Beg for Me (Be for Me 2)

“I really need my own s-s-space.” She gritted her teeth as her stupid stammer tripped her up.

“What, like all that room you had in Brooklyn?”

“Yeah.” All that room. “On m-my own.”

“Poor little introvert,” he mock soothed. “But it’s only me, it’s not like there’ll be twenty people making noise in an overcrowded open plan nightmare.”

‘Only him’ was way worse than that. ‘Only him’ was too intimate and her unruly libido liked it.

“You can have the big screen,” he said charmingly, looking like some angelic schoolboy sipping a milkshake. Except the milkshake was a lurid green and his eyes were beaming wicked thoughts right into her head.

“Great.”

She trailed after him into the large office. Watched as he took an iPad and phone to the sofa, set his already empty glass on the floor, sat and stretched his legs out in front of him, putting his body on show.

Min’s mouth dried. No wonder he was such a successful model. Even though he only ever shot for his own company, and occasionally for charity fundraisers, she knew other companies approached him all the time—via Twitter.

And she could see why. The guy’s arm muscles were incredibly defined, even if he was no longer a pro athlete, he clearly still worked out—for hours.

She drew a breath and turned away. Not going to look at him. Not talk to him. Not notice or be noticed.

How hard could that be?

She put her barely touched smoothie on the gleaming glass-topped desk and took the seat behind it. The computer was already switched on, so was the giant media screen on the wall—a business news channel was reporting some company’s latest acquisition in low volume, while stock market tickers scrolled along the bottom of the screen. Had he already been working this morning? It wasn’t yet eight.

Suppressing her curiosity, she clicked open the internet and started typing.

“You don’t need your passwords book?” he asked, that usual tease in his voice.

“You didn’t think it really had my passwords in it?” Min kept watching the social media manager load the relevant pages, but she sensed his slight frown.

“What does it have in it?” he asked.

“My best cookie recipes.”

There was a pause. “So why’s it called ‘passwords’?”

“To f-f-fool idiots like you,” she muttered. “My recipe book holds my passwords.” Most she held in her head anyway, it was only in case of emergency that she had that back-up plan in the index.

Logan suddenly sat up quickly, she turned to look at him.

Damn if he wasn’t so handsome it hurt.

He was leaning forward, his face lit up with that huge, wide smile that she’d only seen a couple of times. Way nicer than the usual slight, teasing curl of his lips—and frankly that was to-die-for as it was. And his eyes—so ice-blue, so sharp, so gorgeously set off by his dark hair.

So freaking striking she was rendered speechless and it had nothing to do with her stutter.

“I bet I know one of your passwords,” he challenged.

“Oh?”

“Caramel Cashew.”

She gaped. OMG she did use that in one of her passwords. “How?”

“You had the empty carton at your desk.” He sat back, clearly pleased with himself. “You’re not as smart as you think.” He waggled his eyebrows. “And I’m not as stupid.”

Yeah, well. She was learning that quick enough.

“But you’d have some number on the end,” he continued to muse. “Maybe 99, 007, 1234?”

Smart-ass. “No d-d-doubt your number would be 69,” she said acerbically.

“Naturally.”

She met his wicked smile for only a second then turned back to the computer.

Work. The reason she was staying here was to save her work. So she’d better get on with it.

No more distraction. No more desire.

She glared at her email inbox, scanning the messages. Blake, bless him, had emailed through pictures of the engagement ring design. She sharpened the images and scheduled them to post at good times. Then she worked on her daily list—re-tweeting, replying, pulling off activity reports, compiling the most relevant tweets and comments affecting her clients. She knew almost everything about her clients’ profiles on the internet and she’d been offline for over ten hours, the longest she’d been out since launching her business.

She tried not to listen to Logan as he took a call but it was impossible not to hear him as he debated the merits of holding or selling some kind of shares. Min didn’t know much about the stock exchange, but it was obvious Logan did. Less than a minute after one call ended, he took another. This time about some start-up that was seeking capital. All the while he tapped on the iPad screen and she heard the swishing sound as he sent email after email.

It wasn’t even eight in the morning and he was all over it.

“You’re very busy.” She couldn’t help commenting in a lull between calls. So curious. And if he was so freaking tech-savvy, why had he needed a social media slave in the first place?

“You’re surprised,” he answered sardonically. “Money makes money. Have enough of it, invest it well, it does the work for you.”

No way was it that easy. Many people had lost millions in bad investments.

“Believe it or not, my lifestyle isn’t that hedonistic. I’m careful-ish.” He misread the reason for her skeptical expression. “I don’t need to spend big to prove anything to anyone.”

“What?” She sent him a withering glance. As if this apartment wasn’t spending big? “So you have no jeroboams of champagne and edible gold leaf adorning your tarts?” she scoffed. “You d-disappoint me.”

“I know I do,” he murmured, but he didn’t look sorry about it. If anything he looked amused at her expense.

Min turned back to her work. One of her clients had a website update due, it’d take her some time to get perfect. Which was perfect for her to get stuck into.

But she wished she knew what Logan was plotting. Because he was definitely up to something, it was in his eyes every time he looked at her.

Finally she faced the task she’d been avoiding for almost two hours. The task she should have been onto first thing.

She went into Logan’s account and pulled up his dreaded Twitter feed.

“What d-d-do you want me to tweet for you today?” she reluctantly asked.

He sighed and lowered his iPad. “I don’t want you to tweet anything, but I suppose you have to.” He levered up from the sofa and walked over to her. “But can I not be a trending topic today?”

Min shot her focus back to the screen but she felt him at her back as he leaned in close to read the screen. He was so deliciously muscular and damn if she couldn’t feel the warmth emanating from him. Her cheeks started to burn. She was sexually frustrated, right? It had been too long. It wasn’t all him doing this to her...

Awkwardly she clicked on one of the URLS that had been shared too many times for comfort. Mortification ignited, sweeping a totally different heat over her. Her yearbook picture was on the internet. Her freaking awful yearbook picture from her freaking awful final year at her freaking awful school.

“Looks like they’ve hunted you down,” he said.

They sure had.

“Someone will step forward and talk about you,” he murmured too close to her ear. “What’s she going to say?”

“That I was quiet,” Min said softly. Oh this was awful. So, so awful.

“What else?”

She stared at that old picture of herself, so timid with her too-thick hair in a ponytail and a tight smile on her lips. She’d never spoken up. “N-n-nothing,” she mumbled. “I was quiet.”

End of story.

“No boyfriend? No smoking beneath the bleachers? No prom scandal? No illicit liaison with a student teacher?” He joked.

She shook her head, unable to speak.

But there was something to say.

She tried not to read the comments beneath the picture. But like that was possible? She clicked, scrolling further through the hundreds of judgments.

Logan suddenly put his hand over hers, taking control of the computer and clicking that page away. Then he turned to lean against the desk, to face her, close enough to obscure half the screen anyway.

Min restrained the urge to push her chair back. He didn’t need to know how bothered she was by his nearness.

“What about your family?” he asked.

Had he read some of those comments? The ones mentioning her mother?