Foreplay: Six Full-Length Standalone Novels from Six New York Times Bestsellers Read online

  Unsure what to do or where to go, I slipped on a robe from the closet and headed downstairs after finishing in the bathroom. As I rounded to the second floor, I heard water running and coffee brewing. Then came the smell of bacon, causing my nose to twitch and my stomach to growl.

  When I reached the kitchen, I braked. Instead of the grey suit from the night before, Carter stood in front of the stove in jeans and a plain tee shirt.

  My mouth watered, and not from the food. Tee shirts had never looked that good before. Then my eyes widened as I realized what I was thinking. I’d never learn.

  “Good morning,” he drawled, relaxed and composed. He had showered and his hair was still wet so the ends curled a little bit.

  It was adorable.

  Then I grinned to myself. Carter Reed was not adorable. Hot and dangerous, but not adorable.

  “What is it?”

  I shook my head. “It’s nothing.”

  “Take a seat.” He indicated a counter. “Would you like some breakfast?”

  I saw a box of Wheaties, bagels, orange juice, and a few eggs on the counter. “Breakfast of champions?”

  He grinned at me. A bolt of warmth went through me. Goodness. I needed to get a handle on myself. It was moving into the pathetic zone.

  “I was at the gym this morning. Breakfast helps me fuel up for the day. Help yourself.” He caught my eyes. “To anything.”

  The gun at a horserace went off and there went my heart. It was thundering like a herd of hooves. I managed out, “Uh, coffee?”

  His grin widened. He knew full well what he was doing to me, but he turned towards the stove again. “Or I could make you an omelet?”

  “Oh. Uh.” My stomach rumbled, but I shook my head. “Coffee is usually my breakfast, or a breakfast bar on the run. I hit the snooze too much and am always late for work.” I grimaced. “Or almost always late.”

  He checked his watch. “What time do you start work?”

  I snorted. “After last week, I doubt I have a job there.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  My eyes had wandered over to the coffee, but now they whipped back to his. A deeper look caught and held me breathless. Then a suspicion started to grow. “Carter, what did you do?”

  “What makes you think I did something?”

  I studied him, but there it was. I saw it again. There was a spark of amusement in his wolf-like blue eyes. I sighed. I was starting to realize he could do anything, and getting my job back was probably something he could’ve done in his sleep. “You know Mr. Hudson, don’t you?”

  His grin widened. “No, I don’t know Mr. Hudson. Who is he?”

  I couldn’t tell if he was lying now. “He’s the Head of Beverage Sales. I’m his assistant.”

  “Oh.” He lifted his orange juice and took a sip. “That’s good to know.”

  Why was I getting frustrated with him?

  He glanced at his watch again. “When did you normally have to be at work?”

  “Nine in the morning.” I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”

  “You’re going in like that?”

  I glanced down at myself, in the robe with my bare feet poking out. Then I heard what he said again and my head whipped up. “You got my job back, didn’t you?”

  He took another sip of orange juice. “I don’t know Mr. Hudson, no, but I am sparring partners with Noah Tomlinson.”

  My eyes bulged out. “You know Noah Tomlinson? He owns The Richmond, Carter.”

  “I know.” His grin grew wicked. “He owns all of them.”

  I couldn’t talk, not for a while. The Richmond was a ritzy hotel, with a chain that spread nationally and internationally. It had global success and Noah Tomlinson started it all. Wait—did he say sparring partners? Feeling dizzy all the sudden, I reached out for the counter to steady myself. My hand slipped, and I would’ve fallen off my stool to the floor had Carter not caught me. He grabbed my arm. It happened so fast. I couldn’t look away from his hand as it was wrapped around my arm. He righted me back on my stool before he stepped back.

  “Good reflexes,” I noted, breathless. “I’m sure that comes in handy when you’re sparring against an MMA Champion.”

  Carter grinned and shrugged. “It does have its benefits.” Then he gave me a pointed look. “You are going to be late if you don’t get ready.”

  I still couldn’t believe any of what he said.

  “Emma.”

