Catch a Mate Read online

“Looking for Jillian?” she asked. He and Jillian must have come to blows because he seemed every bit as infuriated as Jillian had.

  He didn’t say anything, just scowled at her and closed the door again.

  “That went well,” she muttered. Time to get back to work. She’d think about the Greenes later.

  INSIDE ANNE’S OFFICE, Marcus stomped to the desk and plopped into the swivel chair. He crossed his arms over his chest. He stared at the door, his nose twitching at the lingering scent of luscious female. A mysterious scent he couldn’t quite place. Maybe a sunset. Maybe a midnight ocean breeze. Maybe sulfur and brimstone.

  Okay. So. The meeting hadn’t gone as planned. He blamed Jillian, of course. Infuriating woman.

  He’d worked in this strip-you-of-your-innocence business for a long time, but he’d never encountered bait quite like her. She was…unpredictable. A sweet smile one moment, a tongue-lashing the next. Mmm, tongue-lashing. He frowned. Don’t go there.

  He’d meant to behave, to show Jillian his polite side. She’d walked in, however, looking eatable in a scrap of nothing, and that intention had been blown straight to hell. At that point, the only politeness she’d have gotten from him would have been if she’d asked him to take her up on her clothing’s unintentional offer and eat her. He would have said thank you.

  Hence the reason he’d done everything in his power to piss her off.

  If she despised him, she’d continually push him away and he’d never have to worry about giving in to temptation. Or trying to seduce temptation. Firecracker that she was, she’d ignited at every barb he’d tossed her way. That shouldn’t have been such a turn-on. Insulting her shouldn’t have been such a turn-on. But they had been. Oh, they had been.

  Sadist, he berated himself. He didn’t usually allow women to affect him on any level except a sexual one. But Jillian had done that and more—and she’d done it while looking at him as if he were a pus-filled wound on a horse’s ass one moment and a platter of chocolate-dipped strawberries the next.

  Anger? Yes, he’d felt angry. She’d accused him of fucking the boss to land a job. Admiration? Definitely. She’d faced him nose to nose, matching him in insults and in (pretend?) disregard. Excitement? Abso-freaking-lutely. More than he’d experienced in years.

  Conclusion: buying CAM from Anne without personally meeting all her employees first had been a mistake. One it was too late to rectify. He’d gone through their files, of course, but hadn’t considered their actual personalities. Or clashing with their personalities. Or lusting after their personalities. In his defense, he’d simply wanted to expand his business and had been blind to everything but the profit margin.

  He wasn’t blind anymore.

  After calling and offering him the company, then changing her mind the next day, then changing her mind yet again when he visited her, Anne had suggested Jillian Greene as his second-in-command. No way in hell he’d consider that now. One, he was attracted to the infuriating demoness. He’d never been attracted to bait before and didn’t like that he was now. To this woman. Two, Jillian was a danger to society with her innocent face, killer body and forked tongue. And now she was his.

  His body instantly hardened in all the right places. Whoa, boy. Not mine personally. My employee.

  Fighting the wildfire in his blood, he leafed through the employee folders resting on the edge of the desk. When he found Jillian’s, he tugged it free and flipped it open. Her deceptively innocent features stared up at him. You want to taste me, don’t you? her half smile seemed to say.

  Yeah. He did.

  She had a button nose, a small scattering of freckles barely visible—he’d had to search intensely for them when he’d met her in person—and, sweet Jesus, the cutest dimples he’d ever seen. He hadn’t had to search for those. They’d snagged his attention and hadn’t let go. Added up, these features were the attributes of a Sunday School teacher.

  She also had glossy dark curls made for a man’s hands, lush pink lips and wide blue eyes fringed by inky lashes—the attributes of a well-sated sex puppet. An exquisite combination that made him wonder which she’d be in bed. Maybe both.

  Don’t go there, asshole.

  He coughed, shifted in the chair, hot and definitely bothered. Reading on…Under strengths, Anne had marked: loyal, honest, determined and trust issues. How was trust issues a strength? Under weaknesses: gives to charity, is a closet do-gooder and considers her friends’ well-being before she considers her own. Those were weaknesses? He shook his head. Anne was weird.

