Page 82 of Her Selfless Warrior (Omega Sky)
“Lark?”
She looked around the table.Where’s a pencil?She shot up off her chair and rushed back over to the desk and scrabbled through papers, pens, and pencils. When she found one, it wasn’t sharp enough. Lark found her computer bag on the floor, blindly reached in, and pulled out the small electric pencil sharpener. She slammed it on the desk then sharpened her pencil and started writing on the notepad.
“How the fuck did I miss this?”
She flipped more pages, and wrote notes in the margins, then went back to the first page and grinned. “You absolute motherfucker!”
All along he’d been acting like the damned martyr. As the SVP of Enterprise Solutions, he’d been defending the hundreds of engineers he managed with his dying breath when really, he was the puppet master of the whole damned operation. Lark would bet her entire retirement fund on it, but how in the hell would she prove it?
“You know, my source never told me that you like to eat graphite.”
Lark went to the first blank page in the notepad and started a diagram. If Schroeder really was the one who was organizing everything, then why was he funneling the sales through these chino-pant-half-wits? Lark drew a line between Harkins and Saudi Arabia. With his connections going back to his time working with the petroleum company he was the perfect guy to be selling there. And then there was Stanley, who she’d already—
“Hey!”
Lark glared up at Kostya as he pulled the pencil out of her mouth.
“Lark, you’re chewing this more than you’re writing with it,” he admonished. He leaned against the desk and crossed his ankles. “So what has you so in a twist?”
She grinned up at him. “Nothing has me in a twist, I’m actually untwisting,” she bounced in her chair. “Or I’m unraveling. Well not me, I’m fine, I’m sane. It’s not me unraveling, I’m beginning to unravel what the hell these limp-dicks have been up to.” She lunged for her pencil, but Kostya held it up over his head.
“Tut, tut, tut. No more pencil for you. You have eaten your quota of graphite for the morning.”
“Seriously, Kostya, give that back. I need it.”
He grinned down at her. “Explain why you need it, and I’llconsiderit.”
She stood up to confront him, then immediately realized her error. Her body was damn near plastered against his and if she lifted her arms to try to reach the pencil, not only would she fail, she would be pressing her breasts right against his chest.
“Go for it.” His voice was a rough whisper of seduction.
“You planned this,” she accused.
“Nope,” he shook his head. “But I’ve been trained to take advantage of situations as they arise.”
Lark took a half-step closer and pressed her stomach to his groin. “Yep, I’d say a situation has certainly arisen.”
Kostya threw the pencil across the room and grabbed her around the waist. “That’s what happens anytime you’re around, Woman. Now you have to pay the price.”
For just a moment she thought there was something she needed to be doing, but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember.
“Kiss me, Kostya.”
“Oh yeah.”
* * *
His littlesólncewas pissed.Kostya smothered a smile.
“If you blow this for me, I’m ripping your dick off. Do you hear me?” she damn near shouted as she marched her way across the parking garage at the MGM National Harbor casino.
“I hear you, Honey. I also think they did over there.” Kostya pointed to the group of retired ladies who were looking at them wide-eyed near the elevator. Lark stopped walking.
“I think we’ll take the stairs,” she whispered.
Kostya bit back a laugh and grabbed her hand. “Okay, pretty lady, let’s get this show on the road.”
“Tell me again why your friend had to come?”
