Market for Love

Market For Love By

Jamaica Layne

MARKET FOR LOVE

Jamaica Layne

2

© copyright by Jamaica Layne, Oct. 2007 Cover art by Alex DeShanks, Oct. 2007 ISBN 978-1-60394-098-6 New Concepts Publishing Lake Park, GA 31636 www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

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Chapter One “I am so dead.” That’s what Miranda Johansson, the sole female stock research analyst at Maxwell Moore & Company, LLC, whispered one Tuesday morning—a Tuesday that would surely soon be known as Black Tuesday in financial circles. “I am so, so, dead,” Miranda moaned. The market had just crashed. Well, not the whole market, exactly—just the entire telecom sector, which also just so happened to be the area of the market Miranda Johansson’s stock research focused on. And to be perfectly accurate, the telecom sector hadn’t just crashed. The telecom sector had actually sunk so low it was resting somewhere in the ninth circle of Hell, right next to Dante, Lucifer, and Julius Caesar. Miranda watched the share prices of the thirty-two telecom stocks she covered plummet farther and farther down on the black-and-green screen of her trading terminal. When all the shares in her research universe sank to below ten percent of their opening price, she put her head down on her keyboard. She thought she might cry. In fact, she did cry. A little. Not out loud. Not enough to need a nose-blow or a hanky. But enough so that two big fat salty tears squeezed their way past her scrunched-up eyelids. And those two big, fat, salty tears were more than enough to send her $15.98 eyeliner and $32.00 Super-Luscious-Curl mascara running right down both her cheeks in two greasy black rivers. But she was too wrapped up in the eighty-seven million or so dollars she’d just lost for her clients to know that. “I am so fucking dead.” This time she didn’t whisper or moan. This time, she screamed. Screamed, loud enough to bring Annabelle--her emotionally astute, middle-aged personal assistant--trotting right into her office. “Miranda? Miranda, hon, are you okay?” “Mrrrghhhh,” Miranda told her keyboard. The ‘ESC’ button jammed itself into her left eyelid. “Miranda? Are you going to issue a special First-Call bulletin on the—ahhhm—price adjustments?” Price adjustments. Miranda silently thanked God that Annabelle was too diplomatic to call it what it really was—a career-destroying clusterfuck of a total, massive, stock implosion. Miranda jerked upright, the pattern of her keyboard decorating the entire left side of her face. “Yeah, Annabelle. I definitely think a First Call bulletin would be, um, appropriate.” Miranda had to bite her lower lip to keep from bursting into tears again. She knew that the day’s portfolio losses of any investor who’d been following her stock advice would exceed 90 percent. With that kind of single-day hammering, Miranda figured this First-Call bulletin could very well be the last one she’d ever write, to say nothing of the hate mail and obscene phone calls she was sure to start receiving from Maxwell Moore and Company’s clients any minute. She made a mental note to start working on her resume.

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Annabelle pulled a steno notebook and pen from somewhere in her ample cleavage. “Shall I start taking down that First Call bulletin now, hon?” Miranda sighed. The still-plummeting numbers on her trading computer screen were making her dizzy. She needed a coffee break, and fast. Well, more like a four-martini break. But drinking during market hours was strictly against Maxwell Moore & Company policy. With guzzling gallons of alcohol out of the question, Miranda decided she’d need at least three double-espressos just to get through the rest of what was sure to be a horrendous day. “I’ll be back in five minutes, Annabelle. I’m going downstairs to the coffee shop for a little while. Hold my calls.” “Sure thing, Miranda. But wait just a sec ….” Miranda ignored her. She got up from her desk and headed out of her office and straight down the hall toward the elevators. **** “Three double-espressos, please,” Miranda barked at the purple-dreadlocked college student behind the counter of her building’s lobby coffee shop. “With soy milk and a dash of hazelnut syrup. And can you put all three double-espressos in the same big cup, please? Just leave off the lid. I’ll drink it here.” The purple-dreadlocked clerk didn’t acknowledge Miranda’s order. He just stared at her. Miranda rolled her eyes. She didn’t have time for this. “Pardon me, but are you hard of hearing?” “No,” the glassy-eyed, purple-haired clerk said after a long, awkward moment. “Sorry. I was just kind of freaked out by your--face, that’s all.” “My face? Are you implying there’s something wrong with my face?” Miranda’s temper—short in even the best of circumstances—let loose in full post-market-crash fury. “Because if you are honestly going to stand there making comments about my face when your hair looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, then you have really got a lot of nerve, buddy.” Purple Dread Head’s mouth popped open for a moment, then clapped shut with a click. Silently he turned his back on Miranda and began frothing some milk for her espresso order. “That’s more like it,” she said under her breath. “Lazy freaking hippie.” Tossing petty insults at low-paid service workers wasn’t exactly Miranda’s style----in fact, she’d put herself through business school slinging lattes at this coffee chain’s main competition----but losing eighty-seven million dollars’ worth of her clients’ money in one day wasn’t exactly her style, either. With that kind of bad news weighing her down, Miranda figured she was entitled to blow her stack a little bit. She stepped down to the end of the counter to await her order, seething, and grinding her teeth in time to the espresso machine. As she stood there, gathering up about nineteen packets of sugar for what would probably be the most intense shot of caffeine in her life, Miranda felt a sharp tap on her shoulder. “I really think you owe the Rastafarian behind the counter an apology, miss.” Miranda whirled around. A tall man stood just to her left, carrying an extra-large mug of hot chocolate complete with about four inches worth of whipped cream on top. A tall, slim, trim, well-dressed, and very attractive man. Dark hair in an immaculate, well-combed cut. Ice-blue eyes. Jawline so angular and sharp it was probably capable of shredding lettuce. Broad shoulders, square chest, dimpled chin. A stop-your-heart-right-between-beats kind of tall, attractive man. In other words ….

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Drop. Dead. Gorgeous. A drop-dead-gorgeous man who also looked about two seconds shy of tossing his hot chocolate right into Miranda’s face. “Well?” he hissed. “Are you going to apologize to Mr. Dreadlocks there or not?” Miranda felt her cheeks go hot. “I don’t see why I should. He insulted me, after all.” “Actually, I think he was trying to do you a favor,” this drop-dead-gorgeous man said. He looked to be in his mid-to-late thirties, and wore an obviously custom-made silk gabardine suit underneath a long, black cashmere trenchcoat that was open at the front. Typical attire for the lobby of Miranda’s building—a LaSalle Street skyscraper in Chicago’s financial district. Miranda pegged him as a broker at one of the many small trading houses in the building, or maybe a tax and securities lawyer from the professional tower across the street. “You should probably go take a look in the mirror,” the man said, softening his tone a bit. “I’ll keep an eye out for your triple-espresso if you like. I hope you don’t intend on drinking it all yourself, by the way. Drinking that much caffeine in one shot has been known to kill people of your size.” The comment made the very petite Miranda self-conscious. She drew her rail-thin, fivefoot-one frame up as high as she could on her two-inch kitten heels. “And how exactly would you know that, sir? Are you a caffeine expert or something?” Miranda tried to sound authoritative, but for some reason her voice only came out as a high-pitched squeak. Something about this tall, well-dressed, drop-dead-gorgeous man was making her feel odd. Very odd. “Call it personal experience,” the man replied. “I’ll explain when you come out of the bathroom.” “Sure, fine,” she shot back. “I’ll humor you. Keep an eye on my sugar, too, why don’t you?” Miranda tossed the brown paper packets back onto the counter with a huff. The devastatingly handsome gentleman raised an eyebrow at this, but did not comment. Miranda headed straight to the back of the coffee shop for the restroom, ignoring the quizzical stares she got along the way from several coffee-sipping patrons. When Miranda saw her reflection in the bathroom mirror, she wanted to crawl right into the toilet and die. The expensive eye makeup she’d treated herself to the week before was now decorating her cheeks, her chin, even a couple smudgy spots on her forehead. Some of it had settled into the grooves her computer keyboard had made on the left side of her face. Apparently, Miranda had been crying over the day’s multimillion-dollar financial losses a little more than she’d thought. Either that, or the claims of the overpriced makeup of being ‘100% waterproof’ were highly exaggerated. No wonder the purple-headed Rastafarian had stared at her. Miranda’s face looked like a cross between a zebra and a slightly melted, dyed-black honeycomb. “Aggggghhhhh!” Miranda pumped a massive amount of liquid soap from the dispenser on the wall and tried to scrub the nightmare off her face. But all that did was melt her lipstick and foundation into the already running mess of her eye makeup, making her look like a psychedelic clown. “Aggggghhhhhh!” she screamed again. More scrubbing and soap just made it worse, and the colorful mess started dripping onto the collar of her designer suit. She dried her hands and face on the roller towel as best she could, and gave up. Miranda’s face looked about as good right now as her clients’ stock portfolios did.

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Oh well. Head held low, Miranda shuffled back out into the shop, keeping her eyes on the ceramic tile floor. Her gigantic quintuple-espresso sat ready on the counter. She reached for it without looking up. The Rastafarian was there, wiping the counter with a thick white barman’s towel. “The guy in the fancy suit paid for your order,” he said. “So you’re all set. By the way, I think what you’re doing with your makeup is pretty cool. It makes a great sticking-it-to-the-man statement, if you know what I mean.” Miranda sucked in her breath. She was a button-down, reserved, very conservative stock analyst. She didn’t want to stick anything to any man, ever. People who went into finance generally didn’t enjoy ruffling anyone’s feathers—at least, anyone who had ample supplies of money to go along with their feathers. “I’m sorry I yelled at you before,” she said in a small voice, mortified. “No worries, ma’am,” the purple-headed Rastafarian chirped and went back to wiping down the countertop. Ma’am. This just embarrassed Miranda even more. At thirty-one, she still felt too young to be called ma’am. She was a miss, or a perhaps even a mademoiselle. Not a ma’am. Miranda started to walk out of the Starbucks, hoping to find some dark, abandoned corner where she could drink her giant espresso and hide her hideous wreck of a face for a while. Just as she was about the cross the threshold back out into the lobby, however, she felt a strong hand on her shoulder. “Looking for some privacy?” a familiar male voice said just behind her left ear. She turned her head towards the voice without looking up. She recognized the polished wingtips, gabardine slacks, and cashmere trenchcoat as those belonging to the tall, blue-eyed, rip-youreyes-out-he’s-so-hot man who’d just paid for her coffee. “Umm,” was all she could manage. This man—this incredible, magnificent specimen of the male animal—was making her feel very, very odd. Pleasantly odd. The kind of odd one feels just after getting kissed for the first time. “I have access to a private office suite on this floor,” he said, his voice even and businesslike. “Private bathroom, too, which should also have some better facial soap available. You can clean up, take a breather, whatever you need to do. Follow me.” Without waiting for Miranda’s reply, the man took her by the hand and gently led her across the lobby. Before Miranda knew what hit her, she was whisked into a small, luxurious office, complete with leather-on-mahogany furniture, Oriental rugs, and a six-foot-high decorative fountain. “The bathroom’s over there,” the man said, pointing to a doorway just to the right of the fountain. “If there’s anything else I can get for you, let me know.” “Umm,” Miranda mumbled again, and made a beeline for the bath. Her eyes widened as she closed the heavy paneled door behind her and took in the posh powder room. Everything was made of marble—even the ceiling. The fixtures were spotless polished white porcelain. On the gleaming countertop was an array of high-end toiletries—and a few brands even the hopeless shopaholic Miranda hadn’t heard of. There was a basket of clean, folded silk-terry washcloths, and another, smaller basket full of cotton balls and cotton swabs. There was even a laundry pen for removing clothing stains, a lint brush, and a miniature fabric steamer. After some consideration, she chose a bottle of astringent and a cotton ball to strip off her ruined makeup. It worked perfectly. It even helped exfoliate the top layer of her skin, revealing a healthy glow she’d never been able to achieve with hundreds of dollars’ worth of other cleansers. Miranda made a mental note to pick up a bottle of the stuff next time she was at the mall. She used the

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laundry pen to clean the makeup off the collar of her suit, and then applied some moisturizer to her face, dabbing some extra around her eyes in hopes it would help reduce the puffiness all her crying had caused. Satisfied with her refreshed appearance, Miranda took a deep breath and headed back out into the tall, super-sexy-yet-anonymous man’s private office. He was waiting for her just outside the bathroom door and when her brown eyes met his blue ones, her stomach did a flip-flop rivaling that of any Olympic diving champion. “Oh!” she squealed as her hand jerked itself onto her belly. “Feeling all right?” he asked. “I have some antacid in my desk drawer if you need it.” “No, umm, that’s OK,” Miranda replied, her voice still high-pitched and squeaky. “I umm, I just hiccupped, is all.” A lie. The truth was, this man was making her feel—well— quidgy. Quidgy all over, but especially right between her legs. It was a delightful feeling, but a scary one, too. She decided she needed to thank him, guzzle her giant espresso, and make a graceful exit before anything got out of hand. “I, ahhhh, I really need to get back upstairs.” “Suit yourself,” the man said. “But you’re espresso’s getting cold. You’re welcome to have a seat and relax for a few minutes while you finish it.” He indicated one of the heavy leather armchairs, gesturing for her to sit. Without thinking, Miranda did. She noticed with surprise that there was a huge fireplace directly across from her chair. The tall, azure-eyed man flipped a switch, and a blazing fire appeared out of nowhere. “Gas fireplaces are the eighth wonder of the world,” he said as he sat down in the leather chair opposite her. “Don’t you think?” “Umm,” was all Miranda could say. The quidgy feeling that was so delightful in the nether parts of her body had a funny way of paralyzing her from the neck up. After much concentration, she finally got her jaw and lips to work. “I, umm, never knew this place was here,” she stammered. “My company has several floors of offices in this building,” the man said. “The management gives me use of this little private hideaway as thanks for all the money I drop here in rent. I can use it whenever I need some privacy.” He paused, smiled. “Or, when someone I know needs some privacy.” “That’s nice,” Miranda said, drinking the rest of her espresso in one gulp. The quintuple dose of caffeine hit her bloodstream like a shot of heroin. She could almost feel her pupils dilating. “Are you sure you’re all right?” the man asked, his turquoise eyes meeting hers. “You seem kind of—agitated.” “That’s because I am!” she blurted. The caffeine was working fast—too fast. Miranda felt her heart start racing, felt her lips forming words faster than she could think about what they might be. “I’ve had such a bad day! I lost eighty-seven million dollars for my clients just this morning! I’m totally screwed! I’m going to get fired! I hate myself! I’m ….” “Whoa!” the tall man said, holding up both hands. “Slow down. Like I said back at the coffee shop, ingesting that much caffeine in the space of two minutes isn’t good for people your size. Or to be more specific, very attractive young women of your size.” “Are you coming on to me?” Miranda sputtered, her mouth going a mile a minute. “Because if you are, you should really stop. You know why? I’m a walking disaster area. That’s what my last boyfriend called me when we broke up. Plus ….” The tall man’s blue eyes were serious. Miranda felt them drill into her, felt them penetrate the private, sensual part of herself she’d kept carefully locked away ever since her last

