No Excuses Read online

  “You can’t have her. She’s mine. This is okay,” I said, handing back the board, “but I made a few notes. See if you can get me a revision early next week. It doesn’t need to be dry mounted.”

  “Do you hear yourself, Gage? ‘She’s mine, you can’t have her!’” he mimicked in a brusque, caveman-type voice. “Og want.” He uncrossed his arms and leaned forward in his chair, resting his forearms on his knees. “Does somebody have a little crush?”

  “Crushes are for teenagers, Aaron. I grew out of that around ten years ago. I meant she works under me, and she’s turning out to be a valuable asset.”

  “Ah, but you didn’t say no, did you?”

  Clearly, he wasn’t going to let this go until he got it all out of his system. Better here than at the retreat this weekend. I frowned. “Seriously? She. Works. For. Me. I don’t dip my quill in the office ink.”

  “You don’t dip your quill in any ink. Your quill might as well be back on the damn bird. Dude, have you had a girlfriend in the last five years?”

  “I do fine,” I said shortly.

  Maybe I hadn’t had a girlfriend in seven years, but there were a handful of women over the years that were happy enough to hook up once in a while. Although it had been a while, they knew the score and didn’t play games, which I appreciated.

  I wanted a woman who was confident, goal-oriented, and ready to commit—someday. Right now, I was too busy.

  And Madeline Jones—despite her objective attractiveness and the fact that she smelled like cinnamon—wasn’t my type.

  CHAPTER THREE

  MADDIE

  “Madeline Jones, checking in.”

  I parked my beat-up rolling suitcase by the front desk. It definitely looked out of place in the swank lobby of the “rustic” mountain lodge. Maybe it was time to peel my once-prized Harry Potter stickers off of it. But that suitcase had been my home longer anywhere else I’d lived.

  The clerk smiled politely, tapping on her keyboard. I leaned against the desk with a small sigh and admired the river rock fireplace, open on all sides. It was so big it probably counted as an extra room in the hotel. It looked like a whole tree was burning inside it, but the heat it produced was already replacing the chill of the autumn air outside.

  “You and Mister Gage are in Suite 203.” Her smile broadened. “I hope you enjoy your stay, Miss Jones.”

  “I’m sorry?” I blinked at her. Did she say me and Mister Gage?

  The problem with Mister Gage was… well, where did I begin? The main one was he elicited a strong reaction in me. Mostly it was impatience, but my heart was thumped a little faster when I saw him in the morning, and squeezed when I went home at night. I told myself it was anxiety, but the truth was that there was something compelling about him.

  It might have been the way his arms flexed as he leaned on his desk. It might have been the curve of his lips as he told me to just call him “Gage.” Or it might have been his willingness to hire me and give me health benefits. That would make any college grad’s heart flutter—as long as I didn’t mention it on the insurance forms as a pre-existing condition.

  “Brian!” The courteous smile on the woman behind the desk expanded and softened as she looked over my shoulder. The tingling awareness crawling up my spine had already warned me, but Gage’s staccato steps on the flagstone floor definitely signaled his approach.

  “Hi, Pinky.”

  My head whipped around to look at him. The casual tone of his normally stiff demeanor surprised me, and the look on his face was even more bewildering. Added to that was the fact that her nametag said Bobbie, not Pinky, and I was totally confused.

  “Problem?” he asked.

  I nodded. “This nice lady says we are sharing a suite.”

  He frowned at me. “Yes, that’s what I booked.”

  “But—“

  “But what?”

  Wow. He really didn’t get it. “Isn’t that, uh…?”

  He raised a dark eyebrow at me expectantly. “Pinky” stared at the computer screen below the desk, pretending not to eavesdrop. I clutched the leather sleeve of his jacket and pulled him away from the desk for some privacy.

  “Mister Gage, I can’t stay in your suite!”

  Why not?” His gaze pinned me just as effectively as the first time I’d met him.

  “We just can’t share a room,” I persisted.

