The Exhibition (An Executive Decision Trilogy) (12 page)

‘Harris.’ Her voice was a stretched whisper. ‘I need you to fuck me. Now. I need you inside me.’

Her honesty, her ability to ask for what she wanted without mincing words was outrageously arousing, and he certainly wasn’t going to argue with her. He slipped a condom from the drawer of his bedside table, sheathed his cock and slid home. And they both cried out in a sound that was somewhere between pain and pleasure, exquisite and primal. Then there was no more sound other than their ragged breathing, other than the sound of flesh against flesh, straining and pressing, until she convulsed and whimpered beneath him and he emptied himself inside her like he’d not come for ages, even though the taste of him was still fresh on her lips.

Stacie woke up naked with Harris Walker wrapped around her possessively. For a second, she was pretty sure she had to be dreaming. It all felt entirely too good to be true. He held her to him with his face nuzzled at the back of her neck and his hand cupped to her breasts. His breath against her nape was warm and even; the relaxed breathing of sleep. His erection pressed against her bottom, and she felt herself quiver in anticipation of what would happen when he woke up, when they woke up together, him hard with his morning need and her wet and ready for him.

The sky was just greying with dawn as the events of the past evening came rushing back to her. She would have spent the night in the Lexus at the clear-cut if Harris hadn’t come to her aid. And she was pretty sure if that had happened, she wouldn’t have slept at all. She shivered as she recalled her encounter with Harris, before she knew it was him, when all she could think was that it had to be Terrance Jamison. It made no sense, really. The man couldn’t have known she was there.

But the place and the time didn’t really matter. Eventually he would come for her, sooner rather than later, she suspected. And when that happened, he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and she would have to face the music.

Harris moaned in his sleep and loosened his hold on her slightly, giving her space to wriggle out of his arms. She slid quietly from under the comforter and for a long moment sat naked on the edge of the bed watching the man sleep. His face was relaxed, his eyelids fluttered, evidence that he was dreaming . She couldn’t help hoping his dreams were more peaceful than hers had been recently. ‘Stacie,’ he mumbled; she caught her breath for fear that she had awakened him, but he slept on. Only dreaming, she reminded herself, and calling her name as he did. She hoped desperately that it was a good dream, that it was one he would be happy to linger in. She was pretty sure when everything happened as she knew it would, as she knew it would have to, he wouldn’t be having pleasant dreams of her, and as sad as that made her, ultimately she knew there was nothing she could do about it. Things had gone too far now to be undone. There was no way to go but through the thick of it. And she most definitely didn’t want to drag Harris Walker though what was to come.

She let out a low sigh and stood carefully, her eyes still locked on the sleeping man. Then, almost as an afterthought, she bent and brushed a soft kiss across his lips, in spite of everything, half hoping he would wake up and pull her back down into the dream with him, but knowing that couldn’t happen no matter how much she wanted it to.

In the guest room, she slipped into the borrowed sweats, then gathered her muddied clothes from the porch, along with her BlackBerry and her backpack, and left the house. On the way home, she ran the Lexus through a car wash so that it wouldn’t be quite so obvious she’d been using it as an off-road vehicle, then she headed toward her flat just as the sun stained the eastern sky pink.

At home, she showered and dressed for her day at the gallery. She took extra care with her make-up and her choice of clothing. She was pretty sure today was the day she’d have to face Jamison, and she needed to be ready for it. She had deliberately shut off her BlackBerry. She wasn’t ready to talk to the man yet, but that wasn’t the reason. She was sure he’d never let a little thing like her ignoring him stop him from getting what he wanted. Mostly, she didn’t want to talk to Harris just yet. She couldn’t picture him being particularly happy about her leaving without saying goodbye. Plus she didn’t want to face his questions, questions she knew he would have asked last night if she’d given him space, and questions she was certain would have been on the breakfast menu if she had stayed. It was better, at least for the moment, not to have to face Harris’ disappointment. There would be way more than enough disappointment she’d have to face before long. This was just a little reprieve.

