Take Me if You Dare (Entangled Brazen) (10 page)

Chapter Sixteen

Andrew sat behind his desk, his expression unreadable as he flipped through the binder one more time. Jasmine stopped herself from bouncing her foot, crossed her legs, and casually rearranged her skirt back over her thighs. He flipped back to the budget and timetable sections of the report, again, and her heart thudded and stuttered in her chest.

Finally, he closed the binder, smoothed his hand over his tie, and sat back in his chair. “I’m impressed. It’s a good plan.” He stared at her a moment and said, “Regency Health has the contract.”

Yes!

Curbing her inner cheerleader, she pasted on her most professional, pleased smile. “Thank you, Andrew. That’s great news. I’ll call Ted. I’m sure he’s anxious to get this moving forward.” She moved to stand up from the chair, but he stalled her with his raised hand.

“I have one more request. I’d like for Regency Health to finalize the plans for the other two facilities in Montana and California as soon as possible.”

“Of course, I’ll make sure Ted is aware of that.” She rose from the chair, glad he couldn’t see her legs trembling on the other side. He stood as well and they shook hands. His hazel gaze held hers with a direct look.

“Tell him to give me a call this morning, and just so you know, when I talk to him, I’m going to request that you assess our other two facilities and write up the plan. I also want you to oversee our account, personally. Is that something you’re interested in?”

Cartwheels turned into backflips in her mind. Ted was right. This was her ticket out of the call center.

Her smile widened. “I’m very interested, Andrew. Thank you.”

“Good.” He released her hand and sat back down in his chair. “I’m leaving on the corporate jet at one o’clock today for Montana. If Ted agrees, I’d like you to join me so I can show you the facility and introduce you to our managers and site director. They’ll be helpful in giving you a preliminary needs assessment. After that, you’ll fly out to California to meet with Devin, and he’ll walk you through the plans for our new facility.”

“This afternoon?” Her portfolio almost slipped from her fingers.

His brow rose in question. “Is that a problem?”

The multiple cups of coffee she’d drunk to get her started that morning churned into acid in her stomach. That left her a little over an hour to clear out her office and go home to pack.

“No, it’s not. I’ll be ready.”

She walked out of Andrew’s office and closed the door, but her fingers remained clutched around the doorknob. What about Ethan? They were supposed to spend the next four days together.

Andrew’s assistant, Margot, was sitting at her desk, and she gave Jasmine a quizzical look. Offering up a tight smile, Jasmine walked out of the reception area and headed down the hall.

Maybe she could talk Ted into delaying the trip.

No—bad idea.

Seeing her as a professional would go right out the window if she stayed in town to be with Ethan.

Her cell phone buzzed, and she fished it out of her blazer pocket.

Ted.

She answered the call.

“What’s the verdict?” he asked.

As she walked into her office and closed the door, she gave him the good news and relayed Andrew’s request about her traveling to Montana and California.

Ted whooped out a laugh. “Didn’t I tell you this was it? I knew you could pull it off. Consider it a given that you’ll be on that plane with Andrew this afternoon. You can give us a full briefing when you finish in California. I may as well tell you that the decision was already made that if you nailed this, you would get your old job back. Congratulations! You did it.”

“That’s great,” she said, but her enthusiasm floundered.

“Being a program coordinator again, that
is
what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“Yes, absolutely, Ted.” She leaned against the door to her office. “Things just moved faster than I expected, but I’m ready.”

“I’m happy for you, Jasmine. You deserve it. In no time at all, you’ll be back on track for a manager’s position. When you get back, we’ll start working out your game plan. Let me get back to Andrew so we can firm things up. Call me or my assistant, directly, if you need anything.”

“All right, Ted. Thanks.”

The call ended, and she let her head fall back against the door. What was she supposed to tell Ethan? As she walked over to her desk, she pulled up his number but stopped the call before it went through. He was expecting good news about the contract. How was she supposed to tell him this?

Her desk phone rang, and she picked it up. Margot was on the line. During their two-minute conversation, Jasmine started packing up her desk, laughed when expected, wrote a note about the car service picking her up at the apartment in less than an hour, and tried not to cry when she hung up the phone. She couldn’t leave Ethan like this.

A force stronger than reason prompted her out the door of her office to the elevator. She reached the floor where Ethan worked, and when the doors slid open, her heart sank. Security instead of one the interns she’d come to know during the past few days manned the reception area.

As she squared her shoulders, she masked her desperation with professionalism and walked up to the counter. “Hello. I need to reach someone in the lab.” She gestured over to the secure entrance down the hall. “His name is Ethan Worth. He’s a contractor.”

The guard’s stern expression didn’t waver. “If you don’t have an authorization badge, I can’t let you in.”

“I don’t want to go in. I just need someone to see if Ethan can step out for a minute. I’m
—
”

The phone at the desk rang, and the guard turned away to answer it. While she waited, the elevator doors opened and she studied the people walking out of it, looking for a familiar face. When they scanned their badges to open the lab entrance, she peered in praying she’d see Ethan. The door closed and sense of hopelessness opened up in her chest. Her cell dinged the arrival of a text message, and she glanced at the screen. It was Tab.
FYI—Straightened out Brenda’s text messaging etiquette.

A reminder came into her thoughts. She’d never deleted Brenda’s text. As her finger hovered over the list of messages, warnings flooded into her mind but she ignored them. She clicked on it and stared at the photo of Greg and his girlfriend smiling down at their baby girl. For the past year, she’d fortified herself with thoughts of him being unhappy. Clearly, she was the only one left with losses and regrets. Jasmine closed her eyes for a moment and they stung with unshed tears.

Damn it, I’m not going to cry over this again! I have to move on.

