Kelly Jamieson - TamingTara

“And he’s taking the job?” Her insides were cold and hollow.

Sasha shrugged. “Grandpa didn’t know what he’d decided to do.”

“Oh.”

Tara leaned back against the couch, her heart thudding painfully, her mind churning. He had another job offer. Just what he wanted. Napa was close to San Francisco.

Had he told Grandpa about his last job? It didn’t sound like it or Grandpa surely would have mentioned that to Sasha.

“Where is Grandpa?” she asked.

“He went out for dinner.”

“Oh.” Tara stood on rubbery legs. “I’m going up to my room for a while.”

“Are you okay, Tara?” Sasha’s perfectly groomed brows pushed together.

“Yes.” She forced a smile. “This is great, actually. You know I didn’t want Joe here. When he’s gone, Grandpa will have to realize I can run the business just fine.”

Except she wasn’t so sure of that anymore.

As she trudged heavily up the wide curving staircase, doubts and uncertainties weighed on her shoulders. In her room, she threw herself down to lie sideways across her bed and stared at the ceiling.

Joe had made himself so invaluable, the idea of taking back all those projects he’d assumed responsibility for made her body clench with panic. The tax audit, all the finance stuff, that lawsuit…God. Her stomach churned and she pressed a hand to it.

He was going to leave. And if she was going to be brutally, painfully honest with herself, she had to admit…she didn’t want him to.

Her throat tightened and ached and she closed her burning eyes. God. Not only did she need him at work, but she just…needed him. She’d fallen in love with him.

He was the only person who’d ever stood up to her, who was as strong and determined as she was, who hadn’t let her walk all over him. Other than Grandpa, of course. But Joe also had a way of making her feel special. Desired. He’d told her she was smart and beautiful, while all Grandpa’d ever done was make her feel useless and incompetent.

Her heart ached with thoughts of what he’d gone through. A man so strong and proud and career-focused had had everything snatched out from under him. He’d been left with nearly nothing, forced to rely on his parents, his grandmother to help him find a job for God’s sake, humiliated and beaten up. He was a good man. He didn’t deserve that. Impotent fury rose in her that he’d been dealt such a fucking lousy deal, along with a desperate need to do something—anything—to make it better for him.

She rolled off the bed and walked over to her briefcase sitting on the carpet near the door. She pulled out the folder on the soap production idea. She still hadn’t looked at what Joe had given her.

She sat on the side of the bed, opened the folder and started looking at the research and the numbers. Her eyes moved over one page, then another. She nodded. She calculated. She nodded again.

She closed the folder and stared unseeingly across the room. Her mind wandered back to the first day she’d met Joe. Her mouth twisted wryly in remembrance of what a bitch she’d been to him, not just that first day, but lots of days. Not telling him about meetings she’d set up. Sending him to look at paperwork that didn’t mean anything, wasting his time. But he hadn’t let her push him around. He’d dealt with her grouchiness with patient humor, challenged her, stood up to her, pushed her even to the point where she’d stormed into Grandpa’s office, hoping for his support, and had to return humiliated to face Joe. And had he been snotty about that? No.

Everyone liked him. Everyone in the office, everyone in the store, even their goddamn competitors liked him. His air of solid competence inspired confidence in him.

And now, looking at her soap proposal, she saw he hadn’t just trashed it. He’d done more than just research it and cost it out—he’d even explored things she hadn’t thought of, in an attempt to find solutions. He’d tried to make it work. For her. It just wasn’t economically viable.

He was right.

He was always right.

Except about her. About her supposed desire to submit.

She bent her head and gazed at her bare feet.

If this was the time for brutal honesty…she sighed and closed her eyes.

She did want to submit to him.

He was everything she’d ever dreamed of alone in her bed, those wicked dark dreams of sin and submission. She was the one who wanted to be tied up, held down, spanked until pain turned into pleasure. She wanted everything he’d tried to give her.

She knew why she’d held back. That was no mystery. Except now…the reason didn’t seem so important. Faced with Joe leaving and the burden of running the company on her own, battling with Grandpa endlessly about every little thing, surrendering to Joe didn’t seem like weakness…it seemed…necessary.

She looked up at the clock beside the bed. The play party at Le Château started in half an hour. Would Joe be there?

Joe leaned against the bar at Le Château, a glass of San Pellegrino in his hand, and surveyed the scenes. His head thumped in time with Enigma and he lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck. He wasn’t sure what he was doing there. He’d had some crazy idea of coming here, finding some willing submissive he could flog and fuck into next week to take out some of his frustration, but his responsibilities as a Dom wouldn’t let him do that. Plus there was nobody who really interested him that way. It all seemed too…easy. He attracted enough interest from some of the pretty little subs there tonight, but instead he stood alone at the bar, letting the music increase his headache.

He wanted to sit down. Weariness and disappointment and anger had sapped his energy. He found a comfortable arm chair and sank into it, letting his head relax against the back of it.

The tall slender blonde who walked into the room caught his attention. Probably because she looked like Tara, her honey-toned hair gleaming in the red and gold lights. But she was dressed in white and—holy crap, it was Tara.

She stood just inside the entrance, looking around, the white off-the-shoulder mini dress she wore hugging her curves.

Joe straightened, his heart sledgehammering so hard in his chest he could barely hear the music anymore. He waited for her to spot him. Had she come here looking for him?

Finally her eyes came to rest on him. Their eyes met in a collision he felt viscerally. Her lips parted. She hesitated. Then she started toward him on long bare legs, her feet clad in strappy white sandals that revealed pink polished toenails. He wasn’t a foot fetish kind of guy, but he had an urge to pay some attention to those pretty toes.

She stopped in front of him. Nerves shimmered in her eyes and her bottom lip trembled ever so slightly.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi, Tara.”

A pause thickened around them.

She curled her fingers around the small purse she carried—no flogger tonight—and her breasts lifted on a long inhalation. “I was hoping you would be here.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“About?”

She lowered her chin and looked at him through her eyelashes. “Could we maybe go somewhere else?”

“Where do you want to go?”

Her eyes darted around. “It doesn’t matter. Just somewhere…oh, never mind.”

And she went to her knees in front of him.

He stared at her, unmoving. What the fuck? His heart almost burst out of his chest.

Her head bent, her long golden hair curtaining her face, she set her little purse on the floor beside the chair and clasped her hands together in front of her.

“Tara.” He reached out a hand and lifted her chin. She met his gaze and the submission shining there sucked the breath right out of him.