Reckless Encounter Page 3

  The new hunger that had broken free tonight rose inside Elena once more. She untangled herself from the man’s confining hold and shimmied down along his body, stroking him with her fingertips and scattering light kisses on his naked skin. Gradually, she traveled lower, increasing the pressure of her touch, until she reached his rapidly forming erection.

  She took him in her mouth and moved her lips along the satiny shaft. When he stirred beneath her, she slanted up a glance. He had opened his eyes, but he said nothing, just watched her with a guarded look on his face. Elena lowered her head and took him deeper, playing with her tongue, teasing him with the soft tug of her teeth, until he gave a muffled groan of relief and she felt the salty semen pouring into her mouth.

  Without any comment, the man drifted back to sleep. Elena got up and went into the bathroom. She studied herself the mirror. Was there something new about her, something that everyone could see? Had the experience left a clue on her features, some outward sign of decadence?

  All she could see was that the hazel of her eyes had turned almost black and stood out starkly against the paleness of her olive-hued skin. Nothing else had altered. A shiver passed over her. Somehow, she had expected that the carnal passions of the night would have left a lasting imprint on her face.

  Maxwell Glaser was asleep when Elena tiptoed back into the room. She dressed quietly and let herself out into the corridor. The unexpected opportunity to sneak away filled her with relief. Everything would look different in bright daylight, and she wanted to preserve the experience of the night as a thrilling memory.

  A dream, instead of something real.

  Shortly after eight in the morning she telephoned Tony Harris in his office. A female assistant whose name Elena didn’t recognize answered the phone. With a pang of regret Elena realized that things at the firm had altered since she’d left. She was no longer a part of McKenzie and Harris. Soon the administrative staff wouldn’t even remember her name.

  “This is Elena Rodriquez,” she said.

  “Oh yes, the lease agreement for Max Glaser,” the assistant replied. “Brian Seidman asked me to thank you for stepping in at the last minute. His kid fell off his bicycle and broke his arm.” A slurping sound—a sip from a morning coffee, no doubt—filled the brief pause before the girl continued. “When I called Mr. Glaser to let him know that Tony had found you to take over and you were on your way his line was busy. I left a message. How did it go?”

  “It didn’t.” Elena forced her voice to sound calm, perhaps a little annoyed. “There must have been some mix-up,” she went on. “Mr. Glaser had a ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the door. I knocked, but there was no reply. The intimate noises that came out of the room didn’t encourage me to keep trying.” With the final comment, she inserted enough innuendo into her tone to discourage any further questions.

  “I see.” The secretary sounded amused. “I assume that he didn’t get my message then. I’ll postpone the signing of the lease agreement. Should I schedule another appointment for you to meet with Mr. Glaser later today?”

  “I’m afraid I have another job out to town this morning,” Elena said, feigning the brisk tone of a lawyer with a full appointment book. “Could you tell Tony Harris that he has to find someone else, and please give him my apologies?”

  “Hold on a second.” There was a moment of silence, another slurp of coffee, and then the assistant came back on. “Tony has just arrived. I’ll put you through.”

  Elena swore under her breath. She’d hoped to avoid further explanations, and Tony might be more perceptive than a newly hired assistant. Elena repeated her story, this time adding a note of indignation about the wasted trip to meet the client. Relief poured over her when Tony didn’t try to persuade her to carry on with the assignment. When she hung up the phone, her hands were shaking. And yet, despite the fear of exposure, she couldn’t bring herself to regret the night and what she had done.

  Chapter Two

  The next few months were hard on Elena. There was little work coming in, and one of her clients, a small lumber yard, went bust owing her money. Soon she would have to admit defeat and start working for someone else again. At least the animosity of her break-up with Steven had faded, so that she no longer needed to take seriously his threat of making sure that she would never work as a lawyer in Seattle again.

