The Job Offer (10 page)

"Come on, Sweetheart.  Time for
bed," he said before steering Anne over to the elevator.  While they
waited for the car to come to the first floor, he whispered to her then leaned
down for a sensual kiss.  Anne knew the kiss was just as much for Chelsea's
benefit as it was for her own, but she smiled at Ben anyway.

Walking beside Ben in the hallway down
to his suite, she wondered if she could change his mind about sleeping with her
tonight.  The thought shocked her, but then she was shocked at her overall
behavior tonight.  She could not even blame it on alcohol because she only had
one glass of wine.  Since when had she become such a wanton woman that she
would sleep with a man after so short an acquaintance?  She had only had two
short lived romances in her twenty-nine years and not a lot of sexual
experience from either.  Apparently she had some latent sexual tendencies that
Ben brought out in her, she thought logically.  She needed to get back to her
parents' house and think about all of this without his presence affecting her
judgment.

He opened his door and allowed her to
walk in first, and she flipped on the light as she waited for him to close and
lock his door.  They were in the sitting room of the suite.  He came to her
immediately after locking up and pulled her into his arms.  Then he kissed her
until she was ready to drag him to the bedroom for more.  All too soon for her
tastes, he stopped and pulled back enough so that he could hold her still in
the circle of his arms.  He looked down at her with a look of frustration then
kissed the end of her nose before letting her go entirely.

"You have quite a powerful effect
on me, my dear Anne.  Did you know that?  You always have.  Not tonight, but
soon, you won't be going out that door."  He kissed her again then pulled
away with a groan to look down at her.  "I intend to make sure you
experience my 'mostly bad' in a very good way."  She sighed in frustrated
desire then allowed him to pull her to the back balcony door off of the sitting
room.  Before stepping outside, she pulled him back into her arms and kissed
him until he was drawing her in closer to his body.  Then she stepped away,
walked over the threshold, and turned to look at him.

"You always had an effect on me,
too.  Goodnight, Ben.  What are you going to do for the rest of the night? 
It’s still pretty early."

"Take the coldest shower I can
handle then try to get a few hours of work in.  Goodnight my sexy little
temptress.  I'll see you in the morning.  I get up around five and usually have
coffee in my room before heading down at six.  So meet me up here before
six."  She gave him one last smile before she slipped quietly into the
night.

*  *  *  *  *

Ben did not waste any time after Anne
left his suite.  After a quick cold shower, he went down to the lobby where he
was told by the front desk that his parents and the Petrovics were in the
lounge.  He noticed that Chelsea was gone.  Thank God for that.  He decided to
skip talking to his and Anne’s parents tonight, preferring to do so when Anne
was with him, and asked for keys to one of the inn's cars.  Then he drove until
he found the island’s only 24 hour pharmacy.  He went inside and came out a few
minutes later with a box of condoms and a few other necessities.  If tonight
was any indication of what was ahead, he would have Anne in his bed tomorrow
night if not sooner.

Thinking of Anne, he smiled.  He liked
her.  He always had, and there were not that many women whom he actually liked as
a friend and whom he also wanted to take to bed.  She was fun to be with, had a
quick intelligent mind, and had a great sense of humor.  Then there was her body.
 She had a body made for sex.  In all his fantasies about her when they were
teenagers, he never thought that she would be as responsive as she was
tonight.  It was all he could do to hang onto his control when she climaxed, he
thought.  Her lips were like honey, too.  He never kissed a woman who could
seduce him so quickly with just the touch of her lips and tongue on his.  He
knew that she was not the type of woman to fall into bed with virtual
strangers, which they were after all of these years.  Neither was he, for that
matter, but when he touched her it was like a flame went wild in both of them.  He
could not explain it.  He had never had that connection with another woman
before.

It's was a good thing she was leaving
the state after that weekend because, if she lived in Seattle, he would be
tempted to keep seeing her.  He would not have been able to stay away.  It was
just as well she was leaving, he told himself again.  At least he knew that she
was not after him for his money.  She did not know who he really was, and she
was perfectly okay with leaving once their vacation romance ended.  He ignored
the catch in his gut at the idea of using her then walking away and drove back
to the inn.

Anne climbed up the back balcony's
narrow fire escape staircase around five-thirty the next morning.  The lights
were off in Ben’s sitting room and the door was locked.  So she tried the
bedroom door and found it unlocked.  Ben had flipped the security bar over to
keep the door open a crack.  Opening the door, she slipped inside and turned on
a small table lamp.  His bed was empty.  The sheets were messed up and still
warm indicating that he just got up.  She heard the sound of the shower being
turned on inside the bathroom and saw a sliver of light under the door.  With
nothing to do but wait for him, she crossed over to the sitting room and made a
pot of coffee at the buffet counter.  Then, thinking a cinnamon bagel would be
nice, she grabbed the key card from the table and went downstairs to the inn's
casual sitting room where a continental buffet was being set up for guests who
preferred a light breakfast as opposed to a bigger breakfast in the dining
room.  She remembered that Ben used to like chocolate covered cake donuts and
blueberry muffins, so she grabbed one of each and a cinnamon bagel for herself.

There was no one in the hall on her way
back up the stairs or in the hallway when she let herself back into Ben's room
a few minutes later.  She could still hear water running in the bathroom, only this
time it came from the sink.  After setting her plate of goodies down on the
coffee table, she poured herself a cup of coffee, and added two creamers just
as she liked it.  The morning edition of the
Seattle Times
was waiting
outside the hall door when she returned, and she had brought it in with her and
set it on the table next to the plate.  Seeing it still where she left it, she sat
down on the couch and picked it up to read while she enjoyed her coffee and
bagel.  Wednesdays were typically not known for being newsworthy, and today
proved no exception.

