Working Him: A Billionaire Romance (6 page)

“I positively hate that I had to do so,” she replied, cutting a glance at me. “Who is she?”

“This is Rachel,” he replied, giving me a once over as well. “She’s my assistant. I wanted to make sure I got all of your issues documented so I can work on them for you.”

“Oh,” she said, looking a bit irritated. It was then that I realized why I was really here. “I thought, well, I thought you would come by yourself, Garrett.”

“Well, I didn’t want to botch this up for you,” he said, giving no indication that he knew why he was here. “Can we do a walkthrough so you can show me the areas of concern?”

I hid my smile as her lips formed a pout and she turned away, heading back into the house. Boy this was going to be interesting.

Chapter 9:  Garrett

I felt mentally exhausted as I climbed back into the car, glad that this was finally over. Rachel climbed in beside me and I wasted no time pulling back out of the drive, waiting for her to start with her snide remarks. Yeah, I had brought her along to help me fend off Tess Trent, a bored, rich housewife that had hit on me more than once when I was showing her houses. I knew when she called there had been nothing wrong with her house and that she just wanted to attempt to get me in the sack, but I couldn’t ignore her. After all, she had talked her rich businessman of a husband to buy a three million dollar home from me. Bringing Rachel along had been a security blanket, though I was still upset at the fact that I had caught Travis flirting with her this morning. Last night I had given him the green light to go after her, but seeing him actually attempt to do so had not set well with me at all.

I turned the car onto the interstate and shifted in the seat. “Go ahead,” I finally said. “Ask the damn questions.”

“Oh my god,” Rachel responded immediately. “She was so expecting you to sleep with her!”

“She’s been trying to get me in her bed for a year,” I grumbled. I wasn’t about to tell her the one time Mrs. Trent had shown up to the office in nothing but a trench coat. “I knew she didn’t have anything wrong.”

“Well, I think I wrote down holes,” she said, looking down at her notes. “Where the holes should be. I’m not sure how much of that you will get fixed.”

“I, thanks for playing along,” I said, glad that she hadn’t asked any questions up front. Not that I had given her much of an option to do so.

“Not a problem,” she said, closing the notebook with a sigh before looking at her watch. “Though you do owe me a lunch break.”

I looked over at the clock and say it was nearing four o’clock in the afternoon. Well past lunch. “We could grab something to eat before we head back,” I said, surprised that the words came out of my mouth so easily.

“Um, alright,” she responded, hesitation in her voice. “What do you have in mind?”

I thought about it for a moment and then grinned. “I got just the place.”

She looked at me as I turned the car toward one of my favorite local haunts in Fort Lauderdale that was right by the water, the food freshly caught right there off of the dock. It didn’t take us long to get there and I could tell by Rachel’s face that she was surprised we were eating there. “Come on,” I said, climbing out of the car. “You’ll love it, I swear.”

She followed me inside and we were shown to a scarred table on the back porch overlooking the water, a bucket of beer placed between us. “This is interesting,” she said slowly as I handed her a beer. “I thought you would be too, well…”

“Too uppity to enjoy a place like this?” I answered for her, laughing. “Nah. I might enjoy the finer things in life but I know where to find good food when I want.”

She grinned at me and I was glad to see that our earlier tension was gone. I still didn’t want her hanging around Travis, but I wasn’t going to ruin this by bringing that up again. “So Rachel,” I said instead. “Tell me about yourself.”

“What do you want to know?” she asked, taking a sip of her beer. “I can tell you that it’s pretty boring.”

“I doubt that,” I grinned draining my beer before reaching for another. She made me slightly nervous, though I had no idea why. “Give me the scoop on why you are here, Rachel, and not at home.” I was curious to know why she had left and what the asshole of an ex had done to cause her to run away.

“I just needed a change in scenery,” she shrugged, peeling at her label. “I swear I didn’t put two and two together until I saw you that first day.”

I chuckled, thinking the same thing. It had been a shock, that was without a doubt. “I’m glad to see you, Rachel. We had some great times together.”

“That we did,” she answered with a grin. “Remember that basketball court in the park where you thought you could hang on the rim like the pros do?”

