The Elliotts: Bedrooms Not Boardrooms!

Belatedly he remembered his own date. Forgetting a woman who had groped his butt on the dance floor and whispered in explicit detail what she’d like to do to him later ought to be more difficult, but he’d done so easily. Trisha didn’t get to him the way Aubrey did, and he had no interest in accepting Trisha’s naughty invitation. On the other hand, he knew without a doubt that if Aubrey had made those suggestions—wise or not—they’d be halfway back to his apartment already.

Aubrey’s off-limits. Back off.

But knowing he should back off didn’t make him any less aware of the woman to his right for the remainder of the tasteless dinner and long-winded speeches. He couldn’t have her, but he ached for Aubrey Holt with each pulse of his blood and each lung-filling breath. Duty had never been so onerous and desire had never been more difficult to ignore.

Four

“Are you alone? Or is the thug with you?”

Aubrey’s heart stalled at the sound of the deep, slightly husky voice on the phone. “Liam.”

She scrambled upright in her bed, clutching the sheet to her chest and squeezing the phone so tightly her fingers hurt. And then she recalled his question. “That’s none of your business.”

“You are alone.”

“I didn’t say that.” She shoved the hair out of her eyes and squinted at her bedside clock. “It’s midnight. Why did you call?”

“To tell you that you looked beautiful tonight.”

Her lungs failed. The phone slipped in her grasp. She fumbled it back to her ear. “Thank you. So did Trisha.”

She cringed at the jealousy in her voice.

“Did she? I didn’t notice.” His distracted tone made her want to believe him, but the man had gone out with a woman who’d been ballsy enough to pass him her number with Aubrey standing two feet away.

“You shouldn’t have called, Liam.”

“You wanted me to tell you how beautiful you looked with your watchdog standing by ready to stamp my forehead with his Super Bowl ring?”

“Have you been drinking?” He sounded sober. Tired, but sober.

“Haven’t had a drop since that lousy wine at dinner. But I couldn’t get to sleep.”

She knew the feeling. “So you decided to call and wake me?”

“Did I?”

“Did you wake me?” She should lie and say, yes, she’d been sleeping dreamlessly. But she didn’t. “No.”

She scooted back under the covers and laid her head on her pillow. She shouldn’t ask, but her mouth didn’t listen to her mind. “Why can’t you sleep?”

The sound of a heavy breath and the rustle of sheets traveled through the phone line. Aubrey closed her eyes and a picture of Liam naked and kneeling above her on his king-size bed filled her head. She lifted her lids and turned on the lamp. Listening to Liam’s sandpaper voice in the darkness and remembering him naked wasn’t a good idea if she wanted to sleep any time in this century.

“I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking about you. About Monday afternoon.”

Her heart would very likely sustain permanent damage from its frantic battering against her rib cage. Her fingers crushed the sheets. She bit her lip.

“It was good.”

“Good?” she choked out in disbelief.

His low chuckle made her shiver. “Better than good. Fabulous.”

She smiled. “That’s more like it.”

“Incredible. Stupendous. Phenomenal.” She could hear the laughter in his voice and then another rustling sound. “And it’s a crying shame that it can’t happen again.”

Her grin faded at the seriousness and accuracy of the last statement. “But it can’t.”

“I know. But I don’t have to like it.”

Neither did she. “No.”

The silence stretched for a dozen heartbeats. “Good night, Aubrey. Sweet dreams.”

“You, too, Liam. Sweet dreams.” She cradled the phone, turned off the light and then rolled on her side and tucked her hand beneath her cheek.

Odd phone call. So why was she smiling?

Seeing Liam again was out of the question. If she did, her father would expect her to weasel information out of Liam about EPH and she just couldn’t stomach the duplicitous role. Her father had been angry enough that she hadn’t brought him anything useful after her lunch with Liam. Oh, Matthew Holt hadn’t yelled. He never yelled. But he’d treated her to that same silent stare she’d come to know so well.

She couldn’t continue letting her father down. She’d worked her fanny off to be the kind of employee and daughter of whom he could be proud and she’d failed. She owed him for taking her in when he hadn’t wanted her. He hadn’t wanted custody during the divorce from her mother, and he hadn’t wanted custody after Aubrey’s jerk of a stepfather had crawled into her bed and offered to keep her from getting lonely while her mother was out of town.

Aubrey had heard her father arguing with Jane after she’d revealed that dreadful secret. His bellow had carried through his closed office door. “What in the hell am I going to do with a teenage girl?”

Aubrey hadn’t heard Jane’s reply. In fact, Aubrey hadn’t heard anything from either of her parents until hours later when her mother had stormed into Matthew Holt’s office with Aubrey’s belongings and dumped them on the floor. She’d glared at Aubrey and said, “Look what you’ve done with your lies,” and then left.

Pamela Holt Curtis hadn’t asked for Aubrey’s side of the story. She’d chosen to believe her young husband’s version. He’d claimed Aubrey had invited him into her room and that she’d been flirting with him for weeks.

Aubrey had been left with a mother who no longer wanted her around and a father who had never wanted her in the first place.

“Liam.”

Liam blinked his unfocused eyes and looked up from the papers on his desk to the man rapping on his office door. Cade McCann, the executive editor of Charisma, EPH’s high-fashion magazine, also happened to be Liam’s good friend, probably his best friend.

“Got a minute?”

“Sure, Cade. Come in.” Considering Liam’s mind had been elsewhere since this morning’s monthly meeting with the editors in chief of the different magazines, Cade wasn’t interrupting anything. Liam hated the tension invading the formally congenial meetings.

This week he’d been distracted by thoughts of Aubrey and he’d barely managed to relate the pertinent facts and figures. For a split second Liam considered asking Cade how to wipe a woman from his brain, but nixed the thought. His friend hadn’t been too successful on that score, a fact proven by his recent engagement.

“What brings the rooster out of the henhouse?” The question was a running joke between them. Cade was a rare male on Charisma’s predominantly female staff. A lesser man would have been henpecked into submission, but not Cade.

“Are you having woman troubles?” Cade asked as he settled in the chair in front of Liam’s desk.

Alarm straightened Liam’s spine. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I called you three times before you answered.”