  He himself had seen no redeeming qualities from Jillian. Okay, that was a lie. She’d apologized to him the first time she’d inadvertently insulted him, after she’d asked why Anne had hired him. Also, there was her mouth. That was certainly a redeeming quality. And her legs. And her breasts, with those so-hard-I-need-a-lick nipples.

  All of his blood rushed south again. Please, he mused in the next instant. Like it’s ever migrated north since Jillian stepped inside the office.

  What was he going to do with that woman?

  I can think of something, his cock replied.

  “Shut up,” he muttered darkly. “You don’t get a voice in this situation.” Hell, no. Erections turned men into, well, dicks. Made them do stupid things. He wasn’t stupid. Most of the time.

  Women were vipers by nature; Jillian clearly more than most, what with her trust issues and all. Getting involved with an employee—especially one who wouldn’t hesitate to slice and dice her opponent to shreds—would be tantamount to cutting out all his vital organs and selling them on eBay.

  Not that Jillian had wanted anything to do with him.

  Not that Marcus wanted anything to do with her. Really.

  He was a gambling man but she was high stakes. Too high. Still, he would have liked to play naked poker with her. To have all of Jillian’s passion directed at a hand of cards while she was bare-assed naked…Ah, hell. Anymore of that and he might lose all common sense and go ahead and try to seduce her.

  Did she have a boyfriend? Was Jillian the type who demanded a commitment? Surely not. Like him, she probably kept her relationships strictly about sex, sex and more sex. No strings. Ever. And never with employees, he reminded himself. Or coworkers. Or other bait.

  He’d probably need the reminder a few (thousand) more times because he’d been in a slump lately and wasn’t getting even a little sex. Not his fault. There’d been offers—oh, there’d been some offers. Fine. There’d been two. In his defense, again, he hadn’t been nice to anyone who approached him.

  Lately he just wasn’t interested and (embarrassingly enough) couldn’t get hard because all he could think about was the doomed nature of the whole mating dance. Meet, screw, say goodbye or try for something lasting, then wait for failure. Then he’d seen Jillian and the slump had ended. Literally.

  What have I gotten myself into? he wondered again.

  Despite his need to keep Jillian at an emotional distance, to keep her mad at him so there was no chance she’d want to be friends or lovers, he had to smooth things over with her or life at the office would be hell. Tonight would be hell. He didn’t need more hell. He’d been looking forward to relaxing, to simply watching an assignment unfold and critiquing it in his mind. Now he’d have to step in and do cleanup when Jillian messed up. And she would mess up. Women that emotional were volatile and out to get everyone in their path.

  That wasn’t a stereotype. That was simply the truth.

  As dread (and anticipation) uncurled inside him, he glanced at Jillian’s home address. He’d have to go over there, smooth things over while still keeping her at a distance. He’d have to use his notorious “bluff” face to cover his dread (and anticipation).

  Good thing he liked a challenge.

  JILLIAN stormed through her front door. Stupid. Idiot! she seethed, not sure if she meant herself or that smart-ass Marcus Brody. She couldn’t recall having been this mad in a long, long time. How could one person be so rude? So diabolical? />
  So damn sexy?

  She tossed her keys and purse on the side table in the foyer and pounded to her bedroom. Usually her home was her place of comfort, her refuge from the maddening, always disappointing outside world. Lush tawny-colored (fake) plants abounded, spilling from every corner. She’d painted them herself. Her walls were caramel, the color of coffee—her biggest weakness. The floors were wood and polished to a high gloss. Nothing was out of place, every surface was clean.

  Jillian was a woman who despised clutter and messiness.

  Marcus Brody was total chaos.

  “The man must die!” she told the bronze lamp hanging from her hallway ceiling. “But first, he must experience pain and suffering,” she told her bedroom.

  With a screech, she fell onto her sleigh bed. The velvety brown comforter—too close in color to Marcus’s eyes for her peace of mind—puffed around her. She punched it once, twice, then let loose a storm of fury, determined to release her temper so that she wouldn’t bite her target’s head off before she even tested him. By the time she finished, she was panting and tired, but she felt better.

