Beg for It (11 page)

“Yeah?” Corinne kept her voice hard, ready to put the smackdown on a telesolicitor. “Are you aware that you’re calling past nine p.m.?”

“I forgot about your phone rule,” said a familiar male voice. “I apologize, I should’ve called earlier.”

“Reese. Hi.” Turning, the phone’s long cord twisting as she did, Corinne kept her face away from Peyton’s curious look. The kid had eagle eyes, and Corinne didn’t want to give anything away with her expression. She also avoided Caitlyn’s scrutiny. Hell, she wasn’t sure what she was going to say or do.

“I have some questions on a few things about the accounts, and—”

“And you couldn’t wait until tomorrow morning?”

“You’ve taken tomorrow morning off,” he reminded her. “You won’t be in until the afternoon, and I’m heading back to Philadelphia in the morning to tie up a few things.”

He paused. She wondered if that was meant to be an innuendo. If it was, there was no way she was going to react to it.

“I won’t be back in Lancaster until next week,” Reese added. “I didn’t want to wait.”

“What kinds of questions?”

Reese hesitated before answering, though when he did speak his voice was strong and confident. A bit overbearing, actually. Arrogant. Another of those slow, rolling shivers that had so often run through her when they were together made its twisting, curving journey into her nervous system. He was putting on a show for her. Pushing her buttons, trying to get a rise out of her.

“I want to go over some of the numbers with you, make sure everything is properly squared up. There are some discrepancies.”

“In
my
work?” She’d closed her eyes, one arm crossed over her belly to tuck her elbow into her palm while she held the phone to her ear. She opened them to see both her daughter and sister staring, and she waved them out of the kitchen with a fierce look.

“I have questions. That’s all.”

She pictured him in the business suit he’d been wearing in that restaurant, the first time she’d seen him in fifteen years. Now she pictured him in that same suit but on his knees in front of her, head bowed. Hands behind his back, crossed at the wrists, the position he’d so willingly gone to for her, so many times.

I think you’ve got the wrong idea. I’m not your boy anymore.

He could not have been more clear. She could not have been more stung. Lifting her chin now, cheeks heating, Corinne opened her eyes. From upstairs she could hear the faint noise of Caitlyn urging the kids to get ready for bed.

“It’s getting late, Reese. I need to get my kids settled for the night.”

“This can’t wait,” he said. “I’ll need to talk to you about it tonight. Put your kids to bed and call me back.”

Corinne had never been a switch. It was true that after Reese, she’d never had another boy the way she’d had him, and that she’d settled into a pattern of traditional, vanilla relationships that had rarely even hinted at her proclivities. But she had definitely not gone in the other direction, ever, not in her personal or working life. At his arrogant assumption that she would rearrange everything to give him what she wanted, she smiled without humor. The rusted-shut tumblers of a long-abandoned lock began to click open, one by one, inside her.

“Tell you what,” she said. “Why don’t you come over here. They’ll be in bed and I’ll be able to address your issues without distraction then. Forty-seven minutes.”

Not forty-five. Not an hour. Forty-seven, a specifically odd number, meant to remind him of who was in charge. Meant to make him think hard about making sure he got it right.

“Fine,” Reese replied in a steely voice, giving her no hint as to whether or not he’d remembered all the other times she’d set him such a specific task. “I’ll be there.”

Chapter Thirteen

Reese pulled into her driveway exactly forty-five minutes after they’d hung up from the call. It would take two minutes to get from the car to the house. Arrival time, precisely forty-seven minutes.

He didn’t get out of the car.

He turned off the ignition and slipped the key into his pocket. He gathered the handful of folders he’d brought along. Patted his pocket to make sure his Parker fountain pen was in its place. He waited, hating the fact his heart had started to pound faster with every passing minute that he was late.

When I tell you to be ready at a certain time, puppy, I expect you to be ready. I despise being made to wait. It’s disrespectful.

Corinne’s words from the past echoed in his mind. Yet here he was, dallying in the front seat of his car on purpose just to fuck with her because she’d had the audacity to pull that forty-seven minute business with him, like even after all this time he was going to jump at her command.

Inside the house, the upstairs lights went out. A minute or so after that, the front porch light also went dark. Then the ones in the front room. She wasn’t going to wait up for him.

He’d pissed her off. Good, Reese thought as he got out of the car. She needed to remember that things were different now. So did he.

Standing on her porch in the dark though, at least ten minutes after she’d told him to be there, he wondered if he’d pissed her off so much that she wasn’t going to answer the door. He didn’t want to ring the bell, mindful that her kids were supposed to be sleeping—kids. The thought of it made him reel just enough to take a step back so his heel hung off the porch. Corinne had children. She’d had an entire life after him.

What the hell was he doing? Badgering her on a Sunday night, insisting they go over these stupid numbers that ultimately weren’t going to matter, not once he fully took over and the new budgets and strategies for growth were implemented. Why the hell was he on her porch when he could’ve phoned the office or even had a video meeting next week to talk about stuff?

Before he had the chance to turn and go, however, the door opened. Silhouetted in the glow from the hallway behind her, Corinne leaned in the doorway. She wore a pair of soft, clinging yoga pants and a tight T-shirt with a deep V that hinted at cleavage. She’d pulled her hair on top of her head with a few tendrils escaping to draw attention to the line of her neck. She held a glass of red wine.

“So. Are you coming in, or are we going to talk on the porch? I warn you, the mosquitos will devour you.”

Reese squared his shoulders. “Yeah, I’m coming in.”

She stepped aside to let him pass, closing the door behind him. “Shoes off, please.”