Once she was dressed and ready, she hopped in the Lexus and made her way to the gallery, where she’d be meeting with Martin Flannery about installing the security systems. He knew what she wanted, and he was probably one of the few people in the city of Portland who could make it happen, exactly like she wanted it to, before the gallery opened, and certainly he was the only one she trusted with the job. There was plenty to occupy her mind, plenty of things to keep her busy and keep her thoughts from wandering to the man she wished she was still lingering in bed with over a seriously hot morning fuck or the man she knew was about to turn her world upside down again. Yes, she needed to keep her mind occupied. 

Chapter Fifteen

Where the hell are you?

Harris punched the message into his BlackBerry, then he deleted it, slammed the device down on the nightstand and headed for the shower. Incredible sex followed by Stacie Emerson doing a runner; this was a habit he didn’t need. How could the woman leave without at least waking him up to tell him to fuck off? He thought they were really connecting. He thought they had something good going. He thought he had really found someone who understood … what? Just because she liked the great outdoors didn’t mean she wanted anything more than for him to exhibit his work at her gallery. He shoved his way into the shower and cranked the hot water; a cold shower was no longer necessary. Waking to find Stacie gone had pretty much taken care of his hard-on and given his ego one helluva bashing.

Best he didn’t dwell on it. Best he just got on with what had to be done. Oh, he’d do her exhibition, just like he said he would. Of course she was right. Of course they should have left things on a nice, friendly, professional level. But then it was already way too late for that, wasn’t it? From the first time he kissed her all he could think about was being with her again. Jesus, could he be more stupid? Kendra would give him a serious talking-to for being such an idiot with his heart. It wasn’t his heart, he told himself, couldn’t possibly be his heart. It was just lust, that was all. Just lust. He’d get over it. Stacie just wasn’t his type, he reminded himself for the hundredth time – never had been, never would be. And the fact that she had a history with both Thorne brothers – well, that just made the whole situation strange.

Once he was out of the shower and sitting with a much-needed cup of coffee, he pulled up his email. Several messages from
Wilderness Vanguard
were waiting for him – nothing unexpected in that when they were on a deadline with the latest issue. He could expect a dozen more emails from the assistant editor before the day was over.

In addition, there was a message from the local wildlife photography group he’d agreed to speak to. There was a message from Doug, the naturalist down on the other side of Prineville who had spotted a mountain lion, possibly the same female Harris had photographed two years before along the Crooked River. Doug thought she was nearly ready to mate again. And in spite of Harris’ best efforts to distract himself, he couldn’t keep from thinking how much he would love to take Stacie along on a shoot of that mountain lion.

There was a message from Ellis asking if he was free for lunch one day next week. No doubt he wanted to know all about the meeting with Stacie. Well he’d be happy to know that Harris had told her yes. Damn, he hoped the word hadn’t been passed on via Kendra and Garrett, who were quickly becoming the most efficient grapevine in the Northwest, about what had happened between him and Stacie at the Boiling Point, but no doubt it had. There was no privacy left in the world, he grumbled.

Once he’d had coffee and some toast with peanut butter, he rounded up his new, post-owl backpack, shoved in another peanut butter sandwich, a Thermos of coffee, and headed for a particularly deserted part of the Pacific Crest Trail, which he knew how to access through old logging roads. It was the cure for almost everything that ever ailed him – a good walk and some up close and personal time with wildlife. Surely it would be the cure for Stacie Emerson as well. And now he was committed. He’d have to see her again. Jesus, why did she have to be so intriguing, and why couldn’t he have just left well enough alone and continued to send her his
fuck-off, not interested
message? God, he hated complications. He slammed the door behind him and hopped into the Jeep. But before he started it, he checked his BlackBerry one more time for a message from Stacie. There wasn’t one. He shut it off and shoved it into his pocket.

Stacie was going over the details for the installation of the bank of security monitors. Martin Flannery had reassured her there’d be no problem installing the switches to control the cameras where she wanted them and making sure that nothing was obvious. The monitors could easily be housed in the large closet next to the bathroom in her office. She was giving the blueprint one last look-over when the landline rang. She picked it up without thinking. That was a big mistake.

‘Stacie, returning my little gift has cut me to the core. Surely you don’t hold the past against me …’ Terrance Jamison’s voice was as velvety smooth as it always was, like something you wanted to rub up against, like something you wanted to get lost in. Like something in which you did those things at your own risk. She could almost hear him smiling as he spoke.