  Work. Late. It was after 8:30 now. Oh god. I shook my head. I was getting dizzy again. Then I choked out, “Noah Tomlinson didn’t have enough money to start all those hotels at once. He got the money from you, didn’t he?”

  Carter lifted an eyebrow. “Your job is still there, but if you’re late, I can’t guarantee it’ll always be there.”

  He didn’t have to say any more. I raced upstairs and emptied my bag onto the bed. When I couldn’t find anything that would’ve been appropriate, I wanted to scream. But then I looked at the closets and I wondered…. I swept it open and gaped. Well, that wasn’t true. I would’ve gaped if I had enough time. The closet was full of designer labels and after I checked a skirt, I saw it was in my size.

  I didn’t have time to think about that coincidence.

  Hurrying, I grabbed a white business skirt and shirt. There was another closet of shoes. I wanted to fall over in a faint. High heels, sandals, pumps, everything a girl would’ve wanted in shoes were in that closet. Giggling from all the emotions, I slid on a pair of Casadei shoes and then stopped in my room. How would I get there?

  With my purse, the new phone from Carter, I headed out of my bedroom. My answer was standing in my living room, waiting for me.

  One of the guards gave me a nod. “Miss Martins. Your ride is waiting downstairs.”

  Of course. I had a car waiting for me.

  This was Carter’s life. It was now my life, I guess.

  We went down the elevator where the other guard had the door opened for me. I slid inside. One of the guards sat beside me while the other sat in the front and off we went. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t know if I was supposed to. I didn’t know which guard sat with me, but I had a feeling that Carter wanted them around me from now on.

  When we were close to The Richmond, my phone vibrated.

  When you are ready to come home, push zero nine on your phone. Mike and Thomas will be waiting at the back entrance of wherever you are. Have a good day, Emma.

  I stared at the phone for a long time. I couldn’t look away from it. Home? To Carter? I was really living with him. It felt so intimate, my pulse picked up. A sizzling sensation went through me. This was my life. This was my new life. I had a car. I had two bodyguards. I lived in an extravagant home, with an extravagant man. I drew in a shaky breath. Could I handle this? This was all too…it was too much.

  I sat back and counted to ten. An anxiety attack was coming on.

  Four days ago, I thought my life was ending. Everything had taken a 180 degree turn.

  “We’re here, Ma’am.”

  I jerked out of my thoughts. The car had stopped and I scrambled out the door to find that we were at a back entrance. When the guard closed the door behind me, I looked at him, unsure what to do or say now.

  He gestured towards the door. “This is where we will pick you up. Have a great day at work.”

  “I—thank you…”

  He nodded at me and then waited.

  Uh…

  “You can go on in, ma’am.”

  “Oh!” Flushing from embarrassment, I hurried through the door. It was an entrance that I never knew about, but a time clock was next to it. I clocked in before I headed to the hotel’s breakroom for coffee.

  I ignored the workers at the tables. No doubt they had whispered about me and my week of no-shows, but as I got my coffee and headed out, I was surprised. There was no reaction. It was like nothing had happened, so I shrugged and headed towards Mr. Hudson’s office.

  When I got there, it was the same shock. I expecte
d some comment from him, but didn’t get anything. As I sat down at my desk, in my own little office two doors down from his, there was a pile of paperwork on my desk and my inbox flashed a number that would keep me reading emails all morning.

  It was nearing lunch when I got my first clue.

  Mr. Hudson said from my opened door, “How was your vacation?”

  I jerked back, my heart pounding. He never knocked, not even a courtesy knock. “Vacation?”

  I stared at my boss. It took me a moment to comprehend and then I sputtered out, “Oh. Um. It was good. How was the week here?”

  Mr. Hudson stared at me behind his glasses and pinched the top of his nose. He was a big man, but bigger since he had stopped working out due to a back injury. He had gained fifty pounds over the last year. He carried it all in his belly now, which made him unhappy. Everyone knew Mr. Hudson used to think of himself as a player type of guy, but with his hair starting to gray and thin, he couldn’t keep up the image. Annoyance had his nostrils flaring and he clipped out, “The week was fine, would’ve been better if we had proper notice of your vacation.” His eyes narrowed and he lifted the top of his lip in a sneer. “Word came down from the top. You never told me you knew someone at the top, Martins.”