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boyfriend—a dry-as-a-bone commodities broker named Paul--had dumped her more than four years before. And now, the attractive-yet-mysterious man sitting across from her didn’t just penetrate that most private part of Miranda’s inner being. He downright melted it—hell, vibrated it—with just one ice-blue glance. “You don’t look like a walking disaster area to me,” he said. “But I am! Didn’t you hear what I just said? My ex-boyfriend called me a walking disaster area, and he was right. Because only a walking disaster area would lose eighty-seven million dollars of her clients’ money in the space of fifteen minutes.” The tall man’s expression softened. He loosened his green silk tie, stretched out his legs a little. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the stock market in my career, miss, it’s that you can often earn money back just as fast as you lose it. If you know how to play the game.” The man’s acute comment caught Miranda off-guard. “I ….” “I bet your work has something to do with the telecom sector,” he said. The accuracy of his guess shook Miranda to the core. “That area’s taken quite a beating this morning, as I understand it.” “How did you know?” Miranda’s voice trembled, just as she felt her nether parts getting warmer and warmer. “I have a live CNBC feed in my limo,” he explained. “Plus, by my calculations, that’s the only market sector where it’s possible for anyone to have lost, say, eighty-seven million dollars from their fund portfolio just this morning. Am I right?” Miranda nodded, unable to speak. “I bet if you can make even a portion of that money back for your clients by the end of the market day, your boss won’t be too upset with you,” he went on. “In fact, I’m sure of it.” “B-but I’m an analyst!” she protested. “I’m not a broker! I have to do weeks and weeks of research and analysis before I can recommend any stock to my clients. I can’t day-trade! It’s against the rules!” “I never said you had to day-trade,” the man said, leaning in closer. Miranda could feel the tiny stirrings in the air between them from his breathing. Those stirrings excited her. Excited her a little too much, in fact. “Then what can I do?” she sputtered. “The SEC regulations on what analysts can and cannot do are pretty strict, you know.” “I’m familiar with all the SEC regulations, miss. I did your job once myself. What I can tell you--based upon my own past experience as an analyst—is there is quite a lot you can accomplish in a short period of time if you’re creative.” Creative? Miranda wasn’t creative. Not even close. She was a right-brained, numbersobsessed, stock-market-loving bean counter. That was the whole reason she had gone into finance in the first place instead of say, oil-painting. Miranda voted Republican, checked her stock portfolio every day, and always wore gray or black pinstriped suits with pantyhose and high heels. “Umm,” she stammered for the umpteenth time that morning. “I’m not really--creative. I’m more of a ….” She trailed off. Suddenly her tongue felt too large for her mouth. “It’s all right, miss,” the tall, azure-eyed man said, taking her right hand in his and squeezing it. “We all have bad days in this business. Goes with the territory. As long as you can make up some of your losses, I’m sure you’ll be fine.” As long as you can make up some of your losses. He made it sound so easy.

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But it wasn’t. Anyone who’d ever invested a dime in the stock market could tell her that. “Well, um, I guess I should really be going!” Miranda stood up, looking right and left for a wastebasket where she could toss her empty espresso cup. “I’ll take that,” the tall man said, standing up. He reached for the empty, and their hands touched again. Miranda felt a bolt of lightning streak right through her body as his skin grazed hers. She’d never felt these kinds of sensations before. Not with Paul. Not even with her old college boyfriend Bradley--the man to whom she’d given her precious virginity. Not with anyone. The entire lower half of Miranda’s body was in flames. Her nipples had gone rock-hard, and the space between her thighs was slick as melted butter. Her head throbbed, and her lips, teeth, and tongue screamed for the feel of his mouth on hers. What the hell was going on? Miranda felt her cheeks flush. How could this be happening? She was a prim, proper, and very strait-laced woman. She didn’t go throwing herself with wild abandon at total strangers--let alone total strangers she’d met while on what was supposed to be a five-minute coffee break from work. And yet, her body was telling her that throwing herself at this nameless man with wild abandon was exactly what she had to do, right now, just to stay alive, just to keep breathing. Without giving the matter another thought, Miranda leaned forward and kissed the tall, generous, anonymous man’s lips. And it wasn’t just any kiss, either. It was a grab-his-ass, stickher-tongue-halfway-down-his-throat kind of kiss. It was a kind of kiss Miranda hadn’t known she was capable of giving anyone--let alone a man she’d met less than ten minutes ago, a man whose name she still didn’t know. A man who was kissing her back with as much gusto as she was kissing him. When they come up for air, the tall, enigmatic man ran his index finger down the right side of Miranda’s nose until it landed in the divot just above the center point of her mouth. “I’d say that was pretty darn creative,” he said. “Umm,” Miranda sputtered. “I should really go back to my office now. Upstairs. You know, work and everything.” “Are you sure?” he asked, running his lips down the side of her neck in a liquid caress. “I bet they won’t miss you upstairs for a little while longer. Stay. Please.” “I really couldn’t …,” Miranda whispered, breathless. But her sizzling body was having none of it. Stay right here, it told her. Stay. And do everything I tell you to do, Miranda’s heaving, electrified body ordered her brain. And her body also told her it would not take no for an answer. Miranda’s body had never spoken to her directly before. She supposed there was a first time for everything. Miranda also supposed that since her body was going to the trouble of issuing her direct orders, she probably had no choice but to listen.

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Chapter Two “I’ve never done anything like this before,” Miranda heard herself say as her fingers involuntarily started unbuttoning the tall, well-dressed, and completely anonymous man’s white oxford shirt. She tried to will her hands to stop working the buttons, to stop running her fingertips through the dark chest hair his unbuttoned shirt revealed--but her hands and fingertips refused to cooperate. In fact, her hands and fingers seemed to be moving up and down her nameless companion’s firm, muscled torso via some kind of invisible machinery. Miranda considered asking her companion his name--not to mention giving him her own-but she found their mutual anonymity strangely thrilling. And apparently, so did he. He tore off his unbuttoned shirt along with the gabardine suitjacket he wore over it. “You mean to tell me you’ve never ravished a man before you were properly introduced? Is that it?” He spoke into the curve of Miranda’s neck, which he covered in open-mouthed kisses before moving to unbutton her suit jacket. “Yes, that’s it, exactly,” she breathed. “You see, I’m not a very. . .exciting person most of the time. I’m very, very boring, actually.” “You sure as hell don’t seem boring to me,” this passionate, tender man said as he eased Miranda’s black designer blazer over her shoulders. “You seem pretty goddamn wild, as a matter of fact. “Really?” Miranda asked, giddy. No one had called her wild before. Not ever. “You think so? “Absolutely.” Before she knew what was happening, this tall, impossibly sexy man had managed to slip off Miranda’s blouse and bra. He took her left nipple into his mouth, sucking and biting until Miranda felt thousands of tiny vibrations humming from her breast outward to all parts of her body. “Oh!” she yelped. “You like that?” the man asked. “There’s a lot more where that came from.” He sucked on her left nipple some more, then slowly moved his mouth along her breast into the cleavage valley between, where it lingered for a moment before he moved over to give her right breast the same luscious treatment. Miranda involuntarily tilted her head back, and her mouth dropped open as she moaned and sighed at the unbelievable sensations her anonymous lover evoked in her body. This was turning out to be one hell of a coffee break. Her new mystery lover’s mouth stopped working her nipples and slowly made its way down her belly until his lips and tongue rested just above the button of her skirt. With an eager hand, Miranda guided him to strip off the rest of her clothing and proceed with what was fast becoming an all-over tongue bath. Before Miranda could take another breath, her anonymous lover had slipped off her skirt, panties, pantyhose, and kitten heels. With one hand he pressed her down to the carpet, with the other he eased open her legs and slowly slid one finger between the sweating seam of her sex. He opened her, worked the pads of his fingers inside her lips and folds, stroking, flitting, and feathering against her red, hot, swollen clitoris until Miranda cried her joy as the first of what

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would soon be several orgasms pulsated up and out through her whole body. And once he’d given her that precious gift, her new lover started to explore inside her with the fingers of his left hand, alternately thrusting them upward into her G-spot and then drawing them in and out of her vagina in a faster and faster rhythm. She raised her hips to meet each of his caresses, spreading her legs wider and wider to receive the firm-yet-gentle thrusts that he made with his right hand on her clitoris and the hot, wet, bursting rose of her vulva while simultaneously probing and pulsing inside her with his left. She came again and again with his fingers inside her, moaning and crying, her body bucking against his grasp like a wild mustang’s. “How’s that, sweetheart?” her anonymous, amorous lover whispered in her ear. “I love how you come for me, baby. You obviously think this is pretty terrific, but are you ready for the real thing?” There’s more? Miranda thought. After all that, how can there possibly be more? She’d never had such an intense orgasm in her life--even when pleasing herself--so the thought of allout intercourse with this mysterious, unnamed man both thrilled and terrified her. “I’m waiting for your answer, honey,” her mystery lover breathed, pressing and probing her swollen folds and mounds until Miranda’s eyes crossed behind their clamped-shut lids. “Mmmmppggggggrrrrhhhhh,” was all the answer she could manage. She wanted to reach out and strip off her new lover’s pants--wanted to grab hold of his thick, sleek shaft and revel in the length and steel-hardness of him--but three consecutive orgasms in the space of as many minutes had rendered her body and mind into a quivering, gasping mass. She could barely lift her head up off the carpeted floor, let alone make a grab for the part of him she needed most. No sooner than she could beg him to take her and ravish her senseless, though her new lover had already relieved himself of his pants, shoes, and silk boxers. He now stood over her naked, his fingers splayed across the angular points of his pubic bone, his penis standing at attention and its plumlike tip already dripping with hot, clear happy juice. “Is this what you’re looking for, sweetheart?” he said, pointing at his very healthy, very prominent, and obviously very excited prick. “Yes,” Miranda breathed, feeling her nether parts swell and sweat with heady anticipation, her already throbbing clitoris screaming for the push and pull of his hard, thick, long member against it. The folds of her sex blossomed like a wet lily. “Yes, please. Please.” “Your wish is my command,” her mystery lover said. He produced a condom from God knew where, had it out of its wrapper and onto his visibly throbbing penis in a nanosecond, then lowered his body onto hers. He slid into her in one swift, sensuous motion. No slow, gentle entry for him, either. He plunged right in, pumping Miranda hard, then harder--the tip of his penis banging against her G-spot, sending her body and mind into a shower of a thousand tiny exploding stars. Each movement of his sex within her was a hard and fast plunge, sweet as hell. They rocked back and forth together, back and forth, faster and faster, until Miranda exploded into the most earth-shattering climax she’d ever experienced, screaming, and moaning so loudly that her mystery lover had to cover her mouth with his hand. “Shhhh,” he whispered between thrusts. “Shhh, honey. I can’t have you screaming in here. Hush.” By way of answer, Miranda bit into his palm so hard she nearly drew blood. “Ow!” he cried, jerking back his hand just as he collapsed against Miranda’s shoulder in his own powerful explosion of ecstasy.

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“Oh wow,” he breathed into her ear, sweat pouring off his temples and soaking into Miranda’s dark auburn hair, which had long ago slipped out of its tight bun and was spilling down onto her shoulders. “Oh, wow, honey.” Miranda wrapped her legs around her mystery lover’s waist, plunged her fingers into his sweat-soaked tresses. She inhaled his scent, a delightful mix of his designer soap, shampoo, sweat, sex, and musk. “Wow to you, too,” she sighed and closed her eyes. She was in a state of ultra-relaxation even as every nerve ending in her body buzzed in sensory overload. All she wanted to do now was sleep. Sleep right there on the floor, forever, with this man--this incredible, unbelievably sexy, and completely unknown-to-her man--sleep with him permanently coiled inside her. This was what she wanted. But it was not to be. In a move so stiff and abrupt it shocked her, Miranda’s mystery lover pulled out of her, stood up, and walked to the bathroom. The now-loaded condom hung on his deflating penis like a wilted leaf. “Wh-where are you going?” she cried, sitting up. Suddenly she felt very cold. She grabbed her now-crumpled blazer and covered herself with it. He didn’t answer. She heard the toilet flush, then a brief running of the shower. When he returned, her mystery lover was wearing a clean white bathrobe. Instead of the easygoing confidence and poise he’d had before their tryst, this anonymous, enigmatic man’s steps were awkward, his manner growing increasingly nervous and strained. “I ummmm, I have to get ready for a meeting,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I’m late already, in fact.” “Oh,” Miranda said, her voice small. “I see.” Her mystery lover gathered up his clothes, and had them all back on in less than a minute. He found a comb in one of his pockets and used it to straighten his sex-mussed hair, then reknotted his silk tie. “You’re welcome to use the bathroom to freshen up,” he said. “Take as long as you need. The office door will lock behind you when you go.” Miranda didn’t answer. She just sat in the middle of the floor, wrapping her blazer tighter and tighter around herself, and shivering. “I hope it was good for you,” her mystery lover said as he stepped back into his Italian leather shoes. Miranda managed a small nod. She willed herself to stand up, and then began gathering up her clothes. She carried them into the bathroom, where she took a few minutes to clean herself up before getting dressed again, trying hard to restore her hair into its trademark tight bun and to smooth the wrinkles from her clothes with the fabric steamer. The morning’s bizarre turn of events had Miranda in a state of physical and emotional shock. She felt as if her body was taken over by a ghost or spirit--that she was somehow detached from her body and mind and was instead watching herself go through the motions of getting dressed from somewhere high above. She’d never had casual sex with a total stranger in her life--and until twenty minutes ago, she would have laughed in the face of anyone who had even remotely suggested she was capable of doing something so hedonistic, so reckless, so entirely out of character from her strait-laced, icequeen, right-wing-Republican self. The fact that it was also the best sex she’d ever had in her life unsettled her even more. Once she’d made herself presentable, Miranda stepped back into the cozy sitting room, fully expecting her mystery lover to be long gone. But he wasn’t. He stood just in front of the cascading fountain, waiting for her with his hands folded behind his back. “You’re still here,” she said, surprised.

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“I didn’t think you’d appreciate it if I left before you did,” he said. “You don’t seem like the kind of woman who likes to be left alone.” Actually, Miranda was the kind of woman who liked to be left alone. Living the solitary life of a single, workaholic female stock analyst in the often-hostile man’s world of finance was something she was more than comfortable with, thank you very much. And being left alone was also something she’d grown accustomed to--even happy about--ever since the day four years earlier when Paul had called her a walking disaster area, collected all his belongings from her apartment, and walked out. But something about this tall, enigmatic stranger made her wonder if being left alone in the comfort zone of her self-imposed isolation was what Miranda really wanted. “All you all right, miss?” he asked her. Miss. So they were back to being formal. It was almost as if their hot-and-heavy tryst had never happened. “I’m--I’m fine,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I guess I should get back to work.” “Of course,” he replied, stepping away from her. With stiff legs, he walked over to the gas fireplace and switched off the flame. Miranda turned to leave. The lower part of her belly was warm, her panties moist, her nether parts still deliciously swollen. “Well, umm, thanks and everything,” she said, feeling stupid. “Bye.” “Good bye,” the man replied, looking at the wall. Miranda went to open the door. Before she let herself out, she stopped. “I don’t even know your name,” she heard herself say. The tall man turned to face her, and smiled. His teeth were white and even, his dimpled jawline strong. “My friends call me Max,” he said. “And your name is?” “Miranda,” she answered. Feeling her cheeks flame, she left.

