Sold Short (Sidelined Book 3) Page 22

  “Like I said, I’m flattered, but I’m not for sale.”

  “If it’s a matter of the percentage of shares,” said Mark.

  “It’s a matter of trust,” said Dev. “We don’t know each other. You’ve been raiding my company and you thought you could buy my complicity by buying me too. Instead of approaching me formally, you had Arik lead me here so we could meet secretly and you could deny it ever happening.”

  Panic flared in Donovan Lo’s eyes. Alternate could deny ever having met with Dev to lure him away from Plus, but they couldn’t stop Dev using that information.

  “I appreciate the hardball,” said Mark. He was the experienced operator. “I’d like to keep the line of communication open, regard this as an opening sally.” He put his business card on the table, it would include a direct private number, only given to the select few. It would be an insult not to pick it up, so Dev took it with no intention of using it. He had two priorities: Arik and Sarina, followed by a strategy to stop the raid.

  The tragedy was leaving the food untouched. Though it was only last night he’d eaten the best of Jade Palace, he hated seeing the waste. He stood and that started a series of handshakes and then Arik cleared his throat as if to make an announcement. Dev silenced him with a glance. Whatever he had to say, not now. Arik was still a Plus employee until he formally resigned, or Dev strangled him.

  They left Donovan and Mark attempting to make a dent in a mountain of food and hit the street without saying a word to each other, but that was the end of Arik’s tolerance for silence. “I’m, um, I’m sorry. I, oh shit. I thought we. Fuck.”

  What Arik did was probably a sackable offense, but Dev didn’t have time to consider that. Mark’s card was already burning a hole in his pocket when he saw two people exit the hotel across the street.

  The woman was a Boho beauty, quirky but effortlessly elegant. The man with her was dressed casually. Tall, tanned, built, with a head of unruly hair. He carried himself with the kind of confidence Donovan Lo still had to learn and Dev would never master. He didn’t like the spotlight, had always been most comfortable standing out of the glare, even if that meant he wasn’t the hero of the day. The couple was a good match, he could see that objectively in the same way people said that he and Shush looked good together.

  What he couldn’t be objective about was how it made him feel to see them. Sarina with another man, a man you met at lunchtime at a hotel across town, smiling together, clearly not strangers.

  Last night she’d melted in his arms, now she was accepting that man’s kiss on her cheek. It reopened his wounds, made them gush. If it wasn’t for Arik, he’d have become a reason for health inspectors to shut the restaurant down because you can’t have your patrons bleeding out on the sidewalk and that’s what it felt like he was doing.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Interesting how a plot can unravel. How an injudiciously spoken word, a basic lack of respect for another person could bring a plan undone.

  Colby’s last client was a braggart who liked to make herself look important by taking phone calls in front of other people and making them wait. Colby had good hearing and a healthy disrespect for the games people play, but he wasn’t above playing them himself.

  That’s how Sarina learned a company called Alternate was the AI company raiding Plus. Colby told her over a lunchtime sandwich and a drink downtown. He wasn’t willing to talk over the phone so she’d agreed to meet. She could’ve convinced him to come to Plus, sent a car for him, but she needed to keep moving today; one, because she’d not slept more than two hours and was unraveling at her edges, and two, because guilt was a vicious dog snapping at her heels and if she stopped still it might devour her.

  Last night should never have happened.

  Last night was almost everything she’d been missing from her relationship with Dev but was afraid they’d never share. It was incandescent. There was no way they could come together like that and not become lovers, no way he could look at her, touch her, want her and not be in love with her.

  Except she’d betrayed his trust. She hadn’t stopped him when she should have.

  It was as simple as saying we need a condom, there’s a risk because I’m still in my window of fertility. We need a condom so that things don’t become more horribly confused between us right now.

  The thought of stopping had never crossed her mind, because being with him had utterly overwhelmed her.