  “I can, too, control my emotions,” she muttered, despite her outburst. Sometimes.

  Everything would have been fine if Marcus hadn’t awakened such potent desires inside her with his lame-ass insults. She hadn’t wanted a man in a long time, and to want him…now…. Grrrr!

  She’d stopped dating, damn it, had stopped feeling anything but disgust when it came to males and relationships. Then Marcus had walked past her cubicle and her nerve endings had sparked to life—no one should smell that good and look like heaven in a pair of jeans—and that was one very good reason to despise him more than most.

  Except, she hadn’t hated him. Not right away. Then he’d opened his mouth and said rude things and looked at her with loathing—and it should have been enough to remind her of her own predisposition toward hatred, as well as to turn off any sane girl. Instead, his attitude had excited her. Intrigued her. No one had ever treated her like that before. Men flirted with her, damn it.

  “Maybe I’m becoming my mother,” she muttered. Hating something one moment, loving it the next. Happy one moment, depressed the next. “God save me.” She sighed. Marcus Brody should be illegal in fifty states and three countries. “Pig.”

  As she expounded on the reasons he belonged in a pen, rolling in mud and fattening up so he could be carved into thick strips of bacon, her phone rang, startling her. She jolted upright and glanced at her caller ID. Carrington, Georgia. Brow furrowed, Jillian picked up the line and held it to her ear. “What’s up?”

  “Oh, good. You’re home,” Georgia said. She was whispering. “You have to tell me what happened between you and the blond.”

  “Where are you?”

  “A bathroom stall. Not important. Concentrate and spill. He saw that you’d left, went back into the office, then stormed out a few minutes later.”

  She experienced a prickle of satisfaction that he’d left in a huff, too. He’d probably needed a little alone time to stroke his overinflated…ego. Jerk. “Did he leave the building or just Anne’s office?”

  “The building.” Georgia expelled a frustrated breath. “I couldn’t hear you guys through the door. What did he say? What did Anne say?”

  Jillian explained Anne’s odd behavior, the way she’d commanded Jillian to work with Marcus and then abandoned her, her voice clipped with irritation. Of all the men Anne could have chosen to work at CAM, she’d had to pick that one. That…“Ass,” she muttered.

  “That’s not possible.”

  “You didn’t hear the way he insulted me.” And aroused me with those very insults. Idiot. “He’s an ass, I assure you.”

  “No, I mean Anne actually hired him? A man?”

  “That’s right.” See? Jillian wasn’t the only one to be astonished by such a happening. Her reaction had been justifiable. She only wished Marcus were here so she could hold the phone to his ear and shout, “Did you hear that? I did nothing wrong!”

  “Dear God, why?” Georgia said.

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “She could have a brain tumor that’s making her do weird things.”

  “An alien being could have taken over her body,” Jillian suggested.

  “She could have stopped her medication and is now listening to the voices in her head.”

  True, so true. “Whatever her reason, we will be the ones to suffer. Marcus actually thinks women are untrustworthy, that we’ll do or say anything for an orgasm.”

  “Well…”

  “Georgia!”

  “I haven’t had one in a while,” she said, defensive, “and I’m feeling a little desperate.”

  Jillian pinched the bridge of her nose. “An hour ago, you told me everything was great with Wyatt.”

  “It is.” An unspoken kind of hung in the air. “I just, well, I stopped sleeping with him when he asked me to marry him that first time and I miss his Jerry Seinfeld clockwise swirl with a twist.”

  What the hell was wrong with the world? Georgia was the optimist who wished on stars for love, and Jillian was the coldhearted bitch who didn’t believe in happily-ever-afters. It wasn’t like Georgia to stop sleeping with a man because he wanted to marry her. “Are you trying to drive him away?”

  “No, of course not,” Georgia said, but again there was doubt in her tone. “I just want to be sure he’s the man for me.”

  “What are you so unsure about? You tested him and he passed.”