  I straightened in my chair and lifted my chin. “The vacation was a surprise to me as well. I apologize for any strain it might’ve had on you or others.”

  He huffed out, “You can thank Theresa for doing most of your work. She couldn’t do all of it, since you’re my actual assistant, but you can touch base with her. She’ll bring you up to speed on everything. We’ve got a big deal coming up. There’s a conference in New York. I want you there.”

  New York? My eyes widened. I was going to New York?

  “Is that okay with you, Ms. Martins?” There was an edge to his tone.

  “Uh, yes, Mr. Hudson. Of course, Mr. Hudson.”

  “Good.” He rolled his eyes. “We have to present to Mr. Tomlinson in New York. I want you to do the presentation.”

  “What account is that, Mr. Hudson?”

  “It’s a new account. There should be an email about it. If you can’t find it, ask my secretary.”

  “Alright, Mr. Hudson.” I pasted a professional smile on. He couldn’t know how much I wanted to strangle him. A new account? There was an email about it? He spoke to me like I was two.

  With another eye roll and a disgusted sigh, he marched back to his office. I was left in my office with my hands digging into my desk. I wanted to get up. I wanted to follow him. And I wanted to do some damage. He had never talked like that to me before.

  What the hell had been told to him? And by whom?

  The only thing I could do was scroll through my email again, but an hour later I still didn’t see what he was talking about. There was no email from him or any from the higher administrative offices so I pushed back my chair and went in search of Theresa Webber, another assistant that worked underneath The Director of Sales. I could’ve gone to his secretary, but she was slimy like her boss. As I got to Theresa Webber’s office, she was frowning at her computer with a pencil between her teeth.

  I knocked on her door. She jerked away from her computer. Her hands flailed in the air and the pencil went flying. She grabbed onto her desk to keep from falling off her chair. Her hair had been pulled back in a low pony tail, but half of it had come undone from her startled movement. With green eyes wide in surprise behind thin glasses and her shirt already half unbuttoned, Theresa groaned from embarrassment.

  “Am I interrupting?”

  “No, no.” She waved towards a chair in front of her desk. “Have a seat.” Her hand quickly did up the buttons on her shirt and she tried to smooth out her hair. She failed. Half of it fell down on her shoulder. The other half was still in the pony tail. “Sorry. You gave me a fright.”

  I hid a grin. Theresa was always like that. I didn’t know her that well, but she had a reputation. Whatever she was doing held her concentration completely. A nuclear bomb could’ve gone off, and it wouldn’t have fazed her. “What are you working on?”

  “What are we working on,” she corrected me. She gestured to her computer. “It’s the account Mr. Tomlinson asked for you to present on.”

  My eyebrows shot up. Mr. Tomlinson asked himself? I instantly grew wary. What account was it? I hoped Carter wasn’t a part of it, but I already knew he was. He had to have been. I held my breath as she gestured for me to come around to her side.

  “See, here.” She tapped the computer screen.

  As I started to read, shock spread through me. It was an account to develop our own liquor as a brand. I shook my head. What did this mean?

  Theresa must’ve sensed my confusion. “Mr. Tomlinson wants us to pitch this to the board. This bourbon’s been a bestseller in the restaurant and bars. Other revenues are starting to request it. He wants it advertised as a product and distributed nationally. This is a big deal, Emma.”

  “How am I involved?”

  She shrugged and went back to the computer. “Who knows why Noah picks who he does. He always has a reason and it always works. The guy is a genius.”

  Noah? I grinned at her. “First name basis?”

  Her fingers froze and a blush spread up her neck.

  My grin widened. “You know office gossip, Theresa. The little biddies are going to be over this like white on rice.”

  She wrinkled up her nose but the blush spread to her face. “Um, you know, it’s nothing. I mean…”

  My eyes got big. I’d been kidding, but there was something going on.

  “Um.” She shot me a pleading look before her looked down. Then she stopped and held her breath. “Oh, wow. Look at your shoes!”

