Ambi’s eyes sparked. “How do you know I don’t have any employees?”
He shrugged as casually as he could while he cursed himself inwardly for being massively stupid. Then again, he’d always been pretty stupid when it came to Ambi. At least in the tongue-tied, fall over your feet, hopeless kind of way. She’d owned him, every bit of him, from the first time he set eyes on her crossing the college campus with a butt load of books in her arms, her black hair trailing behind her like a gothic cloak.
“I don’t. I was just saying. You’ll have to hire more, you’ll have so much business coming in. I imagine that since you’re here in person, you do most of the work yourself.”
Ambi cocked her head to the side. She gave him two seconds in which she pretended to consider his offer before she lifted her right hand and flipped him off. Right there in his own conference room after she’d just tumbled so ungracefully to the floor. In a freaking dress. She had the nerve to flip him off and laugh in his face. Except she wasn’t laughing. She was dead serious. She’d rather spit on him than accept his money or his offer to help her.
“Please. Let me make it up to you in any way I can. Ambi I-”
“Stop.” Her bird changed to a flat open palm that she held up like a stop sign. “Nope. Not taking your money. Not taking anything from you. I tried that once. It didn’t work out so well. Really, that was your loss and not mine.” She swept up to him, so close that the intoxicating scent of lemons reached him when he breathed in. He pressed a little harder into the door. “Oh, and Trey,” Ambi murmured. “It really is your loss. Now. Get out of the way before you embarrass yourself.” Her eyes flicked down, down to his slacks where his cock was trying to high five her for taking a stand.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. None of the meetings had gone down how he thought it was going to go. The cheque still sat, the amount unfilled, on the board room table. Worse, he was pretty sure that his normal bronzed complexion was ten shades of scarlet.
“Fine.” He stepped to the left, leaving the door open. “But you will plan this party. We’re not done here.”
“Maybe you aren’t, but I am.” With another pointed glance at his groin, and a loud scoff, like what was there didn’t impress her at all, Ambi flipped her hair, set her tote on her shoulder, and stalked out of the room.
Trey wanted to go after her, but he’d had about as much humiliation as he could handle for the hour. Cursing under his breath, he slapped the cheque off the table and slammed it into his pocket. Ambi’s sea glass eyes still haunted him as he stomped his way back to his office.
CHAPTER 3
Amberina
Gross. Just- just gross. Fucking Trey Hartman.
No, just Trey Hartman. The f-bomb and Trey’s name didn’t belong in the same sentence. It was bad enough the creep tried to trap her into some stupid contract, planning a wretched party. It was bad enough that he’d obviously looked into her. That was creepy in itself, but then he had to come into that board room looking like a gorgeous stalker and she had to react all wrong and get so flustered that she literally flipped right off her chair, and then he had to go and make it obvious that for the past five years, he’d probably used her as spank bank material by popping a very obvious hard-on right in front of her.
Ambi smacked her steering wheel with an open palm. She relished the sting and focused on the pain. Anything was better than thinking about Trey and his slacks. Or about anything they’d done in the past. She would have liked to say he had a small dick and she’d faked it every single time. She could lie to herself about a lot of things, but that wasn’t one of them.
“Why?” She smacked her steering wheel again. Then again. A third time. A fourth. “Why, why, whyyyyyy?”
Overnight she’d made some plans for that money that was supposed to be coming her way. She actually did plan on hiring someone. Worse, she was going to bonus herself and treat her mom to a week in Mexico right after Christmas as a surprise. She’d even found a perfect resort for a budget price.
A rap at her window scared her out of her skin. She realized she probably looked wild-eyed and crazed as she rolled down her window to find a middle-aged man with a big paunch and a complexion that was a tad too red along the cheeks and nose, bending at her window.