Wicked Sexy

10

The nerve. The nerve of this man. My voice shakes with rage. “Get out. Get out of my house.

Now.”

Connor looks at me for a long, measured moment. “Sure thing, Pop-Tart. But there’s something you need to see first.” He turns around and disappears.

I find him in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, calmly eating an apple as if it’s the only thing he’s got on his schedule for the rest of the week.

“Liked you better in what you were wearing upstairs,” he remarks, eying my baggy jeans and even baggier Nine Inch Nails sweatshirt.

I say coldly, “If I had one, I’d also be wearing a hazmat suit. The thought that you’ve seen me naked is traumatizing.”

He crunches into another bite. I wonder if he’s got his arms folded across his chest like that on purpose, to show off his ridiculous, oversized biceps. They’re so big, he could be one of those strongmen in an old-fashioned circus, the guys in the stretchy leopard-print unitards, hoisting barbells over their heads.

I’d like to hoist a barbell over his head.

“What’s so important you just doomed your network to an early death over it?” He motions with his chin to a laptop on the opposite counter.

“You brought me a gift? How sweet. But I don’t accept candy from home-invading strangers. Now get out before I remove your spleen. With a rusty knife. Through your nose.”

Connor takes a final bite of his apple—my apple!—swallows, and licks his lips. He manages to make the entire thing look both sensual and provocative. A dare.

A growl builds in the back of my throat.

He says, “Open it. You can kill me after.” A dent forms in one of his cheeks.

I’m not sure which infuriates me more, him seeing me naked or finding my anger about it a source of entertainment.

“I’ll leave you alive just long enough to appreciate my skill at creating the metamorphic virus that’s going to devour every line of code in every piece of software your company owns. How’s that?” I smile sweetly and head to the laptop.

I open it, expecting to see anything but what I find, which is Miranda Lawson staring back at me from a live camera feed.

In a clipped voice, she says, “Tabitha West. I’m Miranda Lawson.”

So much for the preliminaries. I look at Connor, who nods at the screen as if to say, Pay attention.

I turn back to Miranda, an elegant, icy-blonde ringer for the actress Sharon Stone. Straight-backed and pale, she’s sitting at a desk in what appears to be a spacious home office. Bookcases and photographs line the wall behind her right shoulder. To her left is the view of a spectacular sunset over the ocean through a wall of glass.

If she’s cutting right to the chase, I am too. “I understand you have a situation.”

She offers me a pinched, unhappy smile. “Yes. My situation is that Mr. Hughes requires you to assist him in a job I’ve hired him to do, and he informs me you’ve refused.”

With a clenched jaw, I look over my shoulder at Connor. He blows me a kiss.

I turn back to Miranda. “Correct.”

“What is your reason for refusal?” she demands.

This entire situation is really starting to chap my ass. “Well, if you must know, I despise him.”

She makes an elegant little movement of her hand as if she’s swatting away a fly. “Your personal feelings about Mr. Hughes are immaterial.”

I can see why this woman has such a bad reputation. I understand that highly intelligent people are more often than not absolute disasters with interpersonal skills. All I have to do is take a look in a mirror to get that. But that isn’t what I take offense to. It’s the arrogance that gets me. The presumption that what she wants is more important than what I want.

Before I can speak, she says coolly, “No, I don’t care about your feelings. And you don’t care about mine, nor should you. We’re strangers, after all. What I do care about is that you are regarded highly by a person I regard highly, and therefore I’m willing to negotiate on price. I authorized Connor to offer you five hundred thousand. Now I’m offering a million. Will that be sufficient?”

I’m surprised she actually stooped to ask my opinion. I take great pleasure in saying, “I’m not interested in the job, Ms. Lawson. At any price.”

Her icy-blue eyes don’t blink. Her elegant features don’t move. But I feel her disapproval, like a glass of cold water poured down my spine. “You,” she says, barely moving her lips, “are being unreasonable.”

If she’s an iceberg, I’m a forest fire. I feel heat sweep up my neck from my chest, feel my ears go hot, feel the pressure build behind my eyeballs. “And you, Ms. Lawson, along with that high horse you rode in on, can go f**k yourself.” I slap the laptop closed.

Behind me, Connor sighs.

I glare at him. “That was beyond, jarhead, even for you.”

“Well, my finesse didn’t work, so I thought I’d bring in the big guns.”

“Your finesse?” I repeat, astonished. “I didn’t realize you were familiar with the word.” “The letter,” he replies patiently, as if it should be obvious.

“Ah yes. The letter. I wonder, how many tries did it take before you could actually bring yourself to write the dreaded words ‘I owe you an apology’?”

At the sarcasm in my tone, his brows lift. “You think I lied?”

“I think you’d rather stab yourself in the eye than admit you were wrong.”

“Well, yeah.” He shrugs. “But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the truth.”