Past Midnight (10 page)

When she was able to sleep, her dreams of Jay were usually sweet. She would wake longing to return to them. But then, in the dark, the bad thoughts would begin churning, and she couldn’t sleep again. She wanted to reach for Dominic now, with her hands, her arms, her whole being. But Dominic was out of reach. It didn’t matter what had happened between them this weekend; if he knew the things she’d said to Jay, he’d never forgive her. She would always see what she’d done mirrored in his eyes. She was the one who wasn’t able to forgive, not herself, not Dominic.

Yet the trade show had changed something. She couldn’t seek the solace of sex now. After everything they’d done over the weekend, their own bed was . . . different. She now knew she could step outside of herself, move beyond the perimeter of her guilt. She could forget for a time, live for a time, and it didn’t take all that much pretending. They’d woken in Orlando this morning, showered, dressed, packed, driven to the airport, and returned the rental car. She’d let Dominic hold her hand on the plane, though he’d thought she was asleep. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d simply held hands like that.

She craved his warmth now, yet too much of a good thing for too long a time was almost like betraying Jay’s memory. That was the problem. The guilt tortured her, yet without the guilt, it was like forgetting Jay. God, she hadn’t thought of him all weekend. And that was sacrilege. The constant pain she felt was the only thing that kept him alive. Tonight’s nightmare was her punishment for forgetting that.

She knew she was addicted, knew she’d do it again, have hot sex, play Dominic’s dirty games. She craved them. But not tonight. And not in this bed. It was the only thing she could promise her son.

Sliding from beneath the covers, she made as little movement as possible, keeping the blankets mashed down to avoid a rush of cool air that might wake Dominic.

She couldn’t remember where she’d left her slippers and rather than turning the light on to find them, she padded barefoot down the hall. The house was split-level; four bedrooms, one was a guest room that never got used and another served as her office. Dominic had remodeled the workshop attached to the garage as his pseudolab and home office.

Her feet were cold by the time she’d booted up. Pulling her legs up onto the chair, she folded her fingers around her toes to warm them as she waited for the Internet. Her computer was old, a castoff from work, and websites with more sophisticated graphics took longer to load. She’d never been able to throw out stuff that still functioned. Though she couldn’t afford to lose the time at work, it didn’t matter at home. Dominic was different; he loved state-of-the-art.

The desk faced the door. She’d read that was some sort of feng shui thing, so that you could always see when someone was coming into your space. It gave you control. She did the same thing in her office at DKG. She’d also set the computer to erase her history whenever she exited the Internet. Dominic would never check up on her, but she couldn’t take the chance he might see something by accident. So she always made sure she shut down her browser before she left her desk or if Dominic’s shadow darkened her door.

Finally, after the tap of a few more computer keys to open the photo gallery, her son’s beautiful face blossomed on the monitor. She touched the screen as if she were touching his face.

Dominic would be pissed if he knew what she did tucked away in her office late at night, if he knew the things she’d kept hidden from him.

And she wouldn’t blame him for that.

 

 

HE AWOKE WITH A START. HE DIDN’T KNOW HOW LONG HE’D BEEN alone, but when he ran his hand over her side of the bed, the sheet was cold.

This was bad. In her worst moments, Erin didn’t wake him up for sex. Instead, she closeted herself in her office. He figured that was better than if she’d gone to Jay’s room.

Dominic shut his eyes, concentrated on slow, steady breathing. They’d cleaned out Jay’s stuff last February. She hadn’t cried, simply put everything in cardboard boxes, taped them up, and marked them for the Salvation Army. He’d piled the boxes into the SUV and taken them to the drop-off. But before he discarded them, he’d cut open the tape and removed the things he needed to keep. A baseball mitt from Little League. A kite they used to take out to the park on Sundays. Stuff. Memories. Picking and choosing had left a hole the size of a fist in his chest. He’d kept some things for Erin, too, for when she was ready. The clay handprint Jay made when he was six, glazed a bright blue and fired in the school kiln. The animals Leon had whittled for his birthday. He’d been working on the Noah’s Ark scene, having made it through the giraffes, the elephants, the sheep, and the lions. Dominic had kept those and other special things. Erin would be sorry, he knew, when she thought of all the treasures she’d let go.

