Sudden Devotion (13 page)

Her eyes turned into tiny slits as she glared at him. “I want you. That’s what my deal is.” Whispering now, she leaned closer. “I want you to fuck me on your desk like you did that little bitch.”

“Watch it!” Mitch told her.

Ignoring his interruption, she continued. “I want to ride you and show you what a real woman can do. And remember this, Mitch,” she said as she pointed a finger in his face, “I always get what I want. If I want you, mark my words. I’ll have you.” Then she walked away.

“Crazy bitch.” Mitch muttered as he reached for his wallet to pay. After taking the bags to head back upstairs to the office, he knew that if Claudia didn’t start to lay off of him soon, he was going to have to report her behavior to the partners. He didn’t care if she had slept with some of them or all of them. But she’d better start leaving him the hell alone.

Sara was typing at her desk when Mitch walked toward her with the sandwiches. She looked up and gave him a small smile.

“Sara, are you too busy to come to my office and help me sort though some papers while I eat my sandwich?” He hoped she could see the apology in his eyes.

“Of course. I’ll be right there.”

“Thanks.” Mitch walked away. She didn’t look so much angry with him as she did nervous.

Moments later, Mitch sat at his desk. At the knock on his door, he told her to come in. She did and closed the door behind her. Mitch got up from his chair and walked toward her. He placed his hands on her shoulders and dropped his forehead to rest against hers.

“I’m an asshole, honey. Will you forgive me?”

She looked at him with relief, as if in that one minute all of the tension rolled out of her body at once. Had she been so sure he would be angry with her still?

“Yes. I’m sorry if you…”

“You have nothing to feel sorry for. I just was being a jealous ass.” He shrugged and pulled away a little to see her better. Rubbing his hands up and down her arms, he said, “When I saw you there having such a good time and laughing with him, standing in virtually the same spot you were in less than two hours ago when I held you,” he laughed, “I wanted to rip his eyes out for looking at you the way he was.”

“Mitch, that’s silly. Patrick is just an attorney I used to work for. You are the man I go to bed with every night.” Her eyes twinkled.

“Yeah I know. I just...look Sara. I’ve had a lot of casual girlfriends over the years. None of them really mattered. You do. Do you know that?”

She nodded. “Yeah. And I know that I don’t have the experience that you do, but you matter to me, too, Mitch.” She kissed him.

After minutes of her tongue taunting him, he forced himself to pull away to pull away. “Oh, honey. I wish I didn’t have so much work to do. But, if we stay late tonight, I won’t have to work over the weekend. We could spend the whole weekend in bed.” He waggled his brows at her.

“Then you better get to work because after you left this morning, I finally had the courage and took a peek in that little black bag of yours.” She shrugged. “I’m not sure how I felt about all of them, but some of them certainly seemed very
intriguing
.” She didn’t elaborate as she picked up her sandwich and headed back out to her desk.

Mitch stood in his office and watched her tease him with her walk. So, she was intrigued, huh? Racing back to his desk, he decided that never in his life had he ever been given as much incentive to work faster. He was on overdrive now as he tried to focus on work and not on which toy had peaked her curiosity.

Chapter Ten

Mitch hung up the phone and turned to Alan. “All right, so with this last set of documents being stamped, copied, and sorted, we should be good to go for Monday.”

“Nice work, Mitch. You’ve only been with us for a little over a month now, but you’ve meshed quite well with everyone here.” Alan told him while sipping on a cup of coffee.

“Thanks. I appreciate it.” Mitch didn’t mention that joining this firm was the smartest decision he had ever made. He had come here to get away from an office romance that went real bad real fast. But, just five days into his relationship with Sara, and he honestly couldn’t imagine not having her in his life.

As if reading his thoughts, Alan asked, “I realize I don’t have a right to ask, and if it’s none of my damn business, just say so. But, is there something going on between you and Sara Collins?”

Mitch looked up from the papers he had been stacking. “What do you mean?”

