The Ceo's Little Surprise
“I’ve got this,” she said a little more calmly. “Trust me. Nothing is more important than finding this leak. Let me take care of it.”
Trinity nodded. “Let’s meet again on Friday. You can give us a progress report then.”
Cass watched the other ladies stand and leave the conference room. No one said a word but the vote of no confidence rang out in the silence, nonetheless.
With the room empty, she let her forehead thunk the table but the wood didn’t cool her raging thoughts.
She needed a plan.
But Gage had messed her up. Of course he was the reason she’d slipped up in the board meeting. Why had he picked today to dismantle her careful facade?
Her head snapped up. What if the timing wasn’t coincidental? It had been bothering her how accurate his information was and how quickly on the heels of the trade article publication that he’d shown up. What if he’d planted someone in her company who was feeding him information and the mention of Fyra in the trade magazine had been designed to throw her off?
But why would he do that? He was already successful in his own right and he was willing to pay for the formula. It wasn’t as if he’d put a mole in her company in hopes of stealing it.
Or was it?
She had to make sure. She’d never forgive herself if she left that stone unturned.
She also had to make progress on discovering who the culprit was and the faster the better. If the leak heard the formula was worth one hundred million dollars to GB Skin, it was as good as stolen. And Gage probably wasn’t the only competitor willing to ante up.
Fyra needed Cass to step up, to lead this company. So she’d keep her friends close and her enemies closer, no matter what sort of distasteful cozying up to the CEO of GB Skin she’d have to do. After all, she did owe Gage Branson and it was time to pay him back.
He’d used her once upon a time. Turnabout was fair play in Gage’s book, was it? It was time for Cass to wholeheartedly embrace that mantra.
Whatever Gage’s game was, she’d uncover it. And maybe exact some revenge at the same time. Karma indeed.
* * *
Whistling as he rounded the Hummer’s bumper, Gage went over his pitch as he strolled toward the entrance to Fyra Cosmetics only one short day after running into Cass in the parking lot. After she’d kicked him out, he’d really expected to have to push her for another appointment. When she’d called, it had been a pleasant surprise.
The 9:00 a.m. appointment had been another one. Nice to be Cass’s first priority for the day. Apparently she’d thought about the logic of his offer overnight and was finally on board. Or the other executives had convinced her that selling him the formula did make for smart business, like he’d told Cass. Either way, the tide had turned.
Which was good because Arwen didn’t like the hotel, and she’d let Gage know about it. Loudly. He’d have to take her on a weekend camping trip to the Hill Country to make up for all of this. Hopefully, he could melt a little of the ice in Cass’s spine, close the deal and be back in Austin tomorrow.
Depending how things went with the ice melting, of course. If Cass was still as hot as he remembered under her new bulletproof CEO exterior, he might stick around for a couple of days. Arwen could rough it.
Cass didn’t make him cool his heels like he’d thought she would. After yesterday, with all the power plays disguised as flirting and Cass not letting him run roughshod over her, he’d come prepared for battle. Hell, he’d kind of looked forward to another game of one-upmanship. It was rare that a woman could match him.
She appeared in the reception area looking gorgeous and untouchable in another sharp suit with a microskirt, this time in eye-popping candy pink, and she’d swept up her hair into another severe bun-like thing held by lacquered chopsticks that he immediately wanted to take apart. Why was that so hot?
He dredged up a memory of her old look from college, which had largely consisted of yoga pants and hoodies, and he’d liked that, too. But this was something else. Something elemental. He wanted to explore this new Cass in the worst way.
“Good morning, Mr. Branson,” she said, though the frost in her tone told him she thought it was anything but. “This way.”
The chilly greeting and use of his last name put a grin on his face. So she planned to cross swords after all. Excellent.
This time, he didn’t even hesitate at the door of her office. No point in beating around the bush when the upper hand was still up for grabs. He waltzed into the middle of all that purple and plunked down into a chair. Happened to be the one behind the desk—Cass’s chair—but he figured that would be enough to get her into the room.
It was. She followed him into the interior, and without batting an eye, she crossed to the desk and perched on it. Two feet from his chair. Gaze squarely on Gage, she crossed her stocking-clad legs with a slow and deliberate slide and let her stilettos dangle. The little skirt rode up her thighs almost to the point of indecency.
His tongue went numb as all the blood rushed from his head, pooling into a spectacular hard-on. One tiny push with his heel and Cass’s chair would roll him into a proximity much better suited to enjoying the smorgasbord of delights inches away.
This was his punishment for stealing her chair? She clearly didn’t get how corporate politics, particularly between competitors, worked.
“Thanks for coming on short notice,” she purred and the subtle innuendo wasn’t lost on him.
“Thanks for having me,” he returned and cleared the rasp from his throat. Maybe she knew a little more about this game than he’d supposed. “You ready to talk details?”
