My First Second Chance Page 6

  He checked his watch. “No. God, no. Don’t look at me that way.”

  “What way?” I bit my lower lip some more.

  He averted his eyes by pulling out his cell phone and staring at it. “That way. Please, Meg. Stay as late as you want. But lock the door when you leave?”

  I smiled. Bingo. This was exactly what I needed.

  He started to wander toward the door and stopped. “And can I see you again?”

  I plucked the phone from his hand and punched in my information. I handed it back to him. “Text me.”

  “Great. Yeah. I will.”

  He grabbed his briefcase, commuter cup, and jacket, and strode to the door. I gave him a sterile kiss goodbye, like a happy homemaker, one that was perfectly sweet but guaranteed not to get him to say, “fuck it” and take me back to bed. I could’ve done that, if I wanted to. Last night, where he’d owned me? That was a fluke. I owned him. I had the control here.

  And I had a job to do.

  When he left and I peeked out the window to see his Audi driving away, I finished the omelet, put the plate in his sink, and grabbed my coffee. Sipping it, I walked around the apartment, checking things out. In the kitchen, his refrigerator was fully stocked. He had a full supply of condiments and spices, organized alphabetically, in the pantry.

  Oh, Gabe, Gabe, Gabe, I thought to myself as I peeked behind the refrigerator and found not a bit of dust on the coils. Do you even have a life?

  Last night suggested he did have a life. That my innocent little high school sweetheart could be bad. He was clearly a talented lover, probably one of the best I’d ever had. So giving, so intensely concentrated on my feelings, my pleasure. Maybe he just needed the right girl to unleash that side of him.

  I steeled myself. That sure as hell wasn’t me.

  Nursing my mug of coffee, I walked into the office. If the goods were going to be anywhere, they’d be there. I opened up his Mac laptop and powered it up. When it came to the first screen, it asked for a password. Of course it would ask for a password. I stared at it blankly for a minute before I realized I had no idea what he’d use.

  Then I whirled around and found a small filing cabinet. I opened it up. It was so precisely arranged, with not a single sheet of paper bent or sticking up from a manila folder. Every folder had a typed tab, and they were all arranged alphabetically. I lifted out the first folder that said A–Application details and set it aside.

  Then I scanned the others. Financials, information about the building he’d leased to house E-Ventures. But there was also personal information here as well. The title for his Audi. Rent statements for his apartment. Appliance warranties. Tax statements. He kept everything, all so neatly that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to leave it in quite the same manner.

  I was about to close the bottom drawer when I found a tab that said Tiffany.

  I had to know what that meant. I pulled it out and opened it. When I did, a headshot of a beautiful, professional blonde woman fluttered out and onto the floor. I lifted it up and stared at it. The picture looked too perfect, like the kind that comes with a frame you buy in a shop. She could’ve been a model. I rifled through the rest of the papers in the folder — a letter confirming one Tiffany Elliot had been removed from the apartment lease, a bunch of receipts, most from Always Lovely Flowers, but one for a necklace that had cost over a thousand dollars. They were all dated over two years ago.

  I sat down on the carpet and studied them all, then scanned the picture of Tiffany. She was a professional woman, clearly, with a job, a life. His girlfriend, once upon a time. They’d lived together, so it had been serious.

  He’d been in love with her.

  Stop it! I scolded myself. Who the fuck cares who Gabe dated?

  I shoved the green-eyed monster deep down. It’s not like I expected Gabe to crawl in a hole and never date again, after me. I’d never wanted a relationship with a man, anyway.

  Get over it, I thought. Get a grip. Concentrate on your job.

  Shoving the picture and receipts back into the folder, I tucked them back behind the T tab. As I did, I heard the faraway ring of my phone.

  I rushed out of the office, into the hallway, following the sound to my purse, which Gabe had placed on a chair in the living room. I lifted it open and saw the display: Uncle Heller.

  Shit.

  “Hey,” I said to him. “What’s up?”

  My uncle wasn’t one for niceties. “What happened last night?” he barked, without even a hello.