“Look,” the guard said. His expression was slightly sympathetic. “VIPs from Washington are in the lab today. Unless it’s an emergency, he’s probably not going to be able to come out and talk to you.” The man laid a pen and pad in front of her. “Write him a note, and as soon as things settle down, I’ll make sure he gets it.”

A collage of memories from her past flowed through her mind. Ted was right. This was it. This was her second chance, and as much as she cared about Ethan, she couldn’t let her heart get broken again because of unrealistic dreams about a relationship that wouldn’t work.

Swallowing past the large lump forming in her throat, she picked up the pen and started to write.

…

Ethan stepped out of the simulation room into the lab and blew out an irritated breath. Doing his best to control his impatience, he handed over the test weapon and held his arms out to his sides, giving the techs and engineers access to the closures on the body armor covering his chest and legs. The last-minute VIP visit had added a demonstration to the schedule and messed up his entire morning.

Damn it.

Now that he only had forty-five minutes for lunch, he didn’t have enough time to work on the plans he’d come up with that morning for his talk with Jasmine. Flowers, wine, that chocolate dessert she’d fallen in love with at the bakery up the street, and of course the one move she couldn’t resist.

Dinner.

He smiled. Why mess with perfection?

If he pushed the speed limit, he could make it to the bakery, but the rest would have to wait until after work.

As soon as the techs finished removing the equipment, he jogged out of the room and went down the hall to “cube land” where he shared office space with the tech division staff.

After retrieving his phone and keys from his desk, he hurried out the lab. As he walked toward the elevator, he checked for a voicemail message. There wasn’t one.

“Hey Ethan, I got something for you.” The guard at the reception station laid a folded piece of paper on the counter.

Wariness started to seep into his thoughts as he walked over and picked it up. He unfolded the paper and immediately recognized Jasmine’s handwriting.

I’m sorry, but…

He skimmed over the rest of the note and stalled on a sentence toward the bottom of the page. He started to feel sick.

It’s best we end things here and call this week what it was…

Anger started settling in his gut. He’d set himself up for this. Sex was sex, he knew that, and her note had just made that understanding crystal.

He released a bitter laugh and raked his fingers through his hair.

Isn’t this a kick in the ass?
He’d let all that crap about love being worth the risk and having someone special get inside his head. They didn’t need to have a long, honest talk about anything. They weren’t Bill and his wife or Dario and Elaina. They weren’t in love.

A strange feeling close to pain spread through his chest.

But he cared about her, and he’d honestly thought she cared about him.

A mix of emotions started to funnel through him, things that would tear him to the ground right then and there if he let them. He closed his eyes and focused on the one he understood. Anger. It was time for him to get his head out of the fantasy world he’d let himself live in for the past week and get back to reality. He spun on his heels and headed back for the lab. Right now, the best place for that to happen was in the simulator blasting away at virtual targets.

…

Ethan walked into the guest apartment he’d been assigned and dropped his bag on the floor. He inhaled deeply and took in the scent he’d come to welcome over the past two days
—
nothing, just a functionally furnished, squared-away place with no memories of Jasmine. He should have been downstairs clearing his things out of the apartment she’d stayed in, but every time he thought about the tidy little arrangement Jasmine had made with Vanessa about where and how to hand off the apartment key, he got ticked all over again. She’d made a clean getaway and didn’t have a reason to talk to him.

A simple damn conversation
. Was that too much to ask? Leaving him a message to say she was taking a last-minute trip for her job, okay, he could handle that. But they’d practically lived together for over a week. Didn’t sharing a closet and bathroom space at least rate a phone call to tell him how she felt instead of writing it in a note?

The same answer that had plagued him for the past two days popped into his mind.
Call her.

And say what? Thank you for making me feel stupid for wanting to be with you?

Disgusted with the chatter in his head, he went out on the deck for a talk with a few shots of whiskey. The first shot went down ugly, the second a bit easier. By the third, his throat was numb from the sting of the alcohol, and warmth pooled low in his belly. His thoughts slowed, but only total obliteration would take them away. He leaned back in the chair and looked up at the darkened sky. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t get drunk. He still had one last wake-up and a few hours of work in the morning before he could point his truck north to South Carolina.

And then what would he do? Go home and feel sorry for himself over the weekend? That definitely didn’t sit right. He had to get back to normal. Mitch always had something going. Hadn’t he sent him an email about something happening this weekend? Needing a wider view than the screen on his phone, he went inside and dug his laptop out of his bag. He sat down at the dining room table, and moments later, he was in his email account. He hadn’t checked it in a while and as he scrolled through, he deleted the ones he wasn’t interested in along the way.

Horse track.
He stared at the email header, and his heart bumped hard against the middle of his chest. The email address was obviously Jasmine’s, and it was dated the day before she’d left. Not giving himself time to think, he clicked on it, glanced at the photo of them at the horse track, and dropped his gaze to the words she’d written underneath.

Luckiest girl on the track, greatest guy in the world, best day ever!

He sank back in the chair, numbed by shock and alcohol. He just stared, but then something sparked inside him, and it all burned away. He shot up from his chair and paced. Each glance at the photo as he passed by the table made him madder by the second.

Luckiest girl…greatest guy in the world, best day ever
—and then she’d left him that fucked-up note the next day? His skin grew so hot the top of his head tingled.

Oh, hell no
! He wasn’t giving her a pass on this one. She couldn’t say that, and then pack up and leave like it didn’t matter.

He unclipped his phone from his side and as he tapped in the security code, he paused.

No, it wasn’t going down like this. Notes, text messages, emails, he was tired of it. A phone call would be just another way for her to hide.
Greatest guy in the world
…he had a right to know if she felt that way about him, because if she did, she’d pretty much lied in her note to him. He wanted to know why, and he wanted that explanation face-to-face.