“Sure, if you want to jump right into it.” She cocked her head, watching him. “The others don’t want to sell. But I’m willing to talk to them.”
Instantly suspicious, he grinned and crossed his arms, leaning back in the chair so he could see all of her at once. She was something else. “Along with what strings?”
“Oh, nothing much.” She waved a French-manicured hand airily and leaned forward, one palm on the desk. Her silky button-up shirt billowed a bit, just enough to draw his attention to her cleavage but not enough to actually show anything.
The anticipation of catching a glimpse of skin had his mouth watering.
“Name your price, Cass,” he murmured and wondered what she’d do if he pulled her off that desk into his lap. “I’m assuming one hundred million wasn’t enough?”
“Not quite. You also have to help me catch the leak first.”
His gaze snapped back up to her beautiful face as her meaning registered. “Help you catch the leak? You mean you haven’t already?”
Unacceptable. Hadn’t she learned anything important from him? Yesterday he sure would have said so, but obviously she needed a few more pointers about how to run her business.
“I have a plan,” she explained calmly. “And you’re it. Until the leak is stopped, Fyra can’t make a major decision like selling our formula. Surely you understand that.”
He did. This was a wrinkle he hadn’t anticipated. But what she was proposing—it meant he’d have to stay in Dallas longer than he’d anticipated. He ran a successful company, too, and it was suffering from his lack of attention. If he stayed, he’d have to ship Arwen home, which she’d never forgive him for.
“You should have already handled the leak,” he groused.
“I know.”
Her voice didn’t change. Her expression didn’t change. But something shifted as he realized how hard this conversation was for her. She hadn’t wanted to admit that.
Disturbed at the sudden revelation, he stared at her and his heart thumped strangely. He’d been so busy examining the angles, he’d failed to see this was actually just a baseline plea for help that she’d disguised well.
“Work with me, Gage. Together, like old times.”
She wanted to pick up where they left off. Maybe in more ways than one. The simple phrases reached out and grabbed hold of his lungs. It echoed through his mind, his chest, and the thought pleased him. Enormously.
It was a redo of college, where he was her mentor and she soaked it all up like a sponge with a side of hero worship that made him feel invincible. That had been a heady arrangement for a twenty-four-year-old. But they weren’t kids anymore.
And he didn’t for a moment underestimate Cass. She’d suggested this for some reason he couldn’t figure out yet. Which didn’t keep him from contemplating that redo. Who was he kidding? He’d wanted her the moment he’d turned around in the parking lot yesterday and gotten an eyeful of grown-up Cass. If he hung around and helped her, it gave him an opportunity to get her naked again.
And he could ensure the problem with the leak was handled like it should have been from the get-go. Not to mention he could dig a bit to uncover her real motives here.
Her eyes huge and warm, she watched him and he was lost. Dang. She’d played this extremely well. There was absolutely no way he could say no. He didn’t want to say no.
But a yes didn’t mean he’d do it without adding a few strings of his own.
“I’ll help you. Until Sunday. I have a meeting Monday that can’t be rescheduled.”
Her smile hit him crossways. And then it slipped from her face as he leaned forward oh-so-slowly. Mute, she stared at his hand as he braced it on the desk a millimeter from her thigh. He could slip a finger right under the hem of that tiny skirt. And his mind got busy on imagining where that would lead.
“But you have to do something for me,” he murmured. He got as close to her as he dared, crowding her space where all the trappings of business melted away and they were simply man and woman.
She smelled classy and expensive, and instantly he wanted that scent on his own skin, transferred by her body heat as she writhed under him. He could lean her back against that desk and at this angle, the pleasure would be intense. The image made him a little lightheaded as his erection intensified.
“I already said I’d talk to the others about selling you the formula,” she said a touch breathlessly, but to her credit, she didn’t allow one single muscle twitch to give away whether she welcomed his nearness or preferred the distance. “If we catch the leak.”
That ice-goddess routine needed to go, fast. That wasn’t going to happen here. Not under these circumstances. If he wanted to take things to the next level, he had to go bold or go home.
“Yes, but you’re doing that because deep down, you know you owe me. If I help you find the leak, you owe me again. Turnabout, sweetheart.”
“What do you want?”
Oh, where should I start? “Nothing you can’t handle.”
The knowing glint in her gaze said she already had a pretty good idea what gauntlet he was about to throw down. They stared at each other for a long moment and her breathing hitched as he reached out and slid a thumb along her jawline.
“You have to take me to dinner.”
Four
Cass’s laughter bubbled to the surface in spite of it all. Gingerly she dabbed at her eyes without fear thanks to Harper’s smudge-proof mascara. “That’s what you want? Dinner?”
She’d been braced for...anything but that. Especially since she had the distinct impression he was working as many angles as she was.