  They’d fallen into bed like teenagers with less sense than worms. It’d been glorious, but she’d been irresponsible, carried away and made insensible by the emotion between them and the fear she’d lost Dev forever, but the reality was there was a chance, slim but real, she could become pregnant and she’d kept that from him.

  Colby had been a smoother partner, had all the practiced moves. Had she gone all the way she would’ve trusted him to give her a good time; but Dev had been raw and unsteady, a little too soft, a little too aggressive, desperately intense and entirely hers.

  But he’d left angry and he had a right to be and she didn’t know how to fix that. How was it she was so good at reading people, built a whole profession out of it, had a cult following, and had been so bad at reading the person closest to her.

  And that was almost unbearable, to have deceived Dev, no matter how accidentally.

  “I’m not much of a spy, but I thought you’d want to know and I don’t feel the least bit guilty about kiss and tell since she was a condescending jerk and cancelled on me last minute twice and fussed about the fee,” Colby said.

  She picked at her lunch. Right, that’s what she needed to be focused on. Colby had information.

  “But I’m sorry, I won’t tell you anything more.”

  He’d plugged the hole in her intelligence. Now she needed to know everything about Alternate, and form a plan to stop their raid on Plus.

  “Is it bad, what they’re doing?”

  Bad was deceiving the man you loved. “They’ve targeted some of our top people, it’s hurt us.”

  “Then it’s something else? Dark circles under your eyes. How are you?”

  Ready for a good cry, the one she’d been putting off. It would be waterworks if Colby was too kind to her.

  He read her signal not to pursue the line of questioning. “The other reason I did this is because it’s a parting shot. I’m retiring.” He laughed as though the concept was ridiculous. “Getting out. I’m going back to school, add to my degree, maybe start my own business.”

  Good for him. “You have a degree.”

  He nodded. “Psychology.”

  She pointed her fork at him. “You told me you were just good with people.”

  He held her eyes. “Being with Colby isn’t about me.”

  Being with Colby had been a key to unlock all the stalled parts of her life. “What kind of business?”

  “Thought I might do something with training, executive coaching maybe.”

  “Do the study then come see me.”

  He grinned and shook his head. “You don’t have to say that. We both know we’ll never see each other again.”

  She knew she was looking at a resourceful, insightful man. “I’m a talent scout. I think you’d make a great performance coach.”

  He blinked in surprise. “You’re joking?”

  She shook her head and held her hand out. “I’m Sarina Gallo,” which of course he knew. “I find jobs for talented people.”

  He took her hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Dashiell Barton. Sometime soon I’m going to need a new job.”

  It was Dashiell Barton who paid for lunch, who kissed her cheek on the street later, and wished her well, not Colby the escort who’d helped her understand her own desires.

  She had plenty of incentive to keep moving, keeping those shark sharp guilt teeth out of her ass, calling Owen from the back of the Uber car. “I know who’s raiding us. Can you round up Reid and Dev?”

  Reid and Owen were waiting for her in their usual meeting room.
Christopher handed her a bottle of water and told her he was looking for Dev, that he wasn’t in the office.

  She needed Dev here. She needed to put her hand in his without a sheet of glass wall between them, without twenty pairs of eyes watching, without Owen and Reid assessing them.

  “Are you knocked up yet?” Reid said, before she’d taken a seat.

  Owen cracked him on the back of the head. “How is it you’ve lived this long?”

  Reid barely flinched. “What, it’s a relevant question. We need Sarina doing the mom thing soon so she can be back on deck to do the pivot thing.”

  “I can mother and pivot at the same time you know. The two are not mutually exclusive.” In fact, the mom thing was the definition of pivoting for her personally. Unless it turned out to be the definition of free-falling. “And I’ll report the milestones as and when appropriate.”

  And that’s when Dev arrived with an expression like stone. “Good. We need to talk.”

  “Christopher was looking for you,” she said, and they all heard the nervous tremor in her voice.

