***
“Come on in, Ken.” Melanie gave a nod of acknowledgement as her financial controller peeped around the door. She returned her gaze to the spreadsheets she’d laid out across the conference table in her office. “You’ll have to go through these numbers with me again because this is not looking good.”
As Ken walked over he gave a heavy sigh. “I know and that was what I was telling you before you left on vacation.”
“It wasn’t a vacation,” she said, her tone just a tad bit defensive. She hardly ever took time off from work and the one time she did, it was like everyone kept mentioning it. Workaholic that she was, she couldn’t help but feel guilty.
“Sorry,” he said, his tone apologetic. “Your honeymoon.” And then he gave her a weird look, almost like he still couldn’t believe it.
Well, it had been a shock to everybody, including her. She glanced down at her wedding band. She still couldn’t believe it herself. She was a married woman.
But now there were other, more pressing matters on the table. Literally. She pulled her eyes away from the ring and focused on the papers spread out on the table. “Now tell me what these numbers are saying.”
By the time her meeting with Ken Ferguson was done Melanie was feeling sick to her stomach. The film studio she`d bought was turning out to be a money-sucker rather than a brand new star in her portfolio of companies. She’d made the wrong call with that one and she was pissed.
When Ken left she flung herself down into her chair and stared ahead, her eyes unseeing, as she ran her dealings with Rapid Films through her mind. She’d let her next in line, the chief operations officer, handle most of the assessment as he had seemed so caught up with the project. She'd joined the discussion in the later stages when she met the former owner and CEO of the company who painted such a rosy picture of its potential that she’d bought it – hook, line and sinker, as they say. He’d been a charismatic speaker and a brilliant negotiator but she’d always been a tough nut to crack, so why had she folded on this one?
But the thing that really baffled her was that she’d gone through the numbers, line by line, with her VP of Finance. It had looked like the new acquisition would turn a profit immediately. How could they have been so wrong?
And with competition heightening in the media industry, that was not a mistake she could afford to make.
With a hiss of frustration she got up and walked over to the window overlooking Rue Rene-Levesque below. She needed to clear her mind, put this behind her, at least for the moment. She drew in a deep breath and, absentmindedly, she began to twist the ring on her finger.
Suddenly conscious of what she was doing, she looked down at the band of gold glittering up at her. An involuntary smile softened the tight set of her lips and her mind immediately went to Sloane. She couldn’t help it. She still found it hard to accept that he had married her…her, of all people. With all the women he could have had, he had chosen her. He was so weird but she couldn’t be happier that he was. Because of him she was now happily married, working on getting pregnant and, wonder of wonders, having great sex.
Her smile widened into a grin. Who would have thought that she would have a bigger appetite for sex than Sloane Quest himself?
As she stared out the window her mind drifted back to the last time they made love on the island…on the starched white sand of their private beach…under the light of a tropical moon.
Yes, a tropical moon, because it had all seemed so surreal, with the distant chirps of crickets in the trees, the sound of the gentle breezes rustling the leaves overhead, the fragrant frangipanis filling the air with their perfume, and the soft twilight of the moon bathing their na**d bodies. They’d been bold enough to lie there on the massive towel they’d commandeered from the pool house, and they’d made love...over and over and over again. It was their own private beach, after all. And if a wayward stranger had happened upon them she would not have flinched because it was the last night of their honeymoon, their perfect night, and she never wanted it to end.
As the memories came floating back it drove all thoughts of the present from her mind and Melanie felt a subtle heat, a now familiar heat, rising up her body. Her heart picked up pace as the heat spread until it tickled a most intimate part of her anatomy. Good grief. She was standing in the middle of her office and she was horny as heck.
“May I come in?”
Melanie swung around just in time to see her assistant peeping around the door.
“I knocked but I didn’t hear anything so I decided to check if you were in.”
That must have been a really soft knock because Melanie hadn’t heard a thing. Or maybe she’d been so caught up in her heated memories that the sound had simply not registered.
“Are you okay?” Tamara asked, a look of concern on her face. “You look flushed. Are you coming down with something?”
“No, I’m fine.” Quickly, she turned away and walked back to her desk. “Did you need something, Tamara?”
“I just wanted to bring you this FEDEX package that just arrived. It’s probably the storyboards from the ad agency. I know you wanted to get them as soon as possible.”
“Great. Please leave it on top of the credenza. I’ll open it in a minute.” Then, adopting a very businesslike air, she reached for a folder in her desk and pretended to be engrossed in its contents. “Is there anything else?`` she asked, without looking up.
“N…no, that’s all,” Tamara replied, sounding nonplussed by her boss’s unusually cold reception. “I’ll go now.”
Melanie breathed a sigh of relief as she closed the door behind her. She glanced at the time at the bottom of her computer screen. Three thirty-six. Was that all? No matter that she had tons of work to do, she was ready to leave office for the day.
She raised her finger to her lips, her mind on Sloane as she wondered what he was doing just then. Right at that moment, was he as horny as she?
She smiled to herself then shook her head. In all her thirty-three years this was the first time she’d found herself scheming to ditch her duties and run off and jump into bed with a man. And it was all Sloane’s fault. He’d turned her into a wild woman.