Falling for Fate (11 page)

I
t was as if she’d gone off the grid. The damned woman wasn’t on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Match.com, or any other site he’d stalked in an attempt to find her. Of course, it would’ve been much easier to search if he knew her name.

No one at the beach had seen anyone matching her description. By the time summer ended, Dean Maxwell was starting to think he’d imagined her, imagined the mind-blowing sex, the hottest night he’d ever had in his life. Except he still dreamt of her warm heat around him, the softness of her lips, the smooth satin of her skin against his. The sweet, breathy noises she’d made as he’d entered her. Those sounds, an intoxicating mixture of pleasure and pain and need, haunted him even when he was asleep—dreams too vivid to be imagined. And he’d never really had all that great of an imagination.

After walking the beach every night and accosting every woman he saw with chestnut hair streaked through with spun gold that glinted in moonlight, he knew it was time to give it up. His mystery woman was gone for good.

Just appreciate the experience for what it was
. Right. That’s what he should do. That’s what his best friend and college roommate, Keaton Slade, had told him at least a hundred times. He was being promoted to CFO of his family’s multinational healthcare corporation. He needed to regain his focus. Start sleeping at night and stop trying to figure out who the hell she was and where the hell she’d gone.

Maxwell Medical was his legacy and it was time to step up.

It was also time to screw the next thing in a skirt that glanced in his direction, fuck the mystery woman out of his system. And that’s exactly what he was planning when he walked into Lux. The posh nightclub was hosting his promotion party, and being the guest of honor guaranteed him a piece of whatever caught his eye. Not that he would’ve had any trouble even if it weren’t his party. He’d gotten distracted this summer and might be a little rusty when it came to picking up women, but he still got plenty of offers. Just not any from the one he wanted. Because she’d dropped off the damn planet.

Let it go, Maxwell.

The place was packed when he spotted Keaton already standing and chatting up a group of women he was pretty sure worked as assistants in various departments of his company. Dean stopped to order a whiskey neat. A few people came by to congratulate him and shake his hand as he paid for his drink. Keaton called out and he excused himself.

“See anything you like?” his friend asked, taking a drink of his own highball glass and stepping a few feet away from his female fan club.

“Sure. Just wish most of them didn’t work for me. You know there’s a no intracompany dating policy.”

Both men glanced around for Daniel Maxwell, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“Yeah, I’m familiar with the policy. I also know that he’s screwed an assistant or two in his day.”

Dean tried not to wince. His mother had known too. Yet she’d stayed married to the bastard. Right up until cancer took her from both of them when he was fifteen. After she’d died, he couldn’t wait to get the hell out of that house and off to NYU. But he was still a sucker for his dad’s promises and approval, just like she’d been. So his dumb ass had majored in business law and gone back for his master’s in finance. And now, he’d be brushing elbows with the son of a bitch at work every day.

“True. But I’m not him. I’m actually sticking to that policy for the sake of my own sanity.”

The last thing he needed was some crazy piece of ass storming into his office and spewing some shit about being pregnant or threating to go public with a sex tape or whatever. His dad had dealt with those situations by throwing money at them. But he’d be damned if he was going to be a carbon copy of that heartless bastard.

“Well, the world is your oyster, my friend. I’m sure there’s at least one sweet little thing here that doesn’t work for you.” Keaton clapped him on the shoulder and Dean raised an eyebrow at him.

Taking another drink of his whiskey, he glanced around. The crowd was made up of mostly twenty-something’s, women ranging from streetwalker slutty to high-end business casual. A few in fuck-me heels and a few who’d probably want a ring first. He sighed. It was like being presented with a buffet of ham sandwiches when you had a craving for filet mignon.

“Right. I’m sure there is,” he said, forcing a smile for a blonde who’d made eye contact while he was surveying the crowd.

“Dude. Pick one. Hit it and quit it and move the fuck on already. Please tell me you left the obsessive mopey version of yourself behind at the beach.” Keaton had no trouble plowing through half of Manhattan. They were all the same to him. Bored with Dean’s usual shit, he stepped back over to the women congregating near them.

The blonde he’d smiled at made her way over. “For someone who’s supposed to be celebrating, you sure don’t look to happy about being here.”

The sway in her hips told him that she was interested in more than conversation. She was attractive. He should’ve felt that old familiar tug, the twitch of his cock behind his zipper. But he felt nothing. Well, maybe a little bit of dread at the thought of having keep up a bunch of small talk. He hated small talk.

He opened his mouth to say something about the irony of celebrating the fact that he was about to be up to his ass in work. But a flicker of light caught his eye.

A woman sitting at the bar had the exact same shade of hair and skin as the one he’d been looking for. For the past three months, if he were being honest. And her body was made up of the same slender, feminine curves. Her shoulders shook when she laughed in a way that reminded him of how she’d been sobbing when he’d caught up with her on the beach.