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Chapter Three “There you are, hon,” Annabelle greeted Miranda as she trudged back into her office. “I was beginning to get worried about you.” Annabelle eyed Miranda’s rumpled blazer and lopsided bun with suspicion, but didn’t comment. “Sorry,” Miranda sighed. “I ahhhm, I guess I got a little tied up.” An understatement, to say the least. She could barely say it with a straight face. “You’ve had a lot of calls.” Annabelle handed her a stack of pink ‘While You Were Out’ message slips, all marked ‘Urgent’. “These are all from pissed-off investors, right?” Miranda figured she would be safe to ignore most of them, at least for the time being. “Yes, mostly,” Annabelle replied. The plump secretary was filing her long, fuschia nails with an old-fashioned steel emery board. “Except the last one. That’s from some journalist at Investor’s Business Daily. Said he needs to interview you for a story he’s writing.” “What kind of story?” Miranda growled. “A story on how much of an incompetent screw-up of a stock analyst I am?” She was surprised at how emotional she’d become. Most days, Miranda was a picture of stoicism, even under the most stressful circumstances. But not today. Today, she was a moody, oversexed bundle of nerves. “I’m sure it’s a story all about how successful you are, hon.” Annabelle smiled so wide Miranda could see the outline of the older woman’s dentures. Annabelle always had a way of keeping calm and cheerful in a crisis, which was precisely why Miranda gave the woman generous quarterly raises. “And even if it isn’t, a little publicity never hurts, hon--good or bad. Right?” “Not always.” Miranda flopped down in her desk chair, glanced at the still-plummeting numbers on her trading screen, and sighed. “I’m sure the tech analysts over at Morton Myers are absolutely loving this. Especially Victoria Markham.” Victoria Markham, the telecommunications/high-tech darling of Wall Street, was Miranda’s arch-rival among stock analysts. Miranda had always chided Victoria’s philosophy of diversifying her stock research portfolio to include broader-based technology stocks instead of just focusing on the telecom sector, like Miranda did. But now that Miranda and her narrow, telecom-focused investment strategy were both getting hammered, she was sure Victoria was laughing all the way to her posh condo on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The New York analysts thought themselves more sophisticated than their Chicago counterparts, and the pounding Miranda was taking today would only add more fuel to their fire. “I for one could use as little publicity as possible right now,” Miranda sighed. “Frankly, I think it would be best for all concerned if I just went and crawled under a rock for a while.” “Well, it might not hurt for you to lay low for a little bit, if that’s what you want. I’ll keep screening your calls,” Annabelle said. “Oh, and that reminds me. The office grapevine is running a mile a minute. According to my sources, Maxwell Moore Junior, himself, is in the building today. And rumor has it he is dropping in on all the high-profile brokers and analysts, making sure you’re all doing a good job. So take a little time to collect yourself if you want, but you should still be looking sharp. Max Junior could be here any minute.”

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“Maxwell Moore, Junior is in the building?” Miranda had never once met Maxwell Moore Senior, the founder and namesake of her employer, Maxwell Moore and Company, let alone a Maxwell Moore Junior. Maxwell Moore Senior had been retired for years, had turned the management of his company over to a private equity group more than a decade before Miranda had even started working there, and was now rumored to be in a lux nursing home somewhere in the Caribbean. But Miranda had never heard of a Maxwell Moore Junior. “Since when does a Maxwell Junior even exist? And what does he have to do with running the company now, if anything?” “Oh, Maxwell Junior’s always been part of the Moore family, hon,” Annabelle said. “At least as long as I’ve worked here, and I first started in, let’s see, ’77 or ’78, I think.” Miranda frowned. “I didn’t know you’d been with the company that long. I thought you started here in 1997.” “Well, that was my second stint working at Maxwell Moore and Company, hon. I took a few years off in between while I was raising my kids,” Annabelle explained. “‘Course, back in the late seventies through the eighties, when I was just a young slip of a thing, I wasn’t working for the analysts. I worked mostly down on the trading floor, supporting the brokers. That’s where I met Max Junior for the first time.” “You’ve met him? Really? What’s he like? What’s he look like, anyway?” Annabelle stopped filing her nails and pursed her wrinkled, frosted-pink lips together in deep thought. “Well, I first met Max Junior on the trading floor back sometime in the late eighties. He was just a teenager then. His dad used to bring him in to work during the summer, show him around. He was a nice-looking young fella then, but that was a long time ago. Who knows what he looks like now.” “What did he look like then?” Miranda asked, trying her best to sound casual. “He was tall, had dark hair and bright blue eyes. A good-looking kid. Good at sports too, or so his dad said.” A strange possibility was forming in Miranda’s mind. Her mysterious coffee-break lover had said his friends called him Max. Could her mystery lover be Maxwell Moore, Junior? Miranda didn’t even want to imagine that possibility. It had to be a coincidence. Had to be. Max was a common enough name, wasn’t it? There were probably dozens, if not hundreds, of Maxes in Chicago. Hundreds. Odds were good--hey, maybe even better than fifty-fifty--that she’d just had wild, anonymous sex with some other man named Max who also just happened to have access to a posh private suite in her employer’s building. Oh, God. If Miranda had in fact screwed the pants off the founder of her company’s son during work hours, she and her entire financial career were toast. Well, not toast, exactly. More like nuclear waste. “By the way, hon, it’s a good thing you wiped all that mascara mess off your face,” Annabelle chirped, breaking Miranda out of her reverie. “I tried to stop you before you went downstairs for your coffee, but it looks like you took care of it on your own.” “Yeah,” Miranda said, wanting to disappear. She was beginning to think she would be a hell of a lot better off if she hadn’t ever gone downstairs for that quintuple-espresso in the first place. “I ummm, I think I need to hide out for a bit,” she said as she slammed the door of her private office right in Annabelle’s stunned face. ****

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Miranda stared alternately at the message slip from the Investor’s Business Daily reporter and the still-crashing market numbers feeding into her trading computer. She didn’t know which was worse--facing the media when her entire research portfolio was in the toilet, trying to figure out how to get her research portfolio out of the toilet before the market closed that day, or facing the very real possibility that she had screwed the brains out of the man who just might be taking over the day-to-day operations of Maxwell Moore and Company. With those options, Miranda figured it was best to zone out altogether. She laid her head down on the desk to cry again. Before she had time to spew a single tear, however, her desk phone rang, not her regular line, either. Annabelle was screening that one for her. It was her direct, private line—a number she’d only given to two people—her mother, and her ex-boyfriend Paul, who hadn’t called her in over four years. And Miranda’s mother knew better than to call her private line during market hours unless there was some kind of family emergency. “Mom?” she said into the receiver without bothering to say hello. “Is something wrong?” “Well, if I just somehow became your mother, then something is wrong,” a familiar male voice said. “Is this Miranda?” “Yes,” she answered, her voice trembling. As soon as he said her name, she knew whose voice it was on her private line. Knew, but still didn’t want to accept it as the truth. “Miranda, it’s Max. We ahhh, we met downstairs a few minutes ago.” “Uh huh,” she stammered. “How, ummm, did you get this number? It’s my, ummm ….” “Your private line?” he finished for her. Joanna felt her stomach sink to approximately the level of her knees. “Th-that’s right. How the hell did you get the number for my private line?” Max laughed. “Well, when one owns the company, it’s pretty easy for me to get whatever information I want. Among other things. Our little get-together this morning would be a case in point. We should really do it again sometime.” Get-together? Miranda thought, incredulous. Is that what he really thought of what had been the most incredible, cosmic lovemaking experience of her life? A get-together? Oh, good Christ. Not only did Maxwell Moore, Junior now apparently own his father’s company lock, stock, and barrel, he had obviously designated Miranda Johansson as his own personal bootycall. Well, Miranda Johansson was nobody’s booty-call. That was something she needed to set this guy straight on right away. “I really don’t think it’s appropriate for you to be calling me like this,” she hissed. “I mean, after—what happened, and everything.” There was a pause. “I’m sorry, Miranda. I didn’t mean to offend you ….” “Well, you did,” she snapped. “Did it ever occur to you that I might regret what happened once I figured out who you really were? Once I discovered you’ve taken over the company that I work for? You are taking over the company, aren’t you?” Another pause. “Actually, I took over supervising day-to-day operations of Maxwell Moore and Company from the private equity firm about four months ago,” Max replied. “I just did it . . . well, quietly. The official announcement of the change will be taking place tomorrow. I’m in the office today to let all my senior staff--people like you, Miranda--know what’s going on before it hits the press.” Miranda bit her lip. Maxwell Moore, Junior couldn’t have picked a worse day to announce he was taking over her employer. Not only had she lost eighty-seven million bucks’

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worth of Maxwell Moore and Company client dollars that morning, she’d spread her legs pretty goddamn wide for the new corporate honcho to boot. Miranda wasn’t exactly making a good first impression as a top-notch financial professional, was she? “Well, I guess now that I know what’s going on, you can leave me alone,” she said. “I have a lot of money to try to earn back for our clients before the end of the market day. I guess I’ll just hang up now ….” “Miranda! Wait!” Max shouted into the phone. “There’s another reason I’m calling, actually. I was hoping that perhaps you and I could--that is, maybe I could help you regain some of your stock losses from this morning. We could order lunch in, work together in one of the conference rooms on the twenty-third floor ….” “You want another booty call, don’t you?” Miranda shouted back, hopefully not loud enough for Annabelle or anyone else to hear. “You must think I’m some cheap floozy after what happened this morning, and I am here to tell you that I’m not. I am a very, very serious businesswoman.” “I never said you weren’t,” Max replied, his voice calmer, cooler now. “That’s why I thought you might appreciate some help. And I’m offering it, because I think someone like you is a major asset to my company--and I don’t want to lose you over something as trivial as having one bad day.” “Oh, so now you think that us hooking up in the lobby makes today a bad day?” Miranda’s anger and frustration at her poor judgment in matters both business and personal had reached a boiling point. “I suppose both our days would have turned out a lot better if we’d never even run into each other in the first place, let alone fucked each others’ brains out.” “Miranda, calm down,” Max said. “We need to be discreet about this.” That just made Miranda even more furious. “And what if I’m not discreet? What if I go to HR and tell them the whole story? What if I tell my assistant, Annabelle, who is hands-down the biggest gossip in the company and will have every gory detail of our sexual escapade broadcast over the PA system within two minutes of hearing about it? Huh? What do you think about that?” Max sighed. “Miranda, I think you’re very overemotional right now and, given what happened this morning, that’s perfectly understandable. Take some long, deep, cleansing breaths, and get a hold of yourself. But I am dropping by your office in the next twenty minutes whether you like it or not, so I suggest you be good and ready for it.” With that, Max hung up.

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Chapter Four Miranda paced back and forth in her office, trying hard not to hyperventilate. What on earth was happening to her? Up until yesterday, she’d had such a comfortable, established, and oh-so-routine life as a successful single female stock-market analyst. Up until yesterday, you would never have found Miranda Johansson pacing back and forth in her posh corner office, trying hard not to pass out from lack of oxygen. Up until yesterday, Miranda Johansson wouldn’t have considered herself the type of thinskinned, oversensitive woman who cried in her office at the slightest provocation, either. Let alone a woman who had sex at the drop of a hat with a handsome stranger. A handsome stranger who then turned out to be her new boss. But that was yesterday. This was today, and today was different. Very different. There was a knock at Miranda’s closed office door, nearly startling her right out of her skin. “Come in,” she said, dreading who it might be. To her relief, it was Annabelle. “That journalist from Investor’s Business Daily is on the line again. I tried to tell him you were unavailable, but he’s really insistent about talking to you right away. He wants some information for an article for tomorrow’s paper. Do you want to take the call or should I tell him to forget it?” “I’ll take the call,” Miranda sighed, willing herself to calm down and get back to business as usual. “Go ahead and put him through.” Annabelle nodded and left. Miranda made it back to her desk just as her business line buzzed. She picked up the receiver. “Miranda Johansson speaking.” “Miranda! Phil Damien with Investor’s Business Daily. Do you remember me?” “Sorry, no.” Miranda picked up a paperclip from the tray on her desktop and began to pull it apart. “We ahhhh, we met at the Bloomberg analysts’ convention last year, here in New York.” Phil’s voice was scratchy, halting, and effeminate. Miranda pictured him as a short, rumpled East Village-dweller, probably gay. “I uhhh, I gave you my card. Don’t you remember me?” Miranda thought back to what had happened at that Bloomberg convention--a whirlwind seventy-two hours at the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. She’d spent most of those seventy-two hours either staffing the Maxwell Moore and Company investment booth or staying up late in her hotel room, writing stock reports on her laptop. She’d probably gotten a grand total of eight minutes’ worth of sleep that whole weekend. By the end of it, Miranda had barely been able to recall her own name, let alone keep track of every journalist and salesman who’d stopped by the booth with a business card and phony smile. “Sorry, can’t say that I do, Phil,” she said. “Oh. Well. I was ahhh, I was just calling because I’m writing a feature story for tomorrow’s edition on Victoria Markham, and ….” “Victoria Markham?” Miranda blurted. “Your paper is publishing a feature on that woman?” The mere mention of her arch-rival’s name made her blood pressure rise. The knowledge that snobby, petty, sharp-clawed Victoria was getting a full-page spread in the Daily just rubbed salt in any number of old wounds.