She grabbed for the edge of the desk and would have missed the chair she was about to drop into if Martin Flannery hadn’t saved the day by sliding it beneath her at just the last minute. She forced a smile and gave him the thumbs-up. Security officer, PI, ex-military – he was the best at what he did. The last thing she wanted was for him to be suspicious.

‘Sorry, now’s not a good time.’ She tried to sound matter-of-fact over the phone without raising any red flags with Flannery. ‘I’m in the middle of something.’

‘Surely it won’t last forever, darling. Be a lamb, finish it up now,’ Jamison said. ‘I’m sending my limo to bring you to my place for lunch, and I won’t take no for an answer. I’ve been very lax in my hospitality, and it’s past time that I welcomed you back to Portland properly.’ No doubt he heard the reluctance in her silence and somehow he managed to make the hurt in his voice seem nearly tactile. ‘It’s just lunch, Stacie. I promise I’ll be a total gentleman.’ He offered a soft chuckle, just barely loud enough for her to hear and yet loud enough to make the fine hair on the back of her neck rise. ‘Though God knows you don’t always make that easy for me.’

Before she could do more than shudder, he went on. ‘I just sent Todd with the limo and, taking into account construction on I-5, I’d say you have about 30 minutes to wrap up whatever business it is you’re handling at the moment and make any of those ever-so-perfect excuses you’re so good at making to whomever you need to. Oh, I know you’re a busy woman, and I’m a busy man, so I promise I’ll have you back to the salt mines in plenty of time to toil on. I’ll see you soon, darling.’

The line went dead.

‘Stacie? Stacie, are you all right?’ It was only when Martin Flannery shook her arm gently that she realized she was still sitting with the phone gripped to her ear in a painful fist.

She caught her breath and nodded. ‘Fine, Martin. I’m fine. Just an unexpected meeting. Are we finished here?’

‘You are. My men have already started working in the basement and they’ll be working around the clock to finish up for you, just as you requested. It’ll be done in plenty of time.’

‘And the money?’

Martin offered her a broad smile. ‘Paid in advance is something we seldom get in my line of work, Ms. Emerson, but yes, thank you. The money for the job has already been deposited, just like you said it would be. Now just leave the rest to us, and don’t worry.’

And she wouldn’t. At least not about the security system. She was sure with Martin and his team on it, it would do exactly what she needed it to. She barely had time to freshen her make-up and check her hair before the limo arrived. She wouldn’t go before Jamison alone, for the first time in more than ten years, without looking her absolute best. She needed every edge she could get.

There was no way to hide anything from Martin, and that worried her a bit. Still, there was nothing for it now but to be as upfront as she could. She found him on the ground floor, looking over the schematics with one of his colleagues. ‘I have an appointment across town,’ she said, trying to act like it was all business as usual. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

He offered her a reassuring smile and held her in his sharp blue gaze. ‘We’ll be here. Don’t worry.’

It was the second time he’d told her not to worry. And somehow that reassured her in spite of what was about to happen.

She was thankful that the limo was unmarked and as discreet as a limo could be. Terrance Jamison was a master in the art of discretion when it suited him. But then he wouldn’t consider his connection with her something to be discreet about, and this was probably the last time she would be able to hide it. Still, she hoped that no one had seen the limo arrive around back to her private entrance of the gallery.

As she slid onto the leather seat and the driver shut the door, she thought about Harris Walker, thought about their night together, thought about the fact that there were still bright spots in a world that was about to turn very dark. For a painful moment, she wanted desperately to stop the limo, get out and run to Harris, forget everything else and let it all go. With a sudden shiver, she remembered Zoe, remembered finding her like she did, knowing what she knew, and living with the constant niggling doubt, the constant wondering if she might have been able to do something, anything. Surely there must have been something she’d missed, something that, if only she had done it, could have made the difference. But there had been nothing. She had been totally and completely helpless.