  My shoes? It was my turn to become flustered. I’d forgotten about the very expensive heels on my feet, and the expensive designer clothes that I was wearing.

  “Are those Casadei?!”

  “Um,” I bit on my lip. “Yeah…”

  “Oh my gosh!” She jerked her face down to peer at my shoes better. Her shoulders straightened, her back turned rigid, and she looked back up with a stone face. “Emma, those shoes aren’t even out yet.”

  “How do you know?” I huffed out and fanned myself. It was getting warm in her office.

  Because I know someone who’s a shopper for Hagleys.”

  As she named a boutique that was known for being exclusive, expensive, and one of the ‘it’ spots for celebrities, I was going to faint. Of course, Carter would have a closet full of shoes that weren’t even out to the public yet. I glanced down at my skirt and wondered how much money my outfit was worth? How much was I wearing?

  I gulped.

  Theresa had been eyeing my outfit as well. Her eyes were wide. “You look really nice, Emma, really nice.”

  I didn’t like getting all this attention, but wait—she knew Noah personally. That was worth way more attention than my clothes. I jerked a hand towards the computer. “So what do I need to know for this presentation? Tell me what Noah wants.”

  She jerked back in her seat like she’d been burned. “Oh, of course.” After readjusting her glasses, she ran a hand over her hair and then sighed. “It’s going to be a long night. You have a lot to catch up on with this account.”

  NINE

  Theresa wasn’t kidding. I sent Carter a text to tell him that I would be staying late at work. When I didn’t receive a reply, I tucked my phone away and didn’t think about it. After reading more and getting a sense of what Noah Tomlinson wanted for his new pet project, I started to get excited. He wanted this new liquor to be a household competitor. I knew if this bourbon was a hit, there’d be more to come and I would be on the team. In fact, it seemed that Theresa and I were doing most of the grunt work. Her boss and Mr. Hudson were our supervisors, but we were appointed the lead workers.

  It was a big deal.

  When it was nearing seven in the evening, Theresa heard my stomach rumble and grinned at me. She pushed her glasses up and coll
apsed against the back of her chair. “What do you think?”

  “What do you mean?” I was on the floor in the middle of three piles of papers. I’d been there for the last hour and didn’t think my legs could work again. They’d fallen asleep forty minutes ago.

  “Should we call it a night? It’s your first day back from vacation. Talk about a killer, huh?”

  She was joking, but I sucked in my breath. She couldn’t have used different words? Then I forced out a laugh and tried to relax my shoulders. There would be permanent knots in them. “Uh, yeah. We can call it a night.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I could go for a Joe’s pizza right now. You up for a slice and a beer?”

  I started to push myself up from the floor and once I was up, I threw her a rueful grin. I wasn’t getting any younger. Then I saw she was serious and jerked upright. “Oh. Uh, sure.”

  I’d been invited for drinks by some of the other assistants in the hotel at other times. It wasn’t a large group, but we were somewhat exclusive. A fair amount of people worked underneath us so my group of friends wasn’t too big, but Theresa was in another league. She was the Assistant to the Director of Sales and now I knew that she knew Noah Tomlinson personally. I was taken aback by her invitation, but I couldn’t turn her down. In truth, everyone was curious about Theresa Webber. She worked on all the higher accounts and she worked alone. She wasn’t known to go for after-work drinks, much less a slice of pizza and beer.

  She flashed me a friendly smile as she shut down her computer. “Good. I’ll meet you there in fifteen? Or if you wait around, we can walk over together?”

  “How about we meet in the lobby in ten minutes?”

  “Perfect. See you down there.”

  When I went to my office and shut everything down, I grabbed my phone and stuffed it in my purse. I needed to go to the bathroom before I met Theresa in the lobby so I used the one on the first floor. It was always cleaner since it was the same one that the customers used, and it was beautiful. The tiling on the floor was top-notch, with separate sinks along the wall. Each of them had been individually customized as works of art from Italy. The Richmond was a work of art in itself. I was proud of Carter if he had anything to do with it.