  Sometimes, at night when she couldn’t sleep, Elena thought of Maxwell Glaser. She imagined him as he’d been when she caught her first glimpse of him—standing nearly naked in the doorway, as powerful as some mythical barbarian. Her body would tighten and a strange longing would fill her, bringing with it a temptation that she struggled to resist.

  She knew it wouldn’t be difficult to find out how to contact him.

  But she couldn’t. There was no way she could explain her behavior that night.

  In July, on a hot afternoon when the whole country seemed to be taking a day off from work to watch the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Elena sat in her cluttered office, elbows propped on her desk, her chin resting in her hands. She stared at the spreadsheet on her computer screen. Numbers didn’t lie. Her overdraft was at its limit. She needed to pay the office rent and utility bills. The secretary-cum-receptionist hired through a temp agency had been released long ago.

  The single ray of hope was the meeting scheduled tomorrow with a potential new client, a video rental company planning an aggressive expansion across the country. The owner wanted a lawyer who was prepared to travel nationwide and negotiate lease agreements. The billable hours accumulated through overnight stays would make using a big firm too expensive. Someone independent like Elena, who was prepared to bill only for the actual hours worked, sacrificing their personal time for travel, was a more economical solution.

  Again, she would have Tony Harris to thank for the referral. Out of all the senior partners at McKenzie and Harris, Tony had been the only one to believe in her innocence when she’d been accused of having betrayed client confidentiality. However, despite his influence within the firm, he hadn’t been able to save her job against the general mistrust of others. After she set up her own practice, Tony had done his best to help her by sending clients to her when something came up that McKenzie and Harris didn’t wish to take on.

  If she got the assignment, it might give her a reprieve and allow her business to survive. Elena powered down her computer. Tomorrow would reveal her fate. She got everything ready for the meeting and went home to her tiny house in the suburbs for an early night.

  ****

  In the morning, Elena dressed in a conservative white blouse and a smart black suit and drove downtown to the offices of McKenzie and Harris. The familiar route stirred memories of better times. For a few moments, she sat in the parking garage beneath the building, fighting back tears. Then she gathered her briefcase and went inside.

  Tony Harris met her at the reception. He was a slight man with thinning hair and a pale, freckled skin. A pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses sat askew on his nose. The diffident air that Tony cultivated caused many people to underestimate his tenacity and the sharp intellect he possessed.

  “Elena, how are you?” He reached out to shake her hand. “You look well.”

  “Tony. Good to see you again.” Elena smiled at his solution to the dilemma of her status as a former employee. She couldn’t be allowed to roam the premises unescorted, but it would have appeared awkward to send a secretary to guide her around. So, Tony had come down to the reception himself, a gesture that could only be interpreted as a sign of courtesy.

  It was a good example of what made Tony Harris so popular with clients.

  As they strolled down the thickly carpeted corridor, Steven stepped out of a meeting room. He froze as he spotted Elena. She stared back at him, wary and alert. The golden hair and the lean athletic body, and the face that had always sent her into a dreamy swoon, now only caused a twinge of regret.

  Triumph soared inside her. She was getting over him. Before she had a chance to come
up with some bland and polite greeting, Steven pivoted on his heels and ducked back into the conference room where he’d emerged from.

  “Are you all right?” Tony asked in a low voice.

  “Fine,” Elena replied with grim smile. “I’m absolutely fine.”

  In his antique-filled office, Tony poured coffee from a silver pot into rose-patterned china cups and shunted one to Elena across the conference table. “We have some time before the client arrives,” he told her. “Let me give you a little background.”

  Elena pulled a yellow legal pad out of her briefcase. “Who am I meeting?” she asked and clicked the button on her pen. “Is he their top guy?”

  “MovieMax is part of a privately owned group of companies that also includes a chain of grocery stores called FoodMax. You’ll be meeting with the owner.” Tony picked up a blueberry muffin from an ornate silver tray and winked at Elena. “In fact, you almost met Max around four months ago. Do you remember when you went to the Fitzroy Hotel for a lease agreement and the client was otherwise occupied?” A suggestive leap of his wiry eyebrows accompanied the last two words.

