Hard Deal by Stefanie London

Author:Stefanie London
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2018-05-31T18:14:32+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

IMOGEN WALKED, SHELL-SHOCKED, from the ladies’ room where she’d gone to wash her hands and splash her face with cold water in the hope it might pull her out of her stunned state. Prostate cancer. Totally treatable. But Gerald’s doctor had indicated the need for rest and a reduction of stress. That meant reducing his role to board-level involvement in the Allbrook family business.

Oh, and she’d given her boss’s son a hand job under the boardroom table.

What the ever-loving smurf were you thinking? Have you lost your freaking mind?

Thoughts buzzed around in her head like bees, each one fighting to be the loudest until all she could hear was an incessant, ear-splitting whine. Her job was safe, Gerald had stressed that when he’d called her into his office after the management meeting. She would be working for Jason.

Let’s make sure you don’t get fired for performing a sex act in the middle of a team meeting.

She headed into her office and shut the door, sagging back against it for a moment to catch her breath. But that’s when she saw Caleb leaning against the wall beside her desk, arms and ankles crossed, his pants pulled up just enough to reveal a pair of electric-blue socks patterned with yellow polka dots.

“Did you know?” he asked.

His hair—which had been perfect in the meeting—now flopped over his forehead. That coupled with the dark expression and narrowed eyes gave him a wild, dangerous look. But even then, Imogen could only see him through a veil of lust. Her body remembered too much—the demanding grip of his hands at her hips, the velvety hard erection in her palm. How he’d tasted on Saturday night—like whiskey and sex and sinfulness.

“Not until now,” she said. “I... I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry that my father has cancer or that I found out along with the rest of the company?” His lips took on a cruel edge as he smirked. “Don’t answer that.”

“I wasn’t going to,” she whispered.

She couldn’t imagine what that must be like—to have a father who so coldly cut you out of his affection, out of his business. Out of his life, from what she could tell. Her own father was a tough, hardworking man of few words. And even though he never mustered the vulnerability to say “I love you” outright, he always managed to show it by coming over to repair her light fixtures or tighten the decrepit pipes under her kitchen sink.

But Gerald—a man she’d once admired with all her being—was rapidly losing her respect for how he treated his youngest son.

Sure, Caleb wasn’t an ambitious self-starter like his brother...but had he ever been given a chance? She’d always thought of him as a party guy, a social butterfly who didn’t really care too much about work. But she’d seen what he was like in Gerald’s office talking about the leadership retreat, she’d heard the passion in his voice. And now she’d seen the devastation in his face when his father and brother took credit for his idea.

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