Sugar And Spice (40 page)

The muffled sound of conversation outside the door injected a few senses back into his brain, with reluctance. He pulled back, allowing his lips to linger against hers for just one sweet second longer.

“Sorry. That, ah, shouldn’t have—”

“D-d-don’t,” she said. “Don’t apologize.” She gave him a grin of confidence, one that told him the ball had somehow left his court, along with his racket. “It’s C-C-Christmas. Let’s call th-th-that a gift.”

Then she swung around, grabbed a file out of the cabinet and thrust it into his hands before he could respond.

If there were prizes for man screwups, Jake would have gotten the gold medal.

Jake stood outside the file room, wondering what the hell he’d just done.

Okay, he knew what he’d just done—kissed an employee. The question was why. In every how-to-be-a-boss book in the universe, that was a no-no. And not just kissed any employee, but Natalie Harris, who might as well be wearing a T-shirt saying DANGER: BREAKABLE HEART.

Jake wasn’t a man who stayed with women. He was, by and large, a one-woman-at-a-time man, with his time frame lasting roughly six weeks. Anything longer than that meant talk about mortgages, Labrador puppies, and worse, children.

If there was one man who shouldn’t breed, it was definitely him.

And yet, after that kiss with Natalie, every one of his bodily instincts was telling him to do just that—or at least practice—a lot—with her. Natalie Harris might get tongue-tied talking to him, but she didn’t have that problem when it came to kissing. In fact, he thought her tongue had been decidedly flexible and sweet, fueling a few thousand fantasies in Jake’s mind.

Fantasies that were still simmering in certain parts of his body, making him stall instead of cross the room to his office.

Still, it had been a stupid thing to do. He’d never gotten involved with an employee before, and he wasn’t about to start now.

Really.

“Jakey, there you are.” Cousin Brad strode over, his black-and-white striped suit making him look more like a zebra than a Lyons. Where the hell did the man shop? “Come on into the conference room for a bit. I have to break some bad news and want you there to soften the blow. You play Mutt to my Jeff.” He thought a second. “Maybe it’s the other way around. Anyway, come be the good cop.”

Jake waited until they had entered the dark, foreboding conference room before speaking. “Bad news?

Just before Christmas?”

Brad waved a hand of dismissal. “I can’t base my profit and loss on a damned holiday. Besides, when did you care about Christmas? Or Easter, or hell, Valentine’s Day for that matter?”

“Still, firing someone before Christmas—”

“Oh, I’m not firing anyone. I’ll save that one for Christmas Eve.” He chuckled. “Right now, I’m just ending the company’s support of that stupid shelter. God, talk about a drain on resources. What those people need is bus fare to the unemployment line, not turkeys and ‘story time.’” He put sarcastic air quotes around the last two words.

Jake happened to think the story time wasn’t a bad idea, and as far as he knew, it didn’t cost the company more than a couple of hours of Natalie’s time, time she always made up by staying late. The book reading worked out to be a wash in the financial river, and the donations from Lyons Corporation were small enough that they couldn’t possibly be making a dent in the bottom line, but Jake didn’t quibble. Once Brad latched onto a cost-cutting measure, there was no talking him out of it.

It was probably the same stubborn streak that had him convinced he was a dapper dresser.

Still, he hated to see Natalie’s project get axed, especially now. He knew that shelter meant a lot to her, just by the amount of time she invested in it.

He shouldn’t care. He should be smart and remember that he was here to run a business, not save a woman he barely knew from a little disappointment. “Brad, you can’t do that. Not to—” He’d been about to say Natalie but pulled himself back. What was with him lately? Was Starbucks throwing in some estrogen-laced soy milk into his daily morning latte?

He should agree with axing the program because they definitely needed to cut back on expenses. Brad was still handling the books, despite Jake bugging him to see them. Either way, it didn’t take a genius to see that the company was doing poorly.

If Jake didn’t keep his focus on that, he wouldn’t be able to pull Lyons out of the financial pits. Doing so would prove, once and for all, that Jake Lyons was more than just a pretty face who’d inherited a lot of money and not a lot of brains. It would prove it to his family, to the tabloids that loved to latch onto his life and, most of all, to himself.

