed a shower, grateful for whoever’d had the forethought to put a full bathroom in the office. Now, hair still damp but back in his suit, he watched her spread out the cartons of fried rice and chicken lo mein on the tablecloth she’d snagged from the break room.

Corinne handed him a pair of chopsticks and a paper plate she’d already loaded with beef and broccoli from one of the plastic containers. “We have enough food here for ten people.”

“Leftovers. I’m a bachelor, remember? This has to last me the whole week.”

She rolled her eyes and settled back with her legs demurely tucked to the side, a plate of lo mein in her hands. “Still never learned to cook, huh?”

“Nope. Never had to.” Reese took a bite of broccoli.

They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes before Corinne set aside her plate and gave him a serious look. “So.”

Reese swallowed and wiped his mouth, then set his own plate down. “So?”

“We can’t keep doing this…this hate-f*cking.”

Ouch.

“Is that what you think this is?”

“A little, yes,” she told him.

“Do you hate me, Corinne?”

“A little,” she whispered. “And it sure seemed like you hated me.”

“Maybe I did. A little.”

“Why did you come back here, Reese? The truth. Not some story you want to tell me, or tell yourself.” Corinne leaned a little closer. “Why?”

“When I saw the report about how Stein and Sons was a good prospect for a buyout, I didn’t even think twice. I knew I had to make an offer. It was a good excuse to see you again. That’s it.” The truth felt good.

“So…why were you such an unholy bastard about everything?” She still had that familiar head tilt, the one she’d always given him when she was trying to figure him out…or trying to figure out what to do to him.

He didn’t have a good answer for that. “I’ve spent a lot of years forcing myself to forget or push aside the memories of how we were together. Until I saw you again…”

“And you wanted to see me again.”

“Yes. More than that, I wanted you to see me.” He cleared his throat, wishing it was as easy now as it had been back then to give up to her. “I wanted to show you that I’d been right to leave. If I’d stayed in Lancaster, I would never have become what I am today.”

Corinne tilted her head to look him over. “You wanted to prove that I’d been wrong to ask you to stay.”

“I wanted you to see how wrong you’d been not to want to come with me,” he said.

“Because now you have money and power,” Corinne replied quietly. “As though any of that ever mattered to me.”

She’d always been able to read him. Hearing her say it shamed him, but he lifted his chin anyway, not wanting to show it. Her smile struck him right between the eyes.

She shrugged. “You wanted to show me up and prove a point by coming back here, and you also wanted to show me up and prove a point by making me run those ridiculous reports. Well, are you happy about it now? Do you think you got what you wanted? I am impressed, by the way, with everything you’ve accomplished. But I always knew you would make something of yourself. Even if you didn’t think I did, I always knew.”

As a younger man, he’d taken a lot of comfort from relying on her to guide him. His indiscretions had been minor. Her disciplines as much a game as anything they’d done. He didn’t forget, though, how it had felt to trust her, to know that whatever she was asking of him, he would be able to provide. He’d learned not to need that guidance from someone else, but he’d never forgotten how it had felt to have it.


“This is stupid,” Reese complains. Pen in his hand. Paper in front of him.

Corinne has demanded he write lines.

“You’re a procrastinator,” she tells him calmly from her place at the kitchen sink where she’s peeling potatoes for dinner, a job he was supposed to do but had left so long that she’d lost her patience with him. “If I ask you to do something, I need to know you’ll do it. If you tell someone you’re going to, you need to make sure you do. What good is your word if you don’t keep it?”

He writes the first line, I will not leave my chores undone.

“Writing lines isn’t going to make a difference, Corinne.”