Johnson Family 2: Perfect (2 page)

Pinning her arms above her head, he kissed her the way he wanted to. Slowly, thoroughly. He loved to kiss, and he was extremely good at it. The seductive movements of his lips over hers battered her resistance.

“Don’t fight me,” he said against her cheek.

He ran one hand down the inside of her arm, over her breasts and down to her hip. She twisted and arched, the heat of his touch warming her skin through the material. Already he had her wanting more.

Cupping one breast, he kissed the line of her cleavage and pulled in frustration at the edge of the gown, seeking her nipple. In his impatience, he ripped the dress down the middle, a dress that had cost him thousands. Daniella gasped.

“I’ll buy you another one,” he said. He licked the tips of her breasts, unleashing a pool of heat in her belly. “I’ll buy you a thousand more,” he said to the underside of her breast. His voice was rough with hunger, and the sound of it was like an aphrodisiac.

He reached lower. The gold thong was torn from her hips like a thin layer of tissue, his fingers anxious, his chest heaving with each labored breath.

He pressed her legs apart, and when his face disappeared between her thighs, she let loose a whimper of surrender. She’d long ago recognized she couldn’t refuse him. It had always been like this between them—a fiery passion that burned everything in its path and left her trembling, throbbing, and at his mercy.

As his mouth moved over her tender flesh, she closed her eyes and forgot their argument, concentrated on the caress of his lips and tongue, and temporarily shelved any thought of leaving him.

Chapter Two

Present day

Cyrus entered his suite of offices after his normal one hour workout in the company gym. He’d been in since before six. Roxanne, his executive assistant, who made sure she was available whenever he arrived from his workout, greeted him. A tall black woman, she had a no-nonsense set to her mouth, no matter the occasion.

“Good morning, Mr. Johnson.” She pushed her funky fuchsia glasses higher on her nose. They might have looked out of place on an older woman, but they didn’t on Roxanne. She’d worked for his father when he was alive, and from what Cyrus had heard, she’d been quite the hellion in her day.

“Hardy called you back and said he’s available whenever you are,” she said, following him into his office and reading from an electronic tablet in her hand. 

“He’d better be.” Hardy Malcomb worked out of their London office and oversaw beer production in western Europe. Cyrus hadn’t been pleased to learn production levels had dropped because of bad hops they’d purchased, which meant they couldn’t meet production schedules and supplier demand.

He took a bottle of water from the small refrigerator under the bar in his office. He kept the bar stocked with the finest spirits to entertain guests, but he didn’t drink—not even the beer his family brewed. He hadn’t had anything alcoholic since his father passed away at the hands of a drunk driver.

Ironically, the man who’d killed his father had empty cans of Full Moon beer—the Johnson family brew—strewn on the floor of his vehicle. He’d been working on emptying another one when he plowed into the car carrying Cyrus’s father and his brother, Gavin.

“A reporter from the
Seattle
Business Chronicle
called and wanted to interview you about the upswing in sales and what you think it’s attributed to.” 

Cyrus emptied the bottle and tossed it in the trash. He retrieved another and swallowed a gulp of cool water before responding. “Let Trenton talk to the reporter.” Although Cyrus had been closely involved in the changes to their marketing strategy, his brother ran the Sales and Marketing division and should be the one to discuss the ideas they’d implemented. Besides, he was much better at schmoozing the press, a task Cyrus considered a chore.

Roxanne nodded and left his office. Cyrus pulled his sweaty T-shirt over his head and went through the door that led to a full private bathroom and dressing area. After a quick shower, he changed into one of five suits hanging in the closet. Today he chose black with a white shirt and navy tie.

He then had Roxanne call Hardy and pass the call through to him. The conversation went downhill within a few minutes.

“Saying ‘I’m doing my best’ is not an answer.” Squeezing a tension ball in his hand, Cyrus paced in front of the cherry wood desk in his office. “Your job is to make sure we produce enough beer to satisfy the market. If your best allows us to fall below quota so we’re scrambling to meet orders, that, Hardy, is not good enough.”

Hardy Malcomb had been with the company for many years, but right now he was skating on thin ice.

“Cyrus, with all due respect, your father—”

“My father has been dead for almost ten years.” Cyrus stopped pacing and leaned over the phone so Hardy heard everything he said next, including the hard note in his voice. The comparisons to his father, Cyrus Senior, had gotten old long ago, and Hardy should know better. His father had never tolerated mediocre performance, and neither would he. “I’m the one in charge, and it would behoove you to find out what’s going on. I’ll be keeping a close eye on production levels moving forward, and if I don’t see an improvement, you’ll have a major problem on your hands. Get it done, or I’ll find someone who can. Have I made myself clear?”

There was a prolonged silence before the man spoke again. “Yes, I understand,” he said in a defeated voice.

“I don’t want to have another one of these conversations, Hardy. It wastes your time as well as mine. Have a good day.”

Cyrus jabbed the intercom button and disconnected the call. He hated having to deal with something as simple as quotas first thing in the morning. He hadn’t even bothered to have breakfast sent up because he’d wanted to tackle this problem right away. Production levels had fallen well below the norm. If they didn’t hit those numbers, they couldn’t fill orders, and if they couldn’t fill orders, they lost money. As if he didn’t already have enough on his plate with a possible trademark infringement from a small brewery in Canada and the equipment failure at their facility in Portland.

Cyrus rolled his shoulders and tried to release the tension, to no avail. He was a man of routine. It kept him on track, but since he’d missed breakfast, his routine was off, and tension settled in his neck and shoulders.

He’d hoped the day would progress more smoothly moving forward, but luck was not with him. At least not by the sound of the raised voices coming from outside his office. He strode to the closed door and opened it to see Roxanne in a heated argument with his wife, Daniella.