“Some other sucker will come along and toss those homeless some coins, believe me. Anyway, I only did it for the publicity.” Brad snorted. “Fat lot of good that did me. Not one paper ran an article on Lyons Corp’s philanthropic efforts.”

“What a shocker,” Jake deadpanned. Over the last few months, the company had donated the equivalent of one half-filled Salvation Army kettle. The checks were small, but Jake noted that the shelter’s director was always grateful, regardless of the number of zeroes.

“You stay here,” Brad said. “I’ll go get Natasha—”

“Natalie.”

“Whatever. I’ll get her and tell her that her little pet project is kaput. She’ll probably thank me. One less thing to worry about. Besides, this little Christmas shindig she was planning over there would have cost us a fortune. Hiring a Santa, for God’s sake, and buying a present for every one of those ungrateful brats.

It’s a ridiculous expenditure when we need to be watching our own dimes instead of tossing them to the poor.”

“Brad,” Jake said, grabbing his cousin’s sleeve before he could depress the intercom button on the speakerphone in the center of the table, “why not continue supporting the shelter? Both of us have enough personal wealth to—”

Brad laughed. “Why the hell would I give my own money to the poor? I worked hard to earn it.”

“You mean inherit it.”

“Hey, it’s not easy to be born into the right family. All that Lyons sperm floating around, you and I are lucky we’re legit.”

His cousin was right. Brad’s father as well as his father before him, Jake and Brad’s grandfather, had been a notorious womanizer. A tabloid had once done a story on him, estimating the number of potential illegitimate heirs. After a hundred, the reporter had stopped counting. Only because Grandfather’s will had been ironclad had the money passed on to his siblings and grandchildren. Jake’s father had inherited more than a few mill from his paterfamilias. He’d also downloaded the infidelity gene.

John Lyons had been a distant father, never putting any time into his relationship with his son until last year, when a heart attack scared him into catching up. Before the second attack took his life, he’d asked only one thing of his son—to work with Brad and restore Lyons Corporation to its former glory.

There were other companies, dozens of them, in the Lyons family portfolio, but this one had formed the core of it all. It was the source of the Lyons fortune, the kind of rags to riches story that magazines loved to report on. Before his death, John Lyons had finally seen what his brother’s incompetence had done to the company and asked his son to step in.

To save the family name. The cornerstone of the family wealth. And in doing so, Jake saw himself redeemed for all those years of playing instead of caring. And most of all, it would give him the purpose he’d been searching for ever since his father had passed away.

If it hadn’t been for all that, Jake would have walked out on his cousin a hundred times over. But Lyons Corporation was part of his family’s legacy and he’d be damned if he’d watch it drain away.

Despite that, he hated to see Natalie hurt in the process. “Brad, I still think—”

“Jake, we’re rich and we’re bastards. Thinking isn’t required. Just back me up while I protect the company assets.” Brad chuckled as he left the room. “And while I take a peek at Dena’s assets.”

Jake reached a hand into his shirt pocket, where he’d put that day’s Secret Santa missive. Someone here thought he was an honorable, smart man.

He hoped like hell he wasn’t about to prove that wrong.

“Dish,” Angie said. “You left this desk wearing lipstick and now most of it’s on your chin, so you better tell me what just happened in the file room. I saw Jake go in there about three seconds after you did.

What happened behind closed doors? Enquiring minds want to know.”

Natalie shrugged. “We kissed.”

Angie plopped down on the corner of Natalie’s desk. “No, no, no. That’s not the way you tell a story like that. I need details, Nat. You know my life is about as exciting as balsa wood. If I don’t live vicariously, I might as well go buy an oversized cable-knit sweater and eighty cats.”

Natalie laughed. “Okay, I’ll tell you. But only for the betterment of feline kind.”

Angie put her hands on her hips. “Hey, I could take care of a cat.”

“Ang,” Natalie said, laying a hand across her best friend’s, “I love you dearly, but you can’t even keep your philodendron alive.”

“It would help if the plant could talk and tell me it needs water. I mean, it just sits there. I’ve had boyfriends like that, just sat on the sofa and clicked my remote. I didn’t give them any tender loving care either. I want a man who acts, not one who potatoes.”

