Brenda Jackson - The Elliotts - Mixing Business with Pleasure

He grinned and lifted his mug in salute. “It was a good article, but I knew you’d find a way to make it better.”

“Thanks.” His praise warmed her almost as much as the hot chocolate. Sinking into his green gaze, she caught herself. She might need more than a distance rule with Gannon. A time limit, too. “If you’ll excuse me so I can get back to it …. ”

“You’re hinting for me to go.”

“Smart man,” she said and moved to sit behind her desk.

“Thanks for the hot chocolate, Erika.”

“You’re welcome.” She forced herself to look at her computer screen as he left the room. “I’ll get the mug from you another time.”

She focused her attention on the article for thirty minutes and then stretched as she glanced at her frog clock. She looked out the window, down to the street below. The traffic appeared lighter. She should be able to catch a train home without fighting the extra riders who usually took a bus or car. Wrapping her scarf around her neck, she pulled on her coat and hat. She grabbed her purse and cut off her lamp and light, then left her office.

She couldn’t avoid passing Gannon’s office on the way to the elevator. “Night,” she called without stopping.

“If you’ll wait a minute, I’ll give you a ride home.”

The offer stopped her in her tracks. Normally she would choose to avoid riding in a vehicle with Gannon because of her two-foot rule. But declining a chauffeur-driven ride home in a toasty-warm vehicle that would deposit her at her front door as opposed to walking two blocks in sleet from the train station would be insane.

“Thank you. I’ll wait,” she said.

Gannon appeared from his office in a long black wool coat with a cashmere scarf bearing his initials. “Just talked to my driver. He said there are outages all over the place. I’m glad my building has its own emergency generator.”

“I don’t usually have a problem with losing power. When I do, it only lasts a couple of hours. I can live with that, although I was looking forward to using my electric blanket tonight.”

“TDH can’t take care of that?” he asked, punching the elevator button.

“I’m sure he could if I invited him,” she said, feeling prickly at his repeated references to Ger, even though Gannon didn’t know who Ger was. “But the cocktail party was canceled, so he accepted a rain check. Why are you so interested?”

The elevator doors whooshed open and they stepped inside. “Just making conversation. Are you sensitive about discussing your TDH?”

“No,” she said but felt as if she wasn’t telling the truth. She pushed back. “How’s Lydia?”

He did a double take. “Lydia?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I think you dated her after you dumped me.”

“I didn’t dump you,” he said.

“Yes, you did,” she said. “I can repeat the dump conversation word for word for you if you like. ‘Rumors about my involvement with you are getting back to me. I think we need to cool things down. This wouldn’t be good for my reputation or yours.’”

They arrived on the ground level and the doors opened. “The car’s here. We can finish this discussion later,” he said and led the way.

Wind and sleet slapped Erika’s face as she saw the driver appear to open the car door. “Good evening, Mr. Elliott. Ma’am.”

“Sorry to drag you out in this mess,” Gannon said as he waited for Erika to slide into the backseat.

She nearly moaned at the toasty temperature inside. A jazz CD played. Erika wouldn’t mind spending the night in such comforting surroundings. Getting a cab would have been nearly impossible, and walking those blocks to her brownstone would have been a freezing pain in the booty.

He turned to Erika. “Did you ever think I ended our relationship more for you than for me?” he asked in a low voice.

She looked at him in surprise. “No,” she said in a quiet but blunt voice. “You told me from the beginning that we had to be discreet because your grandfather frowned heavily on Elliotts getting romantically involved with coworkers.”

“Right,” Gannon said. “Ever thought whose reputation would suffer most if our relationship had become public?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. “No,” she admitted.

“Who do you think would suffer more? Me? An Elliott? Or you?”

“A non-Elliott,” she said. A non-Elliott without a tenth of Gannon’s power, let alone his family’s power.

“I don’t want the press involved in my sex life.”

“But what about Lydia?” she asked. “Her name and your name were all over the place after you dumped me.”

“It’s none of your business, but I was never intimately involved with Lydia. She didn’t work for EPH and she loves making the society pages.”

“She’s quite beautiful. The two of you made a lovely couple,” she said in a voice that couldn’t hide her resentment.

“You still don’t get it, do you?” he asked, shaking his head. “I went out with Lydia after you and I broke up to throw the attention away from you. I learned a long time ago that I didn’t want the press commenting on my intimate relationships. On people I care about. So I keep the people I care about out of the limelight. I keep it private.”

She looked at him for a long moment while his explanation sank in. Was he saying that he had cared about her? That their relationship had meant something to him?

“Since I graduated from college I’ve had a goal of getting engaged before the press could even guess at the woman I’ll marry.”

Erika shook her head. “I don’t know, Gannon. With your family’s high profile, that may be nearly impossible.”

Gannon gave a half grin. “Maybe. But remember, nearly impossible is what Elliotts do best.”

She couldn’t argue with that. Her mind still humming with what he’d said about protecting the women he’d really cared about from the press, she stared out the window. As the driver turned onto her street, Erika noticed that the entire block was dark. No light emanated from the doorway of her brownstone. Her stomach sank.

“Looks like the power outage hit your place,” Gannon said.

“Yes, it does,” she said and shrugged. “It probably won’t last long.”

“Probably not,” he agreed, and a full silence dangled between them, growing and swelling with each passing second.

“You could come over to my place,” he offered.

She immediately rejected the idea for the sake of her sanity, her two-foot rule and her time limit, which she hadn’t come up with yet. “That’s nice of you but not necessary. I’m sure it won’t last long. I’ve got a little battery-operated TV-radio that my father gave me for Christmas. He even gave me batteries, so I know it works. I have great quilts and snuggly socks.”

“I know,” he said, his voice holding an undercurrent of sensuality. “I remember.”

Erika felt a punch of awareness in her stomach. It hit her so hard she instinctively covered her belly with her hand.

She ignored his response and reached for her door handle as the driver pulled the car to a stop. “Thank you for the ride. It was a treat to dodge mass transit and the snow.”

“Just curious—why did you accept the offer of a ride when you wouldn’t accept the offer to sit out your power outage in my apartment?”

“Well, there are two things you never turn down. A ride home during a snowstorm in a nice, warm vehicle as long as you know you’re not riding with a serial killer.”

“And the second?”

“A trip to South Florida in the winter.”

“But you do turn down the offer of a warm apartment with power while your place is likely to be cold and dark. As long as the offer isn’t from a serial killer.”