  “Give me one good, solid, well-evidenced reason.”

  Heaven help us both. Because I might accidentally on purpose walk in on you in the shower? Because I’m afraid I might call out your name in my sleep? Because I didn’t bring any pajamas?

  “Because it’s incredibly inappropriate, that’s why!”

  “It’s a two-bedroom suite, both with en suite bathrooms. We only really share the living room.”

  “Oh.”

  “They insisted on giving me the best suite in the place for the business I’m bringing them this weekend, and it would have caused dissension in the ranks if I tried to offer it to Aaron or Nikhil or Susan. I figured you and I could share it, since we’ll be working together this weekend anyhow. Is that a problem?”

  “But I’m single!” I blurted out. It was an excuse, a reason, a label, and a philosophy all rolled into two words. Yeah, I was a damned efficient communicator.

  Not only was I single at the age of twenty-four, but I was living with my parents in order to save money. I was a millennial cliché. A college degree in Rhetoric turned out to be, well, rhetorical when it came to the job market. I’d flitted through temp work while looking for just the right job, until it occurred to me that the better strategy would be to make the job right for me.

  “I know you’re single. What’s your point?” He crossed his arms impatiently, his wrists flexing in the crooks of his elbows. I could smell the bruised leather of his jacket mix with the wood smoke from the fireplace.

  “I’m a single woman working for you, and you’re the boss, and you’re so…”

  “Single too?” His lips pressed together in a thin line. “Wait, is there someone that would object to us sharing a suite? A boyfriend?” His eyes widened as his arms dropped to his sides. “A girlfriend?”

  My face heated. Like it was such an unbelievable concept that I could be dating someone? “No, but don’t you see that’s the problem?” It was bad enough that I already daydreamed about him too much, but now everybody at work would think we were sleeping together.

  “Brian!” called Bobbie. “Is there a problem?”

  “No, we’re fine!” Gage replied calmly, a new tightness around his eyes. “Madeline, we’re already late for dinner.”

  I shook my head. Clearly, he didn’t understand the optics of this situation. Maybe he was too powerful, too successful to consider the implications. But I shouldn’t have been so surprised. For a smart man, he could very obtuse at times. For god’s sakes, he didn’t even say please in his letters to venture capital firms! There was direct, and then there was just downright rude. He’d hired me to know better.

  Scowling, I left him in the middle of the lobby, firelight flickering on his face as I returned to the desk.

  “Can you put me in a separate room?” I asked the clerk, who now watched me a little uneasily. It occurred to me that she’d called him Brian, not Gage. I could only assume that they had dealt together before if he also knew her by a nickname like Pinky.

  Maybe she’d been the main point person for planning the retreat.

  Maybe they were old friends.

  Maybe they were fuck buddies.

  Maybe I wanted to stab her in the throat with the cast-iron horseshoe sculpture on the table to my left.

  She offered me a conspiratorial smile. “I don’t blame you,” she stage whispered, shooting a mischievous look at Gage. “He snores.”

  I heard a strangled “Roberta!” behind me. Not Pinky. This was getting worse, and my urge to stab stab stab grew ever stronger.

  “But unfortunately,” she continued sympathetically, “th
ere aren’t any other rooms. Between your block, another meeting, and the late season hikers, we’re full up.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Gage said to her. Then he turned to me. “It will be fine. I promise.”

  I stood there feeling little shaken, like the weekend was already out of my control. Making a scene with my boss was not the best way to start out this retreat. God, I wished I could retreat myself.

  I could have been babysitting my laptop all weekend, but instead I was going to spend two days building towers out of office furniture. It was bad enough that I had to take a tourist bus to get out here. Hopefully I could get a ride home with someone. Reason number eighty-five why I missed having a car.

  Gage’s hands fell heavily on my shoulders, as though he was trying to keep me from running away.

  “Bobbie, can you get someone to take her bags up?” he asked. “We’re already late for dinner.” Before I could say anything he steered me through the lobby to another foyer at the side of the building.