I thought back to that summer before I had moved away, that goal the bane of my existence. It had been a stupid thing to try, but one day I had tried to jump high enough to grab the rim. Rachel had been there to witness my downfall and help peel me off the pavement when I fell flat on my face. I had been lucky that I hadn’t broken anything. “I don’t think those bruises healed for weeks afterward.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said softly, looking up at me. “You were gone within two weeks.”

“I’m sorry, Rachel,” I said, meaning it. “I was messed up for days after we left, like I was lost.”

“I cried for days,” she admitted, shaking her head. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

I leaned forward and touched her hand gently, feeling the softness of her skin under my hand. I shouldn’t be touching her either, but I couldn’t help it. The thought of her in tears over me did weird things to me internally. “Remember the kiss?”

“Why are you bringing that up?” she asked hesitantly, pulling her hand from under mine. “That is ancient history.”

“It was one of my first,” I admitted. Her eyes widened and I felt sheepish, like that fifteen-year-old boy again who wanted to kiss his best friend before he moved away forever. For the longest time afterward I could close my eyes and remember that one, singular moment, but as time passed, the details had gotten fuzzy and life had just gotten in the way.

“It was my first.”

The waitress chose to come at that moment and we were distracted by mumbling something off of the menu, the spell that was cast now broken. I had been her first kiss? The thought rolled around in my head long after we had finished eating and were on our way back to Miami, making small talk about work more than personal life.

The sun was starting to set when I pulled back up at the office, parking right beside her car in the garage. “Thanks for coming with me today,” I said, looking over at Rachel.

“Scared of the big bad housewife?” she laughed, reaching for the door handle. “Any time. Thanks for supper.”

I watched as she climbed out, pushing open my door and getting out before I realized it. She was standing near her car, the driver side door already open as I approached her. “You’re welcome,” I said, feeling a bit uneasy and nervous. I didn’t understand why, but she was having an effect on me unlike any woman before her.

“Well, goodnight,” she said softly as I stepped closer.

“Good night,” I answered, my hand finding its way up her shoulder to cup the back of her neck. She sighed and I moved in, brushing my lips over hers. Instantly I felt the desire all the way down the length of my body. Damn. Either she leaned in or I did and our lips met in a frenzy of kisses, the thirst, the need to claim her mouth nearly driving me insane. Her hands clenched into my shirt as I traced the seam of her mouth with my tongue, her small gasp allowing me entrance into her sweet, warm mouth. She tasted like beer and something else, something that I hadn’t noticed before. I wanted to devour her, push her up against her car and fuck her until we both were panting with exertion.

The realization hit me like a wave and I stumbled back from her, breaking the connection. “I’m sorry,” I said immediately, mainly because I didn’t know what else to say. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

Her fingers were touching her lips, swollen from my kisses, and I groaned inwardly, clenching my hands into fists to keep from reaching for her again. “Get the hell out of here,” I said, more to myself than to her.

Rachel’s eyes widened and she climbed inside of her car, shutting the door before peeling out of the parking garage, leaving me to watch her go.

What the hell just happened?

Chapter 10:  Rachel

The Next Day

“Are you sure? You checked all of the sources?”

Christina sighed in my ear, irritation in her voice. “I swear, I checked all of them. The only thing I could find on your golden boys are small transactions to a dummy account for security services of all things. I can’t find out where it’s coming from exactly, but my money is on this Travis dude. He’s been busted before in small petty cash issues with his last job. Looks like they settled out of court for those.”

My first thought was that I was glad it wasn’t Garrett, though it didn’t make me any happier that she had found something on the owners. It made the rest of my job extremely difficult. “Thanks, Christina.”

“You bet,” she said before she hung up.

I dropped the phone in my purse and walked to the elevator, my morning now ruined by this tidbit of information. Crap. With my sleepless night, this was only adding to my ire. After our kiss last night, I had gone home and sat on the balcony, enjoying the nighttime view of the city as I tried to sort out what had happened between us.

His kiss, gah, it was everything I could have dreamed up and more, nothing like the kiss we had shared all those years ago. This one was raw and unplanned and I had wanted more, much more from him. My fears of what was going to come out of this investigation was now overshadowed by a bigger fear, one that I hadn’t anticipated but should have seen coming. I was emotionally invested in this and should turn it over, get out while I still could. Garrett was going to hate me after it was all over with, all of the clients usually did, and I was going to be hurt at the thought of having to turn this in. But I had no choice. My work was nearly done and I would be leaving.