Rising from the bed, Dominic donned his briefs. He couldn’t go hunting for her with his dick dangling. A swath of light swept across the carpet from beneath the closed door at the end of the hall. He had to pass Jay’s room to get there.

She hadn’t changed the bedspread on the twin bed. He didn’t know why. It was still Speed Racer. On Saturdays, as if it were penance, she dusted and vacuumed his room along with the rest of the house. It just wasn’t lived in anymore.

Outside the door to her office, he leaned both hands against the doorjamb, his head hanging, wanting to knock, yet incapable of it. The only sound was the steady throb of his heart against his chest. He’d been on the outside looking in for over a year. Shut out, shut down. Christ, he needed to talk, sometimes so badly that the words choked him. About Jay, how he died, the pain and guilt, his belief that Erin blamed him, and how goddamn much he missed his son, how the hole in his chest was growing ever wider. All the things he couldn’t say were like boulders between them that they had to walk around to see each other.

What did she do in there that she didn’t want him to see?

Fuck, fuck, fuck. They’d had such a damn good weekend. A step forward. The closed door was two steps back. What had gone wrong? Maybe she’d wanted him to be jealous and he’d failed the test. Was it that he’d wanted her to masturbate for Winter? That he could give Erin to another man and feel only excitement at her pleasure? Perhaps she thought it meant he no longer loved her? The truth was he’d moved into an entirely new territory, where the only thing that mattered was connecting with her on any level he could find.

Dominic straightened, detecting the click of the keyboard.

They had connected this weekend. It worked for seventy-two hours despite the two steps back she’d taken tonight.

He would not give up on her. He would make it happen again. The more he forced her to see him, the easier it would get each time he tried. He had to think of the right thing to tempt her with. Something better than Winter.

Dominic backed down the hall. Something was coming to him. And it was going to be good.

 

 

MONDAY MORNING ERIN LEANED BACK IN HER OFFICE CHAIR, GATHERED her hair in her hand, and slipped a scrunchie around the thick hank to keep the mass of it out of her way. It had taken several phone calls with Wrainger over the last couple of weeks, both before the Orlando trip and two more calls this morning, but she’d managed to raise DKG’s discount percentage. It went against justin-time principles, increasing quantities so they’d have more parts on hand, but the cost-benefit analysis she’d had Bree run proved they’d come out ahead. And they had the stockroom capacity.

She’d been able to tick one thing off her to-do list. She still hadn’t done anything about Leon and the transducers. She’d considered moving the fabrication in-house, but with the loaded labor rate, which included benefits, not to mention the learning curve, Leon was still much cheaper.

She needed to take him out for lunch and ask what he was going to do with all that extra time on his hands. He’d go stircrazy. He needed them as much as they needed him. She didn’t have a decent explanation for why she hadn’t already invited him. Maybe she couldn’t stand it if he said no. Maybe it was because she hadn’t seen him face-to-face since Jay’s memorial.

Her e-mail beeped, and she flipped tabs on the monitor.

Dominic. Was he suddenly getting too lazy to walk over? They hadn’t talked much this morning, not about the weekend, and not about the week to come. He hadn’t said anything about the fact that she’d been holed up in her office last night either, but she knew he wasn’t asleep when she’d gone back to bed.

She clicked on the message. It took her a moment to realize it wasn’t a business e-mail. Warmth spread across her skin, and a kernel of heat sprouted low in her belly.

“Eight o’clock tonight, meet me at Rudolpho’s on Santana Row. I want the skirt short and the heels fuck-me high. Do you understand?”

The tone of command in the words raised her pulse, goose bumps pebbled her arms, and her breath quickened. He wasn’t in the room, and they were only words on a screen, yet she felt an overwhelming rush of desire followed by the oddest need for a little banter. “Forget it, dude.” That should get him going.

She waited, tingling inside. He didn’t disappoint her, an e-mail popping up on her screen in less than thirty seconds.

