Karen Kendall - Who's on Top?

“Coffee would be great,” he said. He accepted it with thanks, omitting sugar or cream. He focused on the hot, black stuff and not Jane O’Toole’s possible tastes in lingerie. Grow up, Sayers. But hell, he felt all of thirteen, having been sent to the principal’s office.

Ms. O’Toole mixed her own coffee with as many cancer-causing substances as she could scrape together and stirred the disgusting brew with a long stick, which she tossed into the trash. “Why don’t we go into my office?”

The other two women involved in the kinky undies discussion—a six-foot Harley babe and a prim china doll—had vanished behind their respective doors. Dom shrugged and followed Principal O’Toole into her den of discipline. They might as well get on with his knuckle rapping.

“Have a seat,” she told him. She walked to a filing cabinet and bent over the second drawer, retrieving a sheet of paper from a manila folder. “This is a permission form—I always videotape my first session with a client. Then I’ll make a couple of tapes midway through our course together and one during the very last meeting. It’s just to document progress. I don’t release them to anyone, under any circumstances. But I do need you to sign off on the form.”

Dom folded his arms across his chest and told her he didn’t like the idea at all.

“Why not?” she asked calmly. “Is there something about being taped that threatens you?”

“No, Ms. O’Toole. I don’t feel threatened. But I would like to discuss a few issues with you and I don’t necessarily want them on record.”

She sat in her cushy leather chair opposite him and crossed her legs. Then she folded her hands across a leather-bound notebook in her lap. A pen emerged from the bundle of fingers, punctuating her air of cool disapproval like an exclamation point. Damn Arianna. He’d already been tried, judged and found lacking. But all Jane O’Toole said was, “Fine.”

“I want you to know that I’m not a behavioral problem,” he said. He could hear the anger in his own voice; saw her note it. “I do not have insubordination issues. I am not a chauvinist jerk who is unable to work for a woman. Is that clear?”

“Crystal,” she said. “So now that you’ve told me what you’re not, how about telling me what you are?”

“I’m a red-blooded American guy who doesn’t enjoy being manipulated by a power-hungry bitch.”

Her jaw dropped open and he heard her teeth click together as she shut it. Gotcha.

“Mr. Sayers, I’ve been called a lot of things during the course of my career, but that is a first.”

“I meant Arianna DuBose, not you!”

“I’m relieved to hear it. So tell me more about your working relationship with Ms. DuBose.”

A nice open-ended question. Gave him lots of rope to hang himself. Well, what the hell. He already had. “Ms. DuBose is an ambitious sociopath, and I happened to get in her way.”

“I see.”

“No, I don’t think you do. I was in line for a promotion and should have been a shoo-in. Suddenly the other regional managers were eyeing me uneasily, and Arianna got the job. Now she’s got it in for me. She wants me gone.”

Jane O’Toole took a careful sip of coffee and set her cup down on a side table. She uncrossed and recrossed her legs, unconsciously exhibiting lean, muscular calves. “So you’re battling a certain resentment that Ms. DuBose was promoted ahead of you. I can see how that would make you angry.”

She didn’t believe him. Of course she didn’t. It all sounded like sour grapes to his own ears. And paranoid, to boot. Dom felt tension growing in every muscle, fresh anger seeping through his veins. Arianna had him just where she wanted him: by the short and curlies. But by God, he wasn’t going to let her win. He had to get through to this O’Toole woman.

Charm. Where had his charm gone hiding? He almost growled out loud. Due to the sheer injustice of the situation, his charm had been squished beneath his heel like an old piece of gum. But he’d better figure out how to scrape some off and resurrect it into a nice big pink bubble, or Jane would unwittingly help Arianna destroy his career.

Ugh. The harder Dom thought about charm, the more it eluded him. He was mad, damn it. Justifiably so. And worse, he was embarrassed. How dare Arianna send him to this woman, like a rowdy child in need of a paddling?

He got up out of his chair and paced Jane’s office a couple of times. She just watched him out of those brown eyes, schooled carefully to be dispassionate. But he could sense her judgment, and it wounded his pride.

“Ms. O’Toole, it’s very clear to me that you think I’m a swine.”

The lashes fluttered over those baby browns and she bit her lip. “No, of course not.”

He snorted, walked back to the chair he’d been sitting in and pounded the back of it with his fist. “Come off it. You think I’m a pig.”

She raised a brow. “Your choice of words, not mine.”

Dom bared his teeth at her. “And you’re right. I am angry. But not for the reasons you think. However, I’m too irate to discuss all of this with you at the moment, so I’m going to put an end to our session.” He turned on his heel, walked to the door and opened it.

Jane sat in her chair and made a couple of notes. Then she got up and followed him to where he was standing gazing down at the catalogue she’d tossed on the sofa by the door. He was unable to look away from the tiny silk G-strings available in hot-pink or midnight-black, the ones with the—

He heard the click as she clutched at her necklace. Turned to see the red flash into her cheeks once again. He raised a brow, knowing that he shouldn’t voice the words even as he said them. “It’s always best…not to dangle pearls before swine, Ms. O’Toole.”

JANE REACHED HER LIMIT WITH this comment. She banished the blush from her cheeks and removed her hand from her necklace. “No one dangled anything in front of you, Mr. Sayers. You rooted out the mud all by yourself. And it’s clear to me that you’re trying to knock me off balance so that I’ll let you run away.”

He froze. The faint devilry and arrogance that had risen with his mocking eyebrows disappeared, and his lips flattened. “Run away?”

She nodded and continued on the offensive. “As fast as you can get your snout out the door.” It was the only way to get him back into her office and address the issues at hand.

Sayers’s shoulders seemed to grow wider and a definite glint shone in his eye. “I don’t run from anything, Jane O’Toole. Not sociopathic bosses and not smug little psych majors with an ambition to fix what ain’t broke. Understand?”

Oh, but I will fix you, Mr. Attitude. You just don’t know it yet. All men need to be fixed! “Yes, Dominic Sayers, I believe I do. Now, since we’ve established that you’re not running away, let’s step back into my office—shall we?” Ha! I’ve got you now.

His eyes narrowed. He couldn’t walk out the door and still retain any self-respect. And he knew it. She restrained a smile. Was it her imagination or did every faint pinstripe on the man’s suit indicate a bullet trajectory—all of them aimed right at her?

Jane smiled at his back as he stalked once again toward her office. Hostility and annoyance buzzed around them like a thousand angry horseflies.

She dropped into her chair and made a couple more notes. This made her look official and professional and gave her a moment to think. Continue on the offensive, she told herself. Just take the bull by the horns. Maybe that way he’ll smash some excellent psychological china….

“So, Mr. Sayers. How long have you entertained hostile thoughts toward women? Does this date back to your childhood?”