there was plenty of evidence that not everyone had packed up and left. She heard muffled voices and the whirring sounds of copy and fax machines behind closed doors. She smelled the strong coffee still brewing for those who were planning a long night.
She slipped into an open elevator, grateful she was alone. That only lasted a couple of floors. On the third floor, a man she barely recognized stepped in. Then on the second floor, two men entered. Cara recognized one of them but didn’t know his name. She thought he might have been at the party at Branden’s place, but wasn’t quite sure.
They looked at her, then each other as if they were trying to keep from laughing. She ignored them and stared at the buttons until the G finally lit up and the doors slid open. As she exited, one of the men said, “Gotta thank our mutual friend for sending me that video link. I don’t know what the equivalent of an Emmy in porn is, but I’d vote for you.”
Cara stopped dead in her tracks, shock freezing her bones. She willed herself to keep walking, but she just couldn’t do it. Instead, she turned to face her accusers and studied them closely. They had bags under their forty-something-year-old eyes, broken blood vessels on the sides of their noses that indicated a lot of drinking or a lot of snorting, and bellies that protruded over the top of their pants.
Nothing she could say would make their lives any more pathetic, she told herself. She finally just turned and left.
Once she was out on the street she blinked back tears. She’d worked so hard to get where she was at, but a whiff of scandal had eradicated her reputation in less than twenty-four hours, making her into someone to insult. To jeer at. To look at in disgust. Just like her father, she was being unfairly charged and convicted of a crime she hadn’t committed.
But unlike her father, she wasn’t going to succumb to the pressure and become a victim.
She couldn’t change what had happened. But what now?
Her father had allowed the gossips to overrun his life. He’d hidden behind lawyers to protect him and had refused to fight to clear his name. She didn’t want that to be her.
No, she wanted to take charge.
She wanted to live her life the way she wanted—truly wanted—for a change.
And that meant Branden Duke.
But how she wanted him, she wasn’t quite sure. Yes, he’d triggered all her sexual instincts and desires—and then some—but her attraction to him went a little deeper. The way he almost toyed with her, reeling her in as if she were a fish hooked on a line but then letting her go…as if he himself were suddenly the fish and she in charge of the line…that sense of give and take, of trust, that’s what had her focused on him. Not just his drop-dead sexy body.
Branden Duke meant more to her than a man whose physique she desired.
She liked him.
It was as simple as that.
There was something compelling about him…something that drew her to him, made her want to learn more, propelled her to seek him out even as the steady part of her mind—the old part of who she was—said to steer clear.
She took a deep breath of the crisp night air, feeling reckless and thankful to the men in the elevator. They’d convinced her Branden was right—everyone already thought she’d slept with him. That meant she had nothing to lose by going after what she wanted.
But she had a whole lot to gain.
Dinner was just the beginning.
Chapter 10
Branden looked at the Seth Thomas clock on the wall over the fireplace in his living room. It was seven-forty. He’d already eaten the gourmet meal his personal chef had prepared and had put the remainder away in the Sub-Zero fridge. Time to accept Cara wasn’t coming. Funny how the realization made his chest burn with disappointment.
Probably for the best.
Yeah, he wanted to get to know her better in bed and out, but she was his employee. Plus, regardless of how strong his attraction to Cara was, he didn’t want a traditional relationship, and she seemed the kind who would. His mother had proven to him the hard way that marriage was a farce. To stand at the top of a church aisle, in front of God and family and community, and promise a lifetime of adoration and monogamy and all that bullshit not once, not twice,