Page 12 of Nothing to You (Nothing to… #7)

HE REACHED AWAY for something on the end table. “Sure.”

Putting his feet up on the low coffee table, he tipped his head back to drop whatever he’d scooped up into his mouth.

“I can fire people?”

“People under you,” he said, jabbing at the tablet on the arm of the couch. “People I don’t care about.”

Like Johann. Authority worked for her. “Nice!”

“Doesn’t include me. I’m above you. In everything.”

“Until I stage a coup.”

He opened his arms, beer in hand, attention on the screens. “Want to be on top?”

She drank some of her daiquiri. “If I fire Johann, does Guillermo go too?”

“Got a thing for the protégé?”

“Maybe.”

“Ever screwed around with an underling?”

“Says the guy who obviously has.”

“Baby, I’m the pinnacle. The apex. The top banana. There is no one over me. Every woman I screw is a subordinate. I’m your alpha, Babycakes.”

She ran her fingers into his hair at his crown and sighed. “Such a big brain and such little sense.” Her fingers stayed in his hair. “Is this where you talk to me? When we’re on Huddle? In this dark, secret lair of yours?”

“Here or upstairs,” he said. “Want to find a booth?”

“Don’t have my headset.”

“We have plenty.”

“Yeah, right! You expect me to login here? Like I’d trust putting those details in your system.”

A slow, sly smile crept onto his face.

Uh oh. Her eyes narrowed, but he smacked his lips and held his bottle toward her. “Hold my beer.”

She did, and he slid the tablet from the couch arm.

“What are we doing now?”

“Is your laptop on? Doesn’t matter, I’ll turn it on.”

“Are you kidding me?” she asked, just as one screen in her peripheral vision changed to her desktop wallpaper. Not just the wallpaper, her icons too. That was… “Oh my God.” He laughed, a low snicker, and opened her browser to navigate to her saved passwords. “Hotshot!”

His laughter came louder this time. “And that’s me going in the easy way. Want me to show you the fifty other ways I could’ve done it?” He opened her history. “Let’s see what we’ve got here…”

See, she’d been totally right all along. “Stalking. I knew it! I said it, didn’t I? You’re a creepy stalker. Thank you for proving my point, jerk.”

“First time I’ve been in here, but it won’t be my last. I’ll check your incognito history when I’m alone.”

“I don’t use incognito browsing, honey. Why would I? What do I have to be ashamed of?” She leaned a little closer. “Sex isn’t a dirty word, Boy Scout.”

“Yet I see no porn listings.”

“That’s what work computers are for,” she said, shrugging and swigging his beer.

“I’ve got to pass the time doing something all day while raking in the billions for you.

” The corner of his mouth rose again. “Why do you need porn, top banana? Can’t you afford to make your own?

Hire a few pornstars, make some home movies. Cast yourself in the starring role.”

“You don’t have to hire pornstars. Get a woman liquored up and turn on the camera. When there are diamonds involved, no woman says no.”

She laughed, somehow knowing he was kidding. Maybe it was that smirk or the last year of hearing his tone without other cues. His voice betrayed teasing. It told her when he was serious. Angry. Hurt. Annoyed. Playful.

Sitting there, looking at him, the flesh and blood three-dimensional human being, it was difficult to comprehend that he owned the same disembodied voice that had filled her senses night after night.

“More power to any woman who uses you for your money. I believe in a woman’s right to choose.”

“I know you do,” he said, hitting another couple of buttons, all confidence and swagger. “And I believe in a man’s right to choose.”

The debate was one they’d had before. From many different angles.

“It’s the woman’s body,” she said, releasing his beer when he took it. “It’s her choice whether she puts it through the trauma of pregnancy and childbirth. Never mind—”

“A man can raise a child just as easily as a woman.”

“And how often does that happen?”

“This isn’t the kind of thing where generalizations hold up.”