Natalie cast a dubious brow toward the shriveled brown leaves of the plant sitting on the shelf above Angie’s desk, but let it go. It was the third plant to be tortured in that spot, despite Natalie’s furtive attempts to sneak the greenery a drink and some sunshine time. The poinsettia Jake had given Natalie was thriving well, bringing a vibrant crimson burst to the drab gray walls of her office box.

“Really, the whole thing was nothing,” she said. “Jake came in, told me he was looking for a file, and he noticed my earrings, and then, before I knew it, we were kissing.”

“Was he good?”

Natalie grinned, unable to keep the memory from showing on her face. “Does Elton John know how to sing?”

Angie laughed. “I knew it. He looks like a good kisser. Nice lips, nice hands. It all spells awesome in bed.”

Natalie had been thinking the exact same thing, before Jake kissed her, during…and after. “Well, we didn’t go that far. He was the one to break it off, to apologize, for Pete’s sake.” She sighed. “I must have been really terrible.”

“Or he just felt bad about a little office hanky-panky.” Angie drew closer. “If that’s the case, then it’s time to add a little bam! to your Secret Santa plan. Send him a vibrator, something that gets his imagination rolling.”

“Trust me,” Natalie said, thinking again of the feel of Jake Lyons against her, “he needs no help in that department.”

Angie grabbed Natalie’s arm. “Then take a bigger risk, Nat. Or you’ll end up sitting under the mistletoe, sipping eggnog and cuddling with a Shih Tzu.”

“Angie, I—”

Brad popped his head over her desk. “Miss Harris, may I have a word?”

Angie slid her copy of Webster’s onto the corner of her desk, sending Natalie a conspiratorial grin.

“Sure,” Natalie said, rising and following Brad into the small conference room. Brad probably had a bone to pick with the way she filled out some paperwork or something. Brad Lyons had a way of taking the tiniest infraction and turning it into a drama worthy of Broadway.

But when she entered the room, she stopped cold, realizing instantly that this was no chastising about using blue ink over black. Jake sat at one end of the long, dark table, looking as uncomfortable as a man could.

She was being fired. For fraternizing—both mind and body—with the boss. Well, if Brad tried that, she’d make it clear that it hadn’t been a one-sided event.

“Please, have a seat,” Jake said, gesturing toward the chair across from him.

She sat, but not all the way, ready to spring up at any second and argue her point.

Brad slid into the chair at the head of the table, cleared his throat, looked at Jake, then back at Natalie.

He readjusted his suit’s lapels three times before he was satisfied with their placement. “Miss Harris, I want you to work on the Simpson account this afternoon. We have a meeting with the client at two.”

“But I’m supposed to be going to the Our Hope Shelter, remember? I have a meeting with the director to talk about the Christmas party for the children. If I miss it, we’ll be cutting it awfully close. We need time to hire a Santa and buy all the gifts.”

“We’re not doing that.” Brad placed his palms flat on the cherry surface. “This company is done with that silly shelter. It’s been nothing but a drain on company resources.”

The heat left Natalie’s body. “Did you just say you were ending the program? Before Christmas?”

“Yeah. I don’t want to waste a bunch of money on presents for ungrateful leeches.” Brad picked a piece of lint off his jacket sleeve, then flicked it toward the floor, watching the fluff’s slow journey down. Jake sat immobile, his face unreadable.

Natalie rose, forgetting her job, her place, seeing nothing but red fury in front of her. “Those children are needy. They aren’t leeches, nor are they ungrateful. If we don’t provide a Christmas for them, they won’t have one. They’re homeless, for God’s sake. Do you know how that affects a child?”

Brad shrugged. “Might as well learn about the cruel, cold world at an early age. Don’t want them holding onto illusions forever. No more solatium from this company. Let ’em get their own damned money.”

She cringed at the bastardization of another Word of the Day. Someone needed to give Brad a Webster’s all right—and shove it into a place a dictionary never ventured. She turned to Jake. “Do you support this decision?”

His gaze wouldn’t meet hers. “I’m sorry, Natalie. I really am.”

“Bullshit.” She shook her head. “I thought you were different. But you’re just like all the rest, aren’t you?

Out for Numero Uno. The rest of the world be damned.” She gave her chair a hard push back into place, then stormed out of the room.

She refused to cry, refused to dwell on the thought that moments ago she had been kissing the very same man who had just betrayed the one thing that meant something to her.