Flipping through the sections, she found
the business section where there was a brief mention about Stanford Enterprises
winning an award for its improvements in the field of manufacturing biochemical
research.  The award was to be given out in a gala event in early August.  Thinking
about the news article, she was hit once again with the desire to work for the
company and be a part of all of their important research.  She had not heard
anything about a call back yet, but there were still interviews to be conducted
that week.

Moving further along in the paper she
came to the lifestyle section that had a photo on the front page of a young,
blonde socialite with her new husband.  Normally she would not care, but her
eyes caught on the photo because the man looked familiar.  Looking closer at
the man, she had a start and shook her head unbelievingly.  The man was none
other than her father, the distinguished attorney, Andrew Conner.  The woman
looked younger than Anne.  This would make her new stepmother wife number six
for her father.  He certainly was a busy man, Anne thought with more than a touch
of rancor.  Just as long as he stayed out of her life, she thought.  Mom would
see the article and probably think the same.

Anne's mother was the first wife of
Andrew Conner.  They met while he was still in law school, and she was a
receptionist working at his father's law firm thirty years ago.  They fell in
love and after a whirlwind courtship of two months decided to get married.  Actually,
they needed to get married because Anne was on the way.  Her mother was a month
and a half pregnant when they eloped in Las Vegas before returning to break the
news to his parents.  It was not a warm welcome.  The scene, from what Anne was
told, was not pretty.  Her grandfather accused Anne’s mother of trying to trap
her father with another man's child even though her mother had been a virgin
prior to her father entering the picture.

From there things got even uglier, and
her grandfather threatened to disinherit her father if the marriage was not
annulled immediately.  Her father folded under the threat, and the marriage was
soon annulled.  Anne's mother was fired from the firm and kicked out on the
street.  She was devastated by losing her husband and job in a betrayal of her
love and trust.  But she learned an important lesson.  Money and connections
always came first with the Conners.  Eventually, she made her way back to Orcas
Island, where she was from, and moved in with her parents while she worked at a
local resort.  After Anne was born, she fell in love with and married Anne's
stepfather, Jim, a Croatian immigrant who came from a long line of hoteliers
and who was on the island looking for a place to invest in a new resort.  The rest
of their story was history.

It was not as nice for Anne.  Except for
the eyes and brows she shared with her mother, most of her looks came from her
father's side of the family, namely her paternal grandmother.  Anne’s life
changed forever when a photo of her winning an all-state seventh grade science competition
made it into the
Seattle Times
and was seen by her paternal grandfather.
 By that time, her father had married and divorced his third wife with no
children coming from either the second or third marriages.  This left her
grandparents without any grandchildren and a sudden desire to meet Anne.  At
the urging of her grandfather, her father took her mother to court demanding
full custody of Anne.  After a long and nasty custody battle, her father lost.  But
while his bid for full custody failed, he was granted visitations on every
other weekend, every other holiday, and a month every summer.  The court ruling
also required Anne to take back her father's last name of Conner, something
that her grandfather fought hard for in court.

Anne was young and had not known that
Jim was not her real father until the court case.  Feeling confused and
betrayed with her mother and stepfather for not being honest with the truth, Anne
opened her heart unwisely to her father and grandparents.  But what she did not
know at the time was that her grandfather was dying of cancer, and he had set
up a trust fund for Anne to be administered by her father.  It was worth
millions.  The terms of the trust put her father in complete control of her
money and left him with the belief that he could also control her young life.

Her father was overly critical of all of
her choices and played so many mind games that it eventually ate at her self confidence
until she was afraid to make even the smallest mistake for fear of how he would
react.  He even went so far as to arrange her boyfriends and an engagement
while she was an undergrad in college.  She finally saw the light at the beginning
of her senior year and kicked her father out of her life for good.  The money
from the trust would become hers when she turned thirty next year, but she did
not want any of it.  She just wanted to forget her father ever existed.

Anne was so caught up in her thoughts
that she did not hear the water being turned off, nor did she hear Ben moving
around the bedroom until he came into the sitting room wearing only a pair of
gray sweatpants.  The sweatpants rested low on his hips.  She could see the
outline of his groin and knew that the sweatpants were all he wore.  Ben was
another issue, Anne thought.  This was Ben Carlson, the boy that she was so
sure she loved back when she was in high school.  The man he became was sexy,
smart, and had a great personality, and she responded to him in a manner so
unlike her usual reserved manner with men.  She laid awake for most of the
night trying to reconcile her behavior when she was around him yesterday with
that of the sensible woman she usually was and could not come up with an
answer.  The only thing she could think was that there were some residual
feelings and urges left over from her teen years.

Sometime during the middle of the night,
she decided that she needed to treat the next five days like a job and keep her
head where Ben was concerned.  She was going to tell him today that anything
more than a kiss or touch in front of Chelsea would be out of the question.  She
just was not the kind of woman to engage in meaningless sex with near
strangers, her behavior the night before and their past friendship
notwithstanding.  If he had not held back, had not been the sensible one last
night, she would be regretting much more than what they did do.  But the minute
he walked into the room dressed as he was looking sexy without a shirt over his
hair covered chest and with the low riding sweatpants, all of her sound
reasoning flew out the window.  She was in serious trouble from this man and
more so from herself.

"Good morning, Anne," he said
cheerfully as he walked into the room and sat next to her.  The sensual look in
his brown eyes caused a flutter in her belly and her loins to contract with
remembered pleasure.  Her mouth went dry suddenly, and she gulped her coffee causing
her to burn her mouth.  Ben smiled in understanding when she grimaced at the
pain of the hot coffee.