“Yes, it is,” she said. “Because by your reasoning, a man can have an ideological objection, a general objection, with no intention of raising or supporting a child, and still force a woman to go through with a traumatic and life-changing process.”

“Isn’t it life changing to take another life?”

“You ever knock a woman up?”

“Not that I know,” he said, drinking his beer and setting it on the end table.

“See! How does that not prove my point? You could go around impregnating twenty women a day and your life wouldn’t change at all. You think the twenty women’s lives would change?”

“I can afford to start my own sex cult,” he said and tilted his head. “Maybe a project for next year.”

She smiled, but quickly erased it. Not that it mattered. His focus was back on the screens and his tablet.

“You have enough land here for it.”

He shook his head. “Dyce would never go for it… Kinloch, maybe. He has land.”

“Your billionaire bachelor friends? Think you could share power?”

“Kinloch, K2, wouldn’t get in my way. He prefers to be left the hell alone.”

“Says the guy sitting alone in the dark with a hundred people in his house.” He didn’t react, though his brow dropped. Something up ahead caught his intrigued focus. “Why invite them if you didn’t want them here?”

“I throw parties all the time.” Whatever was on the end table, he scooped up some more and tossed it into his mouth. “They’re boring as hell.”

She laughed. “Why throw them?”

“Why not? I can afford it. This isn’t your scene?”

Couldn’t be further from it. “Not exactly.”

“People like parties. Food, music, fancy lights, people are easy to impress and they like schmoozing.”

On an exhale, she looked closer. “You don’t. You’re bored as hell.”

“Yeah, do something interesting. Work a little. Pep me up.”

“Call those pornstars if you want that kind of show.”

“Sex is boring too.”

“Then you’re doing it wrong. You should try harder.”

When he glanced her way again, it wasn’t her eyes that got his attention. Her breasts had somehow become more interesting.

“Bet those aren’t boring.”

Snatching his jaw, she jerked his head up as she leaned in. “I am a whole package, Boy Scout.”

“Shame about your warped view of the world.”

“My warped view?” she asked, releasing his jaw to push away the hand he slithered up her thigh to her waist. “You want to have sex with me, but have you thought about contraception?”

“You have an IUD.”

“So? That mean it’s all on me? You shouldn’t trust so easily. Maybe now I know who you are, I want to trap you and your billions.”

“I’ve spent a year vetting you.”

“Thought you didn’t stalk me.”

“Didn’t have to, you’re a font of information.”

“Which I gave to a guy I thought I’d never have to look in the eye.”

“You’re welcome, Radley,” he said, showing an unapologetic smile. “Come on! You can’t deny it. Your life’s better with me in it.”

“Is it?”

“You live in an exclusive zip code. Have a management position. And an office of your own on the top floor.”

That lightened her. “I have an office?”

He shrugged. “I’m working on it.” As she shoved him, he laughed. “What does it matter? You wouldn’t fuck a guy for a promotion.”

Climbing off the couch, she swiped up her glass. “I already got the promotion.”

“I can take it away. Dangle it in front of you until you submit.”

Her? Submit? Hell would freeze over first. Unless…

Going over to the bar, she opened up the fridge and found the expected pitcher of daiquiri in a separate section of the freezer. “If I was horny enough, I might let you.”

“I could get you there. You think I don’t know what turns you on?”

“I think you do,” she said because, begrudgingly, she admitted to herself he’d done it more than once since they started talking over a year ago. “Some things anyway.”

“Oh yeah, what don’t I know?”

On a snicker, she filled her glass. “Trust me, that’s not a door you want to open.”

Sucking a few ice crystals from her fingers, she put the pitcher back. Etiquette dictated offering him another beer. Yet the words didn’t materialize. She slipped off her shoes while returning to him, enjoying her refreshed drink.

“Think about getting me a beer?” he asked.

She just smiled, pleased with herself. “I thought about it. For a second.”

“And?”

“You haven’t done anything to deserve it,” she said, kneeling on the couch again.

