The Real Deal (15 page)

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Authors: Lucy Monroe

BOOK: The Real Deal
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She shook her head, as much to clear it as to negate his statement. “No. I've got it.”
Simon wanted to meet her in her room at nine o'clock that night. After Jacob had retired to his own quarters. Not exactly at bedtime, but too late to be considered strictly appropriate for a casual visit.
Oh, she had it all right.
The only problem was—what was she going to do with it?
Chapter 9
S
imon laid down the calibrator and stretched. Flicking a glance at the digital atomic clock above his main workbench he winced. Nine-thirty. He'd told Jacob to tell Amanda he would be down at nine.
He hoped she wasn't too irritated.
The thought annoyed him. He'd pretty much dismissed the frustration others had with his work habits since he was ten years old. Why were the worries coming to surface now, with a woman who was nothing more than a business contact and an unwelcome one at that?
Even if she was mad, he knew she'd still be up. She wanted a chance to convince him of that damn merger.
She was too dedicated to her job to go to bed in a huff of offended feminine pride at being forgotten. And he hadn't forgotten her. If it had been anyone else, he would probably still be at his workbench. Not doing a quick finger-combing of his hair as he rapidly descended the stairs to the second floor.
The sweet fragrance of the peaches and cream candle she'd lit an hour ago filled Amanda's room, but instead of soothing her, it mocked her attempt to create a mood of romance.
He wasn't coming
. It was after nine-thirty. He'd definitely decided against acting on the mutual attraction between them.
She should be feeling relieved.
After all, she'd only decided at eight-thirty to take the advice she knew Jillian would have offered and go for it. Until then, she'd vacillated between the sane thoughts of her business-conscious brain and the insane urges of her heretofore unknown feminine desires.
She should be glad that his decision to stay away had saved her from herself. Maybe if it didn't feel so much like a rejection, she would be. Certainly it made sense that he would have realized the inappropriateness of pursuing any kind of intimate relationship in their current situation. But why in Hades hadn't he figured that out before sending that stupid message through Jacob?
And why hadn't he had at least the courtesy to come down and tell her himself?
The thought that he'd gotten caught up in his lab experiments and forgotten her was no consolation.
That smacked of unpleasantly familiar rejection as well.
A sharp tattoo sounded on her door and all the air in her body seemed to expel.
He was here. Heavens. What should she do now?
The knock sounded again. “Amanda?”
Open the door. That's what she had to do. She walked across the room on bare feet, the shimmering burgundy of her painted toenails flashing in the periphery of her vision with every step.
The color went nicely with the Bordeaux satin tap pants and camisole she was wearing. She'd spent a full fifteen minutes applying the nail polish, letting it dry while she brushed her long hair into a dark brown curtain that gleamed like silk in the flickering light of the candle.
She reached for the door handle with a trembling hand and then pulled it open.
Simon's fist was raised to knock again. He let it drop while shock registered on his face. “I know I'm a little late, but I didn't think you'd be going to bed so early.”
Why was he looking so surprised?
“It's only nine-thirty,” he added.
She looked over her right shoulder at the red glow of her digital alarm clock. “Nine-forty-two actually.”
“Look, I know it probably irritated you that I forgot the time, but I didn't forget you completely.” Far from looking like a man bent on seduction, Simon looked tired and cranky. “I'm here, aren't I?”
“Yes.” Was she acting annoyed? She didn't think she was.
“I can't believe you're going to dismiss the chance to talk about the merger just because I'm a half an hour later than I said I'd be.” Outrage laced his voice. “Hell, you moved into my house so you could catch me between experiments. Going to bed right now is hardly the behavior of a professional career woman intent on pursuing her objective.”
On that he had her complete agreement, but the rest of his words weren't making any sense.
“You think I'm angry with you?” she asked, while trying to understand what was going on here. The sensual fog she'd been in since deciding to “go for it” was clouding her ability to reason.
He tipped his head and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. Gunmetal eyes reflecting weariness pinned her with unconcealed annoyance. “Don't play this
I'm not mad, just tired
routine. It's such a female thing to do and not at all what I would expect of a woman dedicated to getting the job done.”
As the desire that had overridden her usual caution began to wane under Simon's anger, the inconsistencies in the situation infiltrated her consciousness. Inconsistencies she would have noticed immediately if she hadn't been so overwhelmed by the prospect of going to bed with him.
He was not acting like an amorous lover. In fact, nothing he'd said so far indicated any sort of desire on his part whatsoever. As her now nimble brain went back over what he'd said so far, the sick feeling of embarrassment started to crawl along her nerve endings.
He hadn't meant making love at all.
Simon had wanted to meet her to discuss the merger.
How stupid could one woman possibly be? “Why did you insist on meeting in my bedroom?” Her voice was too high, but there was nothing she could do about that.
He frowned. “I didn't insist. I told Jacob I'd look for you in your room so I wouldn't spend a half an hour searching the house for you when I came downstairs. What does where I asked to meet you have to do with your childish display of temper?”
He thought she was being childish? Everything finally made sense. Simon had wanted to discuss the merger. He believed that because he was late, she'd gotten ready for bed in some kind of juvenile act of rebellion. While not exactly flattering, it beat the truly mortifying truth that she'd thought he'd wanted her.
