Page 21 of One Last Time?
What the hell would he think if he’d seen us seconds ago?
“Sorry to disturb you two,” Dad said, looking at me.
“That’s okay. I was just leaving,” I answered and practically fled, not looking back.
It was clear to me now what was happening.
I’d lost my mind. It had to be that.
Nothing I was doing or had done made sense, so the only conclusion was that.
Why else would I kiss a man who was out to get me?
Chapter 7
Dylan
* * *
Iwas well and truly fucked.
Now that I’d tasted her, I knew I’d screwed myself over a million times.
There was a reason why people said forbidden flesh was the sweetest of all. It was because it was. It was, pure and simple, the sweetest because as I’d devoured Taylor’s mouth last night, nothing had tasted sweeter to me.
Nothing had tasted better, and I wanted nothing more than to taste the rest of her.
I didn’t know what happened. All I knew was, something inside me snapped when she accused me of lying about following her to the bar, and wanting to take over her job and destroy her. Nothing was further from the truth, and as the first tear left her eyes, that thing inside me that had exercised great restraint and agreed to do everything Peter had said, snapped.
It was he who gave me the authority to act in whatever way I saw fit, and that was why I’d cancelled the contract with Luxa and all the other contracts. I didn’t know that it would have worked Taylor the wrong way, or worse… put me in this state I was in.
All worked up with wanting her. That fucking kiss wasn’t the kind a man could forget. It was almost as powerful as seeing her naked. One was visual, the other physical. Both deadly and enough to make me forget the oh-so-very-important promise I made to my father.
No sleeping with his clients. I was thirty-two years old. Not a child and not the jovial guy I used to get away with being. Life had happened to me. I’d lost my brother, and my eyes were opened to the real world and the consequences of my behavior. This should have been a no-brainer for me, yet I wanted her.
I wanted her last night as I kissed her against the wall, and I wanted her now as I walked into the meeting room with Peter and saw she was already in here, waiting.
I tried my best not to want her as those large brown eyes met mine and gave me a cold, hard stare.
It was only a second, but it was enough. In her eyes was the same mixture of emotion I’d seen last night.
She looked away from me and focused on her paperwork. This was the social media presentation I’d spoken to her about last week. I hadn’t looked at the plans she’d made for it yet, but I was sure it would have the same problem I kept finding.
I was starting to think that maybe I needed to work another angle because truth be told, they could afford it. I wasn’t brought in to save them money. I was brought in to assess her work and make a judgement based on that. It just wouldn’t have been right for me to see areas where they could have made savings and not highlight it.
I feared now that what I’d done was turn Peter’s sight to something I felt he should focus on, but in the same breath it was damaging to her.
That two million in expenses that could have been saved was no mere thing. It was what got his attention in the first place. A man like him with all his entrepreneurial expertise and ambition wouldn’t have taken such a thing too lightly. It got his attention, impressed him that I’d spotted it, and it also called Taylor’s work into question in a big way.
Peter took his seat near where she stood, and I sat next to him with my notebook.
Taylor switched on the overhead projector, and the first slide that came up showed the budget for the campaign. It was two million.
“I have gone over the campaign for the next three months as we prep for the new NFL season,” she began. I noticed how she just went in for it. Straight to business, and Peter didn’t say anything to her. Not even good morning. “I felt that as we’ve been focusing on cutting cost, I looked at the areas where we could make some adjustments.”
“Such as?” Peter asked, his brows lowered.
“The masquerade ball, for a start, is perhaps the most extravagant event. I thought we could charge for tickets. We could charge for tickets and still have the option to allow them to make donations to our charity if they want.”