“What about you?” he asked. “What have you done to deserve my hospitality?”

“I’m here. My presence is enough. I could walk right out that door any second.”

“Then what happens to your promotion?”

“You can’t fire me without cause.”

“I can do whatever I like. I own the building. The company. The land.”

“Thought Dyce owned the land.”

“We both do, and he’s more likely to side with me.”

Her head angled. “You think? Is your rack better than mine?”

His gaze dropped again. “Those babies could get you a free pass.”

“Could they?”

“If you tell me what you meant about a door I shouldn’t want to open.”

“Men don’t like a sexually liberated woman. They say they do, but they don’t.”

“Didn’t we already say if it felt good, it was allowed? Be as sexually liberated with me as you want, Radley.”

Slowly shaking her head, her shoulders flexed. “You’re not capable of rising to my challenges. You’d break way before I did.”

“You think?” he asked, ignoring her feline smile to bob his brows. “What makes you think you could rise to mine?”

“The very fact that I challenge you arouses you.”

“Does it?”

“Mm hmm,” she said with a slow nod, arching closer. “All I have to do is show up.”

“The boundaries between men and women are arbitrary.”

“The sexual lines?”

“The physical lines,” he said. “Why should we conform to societal norms? Don’t women always harp on about defining their own rules? About embracing their right to choose?”

“We do have a right to choose.”

“So if you have that right, why not use it?”

Sounded more than a little self-serving. “To have sex with you?”

“Not me specifically, not any man specifically. Physical boundaries that are placed on you by a patriarchal society—”

“A woman who follows her instinct, sexual, physical, or otherwise, also faces the possibility of being judged by those around her. How many times have we heard a woman was ‘asking for it’ by wearing revealing clothing? People impose their own judgments on others.”

“You judge people.”

“I do,” she said, slurping more of her daiquiri then handing the glass off to him. “I own that though. That’s something about me. And I’d hazard we all do it.” Leaving the couch, she went back to the fridge to get him a beer. “I’m just more honest about it than most.”

“You’re right that we all—”

“Oh, I’m sorry, what was that?” she asked, cupping her ear as she strutted back to him. “I’m what?”

“If you’d let me finish…” He gave her back the daiquiri and took the beer, twisting off the cap to toss it aside. “I was going to say you’re right that we all judge people, we judge situations, setups, trust our instincts—”

“Which is really just an innate judgment.”

“Maybe. But the rest of us don’t assume the worst, you do.”

“I do not,” she said, strolling around the coffee table.

“You do,” he drawled. “Radley, your defenses are so damn high, even you can’t see over them. You’re in your own world.”

“We all exist in our own world. It’s not possible to put yourself in anyone else’s shoes.

People might say they do, but it’s bullshit.

You can’t live my life any more than I can live yours.

” Glass in hand, she wandered to the end of the screens and back.

“We know each other about as well as any two people can. Conversation, words, are the only way to learn what’s in a person’s head, them telling you directly. ”

“That relies on honesty,” he said. “Don’t we hide our perceived flaws and present the best versions of ourselves?”

She snorted and spun to pace back the other way. “Is that what you’ve been trying to do? Might want to brush up that game for next time.”

“Next time? Your clause in the contract stated, ‘ friendship is real and permanent, whether you like it or not .’ You’re stuck with me.” Which was what she’d told him. “You’re the last friend I’ll ever make.”

“Providing you’re honest. Honesty is a requirement of friendship.”

“I’m more honest than most because I have less to lose.”

“Less?” She frowned. “You own a massive multibillion—”

“The business is my bedrock. The money gives me the leeway to be as daring, as bold, as out there as I want. I have a direct line to the White House, I can—” She stopped to blink at him and he just snickered. “Yes, Radley, I know those at the top. I do some work for the DOD… on the side.”

“On the side,” she mocked his words. “You can be a real asshole.”

Beaming with pride, swagger bled from him. “I know. You’re welcome.”