She stepped back into the room, flipping on the overhead light as she went. “I'll just get on some jeans and a sweater, all right? It gets cold in the evenings here. Really chilly, to tell you the truth.” She blew out the candle on her way by. “I'm not used to these kinds of temperatures.”
She was babbling, but she didn't care. Maybe if she kept talking it would prevent him from clueing into what she'd really thought. Shame so familiar, it was almost a friend, surrounded her like the hot oppressive air of the Mojave Desert.
“It won't take a sec,” she continued her babbling litany as she yanked on a pair of jeans right over her tap pants. “I'm sorry if you thought I was being childish. I thought you'd forgotten completely. That's all,” she lied.
She grabbed a red turtleneck from the top drawer of the dresser she'd been using. She tugged it on over her head, pulling her hair in the process. She ignored the pain as she ripped it loose of the constricting neck on the top.
“Let me just clip back my hair.” She hadn't looked at him once since realizing her mistake and she didn't do so now either. She spoke to the wall in front of her as she headed for the en-suite.
“Don't pull it back on my account. It looks beautiful down like that.”
She wanted to spin around and start screaming invective at him.
Beautiful?
She wasn't beautiful. She knew it and he knew it. He didn't want her. Not really. She didn't know what he'd meant by telling her he wanted sex with her earlier. It had probably been some kind of joke. An amusing bit of sarcasm she should have recognized as such.
How could a woman with an IQ in the top two percent of the populace continue to be so dim about some things?
She didn't bother responding to him as she walked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. She needed a minute to collect herself.
She needed a lifetime, but she could take a minute
.
She searched for the light she hadn't bothered to turn on before coming into the small room, found it and flipped the switch up.
The sudden brightness illuminated a picture in the mirror she could have gone forever without seeing again. Brown eyes dark with hurt and humiliation were opened wide to prevent the moisture gathering in the corners from spilling over. Her face was crimson with embarrassment, her mouth a tight line of pain.
It was a familiar sight. How many nights in the first year of her marriage had she tried to interest Lance in making love only to have him reject her for one reason or another? How many times had she stood in front of the mirror just as she was doing now and tried to see what was wrong with her?
The sad-eyed woman in the mirror was someone she knew intimately, someone she had vowed never to see again.
She'd promised herself, damn it. She was never going to let another man close enough to hurt her this way again. But she had and she was paying the price. The mire of humiliation was closing over her head, suffocating her with its terrifying inevitability.
She hated feeling like this. Hated it!
Suddenly the slide of satin against her skin was as painful as a hair shirt and just as effective a reminder of things she would rather forget. She ripped off her outer clothes, then tore the camisole and tap pants from her body and threw them with all her might into the garbage can beside the sink vanity.
She'd only started wearing pretty feminine undergarments in the last year, having cut every negligee she owned into shreds and disposed of them the second year of her marriage after a particularly brutal rejection from her husband. He'd told her that fat women shouldn't expose so much of themselves to view.
Fat!
She had been five pounds under her ideal weight, but that hadn't been good enough for her husband.
Why had she stayed married to the man so long?
She didn't have an answer now, any more than she'd had the one hundred and ten other times she'd asked herself that question.
The closest she could come was to acknowledge that she'd grown up with the feeling that she had no right to be happy. She'd been unlovable to her family. It was only natural her husband had decided he didn't love her too.
The pounding on the door brought her gaze away from the mirror.
“Amanda, are you all right?”
She must have been longer than she thought. “I'm fine. I'll be right out,” she called in a credibly even voice.
The only way she could think of to mitigate the pain of Simon's unwitting rejection was to prevent him from knowing how much he had hurt her. At least her humiliation wasn't public, not like it had been with Lance.
She threw her clothes back on, not worrying about a lack of underthings. Simon wouldn't know. It took her longer than usual to clip back her hair because her hands were shaking so badly. She had to get herself under control before she went out there. Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply, concentrating on breathing in peace and breathing out her stress.
It was a psychological trick one of her friends from high school had taught her. Most of the time, it worked.
 
 
Amanda finished zipping up the leopard print suitcase. She'd been up since five that morning after sleeping very little the night before.
Simon had listened to the initial proposal in its entirety, had not interrupted when she outlined her thoughts on the best strategy for joining the two businesses. He had even allowed her to present the rest of her arguments in favor of the merger, all of it with very little comment from him. He hadn't argued a single point, thus not giving her the opportunity to press her own ideas forward.
And she hadn't cared.
She'd been relieved that he didn't want to get into a major discussion because all she had wanted to do was finish the presentation and get away from him. She'd been back in her bedroom by eleven and had started packing five minutes after that.
She
should
stick around and try to bolster the arguments she'd offered the night before, but she couldn't. While her job was the most important thing in her life, she could not stand the crawling sense of humiliation her mistake the night before had left her with. Not even for a major bump up in her five-year career plan.

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