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“Well, yes.” Phil sounded irritated. “I thought you knew.” “How the hell would I know that? I’m not Victoria Markham’s personal publicist.” Phil cleared his throat. “Well, Miss Markham, ummm, she said that you would be delighted to provide me with an interview all about what good friends the two of you are. She told me she’d already spoken to you about it, actually.” “Oh, that’s just great,” Miranda seethed. “Look Phil, Victoria Markham and I are not friends.” Quite the contrary, in fact, considering Victoria Markham had always made it her personal business to make Miranda’s professional life a living, breathing hell--and Miranda figured this phone call could very well be just another of Victoria’s many schemes to drive her insane. “I don’t know why anyone would think we were, in fact. It’s common knowledge in the business that she pretty much hates my guts. And I’m not too fond of her, either. In fact, nobody is.” “I see,” Phil replied. “So, ummm, you weren’t expecting my call, then?” “No.” “Well, um, okay then. Let me, ummmm, let me just--find my list of, ummm, questions.” Miranda heard some shuffling of papers in the background, along with something that sounded a lot like drunken fratboys and Grand Theft Auto. “So, umm, like, how long have you known Victoria?” Phil’s voice now sounded less like an East Village gay journalist and more like a clueless college student who’d just gotten in way over his head. Miranda chuckled for the first time all day as she realized he was probably calling her from his dorm room. “You don’t really work for the Investor’s Business Daily, do you, Phil?” A long pause. “No, I don’t. How could you tell?” “Just a hunch,” Miranda said. “You need to work on your interview skills.” “That bad, huh?” Phil gave an uneasy laugh just as one of his roommates blew something up on Grand Theft Auto and cheered. “Well, you got me. I’m a second-year English major at Columbia. I only took this gig because I’m broke. It’s nothing personal, ma’am.” Ma’am again. That was the second time a goofy twentysomething had Ma’amed Miranda this morning. It made her feel old. “No offense taken, Phil,” she lied. “So, what did Victoria really hire you to do, and how much is she paying you?” Phil coughed. “I’m not at liberty to say.” Victoria must be paying you pretty damn well, then, she thought. Miranda’s financial arch-rival had sunk to a new low if Victoria was hiring impoverished Manhattan college students to do her spying for her. “How about this?” Miranda said, putting on her sweetest, smoothest Midwestern girlnext-door voice. “You tell me what Victoria hired you to do, and then I’ll mail you a check for five hundred bucks. Hell, I’ll even wire you the cash if you want. Then, once I know what Victoria’s really up to, I’ll just play along with your list of questions so you can go back to her without her suspecting a thing. You’ll be like, a double agent. Fun, huh?” “Well--“ Phil took a moment to think. “I’ll do it for a thousand.” Miranda ground her teeth. “Eight hundred.” “All right, deal. But you’ll have to wire me the money by noon today. Can you do that?” “No problem. I work at an investment bank. We wire money here all the time. I’ll send you the cash from my personal brokerage account.” Money Miranda would consider well-spent if it gave her even a small clue about what Victoria Markham was up to. With all that had gone wrong for her at Maxwell Moore and Company today already, she couldn’t afford to have

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Victoria and all the rest of the cutthroat stock analysts in Morton Myers’ New York offices angling against her. “That would be awesome,” Phil gushed. “I’m hurting for pizza money, and my parents told me they won’t send me any more allowance until I get my grades up. So I really, really, appreciate it. Anyway, Victoria hired me to try and find out who’s just taken over running Maxwell Moore and Company. She had an investment interest in some private equity thing over there, or something, and out of the blue a mystery guy showed up one day and just, like, totally bought her out--forced her to sell at a loss. And she’s really mad about it, I guess. I didn’t understand a lot of what she told me ….” “Uh huh,” Miranda said, stunned. If Victoria Markham had indeed had a controlling interest in Maxwell Moore and Company for all of these years, what on earth had motivated her to harass and sabotage Miranda (not to mention most of Miranda’s colleagues) at almost every turn? If Victoria’s antics had ever managed to destroy or significantly damage Maxwell Moore and Company’s business reputation (which so far, thankfully, they hadn’t), Victoria would just have lost her investment. It didn’t make sense. Miranda shook her head, mystified. “So did she tell you how much she had invested in the private equity firm?” “No, but I got the feeling it was a hell of a lot,” Phil said. “Anyhoo, she wanted me to try to find out from you why the private equity firm’s board forced her to sell her share.” “I don’t know a whole lot about it,” Miranda replied. And it was the truth. “We just got an announcement here today that Maxwell Moore, Junior took over running the company from the private equity firm that’s owned us for years. But I don’t know anything more than that.” And she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She’d already had more than enough of Max for one day. “Oh. Wow. Victoria said it might involve somebody named Max. Hmmm.” Phil started munching on something. Pretzels, probably, or perhaps nachos. “So you don’t know anything about this Maxwell Moore, Junior guy, then?” Well I know him in the Biblical sense, Miranda thought. She didn’t dare say it aloud, though. Victoria and her Morton Myers Corp. buddies would have a field day with that. “Nope. We just found out he’s taking over the company today ourselves. There’s supposed to be some kind of meeting about it later on, but that hasn’t happened yet.” And Miranda would be perfectly happy if it never did. She wasn’t sure she could stomach looking Maxwell Moore, Junior in the eye ever again. “Well, umm, cool,” Phil replied through a mouth full of junk food. “I’ll just pass this along to Victoria then. And I’ll be looking for that eight hundred. I can fax you the account numbers to wire it to.” “Don’t you have any other questions for me?” Miranda was disappointed. She doubted the back story Phil had just given her was worth eight hundred bucks, even if it did keep Victoria Markham off her back for a while. “Let me check.” She heard Phil pop another handful of pretzels and chips into his mouth and then rustle some more papers. “She just wanted to know something else about this guy who took over the company--Maxwell Moore Junior, I guess--well, to be honest, she wanted me to ask you what he looks like.” “I have no idea,” Miranda lied. “I’ve never met the man in my life. Fax me your bank account number and you’ll get your money by noon. Have a nice day, Phil.” She slammed down the receiver before he could ask her anything else.

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What the hell was going on? What did snarky, manipulative Victoria Markham and her personal investment portfolio have to do with Maxwell Moore and Company? And why did she want to know what Max looked like? The whole thing just seemed odd. Knowing that Victoria had her slippery little fingers dipped so far into the details of Miranda’s own life and work was creepy. Very creepy. Something funny was definitely going on, and Miranda didn’t like it one bit. She walked over to her office’s floor-to-ceiling window and stared down at the tiny cars and pedestrians buzzing along LaSalle Street thirty floors below. For a fleeting moment Miranda wished she could become one of those tiny, anonymous people, walking the streets of downtown Chicago in the middle of a business-day morning without a care in the world--perhaps a suburban mother in town for a day of shopping, or a tourist checking out Millennium Park and the Art Institute. She wished she could be someone, anyone other than the person she was, wishing that she could just walk away from this horrendous, stressful, frightening day altogether and start over. But that wasn’t going to happen. There was another knock. This time, Miranda was ready for it. She tossed her shoulders back, held her head high, and went to open her office door. But before her hand could even graze the doorknob, the door flew open of its own accord, very nearly knocking her flat. Maxwell Moore, Junior stood behind it, holding a huge bouquet of roses. Annabelle was just to the left of him, trying hard to keep him from entering Miranda’s office unannounced. “Sir! Excuse me, sir! You can’t go in there! If you have a floral delivery, you need to leave it with me. Hey! Wait a minute!” “It’s all right, Annabelle,” Miranda said. She gave Max a subtle nod and cut her eyes over towards her assistant, hoping he’d get her meaning. “Oh, of course. Pardon me, madam,” Max said, bowing slightly in Annabelle’s direction. “I’m Maxwell Moore, Junior. I was just paying, ahhh, Miss Johansson here a visit. To introduce myself and, ahhh, let her know what a good job she’s doing.” Annabelle nodded back, but eyed the huge bouquet with suspicion. “It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Moore,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you is all. I haven’t seen you since you were, well, just a kid with your dad on the trading floor.” “Well, I’m not a kid anymore, Annabelle,” he said. “I remember meeting you, too. And not only am I not a kid anymore, I’m now the chief executive officer of this company. And as such, I’m ahhhh, I’m presenting all the senior stock analysts and executives with huge, romantic bouquets of roses. To show my, uhhhh, appreciation.” “Right,” Annabelle chirped, raising her eyebrows. “Are you getting all the other, male analysts and executives romantic gifts of roses, too? Or are you going for something more macho with them? Like a desk set, or maybe some Bears tickets?” Although Miranda knew Annabelle was far too savvy to say anything out loud, it was clear the seasoned old secretary had already figured out something pretty unbusinesslike was going on between Miranda and Max. Miranda felt herself blush all the way down to her ankles. “If you’ll excuse us, Annabelle, I believe Max and I have some very important matters to discuss.” “You betcha, hon. I’ll keep holding your calls.” Annabelle clucked twice and went back to her desk. “You’re a peach, Annabelle.” Miranda jerked her head towards the interior of her office, and Max took her cue. They both swept inside and Miranda slammed the door shut behind them.

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“What the hell are you doing?” she blurted. “You can’t--you can’t just show up carrying a bushelful of roses and think that people aren’t going to figure out what went on between us downstairs? Ten minutes ago you tell me we have to be discreet, and now this?” “I think I covered for us both pretty well,” Max shot back. “As a matter of fact, I’ve arranged for all the analysts and senior executives to get bouquets of roses this morning. That way, nobody will think anything is out of the ordinary.” “Oh, that’s just great,” Miranda hissed and flopped down onto the Italian leather couch meant for her colleagues to sit on during conference calls. “I can’t even get flowers from a guy without it turning into some kind of overblown business transaction. But I suppose that’s par for the course for me.” She began rubbing her temples. “After all, I’m a walking disaster area.” Max came to sit beside her, thrusting the enormous bouquet in her lap. “If it makes you feel any better, you’re the only one who got red roses,” he said. “Everyone else got yellow. Which, I might add, is the color usually designated for funeral arrangements.” Miranda put her head in her hands. “Sorry, that doesn’t make me feel better at all. I feel horrible.” Max put a strong hand on her shoulder. As he touched her, she could feel the same electricity that had thrummed between them during their lovemaking even through the thick layers of her designer blazer, starched white cotton blouse, and satin bra. That surge of electricity ran down one side of Miranda’s body, then up the other until it settled squarely in her groin and started to simmer there. “Oh,” she sighed. She reached to push his hand off her shoulder, to stop this irritating, distracting feeling of bliss that was spreading through her entire body--but instead, when her hand touched his, Max grasped her fingers tightly and squeezed. Then he kissed her. For a long, incredible moment, Miranda kissed him back. They kissed open-mouthed, their tongues intertwining, their breathing in perfect sync, every inch of their upper bodies stuck together like rubber cement. Then at long last, the reasonable, businesswoman’s side of Miranda’s brain took over. “We can’t do this,” she said, breaking herself away from him and crossing to the far side of the room. “Why not?” Miranda heaved another heavy sigh and stamped her foot. “Isn’t it obvious? This is a place of business, not a cheap motel. And I work for you. Which sets up a whole host of reasons why we shouldn’t be making out on my office couch. Not to mention the fact that I lost eightyseven million bucks worth of your clients’ money this morning, Max. And furthermore ….” Max stood up and darted over to where she stood. “Miranda, everything you just said is true. But it still doesn’t mean that I can’t kiss you whenever I feel like it. Because believe me, I will. And for your information, I generally get whatever I want. Always have.” With that, he planted his hands on both sides of Miranda’s face, and kissed her again. “Stop it!” she screeched, jerking out of his grasp. “Are you trying to drive me crazy or what?” Max smirked. “That was my general objective, yes.” “Agggghhhhh!” Livid, Miranda began to pace the room. “Well, I’m sorry, but that’s just unacceptable.” Max laughed. “Funny, you didn’t seem to find me unacceptable this morning.”

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“Well, I do now.” Max’s very presence in the room—not to mention his ardent kisses— had set every nerve in Miranda’s body to buzzing. Her face was hot, her nether parts hotter. Her breathing came in gasps, and her palms were sweating. And it was all Max’s fault. She couldn’t work under these conditions. “I think you should leave,” she said, angling for the relative safety of her desk chair. Miranda punched up her trading terminal screen, despairing as the still-falling prices of every stock in her research universe appeared. “I have work to do.” Max folded his arms across his barrel-like chest. “I know you do. That’s why I’m here. To help.” Agitated, Miranda picked up a pencil from her desk blotter and broke it in half. “I seriously doubt that. You obviously came here--bearing the entire White House rose garden, no less--because you’re in need of another booty call. Was what happened downstairs not enough for you?” “Frankly, no.” Miranda sucked in her breath and bit her lip to keep from screaming. “Well, I’m afraid what you got from me this morning is all you’re ever going to get,” she snapped, although it took all her willpower to keep from throwing herself at this super-sensuous, ǘber-sexy man’s feet. Max sat down in one of the spare armchairs across from her desk. “More’s the pity,” he said. He began to fiddle with Miranda’s desktop Zen garden, deftly raking tiny lines in its white sand with his fingertip. Miranda found this gesture so suggestive, so intensely erotic, that she had to force herself to look away. “Miranda, I said I wanted to help you earn some of that money back, and I meant it. Will you at least allow me to do that much?” She closed her trading program window and booted up her Outlook, pretending to scan her email and check her appointment calendar. “I really don’t see why I should.” The left side of Max’s mouth tipped upward. “Maybe because you work for me now? Maybe because I’m your boss and I’m ordering you to? Is that a good enough reason?” Miranda pounded her left fist on her desk blotter. “That’s blackmail, goddamn it.” “Maybe so. But I don’t see you having any other option. Unless you’d prefer to find another place to work.” A low, guttural growl rose from Miranda’s throat. The man was insane. Hell, he was making her insane. She had to set some boundaries, and fast. “Look buddy,” she hissed, wagging her manicured index finger right in Max’s chiseled face, “maybe we did have wild, impassioned, earth-shattering sex downstairs a little less than an hour ago. And I might even be willing to admit that it was the most incredible sex I’ve ever had in my entire life. But ….” Max raised an eyebrow, started to speak. But Miranda cut him off. “BUT, that was then, and this is now. Had I known who you really were, I never would have even let you pay for my coffee, let alone parted my legs for you the way I did. In fact, I’m pretty damn mortified by the way I behaved.” (And that was the truth, even if she did think the four orgasms she had enjoyed as a result of that mortifying behavior made her indiscretion well worth it). “But it’s over and done with, and now we are in a business relationship. And when it comes to business matters, Maxwell Moore Junior, I am as serious, focused, and uptight as they come. And I always get the job done. Always.” Max looked her up and down, obviously undressing her with his gaze. “I don’t doubt that for a second,” he said.