  “You’re late,” he said. “If I’d known you were going to take the damn bus I would have given you a ride myself. I just got here, anyhow.”

  Four hours alone in a car with him sounded so tempting—and dangerous. A sign above the archway we were passing under said “Conference Center” and I heard some noise coming from the nearest room.

  Someone yelled, “Hey, that’s my eye!” It sounded like Aaron, our Marketing Director and, as I recalled, an old college buddy of Gage’s.

  Gage’s hands had unfortunately left my shoulders, but his continued light touch at the small of my back made me want to simultaneously lean back against him and walk faster to get away.

  Susan, our HR person, popped her head out into the hallway and spotted us. “Thank god!”

  I stepped to the side, gesturing toward Gage. “Yes, God is here.”

  Susan grabbed my arm as I passed her. “Do the feeding,” she urged me. “Do not eat.” What?

  Of course, my quizzical look could have been because there was a strand of spaghetti hanging from her black chin-length hair. What the hell was going on in here—a food fight? That somehow didn’t seem like Brian Gage’s style for a retreat activity.

  “Susan,” he said calmly, his spine ramrod straight, “what is the meaning of this?” I knew him well enough by now to know that what he really meant was “What the fuck?” only he had too much self-control to say that in front of employees.

  “This was the first activity, according to the schedule. Since you weren’t here, the organizer and chef asked if we could still start on time so we didn’t mess up the kitchen schedule for the lodge restaurant.” She placed her hand on Gage’s arm. “I was really hoping we could be partnered…”

  I plucked some pasta from her hair. “I guess you couldn’t wait.”

  She glared at me, her compulsion to fix her hair forcing her to let go of him.

  He flinched as my hand touched his elbow lightly. I moved to his side to see a dozen tables each set up for dinner for two. It looked like spaghetti was on the menu.

  And the tablecloth. And the floor. And Aaron’s face.

  At least I thought there was sauce on his face—it could easily have been red for other reasons, such as the pasta dangling from the collar of his button-down shirt.

  “Uh, what is the activity?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. “Executive food fight?”

  Susan thrust a piece of paper in Gage’s hand.

  “Close,” Gage said wryly. He read from the paper, “Welcome to your first test of personal communication. Divide into pairs, one at each table, and prepare to enjoy an intimate dinner. The only hitch is that one person will be feeding the other. The person doing the feeding will be blindfolded, and the person doing the eating will have their hands tied behind their back. It is up to the diner to communicate effectively how to direct the movements of their partner.”

  His voice slowed as he continued. “The diner will place the blindfold on their partner before having their hands tied behind them. Enjoy the extra surprise! Bon appetit!”

  “Seriously?” I looked around the room. It looked like a junior high cafeteria acting out Fifty Shades of Grey. “What’s the ‘extra surprise’?” I wondered out loud.

  Gage flipped over the sheet. “You may use only the utensil provided at the table for feeding your partner.”

  As we surveyed the carnage, the problem became self-evident. Aaron was being fed his spaghetti Bolognese with a turkey baster. Nikhil, our IT guy, was trying to coax his pasta not to slide off a giant pancake flipper. Another table was using a melon baller while a couple I didn’t recognize at all was struggling with a corkscrew. Nowhere in sight was a fork.

  “Oh, dear god.”

  That’s what Susan—who was now back at her table wielding a single, solitary chopstick—was warning me about. It didn’t take long to determine the better role in this exercise. This was a new blouse, and I didn’t plan on ruining it.

  I dropped my purse at my feet. My hand shot into the air. “I call feeding!”

  Gage looked down at me, his eyebrow lifting. Okay, maybe that was a little forward and unprofessional of me.

  I stepped a little closer to him, fluttering my eyelashes as I looked up into his icy eyes. “I mean, Mister Gage, that this is a perfect opportunity to learn how to take directions from my boss.”

  “You take dictation all the time.” His eyebrow had yet to descend. It was probably getting altitude sickness.

  “Dictation is not communication.”