When she remembered that night, the night she truly realized just how in over her head she really was, she recalled it with the sounds of sex. Perhaps that was because when she revisited that night in her dreams, she always heard their lovemaking from a long way off – if you could call it lovemaking. It was only much later, too late, that she learned just how cruelly Jamison had used Zoe. In her dreams, she could hear them the moment she entered Zoe’s building. She could hear them in the elevator all the 29 floors to the flat as she rode with her heart in her throat, fearing for her friend, wondering why she hadn’t shown up for their dinner meeting, or at least called. Zoe hadn’t been herself since – well, since Jamison came into the picture as more than the distant presence Zoe spoke about from time to time. In her dreams, she heard their moans and gasps as she exited the elevator and walked the interminable distance to Zoe’s front door. In her dreams, the door was always wide open with a view into Zoe’s bedroom, with her naked on the bed, with Jamison on top of her.

In reality, she had heard nothing, been aware of nothing, until it was too late. In reality, she feared the worst. So when Zoe had left no messages and not returned her phone calls, when there was no answer at the door, she let herself in with the spare key Zoe had given her. In reality, it was the fact Zoe’s bedroom door was closed that had led her to knock softly, call Zoe’s name, and push the door open, fearing … She wouldn’t have dared name exactly what it was she feared. And looking back, even in dreams, she could never visit that unnamed fear without its true horror being thrust upon her in reality far worse than any of her nightmares. It was the beginning of the end – or at least in her memories that’s how it felt. But in reality, the end had begun the moment Zoe had introduced her to Terrance Jamison, with Stacie still flushed from the excitement, from the glitz and the triumph of her second exhibition.

Even after she pushed the bedroom door open it took her a few seconds to make the connection, to figure it all out. At first she saw only a man’s back, a man lying face down on Zoe’s bed. For a split second, she thought someone was assaulting Zoe. It was then she heard the sounds of sex, as though someone had just turned up the volume, as though a tidal wave of noise and smells and connections had washed over her, threatening to drown her. And then she heard Zoe’s yelp of surprise, saw a naked arm shove from under the fully-clothed man, and Zoe called her name.

‘Stacie, Jesus, Stacie, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I meant to call. Really I did.’

It was all so disjointed in her mind, even though at the time every second of it felt like a pinprick to cold skin, so vivid, so powerfully focused.

It was then she realized the man was Jamison. He rose from the bed, still wearing that same smile he always wore, as though he owned the world and he were greeting a favorite vassal. She had interrupted their lovemaking and he welcomed her as if he were inviting her to tea at the Ritz. ‘I wasn’t expecting you, Stacie,’ he said. But she knew that he had been. She could see it in his eyes, feel it in the way he looked at her. She was exactly who he was expecting, and it was as though he had forgotten Zoe was even there.

‘I’m … I’m sorry. I was worried. I was worried,’ she managed before turning and fleeing. In the back of her mind she could hear Zoe’s voice, high-pitched and thin with words staccato and clipped, the way she always sounded when she was drunk. But her words sounded like gibberish against the hard hammering of Stacie’s pulse in her ears as she fled, feeling mortified and humiliated and other hot prickly things she didn’t want to think about. Then Jamison yelled something that had silenced Zoe. Stacie heard the bedroom door slam with a loud crack, and then he was calling after her.

‘Stacie! Stacie, wait!’ He caught her by the arm in the hallway by the door, his grip talon-tight. His white shirt was untucked and unbuttoned to show the mat of hair across his chest that glistened with the heat of arousal. He’d made no attempt to do up his fly, and his erection fought against black boxers. He smelled faintly of whiskey. Mostly he smelled of sex and something else, something that prickled along her skin and made her shiver. He had never been anything but pristine, never been anything but under control, and the sight of him like this frightened her, confused her.

‘I’m sorry.’ She forced the words through the desert of her mouth. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’

And then he pulled her to him with such force that she cried out, and he kissed her. It wasn’t a kiss she had ever dreamed of or hoped for. It was a scorched earth kiss that took no prisoners and left no hope for survivors. As fear rose to the surface over lust and confusion, he crushed her hand to his bare belly, his muscles tightening as though she had punched him. He slid her palm down into the tent of his boxers, down over the prickle of pubic hair, and forced her fingers closed around the obscene heft of his erection, the erection he’d elicited by what he had done to Zoe. Before she could utter a sound, he took her mouth again and shoved her hard against the wall, his hand bruising an irresistible path up under her skirt, over the tops of her stockings and into her panties.