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“From now on, our relationship is strictly business, Mr. Moore,” Miranda said, her voice cool as shaved ice. “Got it?” Max blew a long breath of air out through his nostrils. “Yeah, I got it.” “Good. Now, do you think you can help me recover those eighty-seven million dollars I misplaced this morning without trying to jump my bones every five seconds?” Miranda said this despite the fact the lower half of her body insisted that letting this man jump her bones was exactly what she should be doing. Max sighed. “I suppose I could give it a try, seeing as how that’s probably the only way I can spend time with you. And believe me, I want to spend as much time with you as possible.” “That’s more like it.” Despite her frigid-princess façade, Miranda had to steel herself against the pleasant-yet-terrifying sexual urges that were rising in her body like so much bile. Max’s presence was intoxicating, and it took all her resolve to resist him. “Well Max, I’m waiting to hear your suggestions. I’ve got a whole pile of messages here from irate investors, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m at a loss on what I should tell them to do. I would appreciate any light you can shed on the situation based on the years of experience I assume you have in the investment biz.” “I’m so glad to hear that you’re still interested in my opinion, Miss Johansson,” Max replied, his tone now chill and clipped as hers. “My advice to you is simple. You don’t need to do a whole lot other than change around some of your stock ratings, which will entice your clients to sell the high stocks and buy the cheap ones--the polar opposite of what most analysts do with their stock ratings. And I’ve done enough reading into your research publications to know that your recommendation strategy is just about as boring, textbook, and risk-averse as they come. What you need to do, Miranda, is mix things up a bit.” “I don’t get your meaning.” Max seemed to relax a little, and settled back into his chair. “Well, like most analysts, you rate the stocks that are performing well as a ‘Buy’, stocks whose prices are flat as a ‘Hold’, and stocks that are tanking as a ‘Sell’.” “So?” “Miranda, if there’s anything I learned about you during our. . .encounter this morning, it’s that you are not a woman who is afraid of taking risks.” Miranda’s cheeks burned. The mere mention of their tryst--even a veiled one--was more than she could bear. It was taking every atom of her self-control just to keep from ripping this man’s clothes off, and he just couldn’t let the matter lie. It was so irritating. Not to mention that what she had done this morning was entirely out of character for her. Miranda Johansson wasn’t a risk-taker. She was slow, steady, restrained and practical. Always had been. It had served her well enough in life thus far, after all. She was an independent, strong woman with an Ivy League MBA and a six-figure income--things that Miranda felt more than made up for the fact that where matters of the heart were concerned, she was a walking disaster area. Her ineptitude in all things romantic and sexual was all the more evident by the fact she was about ten seconds away from spontaneously combusting just from the sound of Maxwell Moore Junior’s low, throaty voice--to say nothing of his incredible body and irresistible flirtation skills. Miranda knew the only way she could keep control of the situation was to keep everything strictly business.

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“I thought we already agreed that what happened this morning was not going to interfere with our business relationship,” she said. “I really don’t see how my mentioning one of your better traits interferes with our business relationship,” Max countered. “In fact, I happen to believe that you should take a lot more risks. Here’s the first one--change the way you rate your stocks to something that’s a bit more radical. Do the exact opposite of what most of the investment industry does, and actually tell your clients to buy low and sell high.” Miranda rolled her eyes. “Please. I don’t need to tell my clients to buy low and sell high. They already know that. They aren’t idiots. You of all people should understand that Maxwell Moore and Company clients are all high-net-worth individuals with a lot of education and intelligence.” Max scoffed. “Are you sure about that? Because they seem to be losing a hell of a lot of money in one day for a bunch of smart rich people.” Miranda rolled her eyes. “What do you propose I do then?” “Simple. When a stock price for a good, profitable company is depressed--like all your recommended stocks are today--it’s a ‘Buy’. When a stock price is flat to moderately increasing on a good or even average company, it’s a ‘Hold.’ When a stock is skyrocketing in price, it’s a ‘Sell.’ Make sense?” Miranda laughed. “Sure, it makes sense, Max. In theory. But not in practice. You’re making the same mistake virtually everybody makes about the stock market. Everyone says it’s so easy to make money buying stocks, as long as you buy low and sell high. But the problem is, most people just don’t do that. They buy the wrong stocks at the wrong times. They look to analysts to make the most informed recommendations possible. And anyone who’s taken a single college-level economics class knows that the last thing you want to do as an analyst is tell people to sell a stock when it hits a high price. All that does is create a sell-off that spooks the market and artificially depresses prices, maybe even triggers a recession. That’s how the crash of ’29 happened, you know. You want to encourage people to keep buying the hot stocks so they just get hotter, and dump the dogs before they get any worse. And--“ Max held up his hand. “Miranda, you don’t have to spout a bunch of old-school economic rhetoric at me. I know you’re smart. I know you’re educated. You don’t have to prove anything to me with that kind of pedantic crap.” That remark got Miranda riled up, all right. “Pardon me, Max, but I hardly think the rules of basic supply-side economics are pedantic.” “See? That’s your problem, Miranda. You’re so conditioned to buy into the investmentbanking system that you can’t see how bogus the whole thing is. You and every other stock analyst in America are actually going out on a limb telling people to sell something that’s cheap, and then to turn around and buy something that’s expensive. That’s not a way to make money. At least not the last time I checked, anyway.” “Now you’re just being an ass.” Max blinked twice. “Point taken. But if you don’t mind my saying so, the kind of oldschool Reaganomics you’re spouting is exactly what led to the technology bubble that crashed the market in the first place. It’s high time you changed your thinking, Miranda. Otherwise, you and your clients’ money have nowhere to go but down.” He did have a point there. And Miranda could hardly afford to lose any more money for her clients. Not only would it send her career--not to mention her personal stock portfolio--into

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the proverbial toilet, it would give Victoria Markham and all her nasty Morton Myers cronies plenty of ammo to volley at her from Manhattan. And as much as she hated to admit it, a steadily growing part of her wanted to please Max. “All right, I’ll consider it,” she sighed, and turned to her computer to boot up Microsoft Word. She was well past due to get started on her daily First Call bulletins, anyway. “If you’ll excuse me, Mister Moore, I have a lot of work to get done.” “Good,” Max said, rubbing his hands together as he stood up to leave. “I’ll expect that you send out your revised stock rating system over the wires by the end of business today then.” Miranda whirled around in her swivel chair. “I didn’t say I would do it. I said I would consider it.” “Well, as CEO of this company, I’m ordering you to do it. From this day forward, every analyst at Maxwell Moore & Company will be rating their stocks according to my system. Any analyst who refuses will be asked to resign. Consider that.” Max turned on his heel and stormed out of Miranda’s office.

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Chapter Five Max stomped down the hallway, grinding his teeth in time with every floor-jolting step. What the hell was wrong with Miranda Johansson? She’d gone from sex-kitten seductress to stone-cold frigid bitch in one hour flat. And the fact the woman had a razor-sharp mind combined with even sharper claws she had no qualms about using to rake him over the coals only made matters worse. He’d never been so infuriated with a woman in all his life. Or so aroused by one. Max stepped onto the elevator, swiped his security card through the reader and rode it up to the secure, penthouse-style forty-eighth floor, where his new (and still top-secret) chiefexecutive’s office took up an entire wing. The rest of the company didn’t even know that Maxwell Moore and Company was expanding its presence in the Lasalle-Majestic Building to encompass floors sixteen through forty-nine yet. The rest of the company also didn’t know Max was planning to fill those floors with employees from his six most recent company acquisitions instead of hiring any new workers, either. Things were going to be changing at his father’s oldfashioned, sluggish company, and soon. Almost fifteen years earlier, Max had abandoned his job as a small-time analyst and independent day trader to start his own mergers and acquisitions company. And he had started that company with one goal in mind--to buy back Maxwell Moore and Company from the private equity group who’d rescued it from mismanagement oblivion—the very same mismanagement oblivion that had forced Max’s father into early retirement. Even if his father had retired a millionaire, Maxwell Moore Senior’s fortunes were diminished to a tiny fraction of what they had once been. And the near-collapse of his company into the hands of a few ultra-rich, heartless, and thoroughly unscrupulous private investors as a last-ditch effort to keep it out of bankruptcy had permanently tarnished the Moore family name among the ever-narrowing circles of the American financial elite. Maxwell Moore Senior had fallen from grace while Max Junior was still in college, and soon after, Max found the doors into many of the rich and powerful’s most revered perks, privileges, and gathering places suddenly closed to him. His application to an elite Harvard business fraternity was denied without explanation. His membership at a posh private university clubhouse was abruptly terminated, and even the fresh-faced young coeds from old-money families who’d been all too eager to accompany him to dances or ski trips before the Moore and Company downfall suddenly stopped returning his phone calls. And now, more than fifteen years after it all happened--and even though for all intents and purposes, the vast majority of the business world still held the Moore family in moderately high esteem--it was still that long-ago snub by the richest and most powerful American families that stung Max the most. From the time he was a small boy barely taller than his father’s briefcase, Max Junior had been raised with the expectation that once he was of age, he would take over the company Maxwell Moore Senior had built from a two-bit real estate and annuities firm housed in the family garage to a multinational corporation. But the company had collapsed during the recession of the early nineties, just as Max was finishing his MBA at Harvard. Not only that, the high-powered job as his father’s right-hand man and eventual successor--a job he’d counted on

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since he was a boy--vanished, along with most of Max’s trust fund. His father had raided it without Max’s knowledge to pay off mounting business debts. Humiliated and broke, Max had been forced to go out and pound the pavement with the rest of his fellow business school graduates. And even with a Harvard MBA, the dismal corporate job market of the recession-bound early nineties had forced Max to make personal and professional compromises he’d never imagined. He had taken a mind-numbing salaried analyst’s position at a mid-sized bank in order to pay the bills and was miserable. He had rented a one-bedroom apartment in a dull, affordable suburban complex and was miserable. He had driven a used two-door Honda to work and was miserable. Maxwell Moore, Junior just wasn’t cut out for an ordinary working Joe’s life. It had made him crazy. After a year of living hand-to-mouth on a pitiful entry-level salary, Max decided he’d had enough of an ordinary workaday life and starting scrimping and saving money to go into business on his own. Max had been raised with the belief that as the smart, well-educated son of one of America’s most successful self-made men, his position in life would always be assured. Wealth, power, and influence were three things taken for granted in the Moore household during his formative years, but from the age of twenty-one on, Maxwell Moore, Junior learned the hard way that almost nothing of value in this world came without a hefty price tag. And, over time, he’d also learned that almost everyone--no matter how ethical or innocent they might believe themselves--could be bought. Or sold. Max had learned to use that knowledge to his full advantage in business, and it had served him well. Very well. Less than a year after he ditched his thankless salary job and struck out on his own, his day-trading business grossed more than a million dollars in annual revenue. He soon expanded the venture to include management consulting. And then, mergers and acquisitions--a cutthroat, brutal business which soon proved Max’s true calling. He quickly rose above almost all his competition, cornering the American M&A market in small and mid-cap companies. He’d stuck faithfully to that business plan for more than twelve years, and it had paid back in spades. His M&A company, Junior Ventures, grew at an astronomical pace by acquiring small, troubled companies, turning them around, then re-selling them at a profit and reinvesting the capital gains. Earlier this year, Junior Ventures had finally earned enough for Max Junior to buy back his father’s company lock, stock, and barrel. And buy back his father’s company was exactly what Max did--but quietly. He’d paid an inflated premium for the shares from the private equity group in a hostile takeover, but taking back the family name and fortune for himself was worth every penny. As soon as Junior Ventures acquired Maxwell Moore and Company, Max had Junior Ventures dissolved, and replaced it with the newly incarnated Maxwell Moore, Junior and Company Venture Capital and Investment Group, an expert blending of his father’s old financial-services platform with Max Junior’s personal business acumen. He planned to announce the new, rechristened company to his junior and senior executives later that afternoon at a high-powered business meeting in the company’s new forty-eighth-floor boardroom. All he had to do was pick up the phone and call the meeting over the PA system. His new desk phone sat in the middle of the empty office’s floor, beckoning him. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to make the call. Not yet. Something else was on his mind.

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That something was Miranda Johansson. Miranda was an enigma to Max. He just didn’t know what to think of her--didn’t know what to think of his feelings for her, either. And it was driving him nuts. At the age of thirty-nine, Maxwell Moore, Junior was worth nearly a hundred million dollars, every red cent of it self-made and self-earned--if somewhat off the backs of the people he’d learned to manipulate out of necessity. To Max, people were commodities, just like butter or sugar, or even gold. Even the best people usually had their price. Max wondered what Miranda Johansson’s price was. So far, she seemed to be above such things, which puzzled him. He’d never once met a woman who couldn’t be manipulated to meet his every demand in exchange for a few expensive trinkets or a sizable wad of cash. To Max, most women were nothing more than pretty accessories that he could put on or take off on a whim. He was used to having total control over all the women in his life--and there had been many--whether he used them for sex, entertainment, or just boring dinner conversation. Max had always had a healthy, unfettered sex life. But lately he’d found all the passive, demure, cookie-cutter women who passed through his dating world’s revolving door painfully boring. There was no excitement, no spark, and certainly no passion--bedding these dime-a-dozen gold-diggers had simply been going through the motions. What had so charmed Max about Miranda Johansson at first was her innocence. In the crowded coffee shop, she’d been flighty, naive, even vulnerable. He’d swept her into his private lobby suite with friendly--almost fatherly--protection on his mind, not seduction. He’d planned to help Miranda get cleaned up, get her bearings, maybe calm her down a little with a brotherly pep talk before sending her merrily on her way. But Miranda had soon turned the tables on him. That was certain. During their anonymous morning encounter she’d been the sexual aggressor. Max had never had a woman initiate casual sex with him before--let alone casual sex thrust chock-full of such ardor and zeal. Miranda had seized upon him with such force and surprise that he had merely followed her lead, hoping and praying that he’d perform to her satisfaction. Every moment he’d spent trying to find new ways to please her had been more exciting, more fulfilling than the last, until he found himself on a plateau of ecstasy all his own. The mere act of pleasuring her was far more satisfying than any of the many sensations that had reverberated in his own body. Miranda had opened up a whole new world of pleasure and unlikely gratification for Max. And that new world thrilled him. That passion-filled morning, Miranda had taken him--literally--at face value. She’d seduced him without even knowing his name. She’d given herself to him, freely. He’d never known a woman so without inhibitions, so willing to give her body up to him so fully, so completely, and so passionately--and without expecting a single thing in return. The lovemaking they’d shared in his private lobby hideaway had been nothing short of spectacular. And intimate. Intimate in a way he’d never thought possible, in fact. His encounter with Miranda had gone well beyond mere physical intimacy to include something deeper, something that approached spiritual transcendence. Or so he thought. Max couldn’t quite put what had transpired between him and Miranda into words. But even if he didn’t know how to describe it, Max knew what he’d shared with Miranda was special. More than just special, in fact.

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It was cosmic. So why the hell had Miranda gone frigid as dry ice the minute she’d learned who Max really was? Did she really expect him to believe that she hadn’t felt the same cosmic forces transcending their bodies and souls that morning as he had while they made love on a priceless Persian rug? Did Miranda really expect Max to believe that he meant nothing to her now? How could any woman go from a sensual seductress into a stale pillar of salt in less than an hour? What the hell am I thinking, Max wondered, tugging at his sweat-soaked shirt collar. I’m losing my head over this girl. Max was furious with himself---he had never, ever lost his head on the job about anything----least of all a woman. He needed to buckle down, chill out, and set a good example. And cavorting with his junior executives behind closed doors was hardly setting a good example—something Miranda Johansson well understood. Her sudden frigid turn was proof enough of that. Miranda was being sensible. Miranda was being rational. Miranda had remembered that in the final analysis, Maxwell Moore and Company was a place of business, not a sordid love hotel. She’d placed the needs of the business above her physical and emotional desires, just as any savvy businessperson would. Miranda had done exactly what any smart, qualified woman in her high-powered position should do, in fact. Max recognized that, and as a high-powered businessman himself, he respected and understood her decision. But that didn’t mean Max had to like it. He paced his empty office, shoving both hands deep into his pockets. After shuffling back and forth across the wide expanse of the still-unfurnished room nine times, Max came to a stop in front of his floor-to-ceiling wraparound corner window, which featured a spectacular view of Lake Michigan and the Chicago skyline. It was a blustery March day—technically still the dead of winter in Chicago—and the partially frozen lake was rippling with steep waves. The sky was gray and overcast, the sun nowhere to be seen. The stormy, chill weather matched Max’s mood. He’d sworn to himself when he finally got his father’s company wrested from the fists of the private equity firm that had held it for so long, he would make it bigger and better—not to mention greater—than his father had ever envisioned. Max couldn’t allow one trivial, impromptu tryst with a perfectly ordinary woman get in the way of his plans. He just couldn’t. The only problem was, Miranda Johansson was hardly an ordinary woman. Max couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so taken by a woman—any woman. He simply couldn’t get Miranda Johansson out of his mind. Her shining dark auburn hair, her deep brown eyes flecked with gold, her pale skin, her delicate, petite frame—all of her delectable physical attributes were acid-etched onto Max’s retinas. Try as he might to clear his head of the memory of her beautiful face and body, of the tantalizing memory of her scent, of her taste, of the warm, silken feel of her skin against his—Max just couldn’t do it. Her hold on him was absolute. What the hell was he going to do now?