“You will be there, or you’ll pay the price. If you’re into a little punishment these days, that can certainly be arranged.”

They’d never been into BDSM or pain. So what kind of punishment did he have in mind? Sitting in her office last night, she’d known she was addicted to this new sex game of his. Nothing was going to stop her from playing. Not even her shame or her guilt.

“Maybe I’ll be there. Maybe I won’t.” She wrote, punctuating with a smile to herself. Then she waited for his comeback and hoped it was exceptionally naughty.

“YOU GOTTA TALK TO THE KID, ERIN.”

Erin jumped, slamming a finger down on the mouse to switch the screen she had open on the computer, the reaction automatic. Just as it was if Dominic surprised her at home.

Steve, her quality control guy, completely blocked her doorway, the lewd tattoos on his arms flexing in agitation. His parents obviously hadn’t taught him the art of knocking even when the door was open. After all, a person could be on the phone, in the middle of important business. Or exchanging kinky e-mails. So what if she had an open-door policy?

“Which kid are you referring to?” She already knew.

“Matt,” Steve said with a very hard
t
. “I gotta reject seventy-five percent of his assembly work.”

Erin was head of operations, and her bailiwick included assembly, quality, repair and return, shipping and receiving, production control, purchasing, and employee therapy. She was sure she was missing one of her roles in there, but that was all that came to mind at the moment. Matt was having girlfriend problems. Obviously the talk they’d had a couple of weeks ago hadn’t solved them. He’d jumped from a 60 percent failure rate to seventy-five.

“I’ll take care of it, Steve.”

Steve pursed his lips in old-maid fashion. It was the strangest look on a five-feet-eleven beefcake, former Hells Angel, especially when the naked-lady tattoos on his arms started to . . . undulate. “It’s time and money, Erin.”

“I appreciate you pointing that out to me, Steve. And I said I’ll talk to him.”

He stood straight, hands on his hips. “You gonna fire him if he doesn’t shape up?”

Erin rose from her desk and crossed her arms. In his steel-toed boots, he was taller than her, and much wider, but she was still the boss. Steve was a good guy, he took his job seriously, and he didn’t like anyone messing with his accuracy percentages. And Matt was afraid of him.

“I will to talk to him again. That’s all you need to know,” she said with a bit of a hard edge.

Steve might be eight years older than she was, but sometimes, she was big sister to them all. And the truth was that taking care of them had gotten her through the last year.

Steve hung his head on his thick neck. “All right, Erin, you haven’t let me down yet.”

He hadn’t let her down either in the six years he’d worked for her. Despite his badass bald head and tattooed arms, Steve was hardworking and conscientious, with an endearing little-boy grin when he smiled. Even with the gold front tooth.

She shooed him away with a flap of her hand. “Now get back to work.”

Okay, what had she been doing? Reorder point. No, sex. Hot sex. What did Dominic have planned? What should she wear? Short skirt, high heels, yeah, but which short skirt and which sexy high heels? She had a pair of red shoes and a matching red suede skirt stuck somewhere at the back of her closet.

The rap on the door frame was so light she almost thought it was footsteps on the carpet outside her office. This time, Atul darkened her door, though a hell of a lot less of it than Steve had. Atul might be a couple of inches taller than Steve, but he had far less bulk.

“Erin, you must help me work with that Cam Phan.” He slicked his dark hair back off his forehead with a nervous hand.

Cam Phan was too quiet to cause trouble. “What’s the issue, Atul?”

“I believe she makes her accent heavier when she speaks to me so that I cannot make out what she says without much deliberation.” Atul spoke with a lyrical East Indian accent.

He was responsible for their documentation, the instruction manuals, product catalogues, and website design, and therefore worked closely with the engineers, which would be Cam Phan and Dominic. Starting at DKG when he was twenty-five, Atul had been with them over four years, whereas Cam Phan had joined their team only fifteen months ago, when their original software engineer, Reggie, had gotten pissed off. The episode still left a bad taste in Erin’s mouth. She liked a happy family. Reggie had stirred up a lot of animosity before he left.

“Atul, you both need to be a little more patient with each other.”