Beg for It (7 page)

“Who says I couldn’t own a restaurant, if I wanted to?”

“You looking to buy a place?” The waitress had reappeared with two plates of pie and another round of coffee. “Eddie’s trying to sell, if you’re really interested.”

Tony grinned at her, eyeing the name tag pinned to the front of her blouse. “Hi there…Gretchen. Awesome coffee, by the way.”

“Why’s he selling?” Reese ignored Tony’s batting eyelashes, though they seemed to have caught the waitress’s attention.

“He wants to retire to Florida.” Gretchen shrugged and topped off their mugs, then stood back to give Tony a contemplative look that turned into a small, interested smile after a moment. “Says it’s too cold here in the winter. He’s had this place for about thirty years.”

“Eddie Malone.” Reese nodded. “My dad knew him.”

The waitress shifted her flirtation from Tony to give Reese a curious look. “Yeah? Who’s your dad?”

“Uh…well, he passed away,” Reese told her, which wasn’t the answer to the question she’d asked but one she accepted with a nod.

“Well, Eddie’s trying to get rid of this place. If you’re really looking.”

“I’m not,” Reese said. “But thanks.”

With another shrug, she left them. Tony gave him a long look as Reese forked a bite of orgasmically tasty lemon meringue into his mouth and pretended he had no idea Tony was trying to dig out more information from him.

“I’ve worked for you for eight years,” Tony said finally. “You can’t tell me there isn’t more to this dairy acquisition than just making a profit. I’ve run the numbers for you. I’ve done the due diligence. Sure, it’s possible that with your magic touch you could make it work, but you made them a shit offer. It’s almost like you didn’t want them to take it in the first place.”

Reese chewed pie. Swallowed. He gave Tony a bland grin.

Tony frowned. “Fine, don’t tell me. Drag my ass out here to the middle of nowhere to pursue some weirdly sudden artisanal cheese fetish. It’s my job, I get it.”

“It’s your job,” Reese agreed mildly.

“I live to serve, master.”

Reese frowned. “Don’t call me that.”

“Fine. My liege?”

Tony was joking and had no idea why it made Reese a little uncomfortable. Like he’d never spoken to Tony about where he’d grown up, Reese had never told him about the sorts of games he used to play. “Cut it out.”

Tony stabbed the air between them with his fork. “You can’t hide it from me forever.”

“I’m not trying to hide anything,” Reese began, and his words cut off at the sight of Corinne coming through the diner’s double front doors.

She wore a pair of faded jeans and a stretched out T-shirt sheer enough to hint at the outline of her bra beneath. Her long, dark hair had been pulled into a messy bun, though a few tendrils had escaped to curl and stick to her neck. She looked tired.

She was beautiful enough to stop his heart.

She saw him in the next second, and the pleased, anticipatory look she’d had when she came through the doors became immediately shuttered. She’d put on her guard.

It fucking broke him that he was the cause of that. In the times before, all she’d ever had to do was look disappointed in him, and he’d gone to his knees for her. Literally. Once, making Corinne happy had been the only goal Reese ever had.

Tony twisted in his seat to look where Reese was staring. “You know her?”

“It’s the CFO of Stein and Sons.”

Tony’s eyebrows lifted. “She’s—”

“She’s the CFO,” Reese repeated harshly, “of Stein and Sons.”

“Ah. Look, how about I head on back to the hotel and turn in. I’ll see you tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah, I’ll go with—”

Too late. Corinne had crossed the tiny dining room to stand in front of their booth, hands on her hips. Mouth a thin, grim line. “What the hell are you doing, Reese? Stalking me?”

“I’m finishing my dinner,” he told her. “Actually, it was breakfast. Just at dinner time. Breakfast all day.”

Tony looked startled at the blather spouting from Reese’s mouth. Corinne noticed Reese wasn’t sitting alone. She shook her head and frowned, probably against the start of a tirade. She nodded at Tony.

“Hi,” Tony said. “You must be Corinne. Tony Randolph.”

Now she looked embarrassed and held out her hand. “Oh. Tony. You work with Reese. Hi, nice to meet you. I thought
we
were supposed to meet.”

“I changed it, I told you,” Reese said.

“I’m just on my way out. I’ll see you Monday at the meeting…?” Tony stood.

Reese watched Corinne’s gaze go up, up, up. At the small curve of her smile, no different than the looks Tony eternally garnered from men and women alike, Reese winced from the stab of jealousy. He was an idiot. She could look at whomever she wanted to. Hell, she could drag Tony off into a corner and fuck him into next week, if they were both into it, and although before tonight Reese hadn’t thought Tony might even have considered it… Fuck.

He was getting out of control.

Both Tony and Corinne were staring at him. Keeping his expression bland, Reese leaned back against the diner booth as though he didn’t have a goddamned care in the world. He didn’t seem to have fooled his assistant, who was still smart enough not to say anything about it, but he gave Reese a look that said he’d be asking about it later.

When Tony had gone, Corinne turned as though she meant to leave too. Reese snagged the soft fabric of her jeans at the knee, letting go at once when she looked down at his hand, then at his face. He’d seen that look before. He’d overstepped.

“Sit,” he said. Then, more gently, “Please?”

Corinne slid into the booth across the table from him. “What kind of game is this?”

“
This
is called coincidence. I had no idea you’d be there tonight. How could I?”

“You want me to believe you come back into town after about a million years, trying to buy the company I work for, and you show up at the diner where we first met, and that’s a coincidence?”

He would always remember the first sight of her behind a coffee pot with a plate of eggs and potatoes in her hand. This might have been the place his father brought him on Saturday mornings, but it was also the place with strong memories of her. Reese frowned.