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Chapter Six Scared senseless, Miranda sat on the ladies’ room toilet with her skirt and pantyhose puddled down around her ankles. Just when she thought her day couldn’t possibly get any worse, she’d started her period. A week early. Caught unprepared, Miranda was forced to roll up a huge wad of toilet paper to catch the crimson tide before it leaked out all over her designer suit. Further complicating matters, Max had just called an emergency meeting of all senior executives and analysts, which was set to start in the forty-eighth floor boardroom—When the hell did Maxwell Moore and Company even have a boardroom on the forty-eighth floor, anyway?—in less than five minutes. Miranda doubted she could get through a long, tedious meeting without a ready tampon supply. She’d been too embarrassed to ask Annabelle to fetch some for her, and she’d been fresh out of quarters for the bathroom tampon machine, forcing her to improvise. But the onset of her menacing monthly visitor was the least of Miranda’s problems. The most serious matter at hand was, how could she survive another meeting with Max? The very idea of laying eyes on the man again terrified her, let alone the knowledge she’d have to face him in front of all thirty of Maxwell Moore & Company’s other senior executive analysts—all of whom were male. And most men she knew had a sixth sense about figuring out when one of their own had successfully nailed a woman—as well as which woman got nailed. Namely, her. She could almost feel their leering eyes on her now. Her sexual encounter with Max that morning had been so incredible, so exhilarating— and so naughty—Miranda was sure its occurrence was written across her forehead. She imagined a flashing neon sign reading I SCREWED THE BOSS AND HAD FOUR ORGASMS following her around everywhere she went. She felt like a sleazy office tramp. Miranda cleaned up her menstrual mess as best she could, yanked up her pantyhose and skirt, and went to wash her hands at the sink. She caught a glance of herself in the mirror and was stunned by what she saw. Her hair was still pulled back in its tight bun, her complexion still creamy-white and immaculate from the expensive products she’d used in Max’s private bath. But her eyes were dusky, her lids drooping in a sultry, satisfied expression she hadn’t known herself capable of. Her cheeks had taken on a natural rosy glow, and her lips were thick and swollen from all the kisses Max had smothered upon them. Her body seemed to sway with an air of sensuality she didn’t recognize as her own. A blazing aura of amorous tranquility hung about her head and shoulders. In other words, she looked like someone who’d just finished banging a man’s brains out, and had enjoyed every minute of it. Oh, God. How the hell was she going to survive this meeting?

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Miranda checked the back of her skirt in the mirror for stains or any sign that her giant toilet-paper sanitary pad was showing through her clothes and found neither. At least that part of her looked normal. Somehow, she’d have to make the rest of her body appear as un-sexy as possible. She forced her face into an angry, almost painful frown that crimped her jawline and carved a deep furrow across her forehead, hoping it would help alleviate the cloud of sex that clung to her body like a persistent fog. All that did was make her look like she was sexy and constipated. Miranda shook her head and sighed. There was obviously nothing she could do to hide the fact that she’d bedded the boss, so she supposed the best she could do was try to act normal. A difficult proposition, considering that nothing normal had happened to her all day long. Her heart sinking, Miranda slipped out of the ladies’ room and headed for the elevator. **** Miranda and the thirty-odd other Maxwell Moore and Company senior executives and stock analysts sat in leather-upholstered chairs around a long mahogany table in the unfamiliar, wood-paneled, forty-eighth-floor boardroom. The lingering scent of paint, varnish, and new carpeting indicated the boardroom and all its furnishings were very new. In fact, the entire fortyeighth floor was full of shiny new office cubicles and still-wrapped computers. Something big was definitely going on at Maxwell Moore and Company, and the room buzzed with nervous chatter from everyone in attendance. Well, everyone except Miranda Johansson. She sat frozen, grim-faced, and staring straight ahead, trying with all her might not to look like someone who’d just nailed her boss. Her body was wound tighter than an antique alarm clock, and her teeth were grinding loud enough to be heard across the room. She felt a nudge at her shoulder. Drew Popovich—a slimy, obese fund manager from the Institutional Investments department—stood just to her left, looking concerned. “You all right there, Miranda? You look a little peaked.” “I’m fine, Drew,” Miranda snarled through clenched teeth. “Jeez, Miranda, you don’t have to bite my head off or anything,” Drew shot back before going to take a seat on the far side of the room. As if on cue, Richard Donner, a fortysomething confirmed bachelor who’d been hitting on Miranda unsuccessfully for years, plopped down in the empty swivel chair beside her. “Don’t mind him, Johansson,” Richard oozed, running a flirty hand through his thinning salt-and-pepper hair. “He’s just been in a bad mood ever since his wife left him. Isn’t that right, Drew?” Drew grumbled and stared into his coffee cup. “So Miranda,” Richard went on, his sleazy, middle-aged swinger’s voice about as pleasant as nails on a chalkboard. “What do you know about this Maxwell Moore, Junior fella?” “Not much,” she lied, staring straight ahead. “Don’t you think it’s a little odd that this Moore kid showed up today out of nowhere?” Richard leaned in close enough that Miranda could smell rancid bacon on his breath, probably left over from his ten-a.m. breakfast. “And when the hell were they gonna tell us about all these new office floors? It’s all pretty weird. Me and some of the other guys are planning to go talk about it tonight at happy hour over at Governors Pub on State Street. Wanna come?” “No,” Miranda sighed, trying hard to tune Richard Donner and his inept pick-up lines out—just as she had for years. “I’m busy.” She desperately wanted to get up and change seats, but was afraid if she did, she’d dislodge her lumpy toilet-paper pad and leak crimson tide all over her chair.

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“You know what’s really bizarre, Miranda?” Richard sensuously tapped her shoulder again. It was all she could do to keep from decking him on the spot. “This Max Moore Junior guy sent everybody flowers. Roses. Don’t you think that’s a tad fruity for the office?” “I wouldn’t know,” Miranda seethed and scooted her chair as far away from Richard Donner as possible without looking too obvious about it. All heads in the room turned when Maxwell Moore, Junior came in the room, carrying a briefcase in one hand and a laptop in the other. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Max said, scanning the room. His eyes came to rest on Miranda, whose breath caught. “And lady.” At the sound of Max’s deep, husky voice, Miranda felt a shiver run through her entire body. It was going to be a very long meeting. “Folks, for those of you who don’t know me, I’m Maxwell Moore, Junior. Almost fifty years ago, my father, Maxwell Moore, Senior, founded this company in his garage while he was still a college student, and over the course of many years of hard work and ingenuity, built it into a multibillion-dollar international corporation. As some of you may know, the company fell on hard times after the market crash of 1987, then got hammered even more in the recession of the early nineties. A private equity firm took over the company from my father in 1992 to save it from total collapse—something that broke my father’s heart. It broke mine, too.” “We all know the back story, Junior,” Drew Popovich growled. “How about telling us what the hell you’re doing here after all these years?” “I’m just getting to that, Popovich,” Max replied, noticeably irritated. Surprised at being recognized by someone he’d never met, Drew made a face. “And by the way,” Max continued, “there’s no need for any of you to introduce yourselves. I know each and every one of you already. I know your names, your faces, and your work histories intimately. Made it my business to know, as a matter of fact. Because it’s my business to know everything about each and every one of my senior executives and stock analysts.” Max’s ice-blue eyes scanned the room again, and again they came to rest on Miranda’s brown ones. “And I do mean everything.” Miranda shuddered again and bit her lip. Did he really have to keep making double entendres in her direction? How long would it take before the entire Maxwell Moore and Company old boys’ club knew that the sole woman among their ranks was nothing but a sleazy office tramp? At the rate Max was going, approximately thirty-five seconds. Miranda flushed and tried hard not to hyperventilate—a difficult task considering that Max’s very presence had her heart running at mach two. “Folks, I’m here now after an absence of more than fifteen years to take my father’s company back. I personally purchased one hundred percent of Maxwell Moore and Company’s private equity shares through my own company, Junior Ventures. And it didn’t come cheap, either. I paid a premium for you guys, and as such, I am going to expect that each and every one of you pay me back that premium, plus interest, with your hard labor. It goes without saying that you’re all top-notch banking professionals or you wouldn’t be here. But just being top-notch doesn’t cut it for me. Not by a long shot. From now on, all of you will be instrumental in making the newly expanded company—Maxwell Moore, Junior and Company Venture Capital and Investment Group—the leading privately held financial services company in the world. A collective gasp rose from the room.

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“That’s right, folks,” Max said with a grin. “I want my dad’s company—my company now—to be the best in the world. Anything short of that is just plain unacceptable. In fact, I won’t be happy until all of Wall Street picks up off the tip of Manhattan and moves itself—lock, stock, and barrel—to Chicago, just so it can be closer to us. And I will be riding all of your asses night and day until that happens. Think you all can handle that?” Dead silence. Miranda glanced around the room and saw that virtually all her male colleagues had turned shades of deathly gray. She could only imagine what color her own face had gone. “Well, if you can’t handle it, that’s fine,” Max barked, pounding his right fist on the table. “I suggest that those of you who have already decided you can’t handle it get up and leave now. I have arranged generous severance packages for anyone who chooses to take advantage of them. The only catch is, you have to quit in the next sixty seconds. Anyone who quits—or is fired—later than one minute from now gets zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada.” Max swept his hand across the room. “I think my offer is more than fair.” More silence. Max cocked his head. “Well? Any takers? Speak now. I won’t pass judgment on any of you who do. But mark my words, I will pass judgment on anyone who stays. Big time. There will be big penalties for failure, but also big rewards for success. Big rewards.” Max pounded his fist every time he said the word ‘big’. Everyone around the boardroom table seemed afraid to speak, even to breathe. Max’s business presence and booming voice were certainly intimidating—almost violent, in fact. Not to mention incredibly sexy. Every booming warning Max uttered, every pounding of his well-manicured fist, every glance he made in her direction—made Miranda quaver with desire. Desire she wasn't ready for in the middle of a business meeting, let alone ready to contain or accept. The quidgy feeling that had overcome her in Max’s private lobby suite started to rise in her belly again. The quidgy feeling that had led Miranda to throw herself madly at Max’s feet, to kiss and seduce him with wild abandon. The quidgy feeling that was now instructing her brain to do the same thing she had with Max this morning—right here, right now, right on the boardroom table with every single member of Maxwell Moore and Company senior management watching their every move. Whoa. Get a hold of yourself, Johansson, Miranda thought to herself. What the hell is the matter with you? You’re a thirty-one-year-old businesswoman, not a hormone-crazed teenager. Miranda closed her eyes, willed herself not to give in to the growing demands of her body—which she hoped were attributable to PMS, or perhaps just an unpleasant result of the four-month-old diet dinner she’d microwaved herself for dinner last night. She would not allow herself to let that oh-so-hot quidgy feeling overcome her mind and body ever again. Absolutely not. Especially not here, in front of thirty-odd of her stuffy male colleagues. Seeing no immediate takers for his intimidating business proposal, Max glanced at his platinum Rolex. “All right, you’ve all got thirty seconds to quit and take the severance package before I start making your life hell. Twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven ….” Drew Popovich, who’d started to sweat through his shirt and suit jacket, got up and left. “Good man, Popovich,” Max called after him. “Stop by HR on your way out, they’ll have papers for you to sign. Anybody else?” No one else moved.

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“Excellent.” Max clapped his hands together twice. “I’ll look forward to working with all of you. He shot Miranda a subtle wink. “Some more than others.” Richard Donner raised a hand. “So, what was the deal with all the flowers?” Max leaned against the wall. “Those flowers you all received were motivational gifts. My little way of welcoming you as senior employees to the newly reorganized Maxwell Moore, Junior and Company. I thought about giving my executives something more traditional, like pen sets or Successories posters, but I was ahhhh.” Max again glanced in Miranda’s direction. “Inspired to do something a little more unconventional.” Now Max’s sapphire gaze locked themselves on Miranda’s amber ones, and she felt them bore into her with a sexual intensity that made her entire body tremble. “As a few among you have already learned, I like to do things differently,” Max said, never once breaking his gaze from Miranda. Overwhelmed by the sensations his eyes and voice evoked in her body, Miranda looked away, fixating her stare on the polished mahogany tabletop. Max gave the slightest indication of a double-take when Miranda broke the connection between them, but he recovered quickly. He opened his laptop and plugged it into the port that would project its screen contents onto the large digital view-screen just behind him. A few clicks of his mouse revealed a PowerPoint presentation. Miranda subtly cut her eyes over at the view-screen without turning her head and recognized the new stock-rating system Max had outlined in her office an hour or so earlier. As she expected, Max’s plan for overhauling the company’s very traditional methods for recommending stocks to its clients did not sit well with her male colleagues, who for the most part were even more conservative and by-the-book than she when it came to the investment business. “What the hell is this?” Richard Donner boomed. “Are we just supposed to start telling our clients the exact opposite of what we’ve been telling them to do with their money for years?” “Yes,” Max said. “Well, I’m sorry, Junior, but that’s a crock of shit.” Donner leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his flabby chest. “I’ve worked too hard to build my reputation here to blow it on some cockamamie scheme like this. And the clients will never go for it. They’ll take one look at these new ass-backwards ratings, jump ship, and sign on with the competition.” A murmur of agreement rumbled up and down the room, but Max was more than ready for it. “Well, if any of you still wish to leave the company, I’ll be a nice guy and still allow you to take advantage of my generous severance offer—that is, if you get up and leave in the next five seconds.” Again, no one did. Max laughed. “All talk and no action, aren’t you, Donner? That’s what my investigators found out about you when I was looking into your work history with the company, and you comment just now seems to back their findings up one hundred percent.” Richard Donner went fire-engine red. Even with her eyes still fixed on the mahogany tabletop, Miranda could see the sleazy old bachelor was about three milliseconds away from having a coronary. After suffering his sordid attentions for years, she couldn’t help but take pleasure at the man’s humiliation. Chalk one point up for Max, who immediately swooped in to take advantage of Miranda’s pleasure. “Donner, I assure you that once you all implement my new stock rating system, the positive effect on our clients’ portfolios will be almost immediate. And the result of that, of course, will be to elevate each and every one of your reputations in the investment