  “It isn’t?”

  Like I said, a little obtuse. Give a man a little money and power, and all of a sudden, he thinks he knows everything.

  “If you could have communicated effectively by dictating, you wouldn’t have hired me,” I pointed out.

  “But you won’t be able to see me, Madeline,” he said in a low voice.

  “Exactly, sir. You will have to choose your words very carefully in order to succeed.” I sounded surer than I was, as the idea of being commanded and watched intently by him while being blindfolded made something squirm deep in my belly.

  “I don’t like to fail,” he reminded me. No kidding. I rolled my eyes then jumped as his broad hand swept over my forehead. “You won’t be able to do that anymore.” His thumb traced the arch of my eyebrow, making my heart race.

  “Yes, I will. You just won’t see me doing it. You can’t stop me. You’ll have your hands tied…”

  I lost my train of thought at a vision of a silk tie knotted around his wrists. The fact that he was lying down with his arms above his head in my imagination had absolutely nothing to do with dinner.

  Gage frowned, his fists clenching at his side.

  No, he would not enjoy being restrained or controlled. He was used to giving orders, not taking them. But as he loomed over me, I realized how much he relied on body language to communicate—and I was going to be completely blind to it. Only his raw, demanding voice would tell me what to do. I shivered a little as Gage hung his jacket over the back of a chair and began rolling up his sleeves.

  “I won’t let you fail either, Madeline.”

  Gage and I stood together on one side of a round banquet table covered in a pristine white tablecloth, our chairs pushed back a little. The rest of the room was noisy with laughter and protests as everyone continued eating—or at least tried to.

  “You will do whatever I say,” he said, two black silk ties dangling from his hands. It wasn’t a question.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MADDIE

  He moved close to me, our bodies nearly touching. I kept my eyes on his chest as he gently draped one of the ties around me, cool and soft on the nape of my neck. The tiny hairs under my ears stood up at the feel of the silk sliding across my skin. Every sense I had was on high alert.

  He smelled like fresh laundry, and a trace of something else lingered on his skin. It was almost like the scent of paper, or an overworked photocopier. I felt the heat from his hands close to my
throat, and the hairs on his forearms tickled my collarbone for an infinitesimal moment.

  My attention remained focused on the buttons of his shirt. I was very worried that if I met his gaze, my hyperawareness of him would shine out of my eyes like a flashlight.

  “We’ll just leave this here for now,” he murmured, flicking one end of the tie against the underside of my chin. “Are you ready?”

  Not even remotely.

  I nodded mutely, but I let out a little gasp when his fingers touched my chin and tilted my face up. It was so tempting to screw my eyes shut, like a little girl trying to pretend that something didn’t exist if she couldn’t see it. I’d had plenty of practice with that before.

  But he wouldn’t let me retreat. He looked at me directly and without guile, as usual. What was a little different this time, however, was the way his eyes darkened into stormy seas.

  “Trust me.” His simple words wormed into my heart as his warm breath landed on my lips.

  My voice cracked as I said, “Mister Gage.” It wasn’t an answer or a question, a protest or a plea. I honestly didn’t know what I wanted to say, and whatever was building in me halted as he lifted the other piece of fabric to my eyes.

  He smoothed his thumbs across the strip of silk over my eyes, spreading out from the bridge of my nose to my temples. The tie was held firm between his fingers—those nimble fingers that paused in my hair briefly before they met again at the back of my head.

  “Is that too tight?” he asked as he pulled the half-knot.

  The sound of the silk rubbing against itself whispered in my ear. I shook my head. His hands clutched my hair and held me still.

  “I’m not done.” His fingers tangled in my hair as he finished tying, pulling a few strands just enough to make me suck in a breath.

  He froze. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No.” My nipples hardened into tight buds as his breath washed over my forehead. “I, uh, no,” I repeated.

  Gage had never touched me this much in the whole time I’d been working with him. Just the memory of his hands in my hair was enough to make me wobbly in the knees.