  I sighed. “I’m making progress, Uncle. Get your checkbook ready.”

  “You’re the reason he left early, are you not?”

  “Of course,” I said to him, walking through the apartment. I checked my face in the mirror in the bathroom. I had raccoon eyes. Perfect. “I’m in his apartment right now.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes,” I said, opening the medicine cabinet. Tums. Aspirin. Cotton balls. Q-tips. Aftershave. Snore. Nothing remotely revealing or scandalous, like Prozac. Or even Preparation H. “He’s on his way to work as we speak.”

  “That is what I’m paying you to find out,” he said with a hint of disappointment. “Did he say anything to you of interest?”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that Gabe was my Gabe from high school, but at that moment, I was glad I didn’t. If I did, he’d expect me to move a lot quicker. “Geez, Uncle. I just met him. What did you expect? Hello, nice to meet you, here are the secrets of my new app?”

  “All right. But you’ve made arrangements to see him again?”

  “Well, not yet,” I said, wishing I had. I hated that tone of voice my uncle used with me. It always made me think I was failing him. “But he has my number. He’ll call.”

  My uncle let out a breath. That clearly wasn’t the answer he wanted.

  “Don’t worry, dude. I’ll get the goods. Soon,” I said, trailing back to the office. “He has some files here. I’ll take pictures of anything interesting. Okay?”

  “All right. I need to cut this short. I think he just walked in.”

  “Okay, but–”

  “I’ll be home tonight, and I’ll expect you to show me what you’ve got then. Got it?”

  I sighed. My uncle had never even come to visit me when my mother was alive, despite the fact that she was his only sibling. He hadn’t even met me until my mother died, when I was still a teenager. But sometimes he treated me like a baby. “Yes, Uncle,” I sing-songed.

  As usual, he hung up without saying goodbye. Placing the phone down, I opened the App folder, then took a picture of everything in there. It looked like coding, but I wasn’t a code expert, so I had no idea if it was valuable or not. A lot of it was scribbled over, rewritten, or crossed out. I photographed it all with my phone, over fifty pages.

  Then I pocketed my phone and went to feel my dress, hanging on the bedroom door. Still wet. Yuck. It was silk, too, and not the type of thing I thought would do very well in a dryer. Maybe the rain had ruined it already.

  Then I went through his dresser and found a pair of neatly folded jeans. I had to belt them at the waist with one of his leather belts, and fold the legs up a few times, but they looked kind of cool on me once I tucked the shirt in. Ridiculous with the five-inch heels, but whatever. I sent for an Uber, then went through the apartment, making sure I’d left no trace of my snooping.

  And when I left, like the good girl Gabe thought I was, I locked the door behind me.

  Chapter 9

  Gabe

  I floated into work that morning on a cloud.

  Meg was back, and she was gorgeous. I may have had a slow start in high school, but I’d been with plenty of beautiful women in my lifetime. Turned out, college women liked the thoughtful, geeky type, so I’d gotten my share of attractive ladies. Tiffany had been a model before she’d gotten too old, as if twenty-two was too old for anything. In the modeling world, though, it seems she had peaked at nineteen. So she got her paralegal license. She was alluring, sexy,
and smart.

  But she didn’t hold a candle to Meg.

  I’d never matched up with anyone so fan-fucking-tastic. Even in our early days, Tiffany and I usually had very sweet, missionary-style sex, once and done, cuddle in each other’s arms, fall asleep right after. She never would’ve agreed to being tongue-fucked outside, where anyone could see her.

  But Meg stirred me, and my cock clearly couldn’t get enough of her. No matter how many times I came, it wanted more. And Meg was eager to oblige. She wasn’t shy. She wanted to explore. She wanted to try new things. She let me bend her to my will without complaint. And goddammit, I’d never tasted or felt anything hotter.

  I’d woken up that morning, thinking that this was it. I’d found the missing piece of my life. I should’ve been exhausted, after all that. But instead, I felt great. Energized. And I couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear as I walked into the office.