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business—not to mention help our bottom line immensely. When word gets out on how well our revolutionary new system works, people will be lining up to become our clients.” Donner stood up. “I’m sorry, Junior, but I just can’t accept that.” The confirmed bachelor cut his eyes over at Miranda. “Unless ….” “Unless one of your esteemed colleagues had already agreed to use it with her own clients?” Max finished for him. “Is that what you were going to say, Donner? After all, one of the other things my investigators found out about you was that you’re a follower, not a leader. As are many of you sitting in this room today.” Max chuckled. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” Richard Donner just went even redder. “Well, I ….” Max went and clapped the older, pudgier man on the shoulder. “Well, all of you followers are in luck, because one of your colleagues has already agreed to implement my new stock rating system. Isn’t that right, Johansson?” Miranda sat up rod-straight. “Well, technically that’s true, but ….” Max cut her off. “See? What did I tell you? Surely not a single one of you can dispute the quality and integrity of my new ratings system when none other than Miranda Johansson, by far the most talented and innovative of all the company’s senior stock-market analysts, has agreed to send her adoption of my new ratings system out over the wires by the end of business today. She and I have already had a lengthy discussion on my new system’s merits as a matter of fact.” All eyes in the room fell on Miranda, who suddenly found herself unable to speak. The entire lower half of her body was in flames at Max’s mere presence, while her upper half was frozen solid. No matter how many ‘cease and desist’ messages Miranda’s brain sent to the rest of her body, she felt the heat roaring in her legs and nether parts slowly creep up her spine until her cheeks sizzled, her forehead broke out into a cold sweat, and her crotch melted right into the lumpy wad of toilet paper she’d shoved into her panties out of desperation. A tiny whimper escaped her lips, which Miranda quickly tried to disguise with a cough. To put it mildly, Max had very nearly brought her to orgasm—in a public business meeting, no less—without even laying a hand on her. The man was incorrigible. After great effort, Miranda finally managed to get her lips to form words. “Well, umm, Max and I, we did sort of discuss the ratings system earlier today, but ….” “Thank you for that confirmation, Miranda,” Max said, not allowing her to finish. “Since all of you can see that one of your sharpest, most successful colleagues has already agreed to implement my new system, surely there can be no more legitimate objections? Now if you’ll allow me, I’ll just take a few more minutes to explain the finer details.” The man knew how to work a room, that was for sure. Max had manipulated her—and everyone else—over to his way of thinking like a master diplomat, never once giving anyone an opportunity to dispute his position or question his authority. Miranda could see how he’d become so successful in matters of business, and she guessed he was just as skilled in matters of the heart. He’d managed to simultaneously humiliate her and thrill her to the point of near-orgasm, after all. How was it possible? Like it or not, from that moment forward, Miranda knew she was putty in Maxwell Moore Junior’s hands. It would take every ounce of her intellect, cunning, wit, and spunk to

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keep him and his relentless advances at bay—to say nothing of the lengths she’d have to go to preserve her good name and reputation among her colleagues and clients. The battle lines were drawn. This was war. Max stood at the head of the boardroom, using a laser pointer to highlight the key points of his presentation to the assembled executives. Every inch of his body projected power, strength, confidence. Every word that escaped his lips—the very same lips that had explored and exploited the most intimate folds and depths of Miranda’s body just hours before—exuded his intellectual superiority to almost everyone in the room. Everyone that is, except Miranda. She didn’t listen to another word of Max’s presentation. As difficult as it was for her to tune out his sultry, oh-so-masculine voice, Miranda willed herself to do it so she could focus on something else instead. Nobody humiliated Miranda Johansson and got away with it. Nobody. As Miranda sat demurely in her seat pretending to take notes, she was secretly planning her revenge.

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Chapter Seven The meeting lasted over an hour, well past lunchtime. Once Max had snapped his laptop shut and dismissed his executive team back to their regular duties, several of them stayed behind around the boardroom to chat, to schmooze, to try and figure out just how they would keep the hardass Maxwell Moore, Junior satisfied and hang onto their jobs. But Miranda didn’t see the need to stick around. She had way too much to do. Like buy tampons, for instance. She ducked out of the conference room and headed straight for the elevator, her head down, praying that she could get safely inside the elevator car and down to the lobby before anyone had a chance to catch up with her. Her prayers were in vain. Just as she stepped onto the elevator and frantically pressed the DOOR CLOSE’ button, a well-manicured male hand slipped between the sliding doors, forcing them open. “Hello again,” Max said with a grin. He carried his briefcase in his free hand, his laptop expertly perched inside the crook of his elbow. “Mind if I hitch a ride?” Miranda didn’t answer. She just looked at the floor as Max stepped into the elevator car and stood close beside her. She could hear his breathing, smell his masculine scent. Both reminded her of the morning’s tryst and at the worst possible time. She felt her face flush, her heartbeat speed up, even thought she might faint. This would not do. She had to get away from this man and fast. “It’s time for lunch, you know,” Max said. “And my offer for a working lunch with you still stands.” “No thanks,” Miranda muttered, struggling to keep her composure. “I have to run an errand.” “So I’ll go with you on your errand and then we’ll have lunch.” “I don’t think so.” Max put his strong hand on Miranda’s shoulder and squeezed. “We’re having lunch together whether you like it or not.” Even as Max’s touch on her shoulder sent delightful bolts of electricity through her body, Miranda forced herself to jerk away from him. “You can’t order me around like this, Max. For your information, my lunch break is my personal time, to do with as I please.” Max matched Miranda’s step away from him with two of his own, until his face was only inches away from hers. “That’s where you’re wrong, Johansson. Now that I’m in charge of the company, my first order of business will be to do away with lunch breaks for senior executives completely. Every minute that the market is open and you are working in my offices, you belong to me. Understand?” Miranda backed herself against the cold steel wall of the elevator. “I believe that would violate any number of state and federal labor laws,” she retorted. Max grinned. “Oh? Since when are you the type to bring up labor laws?” “Since now.” Miranda shrank into the corner of the elevator car, wanting to disappear. Her toilet-paper pad was already soaked through and she and her expensive suit wouldn’t last

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much longer without tampon intervention. The fact that Max’s presence was making her panties even moister than they already were certainly wasn’t helping matters. “I see,” Max replied, inching himself ever closer to Miranda’s now-trembling body. “I don’t suppose you’d mind telling me about this errand you need to run.” Miranda’s jaw clenched. “It’s personal.” Max backed off a bit. “Fair enough. Tell you what. Take ten minutes to go run your errand, but meet me at the Marquette Diner around the corner at one-fifteen. I’m buying. And bring your thinking cap, because this will be a working lunch in every sense of the word.” As the elevator car landed at the building lobby, Max planted a firm, open-mouthed kiss on Miranda’s lips that sent her reeling. Then he stepped out of the car ahead of her before she could say a single word in protest. “See you in ten minutes,” he said. “Don’t disappoint me.” Then Max disappeared into the bustling lobby’s lunchtime crowd. Frozen stock-still in the middle of the lobby, Miranda knew Maxwell Moore, Junior had out-maneuvered her once again. **** Maxwell Moore, Junior stood in the Marquette Grill’s tiled foyer, angrily tapping his foot. “You’re late,” he hissed as Miranda swept into the front door, dragging her briefcase and laptop behind her. “Only by two minutes,” she retorted, glancing at her watch. “It was a long ride down in the elevator.” “Miranda, there’s one thing I need to get straight with you,” Max said as he flagged down the uniformed hostess for a table by the window. “I can’t stand it when people keep me waiting.” “Do you always order people around like this?” Miranda seethed as Max took her coat from her and hung it on the pole beside their corner booth. “Just the people most important to me.” “Hmph,” Miranda growled as she took her seat. “I guess that explains why you aren’t married.” A twinge of anger flicked across Max’s chiseled features for the briefest of moments, indicating that Miranda had touched a nerve. She considered pressing him further, but decided against it. She wanted to keep this working lunch strictly business, after all. “So Max, why don’t you tell me what it is you hope to accomplish with this lunch meeting?” Max ran his index finger around and around the rim of his water glass. “You tell me. You’re the one who lost eighty-seven million dollars this morning.” “I thought the whole purpose of this lunch was for you to help me get that money back.” “It is.” Max grinned. “But the way I help my employees succeed isn’t by spoon-feeding them. I prefer to encourage my employees to discover their own path for success. So how about it, Johansson? How are you going to win that money back for your clients today? Tell me your plan.” Miranda choked on a sip of water. “I really don’t have a plan,” she admitted, turning red. “Yes, you do,” Max replied. He seemed to relish contradicting everything Miranda said. “What the hell do you mean?” “You’re having lunch with me, for starters.” He waved down an old, bouffant-haired waitress. “I’ll have a Reuben sandwich, a cup of clam chowder, and a diet cola,” he said, reading his order off the specials chalkboard. “The lady will have the same.”

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“But ….” Miranda protested, just as the waitress disappeared. “You had no right to order for me like that.” Miranda fumed at Max’s take-charge, chauvinistic gesture, but at the same time was stunned that he’d ordered her the very lunch she’d been thinking of having herself. Still, it was the principle of the thing. Miranda didn’t like anyone bossing her around, let alone ordering for her in a restaurant as if she were nothing but an unruly child. “Miranda, the Reubens here are the best in the city. And the clam chowder is spectacular. You’ll thank me for my good taste when your food gets here.” Max spread his paper napkin in his lap. “Now, getting back to your plan ….” “Coming to lunch with you today was not my plan,” Miranda growled. “You forced me to come.” “Forced you? Funny, I don’t recall holding a gun to your head.” Miranda scoffed. “You know what I mean.” “Fine, I’ll admit to being a little … persuasive,” Max conceded. “But that’s just the way I am. Being persuasive is one of the many ways I became so rich and successful. Sue me.” “Nice to see you’re modest, as well,” Miranda remarked as the waitress arrived with their sodas. Oh, was that a flinch marring Max’s features? If so, chalk up one point in the Miranda column. “About my supposed plan,” she continued. “I honestly have no idea how I’m going to make all that money back. Especially if my deadline to do it is close of business today.” Max’s expression softened. “I never said it was. All I did say was, you had to send your write-up on the new stock rating system out over the wires by close of business today. Doing that alone will bring some short-term gains in for you almost immediately. The rest will occur over time. So tell me again, Miranda. What’s your plan?” “Sounds to me like you’ve already decided what my plan is on your own.” Max folded his hands on the tabletop and cocked his head. “Come on. I wouldn’t make it that easy for you.” Miranda took a long sip of her soda. “All right then. Here’s my plan. I’ll send your new rating system out over the wires on all my stocks. But only because you’re making me, not because I want to. Then I’ll do some research into new stocks. I think it’s time for me to diversify markets a bit.” Max nodded once. “Not bad, Johansson. Not a bad plan at all. But tell me something else.” “What?” “Where exactly are you planning to diversify? What sectors? You’ve always been a single-sector kind of girl, just like all the other Moore analysts are. Will it at least be telecomrelated? High-tech? Fiber optics? What?” Miranda smiled, twirled her straw around in her glass a few times before answering. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.” Max frowned. “Excuse me?” “You heard what I said.” Max leaned closer, until Miranda could count the pores in his rugged, angular cheeks. “I don’t like it when people keep secrets from me, Miranda.” Miranda settled further back into the Naugahyde booth. “I suggest you get used to it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of work to get done on this so-called working lunch.” She flipped open her laptop and began typing up notes for the day’s First-Call bulletins.

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Max grabbed Miranda’s wrist. He squeezed it so hard, Miranda thought her tiny, birdlike bones might break. His sudden gesture terrified her, and yet tantalized her at the same time as his touch brought back a flood of sensual memories from the morning’s wild tryst. “Miranda ….” Max’s voice was throaty, moist. He dropped her wrist, rubbed his palms along the tabletop, leaving behind a trail of sweat. “You’re making me crazy. Do you know that?” Miranda sighed. “The feeling is mutual,” she said, her tone dripping with sarcasm. But she didn’t mean it that way, not at all. Much as she hated to admit it, the fleeting touch of his flesh on hers had been enough to make her half-mad with desire herself. Her trembling fingers perched in midair over her keyboard, unable to move. “I …,” she began, but then her mouth went cotton-dry. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even breathe. Like it or not, this man had a powerful hold on her, physically and mentally. “I think you should leave me alone for a while,” she whispered and guzzled the contents of her water glass, which did little to cool the heat rising in her mouth and body. Max captured her frozen fingers, then started kissing them one by one. “Why?” “Because—because I can’t seem to get any work done when you’re around,” Miranda stammered. Max stopped kissing Miranda’s fingers and then started gently sucking each one, slowly and softly. “Oh? I hadn’t noticed.” The feel of Max’s flitting tongue on her slender, sensitive fingertips sent Miranda into a frenzy. He’d make her come right in the middle of the restaurant if he didn’t stop teasing her right now. She jerked her hand away. “Stop it.” Max’s eyes narrowed. “Why should I stop it when you obviously enjoy the attention?” Miranda pounded her small fist on the tabletop, almost knocking over their beverages. “Because, Max, it’s totally inappropriate for you and me to be physically involved as long as I work for you. You know that.” “Under normal circumstances, Miranda, you’d be right. But these aren’t normal circumstances.” “How so?” Miranda asked. But she already knew the answer. “We’re already physically involved. And as far as I see it, now that we’ve already had the most earth-shattering sex known to humanity, there’s no going back to just being business colleagues. I want both.” Max leaned in closer, until his lips were a millimeter from hers. “And I won’t stop until I get what I want.” He kissed her, his velvety tongue probing gently into her mouth like a hot summer breeze. Miranda tried hard to resist but instead found herself kissing him back with just as much passion. “Ahem,” said a voice just beside them. Max and Miranda split apart to find the bouffanthaired waitress standing there with their lunch plates in each wrinkled hand. “If you two kids are going to neck, take it elsewhere,” the papery old woman chirped. “This is a family establishment.” Miranda felt herself blush down to her ankles yet again—a phenomenon she’d never experienced before laying eyes on Maxwell Moore, Junior. Mortified, she bit into her Reuben and found that Max had been right. I was indeed the best Reuben sandwich she’d ever tasted, in Chicago or anywhere else. And the clam chowder was spectacular, just as Max had promised it would be. “Well, it seems you at least know something about food,” Miranda commented, “even if you don’t know much about manners.”