“Relax. It’s not like we have a no fraternization policy. I was just curious. There’s been some rumors going around, that’s all.” Shrugging, Alan got up and placed his coffee cup on the rolling drink cart. “She seems like a sweet kid, and some of the women here aren’t very nice to her. She looks happier lately. That’s all.”

Mitch smiled. He didn’t know Alan all that well and wasn’t exactly sure if he was a part of the good old boys club. “She’s very sweet, and without saying more, I will tell you that she is also very important to me.”

Alan’s brows shot up in amusement at Mitch’s statement. Waiting for Claudia, who had just walked into the room to remove the drink cart, Alan rolled his eyes after she left. Almost in a whisper he said, “That one’s a piece of work.”

Mitch laughed. “Shit. You’re not kidding. Is she crazy or what?”

“I think she’s definitely crazy. I’ve been here for four years now, and I spent the first three months avoiding the hell out of her.” Shaking his head, Alan sat back down and stretched. “I thought I was never going to get her off my back.”

Mitch realizing that maybe he might have found a good friend to have, he asked, “What’d you do? What got her off your back?”

Alan smirked. “I didn’t have to do anything. She had been rude to my wife for quite some time. You know, polite-sarcastic rudeness. The kind that’s hard to prove. My wife was getting pissed.” Leaning closer Alan spoke quieter. “One night, when we were working late, she actually told my wife that I wasn’t here. Said I left with a blonde.”

“No! What’d your wife say?” Mitch was both intrigued and disgusted by the story.

“She called my cell phone immediately and chewed my ass.” Alan was laughing almost to the point of tears as he told the story. “Here I am, sitting across from Brookstein…”

“One of the founding partners?” Mitch asked.

“Yep. I’m going over case files with him, and my wife is ripping me a new asshole. She screamed so loud that old Brookstein grabbed the phone and told her to do what a woman was supposed to do, sit down and shut up.” Alan had to take a breath. “He told her that a woman’s place was to wait at home while the men are out in the world, providing for them.”

Mitch couldn’t help but laugh right along with him. “Isn’t your wife a doctor?”

“Yeah. At the time, I was like, ‘what the hell is going on,’ but when I got home that night, she told me that she called the office because she wanted me to stop at the store on the way home. Claudia lied to her, and she was pissed. But after she talked to old man Brookstein, she was embarrassed and pissed.”

“Oh, my God. So what happened? I still don’t understand how you got her to lay off?” Mitch hoped he had some good pointers for him.

“Well, I came clean with my wife about everything. Told her how she had been blatantly pursuing me. How she has a ‘friendly’ relationship with most of the partners and how she was basically just a conniving bitch.” Alan lifted his shoulders with a grin on his face. “My wife, well, she has a bit of a temper. She wasn’t too happy about someone trying to steal her man. So, she did what any woman who was trying to protect her property would do. She got even.”

“Oh? How?”

They were quiet as they watched Claudia walk past the war room and toward her desk. “The firm’s annual summer picnic was about two weeks away. So, my wife had been biding her time, and when we got there, she walked straight up to Claudia. In front of God and everyone, she reached in her purse and handed Claudia a tube of ointment and said, ‘don’t you worry, honey. As long as there are no outbreaks, it shouldn’t be transmittable. But be careful just the same. Oh, and don’t forget to use that cream daily. It will help with the itching.’”

Alan was doubled over in his chair. “My wife, God love her, went about her business and proceeded to charm the pants off of everyone else at the party while Claudia stood there holding a tube of ointment looking like a deer in head lights.”

“Jesus. That’s great! I think I really like your wife. So, if that happened, why do all these guys still sleep with her?”

Alan shrugged. “Everyone knew she really didn’t have any disease. It was obvious that my wife was just being nasty and giving her a taste of her own medicine. No one seemed to really think there was anything wrong with it. If anything, my wife gained quite a bit of respect that day. She embarrassed the one woman in the firm that enjoys making everyone else feel bad.”