“Keaton, can you buy this beautiful young woman a drink?” Dean grabbed his friend and practically slung him into the blonde’s path.

He watched as the woman at the bar dug into her purse and pulled out a cell phone. She nodded to her friend and hopped down off her stool. She passed by, barely out of arm’s reach, phone to her ear and purse in hand.

It was her. He’d never been more certain of anything in his life.

“F
ate.”

A low whistle pierced the air.

“Hello. Earth the Fate. Anybody home?”

“God, sorry.” Fate Buchanan smiled at the woman beside her.

Gwendolyn Scott was her roommate and only actual friend in New York. She’d come by to eat lunch with Fate at her second job. The bar was crowded and she was dead on her feet only a few hours into her shift. Both women had already spent the previous evening at Lux for a party to welcome the new Chief Financial Officer at Maxwell Medical, where they were both marketing assistants. But Fate was the only one of them who’d had to come in the next day and wait tables.

“Out of it today.” She waved her hand between them. “Hey, I have to get back to work. But I’ll see you at the apartment.”

“Yeah, don’t forget. New boss starts on Monday. So rest up. We have that presentation to give.”

Dread pressed down on her and she wished she could just take one day off to breathe.
Yeah right.

“Yeah, I know. I’m working the lunch shift tomorrow so we can run those numbers again tomorrow night.”

A table of older gentlemen began waving her over, so she said goodbye to her roommate and headed their way.

“Hi, beautiful,” one of them said in greeting.

She didn’t know if was the exhaustion of working two jobs, the fact that she was running on very little sleep, or the stress of the situation back home catching up to her. But for a split second, the man’s words sent her reeling back in time.

Three months ago, a man had called her beautiful on the worst day of her life, had made love to her on the beach without even knowing her name. When she snapped back to the present, she half-expected sand to be stuck to her legs.

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she forced a smile. “What can I get for y’all?”

“For starters, you can tell us how you came by that enticing accent of yours,” the same man who’d called her beautiful said.

“Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, sir,” she informed him.

There was something strangely familiar about him. His hairline, the shape of his eyes, and the coloring of his skin. He reminded her of someone—someone she made a point of not thinking about. She definitely needed more sleep.

“Well, darlin’,” he drawled, obviously teasing her, “can you grab us a few fingers of scotch?”

She flashed her sexiest grin even though the way the man was leering at her was making her a little twitchy. “Sure thing, handsome.” With a wink, she turned to go fill their order.

After waiting on her other tables, she returned to the older men and picked up the leather padfolio.

“You ever get tired of this place, you come see about working for me. I can always use another pretty secretary.” The man gestured to the business card he’d tucked inside the leather pad and then checked his watch.

Yeah,
use
being the operative word, she’d bet. She forced a smile and a nod before walking away, but when she began to process his payment on the high-tech touchscreen, she nearly swallowed her tongue. The black AMEX card said ‘Daniel Dean Maxwell.’

Holy hell.

She did work for him. He was the CEO of Maxwell Medical, the company she’d been hired at as an assistant to the director of marketing. Thank God she hadn’t been rude to him—not that she would’ve been anyways. She needed this job just as much as she needed the one his company had given her. She was finally making enough money to support herself and pay for her mom’s stay at The Second Chance Ranch, a rehab facility back home.

She debated long and hard about telling Mr. Maxwell that he already employed her, but it seemed like a bad idea. So she kept her mouth shut as she returned his card and receipt. But when he lightly patted her ass, she barely resisted the urge to grab his wrist and tell the man to keep his damned hands to himself.

“You gentlemen have a lovely evening,” she drawled before escaping quickly. Once she saw that all her customers were good for the time being, she locked herself in the ladies’ room. This double-life thing was going to be a bitch.

First, she’d had to beg another waitress to switch tables with her when a group of guys from the marketing department had sat in her section. Then the party for the new CFO of Maxwell Medical—the boss’s son who probably had no qualifications whatsoever—was held at Lux, the nightclub where she worked, the night before. She’d taken a call from her mother and used it as an excuse to leave the party early.

She didn’t know why the thought of anyone at Maxwell knowing that she had a second job as a waitress bothered her so much. It just did. She didn’t want to have to explain why she needed the extra money. Didn’t want to tell them that, three months ago, immediately after checking her pain pill addicted mother into rehab, she’d walked into a back room at her rehearsal dinner and found the man she’d been about to marry screwing her maid of honor.

They’d been planning to move to the city together after the wedding in the Hamptons, already had an apartment and everything. And he’d ruined it, just like that. The worst part? She was the only one who’d been shocked. It had been going on for a while, this ‘blowing off steam,’ ‘getting it out of his system,’ Trevor had said in the many voicemails he’d left. She had been the last one to find out.

To makes matters worse—if that were possible—the rehab facility her mother was in happened to be the most expensive facility in Dallas. Trevor had informed her he’d no longer help pay for it if she didn’t go through with the wedding.