  On the desk, the buzzer burst into a ring, shattering the silence. Tony reached over and pressed a button. A disembodied voice on the speaker announced that Mr. Glaser was on his way over.

  Panic seized Elena.

  Maxwell Glaser, room 244.

  Blood roared in her ears and nausea churned in her gut. Her head fell forward as a dizzy spell sent the floor spinning beneath her. With a determined twist of her shoulders, Elena snapped her slumped body upright again.

  What could she do?

  There was no time to beg off, claiming that she was feeling unwell. Even if she got up and rushed out, she’d bump into the man in the corridor outside Tony’s office.

  Her only hope was that he had a different woman every night and could no longer remember her. At least she was not wearing the same suit, and today her hair was gathered into a knot at the nape of her neck instead of hanging loose down her back. She took a deep breath and faced the door, her expression one of bold defiance.

  ****

  Max Glaser strode into the Tony Harris’s office and came to an abrupt halt. The hooker was sitting at the conference table—the girl from four months ago, the one he’d struggled so hard to forget. Eventually he’d given in to the need that festered like a disease in his gut. He’d called the agency, hoping that the girl could fly out and meet him in San Francisco.

  The best way to get rid of an itch was by scratching it.

  Up to now, that philosophy had served him well.

  The manager at the escort agency had been baffled by his request. The girl who’d been sent over to the Fitzroy Hotel that night had come back, explaining that there had been a mix-up and another girl was already on the job. The agency had chalked the incident down to an error. It shouldn’t be a problem, the manager pointed out, since they hadn’t billed him, not even to cover the time wasted by the girl who’d found him busy with someone else.

  When Max mentioned the price of five thousand dollars, the woman on the phone shrieked with laughter. Not one of her girls, she assured him. He had checked his credit card statements. There had been no charge. Not for five thousand dollars, and not for five hundred.

  It had remained an intriguing mystery.

  Until now.

  In front of him, the girl tried to maintain her composure, but the scarlet blush that flared on her face confirmed his suspicions. She perched on the edge of the swivel chair, her back ramrod straight, as demure as a nun in her white blouse and black business suit.

  So prim and proper, but he knew better.

  Oh, he knew.

  Max shifted on his feet to hide the stirring in his groin. A wave of heat swamped him as memories of the night they’d shared came flooding back.

  “Max, hello, good to see you again,” Tony Harris said, capturing his attention.

  With a supreme effort, Max gained control over his body and muttered a greeting.

  “This is Elena Rodriquez, one of our independent associates,” Tony continued. “As I explained over the telephone, due to our billing structure it will be better for you if we use a subcontractor on this occasion.” Tony gestured, his hand waving. “We’ll bill you, Elena will bill us, and McKenzie and Harris will guarantee the standard of her work.”

  Max knew that his success in business was due to a willingness to be ruthless when needed, as well as hard work, ambition and intelligence, but also because he possessed a highly developed sense of intuition that allowed him to make instant decisions on which risks were worth taking and which were not.

  Now, those sharply honed instincts allowed him to evaluate the situation in a heartbeat. He studied the expression on the girl’s face. Horror and embarrassment battled with a fleeting flash of sexual excitement. She covered up her reaction well, but she couldn’t hide the darkening of her eyes and the way her breasts suddenly jutted a little firmer against the shiny material of her white blouse.

  I’ll be damned, Max thought. She walked into that hotel room, and when she realized my mistake, she played right along. His gut told him she’d done it for kicks. Once she’d had her fun, she’d gotten dressed and walked out on him. He almost felt cheated, despite having been given a night worth five thousand dollars for free.

  Keeping quiet, Max contemplated Elena Rodriquez through narrowed eyes.

  He’d wait and see what the lady did next.

