Falling for the CEO (Entangled Flaunt) (3 page)

Chapter Five

Holy hell. Meredith was hot.

Andrew didn’t even register her words for a moment. He was so shocked by the intensity of arousal that had flooded through him as he watched her shake all that luscious red softness down her arched back. She’d ended up in the same pose he’d found her in last night in the hallway. The one that pushed her breasts out and highlighted the curve of her spine—things he’d felt even through her clothes when he’d caught her in his arms this morning. All that sweet, feminine warmth against him…

He shuddered.

Nothing was going to get done today if he didn’t get a handle on his libido. Hell, she had just asked him something from three feet away and he couldn’t figure out what she’d said.

“I—excuse me. I didn’t hear you. What did you ask?” He pulled out a hanger and slid her coat onto it, releasing a faint floral scent. Her scent.

“You—you have a dress in your wardrobe.”

The confusion in her voice made him chuckle. He’d forgotten about Lily’s dress. He pulled it out and draped it over the front of him, trying to twist the way he’d seen his sisters do when they modeled new clothes. “Do you think it suits me?”

Meredith’s eyes went wide for a moment, but then she realized he was joking and clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter.

He paused, grinning back at her. With her eyes bright, her face lit up with a smile, she was so alluring. How had he never seen her this way?

Because it’s not your job to see her that way.

Right.

He lowered the dress and dropped his grin. “Actually, it belongs to my sister. She met me at the office for dinner after she’d been shopping and I let her leave this dress in my closet since it was too bulky to carry around.” He flashed a sheepish look. “But we had a lot of wine with our meal, so by the time we were finished, both of us had forgotten about it. When I called the next day to remind her, she said she’d changed her mind and was planning to return it.”

He held the dress out at arm’s length, actually looking at it for the first time. The black dress didn’t have any straps, and the satiny material on top looked pretty tight-fitting, at least until it got to somewhere around the thigh area, where a bunch of feathery things with sparkly stuff sprinkled on them spilled downward to the floor. It was one of the more frivolous things he’d ever seen.

He turned back to Meredith to say as much, only to realize that she was no longer laughing. Instead, she was staring at the gown with unabashed longing. The look on her face was so raw, so heartfelt, that he knew he’d be unable to resist her if she ever looked that way at
him
.

But then she caught him watching her, and her face shuttered immediately. “It’s a nice dress” was all she said, falsely nonchalant before turning to face her laptop screen and starting to type.

He frowned. It was almost as though she were punishing herself for liking the dress. Hardly a normal reaction.

The way she had looked at it had gone beyond simple appreciation for a pretty dress. What had she been thinking of when she looked at it so hungrily? Had she seen herself sliding it over her body, sweeping up that incredible hair so that everyone could see the delicate beauty of her bare shoulders? Had she imagined him running his hand over her neck, down the slippery fabric—

Hold up. No, she probably hadn’t been imagining those things.

But he certainly had.

Still, she must have envisioned something special for her face to go all starry-eyed like that. And this was the only opportunity to test the waters…

He gave a little cough, and she looked up. “Were you able to find something to wear for tonight? I know I didn’t give you much time to shop. My sisters start looking weeks in advance for things like this.” His kept his tone casual, almost indifferent, but he didn’t miss the way her eyes flickered back to the dress, her body swaying ever so slightly toward it for a moment.

She started to shake her head, caught herself, and changed it into a nod. “I do have a few things in my closet. I’m certain one of them will suffice.”

Not exactly reassuring. And the way she
looked
at the damned thing… For the first time in his adult life, Andrew did something he’d never had a reason to do before.

He lied.

“Too bad that this dress has been sitting here for over a month. When Lily said she was going to return it, I told I’d have it sent back for her, but I kept forgetting. Now it’s too late. I already paid her back and was planning to just donate it, but I’m wondering…”

He purposely trailed off, watching her face. Her lips jumped as though she wanted to speak, to lay claim to it. In truth, the dress had only arrived here the other day, but he’d pay Lily back for it, no matter what it had cost, if it satisfied the hunger he saw in Meredith.