  “I don’t know, okay. He tells me how beautiful I am. He tells me how much he loves looking at me. But what happens when I gain a few pounds or, God forbid, get wrinkles? Will he still love me or will he be like B—boys?” she rushed out. “Be like other boys? I mean, Jill, I don’t let the man come around me when I get a pimple.”

  “So let him.”

  “I’m scared,” she whispered with a desperate edge.

  Jillian massaged the back of her neck. She had no real answer for her friend. “If you’re not sure about Wyatt, date my brother. You know he’s in love with you and he won’t mind if you’re a fat, pimply, wrinkled old hag.”

  “Not true,” she said. With longing? “Even though he doesn’t tell me I’m pretty, I know Brent is just as in love with my appearance as Wyatt is. He wasn’t interested in me in junior high or high school, when I was the ugly girl everyone loved to tease. Only when I developed breasts did he even glance in my direction.”

  Georgia was right. Brent hadn’t looked twice at her back then. He’d treated her like a pesky sister and had even left the house on the weekends he’d known Georgia was staying the night. Maybe he didn’t deserve her—even if he was one of the best guys Jillian knew.

  “So tell me the rest about our newest coworker,” Georgia said.

  Deciding to ignore that earlier longing and what it possibly meant—she would not get Brent’s hopes up, only to have them dashed—Jillian explained their bet about whether or not her target would come on to her and Marcus’s assurance that he wouldn’t. “Honestly, I didn’t know whether he was cheering for his fellow man or insulting my appearance.”

  “What a waste of chiseled features and movie-star muscles,” Georgia said with a sigh. “Is this a cold shoulder situation or an all-out war?”

  God, she loved her friend. Besides her brother and sister, there was no one else in the world who would automatically take her side and be willing to do anything necessary to help her. “War,” she answered without hesitation. Marcus and his sexy rudeness had to go.

  “Cool. We haven’t gone to war together since we convinced that bitch Judie Holt to quit.”

  Jillian grinned. Ah, good times. From day one, Judie had caused nothing but dissent. She’d gossiped, lied, slept with her targets and gotten a friend of theirs fired. At that point, they’d snapped. They’d laxatized a cake and thrown her a birthday party. They’d moved her computer to a stall in the bathroom at least once a week. They’d taped “kick me
” signs to her back as often as possible. Childish? Yes. Did they care? No. Even Anne had found the whole thing amusing.

  “Hang on.” Georgia’s breath cackled over the line. “Someone just entered the bathroom.” A long pause. “Uh-oh,” she whispered, then gagged. “I think they’ll be in here a while.” She didn’t wait for Jillian’s response. “I’ll call you later.” Click.

  Jillian stared at the phone for a moment before shaking her head. She pressed the cordless off and tossed it aside. What should she do now? She didn’t want to think about Marcus anymore—not if she hoped to stay calm. She could worry and think and dream about his demise tomorrow.

  Sighing the same way Georgia had, she labored to her feet. What to do, what to do? She had wasted half an hour and now had three more to go. Maybe she should write a few pick-up lines for her newest target. Nah, she decided in the next instant. She’d have him at “hello, let’s get freaky.” Maybe she should add a little more gloss to her lips and cut a few inches from her already short skirt. That’d waste a whole five minutes and then she’d only have one hundred and seventy-five more to go.

  The doorbell rang.

  Her mouth dipped into a frown. She didn’t want to deal with a visitor. It could very well be her mother—who adored impromptu visits to check on her. Her grandmother—who liked to borrow her sluttiest clothing so she could peruse cemeteries looking for widowers. Her sister—who loved to expound on the bliss of married life. Her brother—who enjoyed showing her charts and statistics on the wonderful creation known as man (to “prove” what she saw on the job wasn’t the norm) before asking about Georgia.

  Jillian strode to the front door, her heels clicking against the wood floors. She glanced through the peephole, froze, cursed under her breath, peeked again, cursed again, then pulled the door open. There stood the devil himself. Marcus Brody.

  Her heart immediately kicked into overdrive; her breath burned her lungs. Once again, just being near him caused her nipples to harden. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, the question flowing from her mouth as soon as it formed in her mind.