  In fact, I wasn’t even thinking about the LuvMakr app. I should have been. After all, I’d bailed on the single most important night of LuvMakr’s future. Instead, Meg clouded my head, hovering above me, impaled on my cock, rubbing her pussy against me as her tits bounced in rhythm with my thrusts.

  I replayed every one of her sweet words to me, too. Everything she’d said. She told me she lived around here. She hadn’t said anything about what she’d been up to since graduating, or why she’d left all those years ago. I knew her mom had passed, but I’d have thought she’d at least say goodbye.

  I wanted to ask her why she left without saying anything, but it didn’t feel right. We’d spent over twelve hours together, and most of that time was spent doing things that seemed far more important than talking. What had I learned about her life? Very little.

  “Gabe?” someone called.

  I snapped back into reality and realized I had walked right past Heller’s office. Then, I remembered he hadn’t texted me how things had gone last night. E-Ventures could have gone down in flames, and I wouldn’t have been the wiser.

  Turning back, I stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. I thought of the party and a wave of exhaustion came over me. I yawned. “Hey. How’d it go last night?”

  Heller was smiling, a rare thing for him. That was the first sign that my leaving last night hadn’t doomed E-Ventures. He didn’t say a word. He simply stood up, came around his desk, and walked toward me. Then he reached out his hand to shake mine, pumping it slowly.

  “Bravo, Gabe,” he boomed. “The vote is unanimous. You’re a genius.”

  “Really?” I smiled. Just when I thought I couldn’t feel any better. “What did they say?”

  “They said it’s a marvel. Revolutionary. They’re all impressed and can’t wait for it,” he said, crossing his arms. “You should be very proud.”

  “So I didn’t miss anything?”

  “No, no. But they do want to know when the final build will be complete. I told them we have a summer rollout scheduled, but of course they want a firm date.” His smile faded. “You do think an August 31 rollout is still doable?”

  I nodded. “Yes. Oh, yeah. Not a problem.”

  “Good, because if you’re firm on that, I’m going to release that on our Twitter feed. Our investors are banking on it. We can’t blow it.”

  “Yeah.” An image of Meg floated in again, her blowing me in my car. I’d never had such a good blow job. Not ever. I closed my eyes, still feeling her mouth on my cock, and nearly let out a groan.

  “You okay?” Heller suddenly said, jarring me into reality.

  I nodded.

  “You seem a little distracted. You’re not still feeling under the weather, are you?”

  “No,” I said. In fact, I felt better than ever. This news was too good to keep to myself. I was bursting to tell it, to anyone, but the truth was, I didn’t have many people to confide in. My parents were both gone, I had no other family, and I’d worked so hard at building E-Ventures that I didn’t keep in touch with any of my friends. As hard-nosed and crochety as he could be sometimes, Heller was the closest thing I had to a friend. “To be honest . . .”

  Heller never had time to waste on me, but this time, he leaned forward, interested. “Yes?”

  I checked to make sure no one else was nearby, then leaned in. “I met someone,” I said in a low voice. “Last night. It’s a long story, but . . . I really like her. And I’m sorry if I’m distracted but I can’t stop thinking about her.”

  “Is that so?” he asked, raising his bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows in surprise.

  I knew what he was thinking. Before, when I was with Tiffany, I was a corporate stooge right out of college, working IT for a bank. I was thinking she would be my life— marriage, family, stability. But after Tiffany left, it gave me the push I needed to go out on my own and start E-Ventures. So for more than two years, I’d been living and breathing this company. I sure as hell hadn’t been thinking about women. I’d shut that part of myself off, almost completely, though my hand and my dick had become really good friends. Maybe Heller thought I was gay.

  I nodded.

  “That’s really great. Just great,” Heller said, clapping me on the back. “You say you met her at the party last night?”

  I nodded. “Well, not exactly. I actually knew her from before. We were like, hot and heavy for a few months. But she’s gorgeous. You probably saw her there. If you did, you wouldn’t be able to take your eyes off her, she’s that phenomenal. And she’s . . .” I realized I was gushing, but I couldn’t help it. I tried to stop before I made a fool of myself. “She’s great.”