Was it the glasses? The hair? His attraction was strong, sure, but also unexpected and inappropriate. He should just drop it and—

“Wondering what?” Her voice cut into his thoughts. She’d stood up. “You were going to donate it, but you were wondering something?”

I was wondering what your bare shoulders look like.

He held out the hanger, the black fabric beckoning her to touch it. “You’re probably about Lily’s size. Why don’t you wear it tonight? It would make me feel better for inconveniencing you.”

At first he thought she would refuse, but then she took another step forward. Her hand reached out and he sucked in a breath, thinking that she was going to touch him, and then he would really lose his mind and do something like haul her against him and kiss her.

But instead, her fingers slid over the curving neckline of the dress before they dipped inside and lifted out the tag.
Ralph Lauren Collection, 6, 100% silk
, it read.

He heard her take a deep breath before she sighed out, “Yes. Yes, I’ll take it.”

***

Her fairy godmother’s name was Lily.

The second her fingers had closed around that dark-purple tag, Meredith had known. The fabric felt like heaven and the dress was in her size. She had to have it, or she’d
die
.

And that was the moment that she’d finally admitted that, yes, possibly, some kind of magic was at play, because in the past half hour she’d never felt more sexy and powerful in her life. Andrew was looking at her like he wanted to eat her up. She hadn’t fallen or spilled something or broken anything since she’d stumbled into his arms back in the elevator. Something was changing in her, and she simply couldn’t say no.

So she’d said
yes
, instead.

Andrew had grinned as though she’d given him the best Christmas present he could think of, and told her to take it home with her that evening, then. And then he’d hung it back in the closet and joined her at the table and pretended that everything was normal.

But it wasn’t.
She
wasn’t. She could feel it.

Her mind kept wandering away from the spreadsheets in front of her. She was wound up with excitement and nerves and…something else. Something hotter and more sensuous and—

“Want some coffee?” Andrew rose as he spoke, and she blinked. Had her thoughts been somehow transmitted to him, but gotten jumbled a bit along the way? She blushed. If so, thank God some mystical static had rendered the message all choppy. It was one thing to imagine a connection between them. It was another thing altogether to pursue it. To ask for it.

But he was doing the offering, even if it was just coffee, so it was okay for her to nod and say, “Yes, please. Three-quarters—”

He interrupted her. “Three-quarters full, one packet of sugar, then cream until the cup is seven-eighths full. Don’t stir. Which is weird, I will add.” He smiled at her in that way that popular high school boys smile at each other—mischievous, happy, and full of life, and Meredith couldn’t hold back a smile in return, her heart swelling with pride in him and, strangely enough, in herself.
He’d noticed how she liked her coffee.
And he was gorgeous.

But just in case she was completely misreading the situation, and he was just being nice while she was acting like a silly fool on some six-day trip to Crazytown, she wiped the goofy grin from her face and gave a perfunctory nod, instead. “Exactly. You’re so—” She fumbled for words for a moment.
Handsome? Sexy? Lickable?
“Observant,” she finished lamely.

“Thanks.” He said it slowly, drawing out the word into a couple of syllables while giving her a strange look, but he didn’t say anything else after that, just turned and walked out of his office. With him gone, the air seemed suddenly too thin, as though some vitally important element had just been sucked out of it.

Had he noticed that, too? The way she drank him in so deeply? He saw so much…

“It’s just
coffee
,” she whispered to herself, before sighing and turning back to focus on her work.

***

Several hours later, Meredith was shaking her head at her laptop screen. “I don’t understand how we could have lost this much money in just a few months. I can’t believe it didn’t show up in any of the overview reports, either.”

