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Disgust bloomed in her gut as Carl looked her over, eyebrows raised slightly. Okay, that was it. Carl officially sucked. Carl was the enemy. He was messing with Jack, and in exchange, she was going to make sure that Jack got this Wexler deal done. Which meant Carl could know nothing about what she was really doing here.
So she stuck out her boobs and her hand at the same time. “I’ve heard soooo much about you, Carl, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Cassidy.” He extended his hand and she placed hers limply in his, the kind of weak girlie handshake she’d always abhorred. “Cute name,” he said, shooting a look at Jack. “Working on the weekend?”
Jack’s fingers pressed into Cassie’s back. “Can’t have my CFO being the only one burning the midnight oil. Or the Saturday oil.”
Cassie wanted to growl at Carl, but she was in character. So she giggled. Simpered. Operation Get Rid of Carl was on, and she was its head cheerleader. “Jack says he’s going to show me the view,” she purred.
“Yes,” said Jack, picking up her cue. “The Saturday view. The view where it’s quiet. The view where there’s no one around.”
If she’d been lukewarm before about the morality of this whole charade, any qualms went out the door when she saw the big, beautiful office. Here was this place that Jack had built, and Carl was secretly and systematically chipping away at it. It wasn’t right. She was going to do everything in her power to help Jack get the Wexler deal done so he could get on with firing Carl.
“Got it,” said Carl. “I’m just about finished here—Britney has a hockey game.”
“These must be the quarterfinals?” Jack asked. His hand was still at Cassie’s back, and he started tapping his thumb there, too, probably an unconscious gesture.
Carl flashed a proud smile. “My daughter,” he said to Cassie. Darn it—she didn’t need Carl humanizing himself now that she was so mad at him. “Yeah, quarterfinals,” he said to Jack. “Fingers crossed.”
“Well, best of luck,” said Jack.
Cassie aimed a zillion kilowatt fake smile at Carl and trilled, “Break a leg!” Then she turned to Jack. “You probably shouldn’t say that about sports, should you?”
He smiled and bent down to whisper in her ear, “You are magnificent.” A spike of pleasure transformed her smile into a genuine one as Carl retreated into his office.
“Let me take your coat,” said Jack.
She handed it over and tried not to fidget while his eyes slithered down her body. She was never going to be the kind of woman who could wear a suit and not feel like a kid playing dress up, so she had tried to find something that was not a suit but was still conservative enough that she looked like she might actually be the senior executive director of finance at Winter Enterprises. Well, conservative, but not too conservative. So she’d settled on a scarlet sheath dress. The neckline was modest, but the dress hugged her curves. She tempered the outrageous color with a fitted black blazer and matte black tights. Then there were the do-me pumps. Okay, so maybe the getup wasn’t conservative at all, aside from the fact that her boobs were not hanging out. Jack was taking his time getting his eyes back up to, well, eye level, which suggested that perhaps she had miscalculated, hadn’t struck the “I’m a serious corporate lady, but I’m not a drone” note she’d been aiming for.
The look in his eyes when they finally met hers made her stop caring.
That look made her brave. She let a slow smile blossom. “I tried to dress the part.”
“Cassie, if you came to work looking like that, no one would get a fucking thing done all day.”
A frisson of triumph spiked up her spine. Jack Winter wanted her. He wasn’t even trying to hide it. When he’d made that little speech about avoiding relationships with his employees, she’d been worried she’d done something to turn him off. But she saw now that whatever else they had going on—a joint commitment to the Wexler deal, their shared distaste for Carl—it was all underlain by a river of wild attraction. Lust. However much they tiptoed around it, whatever rules they made, it would always be there, just under the surface. The idea was intoxicating, made her feel a little reckless. “What?” She played dumb. “I am showing exactly zero skin.”
He cocked his head, as if he were a judge considering an argument in court.
“If you had a dress code, I’m sure this would adhere to it,” she added. A little tipsy on this new feeling of power, she peeled off the blazer and threw it on one of the chairs in the waiting area. “Shall we go to your office?” She started sashaying in the direction from which he’d come. If she let her hips sway a little more than was strictly natural, well, what was the harm?
