“I’m fine. Goodness.” Shit, no she was not in any way, shape or form fine. “Please sit down, Caroline.” If he recognized her, everything she’d worked for, the partnership offer she expected to receive, the amazing life she’d built herself could come to a crashing halt.
Swire & Yallop did not promote former groupies who’d slept their way around every concert venue in Australia to half-million dollar salaries.
“Mark Grippen, this is Mina Grady,” Caroline said with a smile towards their guest as she eased into her seat. “She’ll be taking over my clients while I’m on maternity leave.”
Caroline had said they were meeting a new client, MG Holdings, and the last thing Mina thought MG would stand for was Mark Grippen, the drummer from Lost Property. Grip had been at the top of her list o
f drummers, always and only drummers, she’d wanted to sleep with. He’d been so incredibly aspirational that she’d promised to quit the groupie lifestyle and get on with her real adult life if she could bag him.
And bag him she did. One glorious night that had lasted well into the next day, a full sixteen hours of food, sex and fun that had been goodbye to her rock and roll life and hello to using her finance degree and becoming her own rock star.
More than a decade later, she was one successfully managed maternity leave support stint for her managing partner away from achieving her goal and she wasn’t about to jeopardize that because of the inconvenient reflex action of damp underwear.
She put her laptop on the wooden table and scooped to collect her notepad and cardholder, her pen wasn’t in sight and her phone was, heck, where was it—uh, under the table.
“Excuse me just a moment,” she said to the room at large, not yet prepared to look at Grip and going to her knees. Only to find herself crawling toward him as he was on his knees reaching for her phone from his side of the table.
“I’ve got you,” he said, laughing sea green eyes meeting hers, big hand grasping her phone and disappearing it in his palm.
Oh, he so did.
He’d had her in those sixteen hours all the ways it was possible to have a person you’d plucked from a lineup of random hopefuls, and it had been glorious. There was a good reason, Grip had been her Mount Everest. Those massive hands, the deep chest and muscled arms, the ripped abs and thick quads. The way he played those wicked licks, effortlessly as he lived in the beat and it returned the favor by gracing him with the superpower of raw talent, explosive energy and extreme sexual attraction.
She could not get her tongue to work. He could probably see right down her top to the lace of her bra from this position.
“It’s all good,” he said, looking directly at her, making everything below the waistband of her pencil skirt pull tight.
She got the words lucky and carpet out of her mouth but he’d already moved and all she could see of him was his shins in denim and his no doubt wildly expensive collector’s edition trainers.
Lucky carpet. Dear Mary M. She had to give this man solid investment advice, ensure he made money from his existing fortune, and she couldn’t manage her legs and forgot what words were around him.
Pull it together Philomina Elizabeth Grady. It was one night, a million years ago and you were a different person with a different name, and he’s probably slept with a hundred million women. He is not going to remember you, and you have a date tonight with a very eligible lawyer.
She got to her feet and smiled at Caroline. She could rescue this with a witty quip and scream into her pillow about cosmic injustice later. She’d focus on the business at hand and once they got into the facts and figures it would all be suitable for work and she could sit back and enjoy the not so suitable for work secrets she had exclusive knowledge to.
The fact that she knew where Mr. MG Holdings liked to be touched, what he sounded like when he came, how he liked to fuck long and hard, what his tattoos meant and exactly how much fun you could have with his cock piercing.
“Despite that memorable entrance, clumsy is not the brand of my investment advice. I promise I’ll only ever offer you elegant solutions. Shall we get down to it?” she said, hiding her wince in pulling out a chair, sitting, rolling it toward the table and opening her laptop, because getting down to it sounded like an invitation to something not appropriate for a boardroom.
Performance appraisal D minus. At least her heart had stopped trying to make a hussy out of her by opening the buttons of her silk shirt and her mouth appeared to be in rough working order.
She risked looking at her new client and her brain superimposed an image of Grip shirtless, drenched in sweat, maniacal grin, arms flying over his rims, on top of the one of him leaning back in his chair, one sleeve-tattooed arm lying on the table, wearing a plain dark blue t-shirt that made his eyes pop and a bemused expression that made her suck in a deep breath before he stood and slid her phone across the table to her.
As she reached for it their hands grazed and she felt color flood her face. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
Christ, he shouldn’t be allowed to say that. She dropped her gaze to her laptop keyboard and pulled on her professional reserves to say, “Why don’t you tell us what your priorities are, er, Mark?” only just catching herself from calling him, Grip like his fans did.
She was no longer a fan in any real sense. She didn’t go to gigs, didn’t read everything ever written about him and his band, didn’t follow him on social media or burn brain cells plotting how she might meet him, sleep with him, end up friends with him. She’d put all that aside along with dying her hair black, flashing her tits, drinking till she didn’t care what anyone thought of her and wearing the most revealing clothing she could get away with and still have all her vital parts covered, most of the time.
That’s not to say she hadn’t been aware of his rise to stardom from the drummer in a scrappy but promising pub band to global success. She’d have had to be dead not to have known Lost Property had hit the big time.
She’d always known he was the bomb. The best of the best and that’s why he’d been at the top of her drummers to fuck list and why she’d retired after their time together. It wasn’t ever going to get any better than bedding Mark Grippen.
Although managing his investment portfolio was a nice upgrade given the circumstances.
As he tapped his tablet and pulled up scribbled notes, she could see he was focused on the matter at hand and she was in absolutely no danger of being discovered, until he looked up, quirked his head to the side, studied her across the table and said, “Mina, I have the strangest feeling we’ve met before.”