His fingers dropped away, but her face was still warm where he’d stroked her. She missed his touch instantly.
Why had she thought sitting on the desk would give her an edge? Seemed so logical before she actually did it. Gage had taken her chair in deliberate provocation that she absolutely couldn’t ignore. So she’d trapped him behind the desk and put all her good stuff at eye level. It should have been the perfect distraction. For him. The perfect way to spend the entire conversation looking down at him, imagining that he was suffering over her brilliant strategic move.
Karma, baby.
Instead, she’d spent half of the conversation acutely aware that all her good stuff was at eye level. He’d noticed, quite appreciatively, and it hit her in places she’d forgotten that felt so good when heated by a man’s interest.
The other half of the conversation had been spent trying to stay one step ahead of Gage while feeding him the right combination of incentives to get him to agree to help. If he was up to no good, what better way to keep tabs on him than under the guise of working together to uncover the source of the leak? Besides, she hadn’t done so hot at resolving the leak on her own. If they kept their activities on the down-low, no one had to know she’d outsourced the problem.
If they caught the leak—and Gage wasn’t involved—she’d absolutely talk to the other girls about selling the formula. She hadn’t specified what she’d say...but she’d talk to them all right. The conversation might be more along the lines of no way in hell she’d sell, but he didn’t have to know that.
It was a win-win for everyone.
Crossing his heart with one lazy finger, he grinned. “Totally serious.”
“Dinner?” She pretended to contemplate. “Like a date?”
“Not like a date. A date. And you’re paying.”
A God-honest date? The idea buzzed around inside, looking for a place to land, sounding almost...nice. She’d love to have dinner over a glass of wine with an interesting man who looked at her like Gage was looking at her right now.
She shook it off. She couldn’t go on a real date with Gage Branson. It was ludicrous. The man was a heartbreaker of the highest order.
Instead, she should be thinking of how a date fell in line with her strategy. A little after-hours party, just the two of them. Some drinks and a few seductive comments and, oh, look. Gage slips and says something incriminating, like the name of the person he’d planted at her company. The one who was feeding him information he could use to his advantage.
And she would pretend she wasn’t sad it had to be this way.
Coy was the way to go here. But she had to tread very carefully with the devil incarnate. No point in raising his suspicions by agreeing to his deal right out of the gate. “What if I already have plans for dinner tonight?”
She did have plans. If working until everyone else left and then going home to her empty eight-thousand-square-foot house on White Rock Lake, where she’d open a bottle of wine and eat frozen pizza, counted as plans.
“Cancel them,” he ordered. “You’re too busy worrying about the leak to have fun, anyway. Have dinner with someone who gets that. Where you can unload and unwind without fear.”
“What makes you think I need to unwind?” she purred to cover the sudden catch in her throat. Had she tipped him off somehow that she was tense and frantic 24/7?
His slow smile irritated her. How dare he get to her?
“Oh, I’m practicing my mindreading skills,” he told her blithely. “I see that things are rough around here. You can’t be happy that word got out about your unreleased formula. You’re at a unique place in your career where you have millions of dollars and a large number of people’s jobs at stake. You want to keep it all together and convince everyone that you have things under control. With me, you don’t have to. I get it.”
Something inside crumbled under his assessment. Guess that shield she’d thought she’d developed wasn’t so effective after all. How was he still so good at reading her?
Now would be a good time for that distance she should have put between them long ago. She unglued herself from the desk and rounded it, an ineffective barrier against the open wounds in her chest but better than nothing. Let him make what he chose out of her move.
“You can’t come in here and throw around pop psychology,” she told him, pleased how calmly she delivered it. “You don’t know anything about me, Gage. Not anymore.”
Arms crossed, he watched her from behind her own desk, still wearing a faint trace of that smile. “Yet you didn’t say I was wrong.”
She shut her eyes for a beat. Dinner was going to be far more difficult than she’d anticipated.
If Gage was involved in corporate espionage, catching him in the act was the only way to prove to the others she could lead Fyra through these difficult circumstances. Plus it got rid of him, once and for all. His hundred-million-dollar offer wouldn’t be a factor and the leak would be stopped.
He’d get exactly what he deserved.
Then she could get started on getting over him—for real, this time. She could stop hating him. And stop being affected by him. And stop turning down every man who asked her out. The chaos inside with Gage’s name written all over it had driven her for so long. Wasn’t it time to move on? That was what she deserved.
“I’m not what you’d call a fun date,” she said. “I have a very boring life outside of these walls. Dinner is a chance to discuss the leak. Strictly business.”
A token protest. She knew good and well it was anything but.
“Is that really what you want, Cass?” he asked softly, as if he already knew the answer. “Because it sounds to me as if you need a friend.”