  Dev cut her a look that made her heart shoot up into the back of her throat. He wasn’t the same man who’d put his hand to hers this morning, not the same man whose hands shook as he’d undressed her last night.

  “Go on, Sarina,” said Owen.

  She forced herself to look away from Dev, and not to react when he didn’t sit beside her, but took the seat at the head of the table. “A company called Alternate is poaching our people.”

  “What do we know about them?” said Owen.

  “AI, robotics,” said Reid. “I didn’t think they had funding. You heard of them?” he asked Dev.

  “Very recently. Make intelligent systems for other industries,” Dev said.

  “They obviously have backing and money to splash around on talent. What do we do?” said Owen.

  “Find out everything we can about them first, then—”

  Dev cut her off. “Financed by Mark Minty’s fund. CEO is a guy called Donovan Lo.”

  “Deep pockets. What do we know about Lo?” said Reid.

  “Young, cocky. You with more charm,” said Dev.

  Reid laughed. “And you’ve only just heard of them.”

  “Now we know who the enemy is we can fight back,” she said. “Starting with Arik.”

  “Leave Arik to me,” said Dev. He looked at his hands, and following his eyeline she saw the crescent moon shape cuts her nails must’ve made.

  “You’re sure?” She spoke too fast, too loud. The three of them looked at her.

  “Let’s stop this before it goes any further,” said Owen. “Might be time to take the senior managers into our confidence about new directions.”

  “No detail, broad-brush only,” said Reid. “Sarina?”

  Caught out staring at Dev’s hands. “I agree. I’ll put a briefing together.”

  The men stood. She’d clawed up Dev’s hands as surely as she’d bruised his heart. “Dev, can you wait a moment?”

  She braced for a fight, but he simply sat again while Owen and Reid left, expression closed up, and waited for her to start.

  “Last night.” She closed her eyes, she could feel her body swaying toward his and startled. “I shouldn’t have let it happen. It wasn’t fair to you.”

  “I should’ve kissed you like I’d never stop years ago.” He’d spoken low and deliberately, his voice making her throat close up.

  “We were—” she couldn’t get the words out. Meant to be.

  “Irresponsible. I get it. I get it all. A part of you has belonged to me for a long time, Sarina. Maybe if last night hadn’t happened. If I didn’t know what it was like to lose myself in you, have you trust me enough to fall apart in my arms, maybe I could’ve let you go. If I didn’t crave the taste of your skin, the sound of an orgasm curling inside you, the smell of your heat. Maybe. But I know these things about you now. I know what you look like half-asleep, your face all crushed from lying on my shoulder. I know what you’re like when you haven’t had enough exercise, when you’ve put on weight, when you’re hungry, when you’re anxious. I know what you look like in ratty pjs and in a ball gown. I’ve seen you stressed and elated and every goddamn glorious emotion in between. And I still didn’t understand what you were to me. And then last night you overwrote all that. You let me see more. I know what you look like, sound like, feel like when you’re mine, when you come.

  “I can’t be me without you, Sarina. I could try. I’d fail miserably. But I’m not Reid and I’m not Owen and I don’t know if I can support you the way you want me to, because everything in me rages, rages against sharing you, but giving you up would kill me, so if I have to share, if I have to wait my turn, be part of some arrangement, I’ll form a line and I will wait, Sarina. I will wait for you to need me however you need me, and I will always be there when you do.”

  Speechless.

  The very idea of language knocked clean out of her. Dev watched her try to remember what words were, to form them with a tongue gone limp and lips gone slack. Was he saying he understood there was a chance she might be pregnant, that he was okay with that? Is that what he meant by sharing her?

  Even if she could construct a coherent sentence, her voice box was paralyzed. She planned to apologize, to explain how lost she felt without him, how scrambled her decision making had been. She planned to beg for forgiveness, for taking advantage of him, and to wait a million years for him to grant it. This was beyond her wildest expectations. The best she could do was choke out a sob.