“I wanted something to eat.” He sounded defensive and cursed himself for giving her any hint that she was affecting him.

Her gaze softened, though her mouth did not. “So you came for breakfast.”

“It always was the best I ever had.”

“I bet it still is.” Her eyes met his, held his gaze. Challenging him the way she’d used to, and it wasn’t about the breakfast.

Reese shrugged, giving Corinne the look his last lover had called “the smug bastard expression.” Amber had hated it. He was sure Corinne wouldn’t like it any better.

Corinne, however, smiled. She tilted her head and looked him up and down, and though it had been a long, long time since she’d studied him that way, he’d never quite forgotten how it had felt to be the center of her attention. Object of her affection. Nobody else had ever come close to making him feel for even one second what Corinne had done with such casual cruelty.

“Maybe you should tell me what’s going on,” she said when he didn’t speak.

“I buy and sell businesses that are faltering, and I grow them and sell them for a profit,” he told her. “I saw Stein and Sons listed in a report I get about small businesses that are considered to be in need of acquisition.”

Impulsive. Mom had said he was impulsive, in response to Dad’s somewhat harsher assessment of “flighty.” Reese had grown to think of it as following his gut.

Corinne’s smile twisted on one side. “And you…what? You saw I worked there and decided to buy it? So you could somehow fuck with my life, Reese? What the hell?”

“Is that what you think of me? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You never did give me the benefit of the doubt.”

Corinne’s smile disappeared entirely. “I guess that must be what
you
think about
me
.”

More words wanted to shoot from his mouth like bullets, finding the best places to hurt her. Over the years he’d often imagined it, some grand speech that would put her in her place and leave her reeling, maybe even begging him to forgive her. Now faced with the chance, all Reese could think about was how he needed to tell her the truth. Things had ended between them because of broken trust that had never been repaired. It had changed and ruined everything between them, and it had changed and sort of ruined him too.

“I wanted to see you again,” he said finally.

“Coffee, hon?” The waitress caught a glance of Corinne’s face and frowned. She looked at Reese. “Oh. Sorry. I can come back?”

Corinne shook her head. “Coffee’s good, along with a cup of ice, please. And I’ll have some of that Stein and Sons full cream Eddie keeps. Thanks.”

When the waitress left, Corinne looked at him. “You wanted to see me again.”

He nodded.

Then, shit, she was going to cry. Tears glittered. Her lips quivered. How could he have ever thought that was what he wanted, to hurt her?

He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss away the tears, but didn’t move so much as an inch. Too much time had passed. He didn’t know her anymore.

“You could’ve just called me or something,” she said when she won the struggle to get herself under control. “Found me on Connex, for God’s sake.”

Connex had paid for his house in County Galway, Ireland, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. “I don’t have a Connex account.”

The waitress brought the drinks and the cream. Corinne took her coffee the way she always had. He remembered. Three sugars. Enough cream to turn it white, but she would refill her cup several times without adding more. She added the coffee to the cup of ice and stirred.

“It’s a terrible offer, and you know it,” she told him after she’d sipped.

He wasn’t going to admit that. “It’s a fair offer, considering the losses the company has taken over the past few years and the changes in the marketplace.”

“You really want to run a small town specialty dairy? This isn’t some tech company that you can oversee from afar,” Corinne said, then raised an eyebrow at his look. “Yeah, I did my own research on Ebersole Enterprises. You’re a hands-off kind of corporate mogul, aren’t you? You like to buy up businesses, tear them apart, and sell off the pieces.”

“Not always,” he replied.

Her chin lifted. “You do it often enough.”

They stared at each other over the table, but Reese refused to allow himself to get lost in her gaze. Fathomless, blue, he’d more than once dived into those eyes and let himself drown.

“From everything I was able to find out about Stein and Sons, you’re looking at the total dissolution of the business before the end of the year, unless things change,” he said.

“Which is why you think you can sneak in with that horrible offer, right? I read the terms. You’re not obligated to keep any of the existing board, staff, or employees. So what does that mean? You’re going to come in and fire us all?”

He’d done it in the past, when it made sense for the business, but he’d only put those terms in there this time to make it less likely the board would approve the sale. “I’d do what was best for the acquisition.”

“You’d do what was best for yourself,” she said in a low voice. “Whatever you needed to do for you.”

He scowled. “You’re not being fair.”

“Something tells me this isn’t about being fair.”

“Corinne…”

“I cannot in good conscience suggest to my board that they take your offer, Reese. But they’re desperate. So they’ll probably take it anyway. You’re going to come in and rip it to shreds, put them out of business. Put people out of their jobs, and what do you expect them to do? There aren’t a lot of positions for goat cheese artisans around. And what about me? I’ve been with Stein and Sons for my entire career. Did you think about that? How I might need my job to support myself? My kids?” She took a slow, shuddery breath. “I have two children. They’re my life.”

“You can find another job. You don’t make goat cheese.”

“Sure, because finding a new position that pays me what I’m paid, with my benefits, my flexible hours, yes, that’s so easy at my age. Starting over.” Her lip curled slightly. “Says the man with the yacht.”

“I don’t have a yacht,” Reese told her quietly.

“No, because you get seasick,” she shot back at him.

It was true. She remembered. The words hung between them, somehow accusatory.

He wanted to kiss her.

He wanted to hate her.

He wanted to save her.

“I’ll see you at the meeting on Monday,” he told her, and left her sitting alone in the diner booth.

Chapter Nine

Before

It’s been a long, lazy day of nothing but bed and tea and kissing. They’d gone to bed with the dawn and slept for some hours before Reese woke her with the stroking of his fingers between her legs, finding her clit with that same unerring precision he always did. He’d given her an orgasm, and they’d fallen back to sleep.