  “Great, huh?” He was smiling, thinly, a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Maybe he was worried I’d drop the ball on the app. “You say you knew her from before?”

  “Yeah. We dated in high school, believe it or not. So it was like, fate, seeing her there, after all this time.”

  He nodded, the plastic smile still on his face.

  “But you don’t have to worry. E-Ventures is still my number one priority,” I added.

  “Oh, I know. I have no worry whatsoever,” he said, clapping me on the back again. “I think this is good. You deserve a good woman. You deserve to have happiness, Gabe, after how hard you’ve been working.”

  “Thanks,” I said, stepping out of his office. “I’ve got to go over some of the new social media campaigns, but I’ll catch you later. We’ll do lunch later this week?”

  He nodded. “Looking forward to it.”

  I walked to my office, but every time I tried to picture Meg in my head, someone popped out of one of the cubicles to congratulate me on a smashing party. I said a different version of the same sentiment to every one of them: “Congratulations to you. You’re a valuable part of this team and LuvMakr would not be what it is without you.”

  Meanwhile, all I wanted to do was sit alone in a room and think of Meg. Or better yet, be with her. I wanted to share the good news with her.

  And why shouldn’t I? It had been two years since my last relationship, and yes, I’d been burned, but I trusted Meg. She’d been my high school sweetheart. She wouldn’t hurt me. Life wasn’t supposed to be all work and no play. And Heller was damn right. I deserved to have a little bit of happiness in my life.

  The second I got into my office, I closed the door, pulled out my phone, and sent her a text.

  Chapter 10

  Meg

  Gabe started texting me only a few hours after he’d left.

  And he didn’t stop. Another one after I got home. Days passed, a week. So many texts.

  Forget playing games. Gabe wore his heart on his sleeve. Always had, the silly boy.

  At first, it started with trying to find out when we’d both be available to get together. He wanted to take me out on a date. But it turned out he was too busy with work to pin down a time. I didn’t want to appear too desperate, so I made excuses that I was too busy as well. Instead, we had some long, long text conversations. Mostly, it was about him. He’d told me about how his parents had passe
d away shortly after he graduated college, one right after the other, like they couldn’t live without each other. It sounded incredibly romantic, and . . . improbable. He told me what he’d been doing since high school. College, his interest in developing apps, then working in IT at a bank for a while before E-Ventures. I told him as little as possible about myself.

  I couldn’t get too close.

  Plus, I’d handed in the photographs of the app I’d taken to my uncle last week, and he’d needed some time to analyze them and see if they were what he was looking for.

  If they were, my job was done, and, I knew what I’d have to do.

  I’d have to put on my big girl panties, block Gabe on my phone, and disappear again.

  Even though I couldn’t stop thinking about our night together.

  But I had to keep reminding myself it wouldn’t get better than that. With men, the first time is always the best, and then it gets . . . dull. Boring.

  I was stretched out on my bed, thinking of his tongue on me. It was always in the back of my mind, no matter what I was doing, but that morning, I was particularly horny. Our conversations were always kind of flirtatious, but never hardcore.

  Me: Since we’re both at work, I have a question to ask you.

  I’d told him I had an ordinary drudge job in New York City. I couldn’t tell him the truth, that I was hanging out in his partner’s mansion, doing nothing with my life but trying to find a way to destroy his.

  Him: Anything for you.

  Me: Have you ever done it via text?

  Him: What do you mean? Like sexting?

  Me: Yeah.

  Him: No. Never.

  Me: You need to get out more. Do you want to?

  Him: I’m at work.

  I smiled at that, thinking of him at work, getting a great big hard-on because of me. It made me hot, made my toes curl thinking of good Gabe, getting dirty behind his big desk.

  Me: So? ☺ So am I. Close the door to your office. I’m in a cubicle, but everyone here is at lunch.

  So what if my cubicle was actually my bedroom and I was lying in my bed wearing my boxers and a t-shirt? I was already getting off on the idea of making him hot, where he most definitely shouldn’t be. I relished this power over him.