  “Please don’t cry. I didn’t want to make you cry. I needed to tell you all that, but I need something else.”

  She nodded. Apparently her body knew how to bob her chin, movement a more primitive instinct than language.

  “I need time, distance. If we’re going to work together like we used to, I need to step back, get my head together.”

  Reasonable. “Of course.” Voice found, scratchy and achingly breathy. Giving him time was the least she could do. She wouldn’t know anything for weeks in any case and they’d need to be strong with each other again to deal with whatever happened.

  He stood, put his palm to her face. He wasn’t locking her out now, all his confusion and pain was writ large across his face and deep in his eyes.

  She had to go for a walk to pull herself together when he left, and that night she slept a full nine hours without waking. In the morning everything was brighter, which was useful because Owen was sending her to London.

  They had a small office there, but also the chance to take over a competitor and double in size. Owen wanted her to do an analysis of the potential structure of a merged organization. It couldn’t come at a better time for her and Dev to get some real distance.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Dev couldn’t do much to cover the way he’d shutdown outside Jade Palace. And he didn’t want to draw Arik’s attention to their head of human resources and her male escort saying goodbye after a hotel quickie. Because that’s what it had to be, right?

  Either that was Colby the cheese man, or he was a high-profile hire and the interview had to be kept secret. He didn’t look like a high-prolife hire, not that Dev knew what a high-profile hire was supposed to look like, but not a man who cheek kissed on the first interview, that’s for sure.

  He’d pulled himself together to get in Arik’s car and not freak the guy out any further, and then he’d told Arik he needed time to think and that if Arik couldn’t keep his mouth shut about Alternate, he should keep driving when they got back to the office and not come back.

  Arik parked. So that was one confrontation Dev could put off. He’d received three calls and two messages from Christopher calling him to an urgent leadership meeting, which meant facing Sarina. Any more personal stress and he might blow a fuse.

  He arrived to see her wearing peach-colored lipstick and hear her arguing with Reid about pivoting and pregnancy—perfect. Just the reminder he needed that she was going to have some ot
her man’s kid, as if the marks on the back of his hands weren’t enough, as if Ana’s sobbing about her baby not being fathered by the man she loved hadn’t torn him up.

  How Sarina found out about Alternate, he couldn’t guess, but it prevented him having to admit to the offer. And that was a curious thing. They all got offers, especially in the early days, and they routinely shared the details. Regular Dev would’ve told them everything from the wontons to the whoa-ho expression on Donovan Lo’s face when he’d declined their offer.

  And he would tell them, just not today when it was difficult to sit next to Sarina having already decided he couldn’t run from everything he felt for her, no matter what she’d done, no matter how screwed things were between them.

  He didn’t just love her, he was in love with her, and gut-sick from it. He would forgive her anything, but he needed his head on straight to do it.

  So when Reid and Owen left, he told her that. Knifed his heart and let it gush everywhere.

  He might’ve cooked her vindaloo for breakfast she was so rocked. He’d had to get out of there before he did anything else to make her look at him like she might cry for a thousand years.

  Arik stayed out of his way for the rest of the afternoon and in deference to the fact he couldn’t concentrate on work, Dev took off early. He had to do something about buying a car, might as well get lost in that for a few hours, but when cruising dealerships wasn’t enough of a distraction he headed home. He wanted to sit quietly and color the picture of his night with Sarina, recall it all in vivid detail, from the gone look that glazed her eyes to the hot grip of her thighs, and know it wasn’t a dream.

  But there was no quiet. He’d been occupied and there was a movie but no popcorn. Me casa es su casa should come with a system warning.

  “You’re early. Are you sick?” said Ana.

  She sat on the sofa buried in Connor’s arms. Gavin and Alex were sunk in armchairs and everyone was riveted on the TV, grainy black and white footage. Was that what he thought it was? Holy shit.