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“Oh, Mr. Brighton, you are a bad boy,” the female voice trilled.
“You are a bad boy,” I mocked under my breath. Hot waves of rage coursed over me as I heard Cooper’s throaty laugh in response. My hands fisted at my sides and it took a whole lotta willpower to keep from sprinting the rest of the way and tackling whoever the bitch was that was daring to flirt with Cooper.
Logically, I knew I should be far angrier at Cooper, but the sound of her voice was like nails on a chalkboard to me and drove me to a new peak of anger that I hadn’t imagined myself capable of before.
“Now, now Tessa, all I’m asking for is a little discretion,” Cooper said.
I held back a gag. A horde of scenarios were whipping through my mind as I crept closer and closer to the voices. I needed to see who he was talking to, to see what they were doing, but a part of me also wanted to turn and run. The idea of finding him fucking—or about to fuck—another woman would be more than my fragile heart could take. Especially knowing that this morning, we had been together and it had been so intense and full of meaning.
At least, for me...he probably hadn’t even showered yet. Yuck!
“All right, I promise to keep our little meeting a secret. Now, tell me, what can I do for you, Mr. Brighton?”
Whoever this woman was, she could teach a master’s level course in seduction. Just the sound of her voice and the carefully placed inflections were probably more than enough to get most guys crawling on their knees.
I cringed with the next steps, closing in on them.
“Well, I’ve heard about you and what you’ve been up to, and I wanted you to tell me more. Maybe we can help each other out.”
“I can do that,” she purred. “Let’s go into your office, so we can…chat.”
I held my breath and peeked around the corner. Recognition hit for the second time that day, as I found myself staring at the retreating form of Tessa Greenwood. I remembered her striking beauty and charm from my brief stint at Spotlight.
I whipped back around the corner and ducked out of sight again, right before the door of Cooper’s office closed.
I pressed my eyes closed tight and counted to three before releasing the breath I’d been holding. I repeated the process again, trying to head off the impending panic attack that was rapidly building inside my chest.
A click triggered my internal alarm and I dashed back towards the elevators without stopping to look back. I got on the first elevator and pounded the buttons to get the doors to close. I knew I was in no condition to ride home. My eyes would be blurred with tears, so I resumed my original plan and went down to my office. I used my key card again to get into the IT department and thankfully found it empty.
I went to the staff lounge and made myself a cup of hot tea. My hands were shaking as I added honey from the bottle in the cupboard. I took a sip, barely noticing the scalding effect on my tongue, and then traced the path to my office.
Only once I was safely tucked inside my own silent box did I release the tears that had been building since fleeing the floor above.
“Fuck him,” I said, wiping away the tears before they could even make it past my lower lashes.
I nodded, as if agreeing with myself—briefly contemplating whether or not I should check myself into some kind of mental hospital—and turned my attention back to my computer.
I set aside my cup of tea and started to pull up the database, peeling away layer after layer to see if anything had been compromised since the early morning hours.
It looked untouched.
Well, at least one thing was working right, I told myself.
I tapped my fingers along the edges of my desk and my eyes rotated to the ceiling. I wasn’t sure that Cooper’s office was directly above mine, but it was somewhere near
by. As I listened, I swore I could hear footsteps. My imagination went back into overdrive, wondering what was going on up there.
First, the actress, and now Tessa?
Maybe Cooper was one of those sex addicts.
I shook the thought away and tried to refocus on my work.
“Allison.”
My head snapped up so fast, I feared that I’d inadvertently given myself whiplash. I found myself face to face with Cooper-fucking-Brighton as he stepped from the shadows and into my office.
“Holy shit, Cooper, you scared me to death!”