Of all the things she’d thought he come back with, that was not one of them. The laugh escaped her clamped lips before she could catch it. “What, like you’re volunteering? I have lots of friends, thanks.”
But did she really? This time last week, she would have said Trinity would take a bullet for her. They’d been friends for almost fifteen years. It still stung that no one had stood up for Cass in the board meeting, but Trinity’s silence had hurt the worst.
Alex’s defection was almost as bad.
Cass and Alex had met in a freshman-level algebra class. It had taken Cass four months to convince Alex she had what it took to be the CFO of a multimillion-dollar corporation and Cass had been right. Alex’s lack of confidence and all the talk of selling hurt.
Cass was afraid the cracks in Fyra’s foundation were really cracks in her foundation. The last person she could stomach finding out about the division in Fyra was Gage Branson, and it would be just like him to sniff out her weaknesses.
So she wouldn’t show him any.
“There’s always room for one more friend,” Gage countered softly. “In fact, I changed my mind. Let me take you to dinner and you can relax for a while. Wear a dress and we’ll leave our titles at the door.”
There he went again, working his magic because that sounded like the exact date she’d envisioned. He was the last man on earth she should be envisioning it with, though. “How do you know that’s what I need?”
“Cass. I know you. You can’t have changed too much over the years. At least I hope you haven’t.”
Before she could figure out how to respond to that, he rounded the desk and took her hand to hold it tight in his surprisingly smooth one. For a guy who’d always spent a lot of time outdoors, his skin should be rougher. It was a testament to GB Skin and the effectiveness of his products that it wasn’t.
She stared at his chiseled jaw, gorgeous hazel eyes and beautiful face framed by the longish brown hair he’d always favored and something unhitched in her chest.
Gage had broken her so thoroughly because she’d once given this man her soul.
That hadn’t been an accident. A mistake, surely, but not because she didn’t realize what she was doing. She’d fallen in love with Gage willingly. He’d filled her, completely. Because he understood her, believed in her. Taught her, pushed her, stimulated her.
All of it rushed back and she went a little dizzy with the memories of what had been holy and magnificent about their relationship.
“Say yes,” he prompted, squeezing her hand. “I promise not to mention how boring you are.”
Despite everything, she laughed, oddly grateful that he had figured out how to get her to.
“Yes,” she said. There’d really never been another choice. “But we split the check.”
He couldn’t be allowed to affect her. The good stuff about their relationship didn’t matter because at the end of the day, Gage didn’t do commitment and never would.
“That part’s nonnegotiable,” he said with a wicked smile. “I’m paying. After all, I bullied you into it.”
Mission accomplished. He had no clue he’d spent this entire conversation persuading her into exactly what she wanted to do. For that alone, she returned the smile. “You haven’t seen the price of the obscenely expensive wine I plan to order.”
“I’ll pick you up at eight,” he said, clearly happy to have gotten what he wanted, though why he considered dinner such a coup was beyond her. He had an angle here that she hadn’t yet discovered.
She watched him leave. That gave her nearly ten hours to figure out how to keep Gage at arm’s length while cozying up to him. Hours she’d use to figure out how to pump him for information while keeping him in the dark about her motives.
Ten hours to figure out how to seduce answers out of Gage Branson without falling for him all over again. All she had to do was focus on his sins and the rest would be a walk in the park.
* * *
Gage knocked on Cass’s door at seven fifty-five.
Nice place. A bit too glass-and-steel for his tastes but Cass’s house overlooked a big lake with a walking trail around it. His own house in Austin was near a lake. Funny how their tastes in views had aligned all these years later.
She swung open the door wearing a sheer lacy dress that hugged her body in all the right places. Cranberry-colored, which was somehow ten times racier than red would have been, it rendered him speechless. When he’d told her to wear a dress, he’d fully expected her to wear anything but.
His body sprang to full attention. He could not get a handle on her.
“You’re early,” she said with an amused brow lift. “I like an eager man.”
The blood that should have been stimulating his brain into a snappy response seemed to have vacated for a warmer locale in the south.
Cass wasn’t a college student any longer. Not that he was confused. But he was having a hard time reconciling how much she’d changed. Cassandra Claremont, CEO, might be the most intriguing woman on the planet. She was also far more of a challenge because she seemed to have developed Gage-proof armor.
Dinner was supposed to level the playing field. Warm up that ice so he could get her used to the idea of selling him the formula because she recognized what she owed him. She might be willing to talk to the other ladies about the formula, but he needed her to convince them, not talk about it. For that, she had to be totally in his corner. How was he supposed to get her there when he couldn’t get his feet under himself long enough to figure out what game she was playing?
“Uh...” Brain not engaging. He shook off the Cass stupor. “It’s only early if you’re more than fifteen minutes ahead. Technically, I’m right on time.”
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