to locate her birth parents, April had found a family with the Mooneys. They’d become her family-by-love, as she liked to call them. She’d become a friend to John’s daughters and Auntie April to the grand-kiddies. Aside from occasional bouts of too much concern for her well-being, they were perfect. She honestly didn’t know what she would do without them.
No, she wasn’t going to practice her standing-up-for-herself skills with John. And he knew it.
Leaning back in his chair, he stared at her with dark eyes that saw right through her.
“Why are you so worked up about this job? What’s the real problem? I can’t help unless you tell me.”
Busted. April clasped her hands behind her back and stared hard at the Mooney family portrait. The last thing she needed was a case that would put her in direct contact with sheets—which would invariably lead to thoughts about what couples did between them.
But she couldn’t tell John that now, could she? Telling the truth would mean admitting she’d sworn off relationships that involved sex for the rest of her life because she was a disaster in bed. Bonafide hopeless. Evidenced by the fact that Jeff had nearly aspirated during their last sexual encounter, in the very whirlpool tub he’d sworn would help her relax.
In all fairness, April couldn’t have known he was going to lick her there. He’d been underwater, after all, and if she’d known he’d been perched so precariously on the bench, she would never had jumped, no matter how ticklish she might be.
But she hadn’t known, so she had jumped and Jeff had lost his balance, cracked his head and almost drowned.
Bum luck? Not exactly.
She’d had three lovers in the space of six years and enough near-misses to come to the conclusion that April Accidentally was simply too high-strung to have sex. She could barely stay in one place long enough to run a background check on a suspect.
She worked in front of a computer all day, true, but she didn’t sit, she stood, with the keyboard taped to a treadmill no less. The only time she ever got horizontal was while sleeping.
She simply couldn’t handle another romantic encounter that wound up with some form of CPR, or worse yet, a body. Jeff had claimed she was being ridiculous, accidents happened—especially to her, she’d silently agreed—and had refused to let her break up with him.
But that was a refusal more easily made than kept. April had broken off with him and sworn off men—for their protection and her peace of mind. After serious soul-searching, she’d made the decision to give up the one thing that she’d wanted all her life—her very own family. She’d never have a husband or children. She’d never even have an orgasm, for goodness’ sake.
But this was all need-to-know information that John didn’t need to know. Not only didn’t he need to know, she was fairly certain he wouldn’t want to know. The idea of his own daughters having sex had him waxing poetic about storks flying around with pink and blue bundles. She had no intention of admitting any of this. Not even to get out of this case.
April had handled losing her beloved adoptive parents to tragedy. She’d handled the defeat of sealed state records after an exhaustive search for her birth parents. She’d handled accepting that her future didn’t include her own family or happily-ever-after or mind-blowing orgasms.
She could handle going undercover to spy on Rex Holt. Even surrounded by sexy bedding and a slew of raunchy e-mail posts.
All things considered, life could be a lot worse.
She met John’s searching gaze and forced a smile. “I don’t have a problem with the sex. No problem at all. I’ll go undercover as the in-house marketing assistant.”
And try not to get nervous, cause accidents or think about the family she’d never have and all the sex she was missing.
2
To: Rex Holt (mailto:[email protected])
Date: 7 Mar 2003 08:55:41-0000
Subject: Interoffice Relations
Weekly group sex sessions will promote teamwork between departments!
Studies prove that sex promotes closeness and cooperation; group sex will offer a budget-friendly method of improving interoffice relations. The confidentiality clause of the P&P manual will protect all parties from personal repercussions.
Rex Holt frowned at his computer screen, right-clicked his mouse button and forwarded this and the accompanying 162 e-mail posts to the Luxurious Bedding Company’s president, Wilhemina Knox. Contemplating group sex as a viable support skill wasn’t exactly how he’d planned to start off his Monday morning. While he could live with the thought of two women pleasuring a male co-worker, the flip scenario made him cringe.
He found the effects of the sexy Sensuous Collection and these suggestive posts far too distracting for his taste. Trying to concentrate on work when his blood was maintaining a constant temperature somewhere between simmer and boil was proving damned difficult.
Reaching for his coffee mug, Rex took a healthy swig. Maybe caffeine would help. Then again, maybe not. At least not with a dozen promotional photos of the Kama Sutra Sports Set littering his desk. Bedding the company classified as “gaming sheets,” the 720-thread-count Egyptian cotton set was imprinted with adventurous sexual positions and included a game piece for consumers to spin and add variety to their erotic lives.
A variation of Twister, he supposed.
Averting his gaze from the zoomed images of couples with twining legs and thrusting parts, Rex gulped more coffee. At this rate he’d show up for his ten o’clock marketing strategy session with a hard-on.
Again, not exactly how he’d planned to start off his week. But then, this job at the Luxurious Bedding Company wasn’t turning out to be what he’d expected either.
The titillating sheet sets in the Sensuous Collection were the topic of every marketing strategy session, budget meeting and operational planning review. But Rex hadn’t felt any threat to his professionalism until some clown had started sending these suggestive posts through the company network, lending the whole project a decidedly raunchy edge.
Fetishes, fantasy role-playing, bondage, glory holes…the posts ran the gamut. Sex had become the topic of conversation among employees in corporate headquarters—over the water coolers, in the copy room and even on the lunch line in the cafeteria.
Sex on the brain, Wilhemina had called the phenomenon, which begged the question: who needed group sex in the conference rooms to improve interoffice relations?
No one, as far as Rex could tell. Everyone appeared to be relating fine. The warehouse supervisor had caught two employees testing out the stock in a shipping truck, and a petition urging executive management to implement the glory hole proposal had circulated through the departments. While no one had actually been bold enough to sign it, the petition had left more buzz in its wake that had spurred the sexy talk even hotter.
Unfortunately, Rex was no better than the rest of this bunch. Though he’d had no lapses in professionalism to his credit, he’d been thoroughly preoccupied with all the sexy distractions. Had he known that sex would start occupying a top slot in his thoughts when he’d contracted this project, he might have reconsidered