He came to a complete stop.

The sight of her stole every molecule of air from his lungs and temporarily left him without the ability to breathe. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d visited the company—more than two years at least.

As usual she dressed like the goddess she was in a black, short-sleeved jumpsuit with wide legs. A thin gold belt brought attention to her narrow waistline, and manicured toes covered in polish the same color of a natural pearl were on display in a pair of three-inch sandals that matched the belt.

Her eyes lifted to his and he clenched a fist to fight back the instantaneous tightening of his abdominal muscles.

“Cyrus, do you mind calling off your secretary?” She looked pointedly at Roxanne, who still blocked her path to his doorway.

“She’s doing her job,” he replied.

“Her job is to keep me out?”

“Her job is to make sure I’m not disturbed. I’m a busy man, and all kinds of random people like to come here and disrupt my day.” He leaned a shoulder against the door and folded his arms.

Her tawny cheeks blushed the color of fully ripe peaches. “I’m not a random person, I’m your wife.” True, but she’d been fighting to change her status.

“Roxanne, you can let her by, and while I’m with my
wife
, please make sure we’re not interrupted.”

“Yes, sir.” Roxanne stepped aside. She took her job seriously, which made her indispensable to him. If he said he didn’t want to be disturbed, Jesus Christ and a host of angels couldn’t get past her without an appointment.

Daniella cast a scathing look in the older woman’s direction before lifting her head high and stalking by. She traipsed past Cyrus with a stiff spine, and he followed more slowly.

He closed the door.

“To what do I owe this visit? It’s been what—a year? Two years, since I’ve seen you?” Not since the opening of a restaurant by mutual friends, and he knew exactly how long ago that had been.

“A year, but it went by so fast. I guess that’s what happens when you enjoy your freedom and have fun,” she said.

Her cutting remark only made him smile. “You wouldn’t know what fun is if it jumped up and bit you on the nose.”

They both shunned the typical trappings of entertainment that bludgeoned less focused people. He and Daniella were both goal-oriented and driven. Those characteristics should have helped their marriage work, but the cracks in their union had widened into valleys they couldn’t bridge.

He gestured at the guest chair. “Have a seat.”

“I’d rather stand.”

“Suit yourself.”

Cyrus settled into the high-backed chair behind his desk and observed her in more detail. She’d always been thin, although she appeared to be even more so now, and he wondered if she was taking care of herself. Whenever she worked hard, she tended to forego meals, grabbing a snack here and there, which he’d told her on numerous occasions was not healthy. At the pace she kept, it was important to fuel her body.

What she lacked in curves she made up for with breasts the size of cantaloupes. They were magnificent—the only word he could think of to describe them—and large enough to seem out of place on her slender body. His gaze dipped to them and he suffered the expected consequences. His groin tightened and his mouth watered. No doubt about it, they were his favorite part of her anatomy.

“I wouldn’t be here, except you won’t accept my calls,” she explained.

He lifted his gaze to her face. Her hair was parted in the middle but pulled back with gold clips. He’d always felt the hairstyle made her look too severe because of her pointy chin and high cheekbones. He preferred when she wore it straight or wavy and allowed the lustrous strands to soften her face and frame her delicate features.

“What could you possibly want to talk to me about?” He crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair, pretending to be relaxed when in fact her appearance had made him more tense than he was before. “You were the one who said everything we needed to say could be communicated between our lawyers.”

“That’s what I prefer.”

“Well then, what’s the problem? I take it you’ve changed your mind?”

“Obviously, Cyrus, but as usual, you have to be difficult.” She walked forward, carefully, as if approaching an undomesticated animal and she didn’t know how it would respond to her overtures. “I came because I want a divorce.”

“That would be obvious from the divorce papers you served me with. I haven’t forgotten.” His gaze shifted to the purse she held in front of her. She wasn’t wearing her rings, and the sight of her bare finger pissed him off.

“It’s been three years. Now you’ve petitioned the court to dismiss the divorce completely. You’re unnecessarily dragging out the process.”

“Unnecessary for you, but necessary for me.”

“Cyrus, it’s time we end this.”

“End what?”

“End
this
. The back and forth, this marriage neither of us wants.”

“Where is this coming from?” he asked. To his knowledge, nothing had changed recently.

“I’m tired of fighting you. What you really want is to win, so I’ve come to make you an offer. Tell me what you need to be crowned the victor. Whatever it is, I’ll give it to you.” She took small steps forward, and despite her outward calm, the harsh grip on her purse betrayed her agitation. Had it been a neck she would have snapped it for sure. “I’ll leave with whatever I came into the marriage with and you can have everything else, even what’s due me in the prenup. I’ll walk away with nothing I didn’t earn myself.”

Any other man would be ecstatic his wife made divorce so easy, but her words pushed another button and brought him that much closer to anger. His neck muscles tightened.

Cyrus rested his elbow on the arm of the chair. “You don’t want anything else?”

“That’s right,” she assured him. “Nothing.”

“I’m afraid I can’t just let you walk away,” he said.

“Why not?” The desperation in her voice scraped the air like nails on soft flesh. “I don’t want anything—not the cars or the jewelry. Nothing. You can have it all back.”

“Those were gifts,” he said quietly. Her willingness to give up all he’d given her, to cut her losses and get out of their marriage, burned his stomach. While she earned a comfortable living, his degree of wealth had exposed her to a lifestyle most people only dreamed about. Her dismissal was nothing more than an insult.

“I’ll give it all back if you sign.”

“You know the situation is not that simple, Dani.”

“It can be. Would it help if I withdrew?” She sounded more and more desperate. Desperate to get away from him. “You could divorce me, instead. I don’t care. Just…let me go, Cyrus. I can’t fight you anymore.”