Page 83 of Off Her Game
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Was she ever going to answer her door?
At this point, Noah wasn’t sure. He’d knocked over a minute ago. Tentatively, he knocked again. He knew she was here. The one thing he’d wrangled out of Tom after he got the full story on what happened last night was where she’d gone afterward. He needed to talk to her this morning. After she confronted Symphis alone…after she stole the code…
He knocked harder. Actually, he was pounding on her door. Nothing.
Then it opened. Water dripped off the ends of Tori’s dark hair onto a light blue zipped hoodie. She fiddled with the strings on it. Her long lashes lifted above her eyes. A complexity of emotion he couldn’t interpret met his gaze.
“What are you doing here?”
His heart slammed into his sternum. He wanted to hug her, touch her, to confirm she was fine.Talk. You have to talk.“We need to discuss things. Should we go inside or talk out here about last night?”
She opened her door wide and waved him inside. “What happened was I ended it.”
He pushed shut the door and crossed his arms. “You hacked my computer to steal the code.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
He shook his head and covered his face with a hand. “Officially, I’m here to tell you you’re on probation until we have a meeting with our lawyer and company security to decide the right course of action to deal with it. It’s scheduled for tomorrow. I don’t want to, but prosecution’s on the table as well as firing you.”
She nodded. “I understand. There wasn’t another way.”
On a long sigh he said, “I know.”
“The code I gave away was protected. A one-time read-only file. After he opened it, which he did, it’d be dead.”
“I should go, but I still want to know what the hell you think you heard on the phone.”
“What? After everything,that’swhat has a burr up your ass?”
“I need to know, Tori.”
“I heard you saying to Jake that things were almost over, that you could see it through and handle it, but you obviously didn’t want to.”
He stared at her, his mind rewinding his call with Jake. They’d talked about a lot of topics for about twenty minutes. “We never talked about you. I think what you heard had to do with our accountant. She’s always trying to pull off my clothes. It’s sexual harassment and it scares the hell out of me. It’s a big firm so we’ve asked for a new person to manage our account, but they’re shorthanded right now and the new person can’t be here until a week from now. Quarterly taxes are due so we’re shit out of luck in dealing with someone else. Jake’s going out of town on the day she’s scheduled and wanted to be sure I could handle getting through the taxes.”
“Oh.”
“Tori…” He fisted his hands. “I can’t believe you did that last night, not the code stealing, but faced off with that guy alone.”
“It was the only way to get a confession out of him. He admitted to killing Kaleb. Well, maybe not directly, but he did put in the order to have him murdered.” She fiddled with the strings on the hoodie.
“I was scared when I heard what you did.” He snagged her around the waist to pull her close into his embrace.
She hugged him back. “I needed to get control back in my life.” Her gaze met his. “I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions when you were on the phone. I’m sorry I left you in the dark and stole the code.”
“You’re fucking amazing. You beat down the reporter at the press junket and then faced your worst fear. I’ve never known anyone like you.” His world closed around the feel of her lips against his. Her fingers curled into his shoulders through his jacket. A moan erupted from her when he deepened the kiss. He pulled her tighter and reached down to her waist, under her hoodie and soft T-shirt, and up the smooth skin of her back. Her hands slipped under his shirt to press against his lower stomach.
“This is insane. What is it about you? You’re…you’ve got great abs.” She slammed a hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
He held her. “My abs are probably all I’ve got to offer you. I don’t deserve someone brave like you. Someone who can handle anything that comes her way alone. I always shit out my mouth at the wrong time. I’m an awful date.”
She put her fingers over his mouth, stopping him. “You deserve someone a lot better than me. You’re real, genuine. And good. Yes, it’s good in a nice way, but not in a nice friends-only sort of way, if that makes sense. I’m not right for you and the timing of all this is total crap, but I need this…you.”
With her melting into him he lost focus on the fact he should be leaving now that he’d delivered the probation message. Her hands explored the contours of his stomach and slipped lower.
He bowed his head and struggled to shake off the haze clouding his mind. Memories of her coming apart swamped him. Water dripped off the ends of her dark hair onto a light blue zipped hoodie. Her long lashes lifted above her eyes. God she was beautiful with her wet hair dampening her hoodie and big gray-blue eyes.