But first, I had to find some evidence, which meant I needed to do some snooping around. It could be dangerous and now that Christina had narrowed it down to Travis, I could focus on just his office and leave Garrett out of it for now. The relief was palpable for that knowledge. I hadn’t wanted it to be Garrett.

The elevator doors opened and I walked into the office, glad to see that both of their office doors were open and empty from my vantage point. I had come in early intentionally, to get this over with before the day truly started and it looked like my hard work was going to pay off.

I dumped my stuff on my own desk, grabbing my phone in case I needed to take pictures, and walked to Travis’s office, knocking on the door just in case he was somewhere in there. When there was no answer, I walked in and immediately went to his desk, which was littered with papers, notes, and even a few coffee mugs with some indeterminate liquid in them. A quick search didn’t turn up anything so I moved on to the drawers, finding a pair of women’s panties in one and a few bottles of open liquor in another. Seems that Travis was a very interesting man and I couldn’t help but wonder what Garrett’s drawers would contain if I searched through them – his desk drawers I mean.

Still not finding anything, I moved to the file cabinet. Inside was a variety of files I assumed had been old sales, the entire drawer disorganized with papers everywhere. If Travis had a neat bone in his body, he hadn’t found it yet. In the second drawer, I found something promising, a list of houses that had the realty price plus an added fee that I had never seen before. Was this how he was doing it? Pulling out my phone, I snapped a picture quickly, replacing it back where I had found it and shutting the drawer. I would get Christina to run the numbers against the ones that she had found and if they matched, we had a case.

“Well, well, what do we have here?”

I gathered myself quickly as I turned around, clasping my hands behind my back and attempting to appear as demure as possible. Travis stood in the doorway, a surprised look on his face, looking as if he had just dragged himself out of bed. “Good morning, Travis.”

He walked in, looking around the office. “Why are you in here?”

“I was looking for a file,” I said, keeping the anxiousness out of my voice. “I thought I had left it in here. I-I hope you don’t mind that I came in here to look.”

He came closer still and I swallowed hard, wondering if he knew who I was. I covered my tracks well, Brian even payed us out of a dummy account so that our actual profession couldn’t be tracked but still, there was always that chance.

“Were you really looking for a file, Rachel?” he asked, reaching out to touch my hair with his fingers. “Or were you waiting for me?”

“Perhaps a little of both,” I said, giving him an amused smile. “Is that okay, Travis?”

He grinned and I felt a wave of relief flush through my body, knowing that I had won him over short term anyway. “That is perfectly fine, Rachel, perfectly fine.”

I tucked my hair behind my ear, attempting to look nervous and excited as I tried to think of a way to get myself out of here. “I really need to get back to work,” I tried.

His grin didn’t waver as he took another step closer, his arms on either side of my head now, pressing me against the file cabinet. I thought about my options, all of which involved kneeing him in the groin and I wondered how much longer I could hold out until I did.

“I don’t see a boss around here,” he said softly, leaning down. “Let’s work together, Rachel.”

“Rachel.”

I sighed in relief as Travis turned around, finding Garrett in the doorway. My heart stammered in my chest as I drank in the sight of him, not only because he had just saved me but also because he was looking unbelievably hot in his clothes this morning, his expression unreadable.

“I need your help. Please go to my office.”

“Of course,” I said sliding around Travis and walking toward the door, squeezing past Garrett and out of the office. I had just been saved by the boss, but somehow I could almost hear the lecture that was going to follow.

Garrett entered his office a few moments later and I remained standing near the door, awaiting his punishment. “What the hell were you doing in there?”

“I was looking for a file,” I said, sticking to my original story. It was still partly true.

He sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. “Fine. Did he touch you?”

“What? No,” I said, biting out every word. “He would be dead if he touched me.”

Garrett looked at me for a moment and then waved his hand. “I imagine so. Go on and let me know if he does anything else.”

I took the moment to escape, feeling warm at the thought of Garrett wanting to protect me. It was going to make it all the more difficult when I had to leave.