She sat back in the chair and looked at Andrew. It was just past one o’clock, and except for an hour while he’d had a conference call, they had been talking back and forth about the financial history of Harbor all day. Even when he had gotten on the call, he’d insisted that she stay, and they had communicated with a series of small touches. Her fingers ghosting over his as she pointed out an incorrect entry, his hand on her shoulder to get her attention, foreheads furrowing, mouths smiling…

She could draw him in her sleep now. Could trace the outline of the hard muscles in his forearms in her dreams. She was drowning in him. Working side by side had been a terrible, awful mistake. Because while she was nearly melting into a puddle under the table,
he
was completely unaffected. Business as usual, that’s what it was for him, while that black dress kept calling to her from inside the closet.

It had taken longer than usual for her to work through the statements from the fund. Not just because her mind was wandering all over thoughts of Andrew and how it would feel to wear that gorgeous gown tonight. What she was seeing in the numbers was getting more and more confusing, even without those distractions.

“What is it?” He rose from his chair and came to stand right next to her, leaning down to look at the computer.

Oh, my.
The way he was standing, her shoulder was nearly brushing his thigh. If she leaned just slightly to the left, she would feel those hard flanks against her arm …

“Meredith?”

She shook off her thoughts and tore her eyes away from his legs, turning her attention back to the screen, scrolling down in the report. “See here? Until four months ago, there was actually more than the necessary amount in the fund. But between that period and the next, the balance drops by half a million dollars and the line item only says, ‘Fund transfer to account 6623-841.’ But at the same time, the Christmas Bonus Fund line item disappears from the Harbor Technologies monthly portfolio report, which is why it didn’t even occur to me that something was wrong until I received the fund statement yesterday. And I can’t find this account number in any of the financial tracking systems.”

“How is this possible? My approval is required for this kind of thing, but I didn’t sign off on any of these changes.”

She nodded. “Exactly. So if you don’t know about this, and there is no other record of this mystery account, then the next step is to call the bank and see who did open the account.”

She managed to keep her voice calm, but inside her gut was churning. This looked bad. Like embezzlement bad. Sloppy embezzlement, sure, but even if that was the case, it had still worked. The former CFO would be the likely culprit, and he could be anywhere by now.

“I’ll also call Bob,” she said, referring to her predecessor.

Andrew stiffened, but gave a tight nod. Meredith felt awful. When she had first interviewed for the position, Bob had just left the company. Andrew had spoken so highly of the elderly man. Any hint of wrongdoing must be difficult for Andrew to consider.

But they had to at least ask, even if the older man turned out to be completely innocent.

Andrew let out a ragged breath and straightened up next to her. “It’s late afternoon on a Friday. Go ahead and call the bank, but I have a feeling we’re not going to get any solid answers from them until at least Monday.” He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “In the meantime, let’s just do all we can to work with what we’ve got and assume we’ll never recover that half million. And hold off on calling Bob until we have answers from the bank, okay?”

He looked so weary all of a sudden that she didn’t even think. Her heart simply took over, and she reached out a hand to touch him in comfort. Except, because of their positions, instead of her hand landing on his shoulder in a gentle squeeze, her fingers ended up curling around the back of his thigh.

Ohhhh, that was a mistake. A horrible, hard, flexing mistake.

And yet her traitorous hand refused to move. She simply stared at it, pale skin on pin-striped trousers, and thought about how good it would feel if his clothes simply fell away, changing the sensation from slippery wool to coarse hair and firm skin. She would skim her fingers up, up, until she stroked the curve of his ass—

“Oh, my God!” She tore her hand away just as it started snaking its way upward. It felt like she’d had her hand on his body for an eternity, but it couldn’t have been more than a second that now had ended in awful, soul-gutting humiliation.

“I—I am
so
sorry. I cannot apologize enough. Clearly I wasn’t thinking. I thought it was your shoulder. I mean, obviously that wasn’t your shoulder. But that’s what I meant, to just give you a quick squeeze. On your shoulder, of course! Oh. Maybe I shouldn’t have come into the office today,” she finished, her voice weak with embarrassment.

Sometimes she wished Andrew’s nickname were something more sinister than the Santa CEO. At least then, it would be more reasonable to hope that he had built a trapdoor in the floor in front of his desk that would whisk her into a dungeon and instantly, completely out of his sight. Heck. She’d even settle for covering her face with a folder.