Claudia walked back in the room holding her coat and purse. “Peter has gone home. Would you walk me to my car, Mitch? I wouldn’t feel comfortable walking in the dark by myself.”

Alan looked at Mitch and realized why he had been so curious for the story. He had been looking for ideas. Mitch was obviously Claudia’s latest victim. Or, at least, that was what she wanted. Judging from the look on Mitch’s face, though, he knew that he did not feel the same way.

Slapping his hands on his knees, the newest partner in the firm stood up. “I’ll tell you what, Claudia. How about we both walk you? Two men are better than one, wouldn’t you say?”

Claudia glared at Alan. “I hardly think that’s necessary, Mitch will be fine.”

Mitch was getting tired of her damn games. “No, Mitch won’t be fine. We’ll either both walk you, or I will contact the security guard in the downstairs lobby and ask him to escort you. What’ll it be?”

Claudia’s mouth scrunched together in a thin line of anger. “Forget it!” And she stormed out.

Both men winced at the sound of the heavy glass door slamming. Alan looked at Mitch. “Was it something we said?”

“More like something we didn’t do. Damn. I mean, what is it with her? I’ve never met a woman more intent on bedding so many men. And the married ones, too.” Mitch shook his head. “I mean, why? What the hell does she get out of it? And why do they cheat? I mean, don’t you get married because you love that person.”

Turning out the lights and walking with Mitch toward the front, Alan flung on his coat. “Beats me. I haven’t met a woman or even seen a pinup model that would tempt me into doing anything that would ruin what I have with Valerie. It wouldn’t be worth it, you know?”

“I think I do.” Mitch hit the button for the elevator while Alan locked the door.

“Sara?” Alan asked.

Mitch smiled. “Forget you’re my boss for a minute okay?”

Alan nodded. “Done.”

Stepping onto the elevator, Mitch felt a jolt of excitement as he stood in the spot where he took Sara just earlier that day. “She’s amazing. I’ve never known another woman like her, ever.”

Alan grinned. “I see.”

“What?”

“Nothing. You just have a look about you. I’ve seen it before.”

“Where?” Mitch wondered where he was going with this.

“Oh, about twelve years ago. I was in my second year of law school. Met a cute little med student. One morning I looked in the mirror and had that same shit-eating grin look on my face that you have right now.” Slapping a hand to Mitch’s shoulder as they walked out of the elevator, they waved goodbye to the security guard and headed toward the parking lot. “You know you’re in deep, right?”

Mitch stopped at his car and let out a chuckle. “I’m thirty years old. I was convinced that I would be a swinging bachelor my whole life. You know, that cool guy that has so many girlfriends he doesn’t know what to do with them all.” Mitch reached his hands in his pocket and felt the panties that he had forgotten he had put there. “But this sweet, twenty-three-year-old secretary has managed to wrap me around her little finger. I swear she could tell me to wear a pink suit, and I’d probably do it.”

Alan got behind the wheel and gave him a wave before saying, “The things we do for the love of a good woman. Have a good weekend, man. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going home and make love to my wife until we both drop from exhaustion.”

Mitch waved as Alan drove off and got into his car. That was it. How it had happened so damn fast, he had no idea. But that was it. He wanted that. He wanted to be able to leave work every day knowing that no matter what time it was or what the day had brought that he was going home to Sara.

Now that he had his caseload under control, he knew he was going to have to have a serious conversation with Sara. He still hadn’t told her where he lived. And he knew when he did, she would want to know why he had lied. He knew he had to tell her the truth. If he knew her like he thought he did, he was sure she would be embarrassed. She would probably even try to withdrawal from him out of that same embarrassment.

But that was not a feasible option. He had somehow managed to fall in love with her. There was no way he was going to let her go just because one night he was transfixed by the magnificent sight of her pleasuring herself. That night had drawn him to her. It was the reason he had pursued her. He would not let it be the reason they broke up.