Читать книгу Secret Pleasure - Taryn Taylor Leigh - Страница 13

KAYLEE ARRIVED AT the office eleven hours and forty-six minutes before she was going to meet Aidan for drinks. Which was fourteen minutes late for the daily briefing with Soteria Security, where she was playing the role of Max’s factotum.

“I’m sorry to keep you both waiting. Slight issue with my phone.” Not exactly a lie, she decided, setting it shattered-screen up on the boardroom table. She placed her coffee beside it and took a seat.

“Damn.” Jesse Hastings winced. “I hate to see good tech suffer.”

Kaylee had no doubt that, as a certified tech geek and one half of the crack cybersecurity team Whitfield Industries kept on retainer, Jesse felt her pain.

“Me, too, but not as much as I hate having to sacrifice my lunch hour to replace good tech.”

“Here. Take this one.”

Kaylee did a double take as Wes Brennan, the quieter, more serious half of Soteria Security, pulled a top-of-the-line phone out of his suit pocket and held it up.

“Seriously, Wes?”

“Yeah, seriously, Wes?” Jesse shook his head and turned to Kaylee. “I just gave him that phone this morning. After spending hours configuring the safety features to his exacting standards.”

“My old phone is fine. I did some upgrades to it last week that I wanted to test anyway, so I haven’t even activated this one.” Wes gave his patented low-key shrug and pointed at her broken phone. “Hand it over. I’ll change out your SIM card.”

Kaylee passed it across the table.

“You ever feel massively underappreciated by your boss?” Jesse asked with a sigh.

Her brother’s stern face flashed through her mind. “You have no idea,” Kaylee assured him, and they shared a knowing eye roll.

“I saw that,” Wes said drily, making quick work of the phone. The second he turned it on, the calls, texts, and emails rolled in with a cacophony of buzzes and dings. With a raised eyebrow, Wes switched the phone to Silent and handed it back across the table.

Kaylee glanced at it warily and set it facedown. “Okay, what do you have for me, gentlemen?”

After the security briefing—Wes and Jesse were still no closer to figuring out who had installed the malware on Emma Mathison’s computer that had led to the postponement of SecurePay and the domino of scandals that had followed—she’d spent the rest of the day plowing through the quotidian concerns of running a multimillion-dollar business.

She’d known Max worked hard, but she hadn’t quite realized that every day for him was as busy as being in the middle of a PR crisis was for her. It was eye-opening to see firsthand the difference between how her father had run the business—an unapproachable figurehead who doled out more blame than praise—and the more interactive style her older brother had adopted. He was available without micromanaging, and as a result, there was a level of respect for him among his employees that was quite a revelation to Kaylee. She hadn’t realized how much she’d let their frigid relationship as siblings color her view of Max as a boss.

His long work hours made infinitely more sense to her now. She’d had to force herself to leave the office at eight o’clock, giving up food just so she could steal half an hour to change and freshen up before meeting Aidan.

The bar he’d suggested was classier and more upscale than she’d been expecting, with chandeliers, gleaming wood, and dim lighting. Floor-to-ceiling windows gave the circular room a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the city.

It was a sexy, grown-up place to have a drink.

She pressed her hand to her abdomen to quiet the sudden zigzag of nerves.

When she’d been getting ready, some annoying flare of feminine pride had reared its jealous head at the memory of the polite nothingness she’d seen in his eyes at the coffee shop. It bugged her that while she’d been drowning in lust, he’d been completely oblivious to her status as a female of the species. Little Kaylee Jayne. Completely beneath his notice.

As a result, she’d applied her makeup with a little more flair—slightly winged liner, faux lashes, and she’d painted her lips with the same red lipstick she wore onstage. Then she’d donned the sexiest dress she owned. Well, not including her Lola costumes, but she never included those. They belonged to her blonde, blue-eyed alter ego. It was the sexiest Kaylee dress she owned. A black shift that skimmed her curves without clinging anywhere, but she hoped it was reminiscent enough of the black skirt she’d been wearing that night to give him a little déjà vu—déjà screw?

It was madness. Her goal at the coffee shop had been to escape recognition, and tonight she was doing everything in her power to jog his memory.

What if he noticed? What if he didn’t?

Honestly, Kaylee. Stop fidgeting.

Her mother’s voice was loud in her head. Not even a decade of living on her own, it seemed, could banish Sylvia Whitfield’s scolding. And it was always loudest when Kaylee was nervous.

“Can I get a shot of tequila, please?”

Partly for some liquid courage, partly to remind her mom’s ghostly nagging that it had no dominion here.

Drinks with Aidan Beckett.

Well, sort of.

It wasn’t like this was a date or anything. Still, it was as close as she’d ever get.

The bartender obliged her, and she let the liquid courage burn a path down her throat. The warmth in her stomach centered her back in her body, got her out of her head.

I can do this, she told herself. We’re just two people catching up. And sure, he doesn’t know we manhandled each other against a shelf full of cleaning products, but that’s no reason to think things will be weird between us. He didn’t recognize me this morning. Not even a little bit. Not even a glimmer. I was the only one drowning in a bunch of sexy endorphins. He was cool and above it all. Like always. The golden boy. Supremely unaffected while women swooned around him.

Kaylee set the shot glass on the bar with more force than necessary.

“Actually, I’ll take another one.”

With a smile, the bartender grabbed the Cuervo and gave her a refill.

“Make it two.”

The deep voice startled her from her inner monologue, and she blinked at the man in front of her.

He was handsome, in the smooth, generic way of a manufactured pop star. Brown hair, toothpaste-commercial grin, killer suit. Kaylee made herself return his smile.

Warm-up flirting. Something, along with the tequila, to calm her nerves.

“I’m Rick.”

“Kaylee.”

He raised his shot glass. “To sharing a drink with a beautiful woman.”

It was a sweet toast, she reminded herself when the compliment elicited absolutely nothing from her. She clinked her glass to his before downing the contents.

“Starting without me?”

Electricity prickled through her, straightening her spine.

Even his voice was sexy as sin. And in that moment, Kaylee understood why none of her previous relationships had worked out. She needed this, the illicit zing that came from flouting the rules. She got off on hidden pleasures, on keeping secrets. And her schoolgirl crush on Aidan had been her first secret thrill. It was disconcerting, she realized as she turned to face him, that it was still going strong a decade later.

Aidan was dressed in a cream-colored Henley and another black leather jacket—this one was slim fit with quilted sleeves and a mandarin collar—which he’d paired with black jeans and boots.

He didn’t look blandly handsome; he looked dangerously sexy. She salivated a little at the sight of him. “Hey.”