He’d already been toeing them off, remembering her house rule that had been in place back in that drafty old apartment on Queen Street. When he glanced over his shoulder, she was watching him with a small, faint smile as she sipped her wine. She caught him looking, and her expression changed. Got a little colder. She pointed her chin toward the rug at the side of the door.

He had to bend to pick up the shoes so he could put them on the rug, and he’d never been more aware in his life of another person’s gaze upon him as he did. She was watching his ass. He knew it. Watching him do as she’d ordered him to do. He would’ve acquiesced to anyone’s house rule about shoes because his mother had raised him to be polite as a guest in someone’s house, but this time, instead of neatly settling his leather oxfords on the rug, he tossed them in a jumble.

Behind him, he heard a soft, low sigh.

When he turned to look, Corinne was staring at the messy way he’d left the shoes, one arm crossed over her belly so she could rest her elbow in her hand. Her wine was still sloshing in the glass, her lips wet with it. Her tongue slipped out as he watched. Tasting.

She looked him right in the eyes then, and said nothing. She didn’t have to. She knew exactly what he’d done and why he had done it, or at least she thought she did. For fuck’s sakes,
Reese
wasn’t exactly sure why he’d done it, other than if he’d ever believed he could keep his shit together in the presence of this woman, he’d been fooling himself all along.

“Kitchen.” Corinne lifted her glass toward the end of the corridor. “We’ll sit in there.”

He followed her, of course. Her kitchen was big and bright and cheery, decorated in a red and black color scheme that didn’t surprise him. The kitchen on Queen Street had been smaller, but similar in decor, minus the report cards, school photos, and crayon drawings mostly covering the outdated fridge. A platter heaped high with cupcakes sat in the middle of the island counter. Glass sliders led to a stone patio out the back, and he caught a glimpse of a fire pit and a vast, sloping yard. Everything about this room spoke of a nice, suburban life and family. The complete opposite of his life.

“Wine?” She held up the bottle.

“What kind?”

With a raise of her eyebrow she turned the bottle to show him the label, which featured a colored line sketch of a zombie. “It’s called Malicious. It’s a Malbec.”

She pulled a wineglass with a big bowl from the others hanging beneath the cabinet, and set it on the counter. She filled it. Put the bottle down. Held out the glass to him without coming closer.

He would have to step forward to take it. Of course he did. “You still buy wine based on if the label’s pretty.”

“How else are you supposed to do it?” she teased and lifted her glass, watching him over the rim of it as she sipped. “I suppose you rely on the advice of your personal sommelier.”

“I research,” Reese told her. “It’s not that hard.”

“Neither is picking out a bottle with a fun label,” Corinne said lightly. “Are you going to drink it, or are you going to waste it?”

“It’s already in my hand.”

“Good—” Her voice had dipped, but she cut herself off with a small cough and cut her gaze from his.

He wanted to take pleasure in the sight of her discomfort but couldn’t. He took a long sip of the wine and lifted the glass with a nod. “It’s good. Yeah.”

“So,” Corinne said crisply, “what is it, exactly, that you wanted to talk about?”

He took a seat at the breakfast nook, which had been styled to look like a retro diner booth. “This looks familiar.”

“It’s from the diner. About four years ago, Eddie did some renovations and auctioned off a bunch of the stuff he was replacing. I grabbed this and some other things that are still in storage until I can get around to fixing up my kitchen the way I’d like it to be. My ex didn’t like the diner look.”

“So as soon as you split up you put this in?”

She nodded. “Yep.”

“A good way to stick it to him, I guess.”

Her eyes narrowed. “It was a good way to start working toward turning this kitchen, which he now no longer uses, into a space that would please me.”

It had been a dickish thing to say, and he knew it. “You always did know exactly what you wanted and how to get it.”

That should not have been a dickish statement, but he came out sounding like a total asshole anyway.

“It’s my house. Why shouldn’t I have it the way I like it?” Corinne asked in a clipped, controlled voice.

“You should always have everything the way
you
like it. Right?”
Three strikes
, Reese thought.
You’re out.

He’d have deserved it, too, if she’d lost her shit with him, but all Corinne did was press her lips together and look at the glass of wine in her hand. It seemed that time had given her better control over her temper. Reese wasn’t sure that was the reaction he’d wanted.

“It’s getting late. Please show me what it is you have questions about so we can go over it.”

He spread the folders open in front of her to show the printouts he’d culled from the stacks of material Tony had prepared. “There are a couple of accounts that don’t match up. Some past end-of-year things.”

She tilted her head to look over the papers he was pulling out. With a frown, she tugged one set closer to her. “Yeah…these are from right around the time we switched to the new software. I took care of all that in the new system.”

“There’s no record of any of that.”

“Of what?” she asked sharply.

“Of the updated files.”

Corinne took a sip of wine before answering. “Where’d you pull this from?”

“Tony gave it to me.”

“Where did he get it?”

Reese sat back in his chair. “It was all part of the original information that Lynn sent us when we were collecting data before we decided to make the offer.”

“It didn’t come from the updated package I put together.”

“I—”

“It didn’t,” Corinne said. “It couldn’t have. The stuff Lynn put together was culled from older files he’d tried to access after a computer backup failed. He’s a great guy, but he’s not the most tech savvy. And, if you’ve done any research into this company at all, you know that they’re all great people, but it’s still a small, family run business and occasionally the way it’s been handled reflects that. If you’d asked me, though, I could’ve made sure you were working from the most current information.”

“I am asking you!”

“No,” she told him with a slow, deliberate shake of her head. “You’re trying to show me up. Aren’t you? Because you had to dig pretty deep to find something remotely problematic with the way I’ve handled the financials for Stein and Sons. And wow, did you dig. So here’s my question for you, Reese. Did you pull out all that crap because you wanted something to rattle me with, or did you just want an excuse to see me alone?”