Page 121 of Skins Game

Kingston’s jaw clenched. “If they take a vote, they can cut off funding to Sidewinder.”

“So that’s it.” She flipped her hand at the door, indicating the rest of the building. “People’s lives and livelihoods are at stake. I can’t believe you destroyed people’s lives on abet.”

Kingston skirted the table, grabbed her, and shoved her up against the wall, his hand diving under her skirt and grabbing the side of her panties. “Let’s cut to the end. You’re going to be mad at me for something stupid I did, and then I’m going to fuck you until you can’t remember why anymore because I am so obsessed with you that I can’t keep my hands off you, but we never get anything resolved.”

Nicole put her hands on Kingston’s broad chest and shoved him, and he stepped backward, hands splayed at his shoulders. She said, “Then we need to talk instead of—that.”

His blue eyes were the hottest fire, and he was breathing hard through his nose as he stared at her. “I am a fucked-up man. I know that. But I’m doing my best to save Sidewinder for you.”

“Bullhockey.It was for abetbecause you decided to take people’s jobs and lives and roll dice with them.”

“That was how it started, but not how it will end.”

Nicole strode over to his desk and grabbed her notes that she’d dropped when he’d grabbed her because she wanted him to, but now she needed her notes.

And she needed himnotto have them. “Morrissey said the union contract had an escape clause that you could activate any time because our profits are below an arbitrary line. That contract and those negotiations were notin good faith.”

“The union negotiations didn’t change the fact that Sidewinder is a money pit.”

“But it’syourmoney pit. If you want these design changes for Excalibur—and there’s one that Iknowwill work and solve our problem with Dali stealing our IP—then I’m scheduling another union negotiation for eight o’clock tomorrow morning. If we can come to an agreement, I’ll give you these plans.”

“And if not?” he growled.

“Then I’m done, and you can tell Morrissey that you shut down Sidewinder just like he wants you to.”

“That’smyintellectual property,” Kingston said, pointing to the papers in her hand. “You’re still employed here by your work-for-hire contract. I don’t have to negotiate foranything.”

To heck with it. The equations and specs were all in her head.

Nicole slapped her papers on his desk. “Then good luck stealing this one because I wrote itby hand in Old English.And if I quit, I’m not obligated totranslateit for you. Eight o’clock tomorrow morning, Conference Room Two, buddy.”

And she walked out.

If she’d thought he wouldn’t show up the next morning, that he’d let Sidewinder fall apart, her heart would have been breaking as she stomped through the cheap-carpeted hallway under the tube lights in the ceiling.

But he wouldn’t.

Kingston Moore was too stubborn to throw Sidewinder into the fire.

She was counting on it.

50

An Offer

KINGSTON MOORE

Part of Kingston wanted to slap a closed sign on Sidewinder’s front door and have the locks changed overnight because he was a damaged, stubborn man.

If Nicole didn’t want Sidewinder to survive, Kingston didn’t need to work this hard to save it.

And jeez, shehadwritten her whole set of papers in Old English, weird letters and double-flipped-p’s and crossed-d’s and all.

Nevertheless,Kingston walked past the crowd lining the hallway and into Conference Room Two at precisely eight a.m., finding Nicole Lamb sitting primly on her side of the table.

Two other women flanked her, all of them wearing business suits.

The same woman was down at the corner of their table, holding her camera flat but watching Kingston walk in.