CHAPTER FIVE
CAMERONWATCHEDJACKSONdisappear in silence. Only after the door closed did he breathe a sigh of relief.
He turned back to his team. Each was watching him with varying degrees of amusement on their faces.
“Well, that was interesting,” said Simon with a grin. “And informative.”
Derek raised his eyebrows. “I’m not convinced you’re going to make it through thisdinner without exploding, let alone two weeks. But it’s a fun show to watch.”
They all snickered. Cameron pressed his lips together.
“I don’t know why you’re so wound up, Cam,” said Max. “So she’s hot. That should make the next few days much more entertaining. Though I don’t get the feeling she’s the type to—”
“Shut the hell up, all of you,” said Cameron.
All three of them laughedat him. He grumbled a few curses under his breath.
“Come on, Cameron. You gotta admit this is a little funny,” said Simon. “We’ve been in a shitload of intense situations, and you have never once shown signs of cracking. But one day with an attractive woman telling you what to do and you’re getting ready to detonate.”
“Hilarious,” growled Cameron. “It’s only my company that’s on the line.”
That sobered them all up a bit.
He heaved out a long breath. Any time he had gotten involved with someone he’d worked with, he had always waited until the job was over. And it only took one night to scratch that itch before it was gone. So why the hell wasn’t this under control?
All afternoon, he had told himself that once the shock of seeing her in the office wore off, everything wouldreturn to normal. But she’d ended up in his arms more than once since then. This day was almost over and he was still far from under control.
The last straw was the walk along the harbor. Talking as if they were on some sort of date. As if she and her firm weren’t hired by Harlan Blackmore to get Cameron back in line. But as soon as the restaurant came into sight, reality had hit him. Shewas here because Cameron’s successes at Blackmore Inc. were reminders of his father’s failures.
He had to get his shit together.
Derek sighed. “I get that you can’t stand what the board is doing, but like you said, it’s just a couple weeks. You’ve been in far worse situations. And maybe she can help show the board how important the monitoring side of the business is becoming.”
“Maybeyou could try to just be decent to her,” said Simon. “That might work. Just a thought.”
What was he supposed to say? That he had already put their company on the line by screwing the woman that could torpedo their jobs? And now he couldn’t stop thinking about what else he wanted to do with her, to her. At least they hadn’t gotten into anything dirtier...
“Here she comes,” Simon murmured.
Jackson sat down and flipped through her notepad to a bullet-pointed page. She read her first point and began with questions about the team’s daily routines. Her voice was clipped and professional, and she didn’t once glance in Cameron’s direction. He didn’t hear a word she said.
Just try to be decent to her? What the hell diddecentlook like when just waiting next to her for the elevatorwas enough to get him hard? He was supposed to spend the next week alone with her, on full alert, never once slipping up. That alone was bad enough, but struggling through this in front of his team was pushing him over the edge fast.
Even the way Max was looking at her now made his blood boil. And Max wasn’t even trying to pick her up. What the hell was wrong with him?
“It’s all at yourplace, isn’t it, Cameron?” said Derek.
Cameron blinked. “Sorry. What’s at my place?”
“The master list of all clients,” said Derek, raising an eyebrow.
Jackson looked at him, all business. “I need it for the conference with the board tomorrow morning.”
Cameron shook his head. “It doesn’t leave my apartment. That stipulation is written into some of our clients’ contracts.”
“Ineed to verify the photos against the client list,” she said.
“Not going to happen,” said Cameron. “You’ll have to trust us when we tell you they’re clients.”