  Despite the torrid memories that bombarded his brain, Max managed to get on with an orderly business meeting. He outlined the expansion schedule. The terms and conditions for Elena’s work were agreed. He said nothing to suggest that her involvement in the project should be subject to a further discussion. Her stiff posture and her curt replies told him that she wanted to decline the job but couldn’t afford the luxury, either due to financial necessity or out of obligation toward Tony Harris.

  Max didn’t give a damn about her reasons, as long as she remained within his reach.

  When they were finished, he excused himself and moved from the conference table to the low rosewood cabinet at the far end of the room. Leaning against the top, he wrote out a check and folded it over. Then he came back and handed the folded piece of paper to Elena.

  “Miss Rodriquez,” he said in a tone that sounded a little rough to his ears. “I understand that I caused you a wasted trip the last time I was in Seattle. I never received an invoice from you, but I’m sure Tony doesn’t have a problem if I settle up directly with you, so that we’ll be up to date when he starts billing me for your work.” He cleared his throat. “You’ll find that I’ve doubled up the amount, in the hope that we can meet again tonight and deal with any unfinished business. From tomorrow morning, I’ll expect you to submit your invoices through McKenzie and Harris.”

  Under his scrutiny, a fiery blush saturated every visible inch of the girl’s skin, but she said nothing. Her elegant face had haunted Max during restless nights since they met. She possessed a classic Hispanic beauty, with hazel eyes and a full mouth set in an oval face, but she lacked the overt sensuality that often went with Latin looks.

  But he knew better. A volcano of passion simmered beneath the cool surface she presented to the world. That night, he’d succeeded in setting the heat inside her free, and he’d been scorched by it. The need to have her again had grown stronger every time he’d allowed his thoughts to dwell on her and the memory of their encounter.

  Now, he waited, one arm outstretched, holding the folded piece of paper in front of her. She hesitated, but in the end she accepted the check. Her hands were shaking. He could tell from the difficulty she had with the clasp of her black leather purse as she opened it to tuck the folded check inside.

  “I’m staying at the Fitzroy again,’ he told her. “Would seven o’clock tonight be convenient for you? We can have dinner while we talk.” Max did not wait for her to reply, merely picked up his briefcase and left the room with a curt nod of farewell.


  Normally, at the end of a business meeting, he shook hands with everyone present, but right now he didn’t trust himself enough to touch her in front of an audience, not even just to wrap his fingers around hers. He’d have to wait, but it would only be a few hours.

  Then he could deal with the ache in his gut and be cured of her.

  ****

  Oh God, oh God, oh God.

  Elena rushed down the corridor as fast as her high heels allowed. What demon had entered her blood that night and made her act like a slut? Even now, her skin burned with the recollection of it, and her clothes felt too tight, and a horrible sense of excitement battled with the shame that almost suffocated her.

  It had been a vain hope that Max Glaser might not recognize her. Had Tony noticed the edgy undercurrents between them? After Max had stomped off at the end of the meeting, she had told Tony that she needed to visit the ladies’ room. Tony had frowned at her nervous fidgeting and glanced at his watch. Instead of escorting her off the premises, as was his custom, he had told her that she could find her own way out.

  Elena tore the restroom door open and hurtled inside. Until she was forced to resign from her job, the gleaming chamber of white tiles and serene gray counters had served as a sanctuary to punctuate the hectic pace of her working days.

  Her hands clenched into fists against the countertop as she stared at her flushed face in the mirror. What did he want from her? She closed her eyes and saw the image of Max Glaser as he’d been on that night, naked, fresh from the shower, the cool skin gradually gaining a dull sheen of perspiration as their bodies tangled together on the bed.

  Elena fumbled with the catch on her purse and pulled out the check she’d stuffed inside without a closer look. As she unfolded the slip of paper, her eyes snapped wide. The amount was for ten thousand dollars. Swallowing hard, she stared at the boldly scrawled figures. She could almost hear them screaming at her with a financial temptation as she recalled the stack of unpaid bills on her desk.

  There was no need any longer to wonder what Max Glaser wanted from her.