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“I’ve always been an unconventional guy,” Max replied. “I’ve never set much stock in good manners, and that’s always suited me just fine.” “It shows,” Miranda said, noncommittal. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a business plan to execute.” She finished the last bite of her delicious Reuben and tried to start typing, but found that her fingers itched too much for the feel of Max’s mouth on them once again to move on her laptop’s keys. She knew she’d have to lock herself far, far away from this man’s presence if she ever expected to get anything accomplished. She reached into her purse for cash to pay her share of the bill—no letting the chauvinistic man pay the tab for her—but before she could reach her wallet, her cell phone rang. She flipped it open. “Hello?” “Miranda!” squawked a familiar female voice, dripping with its trademark Long Islandby-way-of-Manhattan accent. “Miranda, darling! How are you?” Victoria Markham. Miranda felt her stomach turn and worried that her Reuben and clam chowder might soon be making an encore appearance on the Marquette Grill’s ceramic-tiled floor. Who is it? Max mouthed at her silently from across the table. Miranda didn’t answer. She just shrugged. Hopefully she could find some excuse to keep the call short while still gleaning some more dirt on what her scheming, passive-aggressive Manhattan arch-rival was up to this time. “What can I do for you?” Miranda sang into her phone as she wedged it between her chin and shoulder while rummaging in her purse for some pain killer to treat her fast-approaching migraine. Victoria Markham had an uncanny talent for making Miranda (and pretty much everyone else who came in contact with her, for that matter) grievously ill. “Well, I don’t know if you heard, but I’m going to have a feature story written on me in tomorrow’s Investor’s Business Daily,” Victoria cooed. Miranda didn’t understand how someone could actually coo when she was also lying through her teeth. But then again, almost anything was possible where Victoria Markham was concerned. “I did hear from someone claiming to be a Daily journalist this morning,” Miranda replied, her tone cool as mint sorbet. “But somehow I think his article won’t be appearing in print. My guess is, it will get bumped in favor of a more important story. These things happen, you know.” “Oh.” Victoria almost gagged—a dead giveaway. There was the slightest pause while the obnoxious woman regained her usual perky composure. Chalk up one more point in the Miranda column, Miranda thought as she popped four pain killers from the container and dryswallowed them. “Well, Miranda, darling, I was just dropping a line to see if you could help me out with something,” Victoria drawled, her East Coast accent grating on Miranda’s Midwestern ears. “Do you happen to know anything about Maxwell Moore, Junior? I just have to find out what is going on out your way in Chicago, you see, and since you and I are the best of friends, I was hoping you could give me some dirt on what that cad is doing messing around with your company. As if he can just show up fifteen years after his dad destroyed the whole shebang like nothing happened? I mean, surely you and all the other analysts must be terribly upset about the whole business. Aren’t you?” Miranda glanced over at the noticeably puzzled Max and chuckled. “You have no idea.” “Well, I’m just dying to know what’s really going on at Maxwell Moore and Company,” Victoria went on, her syrupy, phony voice sounding more ridiculous by the second. “Do keep

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me posted, will you? And let me know if you can get me any dirt on Maxwell Moore, Junior. I knew him years ago, you see. Years and years ago, when we were at college together, and …,” Victoria trailed off. Miranda wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard Miranda blowing her nose. Miranda saw a golden opportunity. Victoria Markham had been making her life and career miserable for years and now Miranda had a small chance at payback. Maybe this ‘working lunch’ with Max hadn’t been such a bad idea after all. “It just so happens that Max is right here, Victoria,” Miranda said. “Why don’t you talk to him yourself?” Without another word, she handed her cell phone across the table to a bewildered Max. “It’s for you,” she said, and got up to visit the ladies’ room, smiling smugly to herself. Anything I can do to keep that man off-balance is a good thing, Miranda thought as she headed to the rear of the restaurant where the restrooms were tucked down a narrow, tiled hallway. Once safely inside the loo, Miranda inspected herself in the mirror. Her tight, conservative bun was still secure at the nape of her neck. Her designer suit was slightly rumpled but otherwise immaculate, her pantyhose still shining and not showing a single run or snag, her kitten heels still pointy and polished. But she still didn’t look like herself. Something about her entanglement with Maxwell Moore, Junior had changed her, physically and mentally. She wore her irresistible attraction for the man like a scarlet letter. The dewy look of arousal clung to her face and body so tightly that nothing—not her frumpy hairdo, not her ultraconservative clothes, not even her own force of will—could cover it up. Miranda felt like a call girl trapped in a schoolmarm’s body. What the hell was she going to do? She couldn’t go through the rest of her workday with her heart fluttering, her panties dripping, and feeling like an honest-to-God call girl. That was just ridiculous. Outrageous. Out of the question. Insane. Miranda gazed at herself in the mirror and saw that she’d gone pale as a marshmallow. She pinched her cheeks hard, trying to get some color back into them, hoping the pain she inflicted on herself would go a long way towards snapping her out of this contemptible mood. Miranda Johansson simply wasn’t the kind of woman who let sex take her prisoner—let alone possess her body, mind, and soul. But like it or not, it had just happened. And Maxwell Moore, Junior was solely responsible for Miranda’s predicament. Max was turning her on—almost making her come in the middle of a restaurant, for God’s sake! Max was making Miranda’s body ache and burn, screaming for more of his enticing touch, more of his scorching kisses. Maxwell Moore was making her crazy. Maxwell Moore, Junior was ruining her life. She would make him pay. Miranda ran the taps and splashed some cold water on her face. She realized that she’d begun panting, and she wasn’t sure if it was from desire, rage—or perhaps a thrilling mix of both. She decided it was probably best not to think too much about it. Miranda gritted her teeth and steadied herself, placing all her faith and resolve in her hunch that being forced to talk to Victoria Markham would take Max down a peg or two. And the man needed to be taken down several pegs. He was just too damn arrogant for his own good. For Miranda’s good, too. She hoped that finding Max crestfallen and nauseated by Victoria’s

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wailing demands when she returned to their table would help cool the fire that stubbornly kept burning in her nether parts. Miranda also hoped that blue-skinned monkeys might fly out of her mouth. But she didn’t figure either possibility had much chance of happening. Oh well. Time to face the music. Miranda strutted back out into the restaurant, her kitten heels clicking on the diner’s terrazzo floor as she approached the booth where Max still sat. He’d already hung up with Victoria and sat silently stirring his clam chowder, looking sullen. He’d also discarded Miranda’s cell phone and shoved it to the far end of the tabletop, as if it was contaminated with some horrid tropical disease. Good, Miranda thought. Maybe he’ll cut out the shenanigans now. Or maybe not. Miranda sat down across from Max, who showed no signs of noticing her presence. His jaw was clenched so tightly she thought his face might break. The skin on his handsome face puckered into dozens of tiny nervous tics. He stirred and stirred his clam chowder until it was practically a purée. He didn’t look Miranda in the eye and wouldn’t speak to her, either. Finally, Miranda couldn’t take the silent treatment for another second. “Max, what’s the matter?” He set his spoon down beside his heavy ceramic chowder bowl, folded his hands on the table, and met Miranda’s gaze with eyes that flashed hot blue flame. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” “I don’t know what you mean.” “You know exactly what I mean, Miranda. The phone call. Why the hell did you make me talk to her, of all people?” “Who?” Miranda asked innocently. “Victoria Markham?” “Yes.” Max’s tone was clipped. The slight twinge of resentment Miranda had noticed in his features earlier in the meal had returned with a gusto. “You are acquainted with Victoria Markham?” Miranda sighed. “Yes, unfortunately. Are you?” “You could say that.” Max guzzled the rest of his drink and slammed the glass down with such force that Miranda could tell this was likely all the information she would get from him on the topic, at least for today. “Well, she’s spying on you, Max. I thought you might want to know and deal with it yourself. Since that’s kind of your style,” Miranda said, digging into the rest of her clam chowder before it had a chance to get cold. Max said nothing. He just went back to pulverizing his own clam chowder. “You might try eating that instead of turning it into sludge,” Miranda offered. Max set down his spoon with a click, then flashed his blue-fire eyes at Miranda again. “I would appreciate it if you would never mention Victoria Markham in my presence again. Ever.” Max’s voice was so cold, so sinister, it frightened her. Miranda was taken aback. Clearly, there was some sort of strange history between Max and Victoria. She could only speculate what it might be, but for the level of vitriol pouring from Max’s voice and hardened expression, it had to be deeply personal. Still, Miranda’s savvy businesswoman’s brain told her to press a bit further. “What if she’s up to something that directly affects your business, Max? Wouldn’t you want to hear about it?” “No,” Max seethed, jaw clenched. He cleared his throat, tried to collect himself.

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“Max ….” “Miranda, I asked you never to mention her again, and I meant it. Now let’s drop the subject and talk about something else. Like how hot I am for you right now, for instance.” He grabbed her wrist again, his thumb lightly caressing the sensitive underside of her wrist in widening circles. Miranda felt her crotch melt at his touch. “Please, Miranda, let’s go somewhere private for a while. I need to taste you. Now.” She stiffened. Being alone with Max right now was impossible for at least a half-dozen reasons, most of which she’d already discussed with him—and she wasn’t about to mention her menstrual period. “Max, we can’t.” “Why?” Miranda snapped her laptop shut in frustration. “Because we just can’t,” she snapped. “We’ve already been over it a hundred times. We are businesspeople. You are my superior, and I am an executive under your supervision. It’s completely, utterly, totally inappropriate, and you know it.” Miranda sighed, took a deep breath and prepared herself for the hardest part. “Plus, I don’t want to.” “That’s a lie and you know it,” Max seethed. And he was right. But Miranda wasn’t in any position to acknowledge her true feelings. Not now, at least. “I’m leaving, Max,” Miranda shot back, gathered up her laptop, purse, and coat, and dropped ten dollars on the table to cover her share of the bill. “I have work to do, and I can’t get it finished when you insist on harassing me. Good afternoon.” Max was having none of it. He reached out and grabbed Miranda’s arm before she could move an inch. “I don’t think so, Miranda.” “I beg your pardon.” Max’s face was inches from hers. His brow was sweaty, and his breath came in short, hot bursts that scorched Miranda’s forehead. “I’m not letting you out of my sight until I can taste you again,” he whispered. “And that’s final.” “I’m afraid that’s impossible, Max. I’m leaving.” “Not if I can help it.” The nerve of this guy, manhandling her in a public place! Miranda was furious. She struggled to free herself of Max’s grasp. “Let go of my arm, asshole,” she whispered. The couple in the booth across the aisle started to stare. Miranda felt her face flush---but not from embarrassment. As much as she hated to admit it, being manhandled by a handsome CEO in a public restaurant was damn sexy. Miranda’s heart was racing, her palms were sweating, and her groin was starting to melt. She was about eight seconds away from going up in flames. This would not do at all. Miranda knew she had to get away from Max before things got out of hand. But before she could move an inch, Max tossed some cash on the table and half-led, halfdragged Miranda out of the restaurant. She stumbled behind him, teetering on her kitten heels as she struggled to keep up. Before she knew it, they were back inside Max’s private office suite in the LaSalle-Majestic building lobby. “I’m sure you remember this place,” Max said. Okay, so things were already out of hand. “I’d like to forget this place entirely,” Miranda hissed. “I’m going now. Really.” But she wasn’t going anywhere. She couldn’t even move. Her head told her she needed to turn on her

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kitten heel and run far, far away from Max, his fireplace, and his expensive Persian rug. But her crotch was singing a different tune. Her crotch told her to start taking her clothes off. Miranda was reeling. She didn’t know which part of her body she should listen to, so she just stood frozen stiff in front of Max’s blazing fireplace. Frozen stiff, yet trembling with desire. Max looked at her quaking body and grinned. “You’re very uptight, Miranda. You should really try to relax more.” He caressed her cheek lightly with his index finger, then went to work on relieving Miranda of her expensive designer suit. Stunned, Miranda watched her clothes fall away from her body and onto the Persian rug below as if she was watching a character in a movie. “I-I can’t do this right now,” she heard herself say. “Why not?” “I---um, I have my period.” Max shrugged. “So?” “So----um, well---it’s----“ “It’s a minor inconvenience,” Max said, easing down Miranda’s stockings. “I’m sure we can find a way around it.” “But---“ “Hush.” Max tossed her stockings aside and then went to work on tugging off Miranda’s panties. As he did so he eased her down onto the floor, slowly, and spread her legs. Without so much as a flinch at the fact that her tampon showed that Miranda’s Aunt Flo was visiting, Max proceeded to delicately stroke Miranda’s clit. “This should help you relax a bit,” Max whispered as he expertly brought her to climax--once, twice, three times. “There. Now isn’t that better?” “Mrrrghhh,” was all Miranda could manage. Max and his fantastic fingertips had reduced her to a pile of orgasmic goo. Max laughed. “Not enough? Why don’t we try something else, then?” He was still fully clothed, something that Miranda in her stark nakedness found incredibly hot. Max leaned forward and took Miranda’s right nipple in his mouth, cupping her right breast with one hand as he sucked, bit, and licked, while he went back to massaging her clit in widening circles with the other. Miranda came again and again, her body shattering in a thousand burning vibrations while she screamed, bucked, and writhed. On her umpteenth orgasm, she was so spent she couldn’t take any more, and finally shoved Max aside. “Satisfied?” Max asked, stroking Miranda’s sweat-soaked hair. “Because if you are, I was hoping you could return the favor.” Max reached for his belt buckle and began to loosen it. Well Miranda was satisfied, all right. Physically, anyway. How could she not be after eleven-odd orgasms? But that didn’t mean she was happy. In fact, she was furious. How could she allow herself to be manipulated like this? How could she allow this man to drag her out of a business lunch so he could seduce her on the job? How could she allow this man to let her lose control, to melt into a helpless mass at his touch, to make her feel so exposed and vulnerable? Miranda had built her entire financial career around being calm, cool, and always in control. But with one stroke of his fingertips, Max could wipe Miranda’s ice-queen businesswoman façade away and replace it with a wall of eleven-odd orgasms. The fact she’d enjoyed those eleven-odd orgasms immensely was beside the point. Miranda was afraid of the person she became in Max’s presence. And Miranda didn’t like being afraid one bit.

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Escape was the only solution. Without acknowledging the fact that Max had just unzipped his fly in full expectation of receiving a blowjob from her, Miranda scooped up her clothes, threw them on haphazardly, and dashed out of the room. **** Miranda climbed the stairs to the El station and swiped her ticket card through the turnstile just as a train arrived. As she boarded the already-packed car, her mind and body were racked with tension from her meeting with Max. She grabbed one of the car’s steel poles to steady herself in the swinging, bumping train, but found she could scarcely hold on because her palms were sweating so much. And she felt dizzy, lightheaded. Every nerve in her body was on full-tilt overload, buzzing with heat that radiated into an intense focal point just below her navel—a burning need that despite her eleven-odd orgasms less than twenty minutes ago, still demanded immediate satisfaction. It seemed that Max had an even greater hold on her when she was away from him than when he was close by. She just couldn’t win. As the train wound its way north from downtown towards Miranda’s condo in Lincoln Park, she resolved not to let Maxwell Moore, Junior get the better of her. She was an intelligent, rational, and very successful businesswoman. She wasn’t about to let an animal, primal thing like sex distract her from her job. And she wasn’t about to let any man—even a man who had such immutable, irresistible power over her body and mind—rule her life. Not by a long shot. Miranda Johansson was no weakling. She would remain in control, no matter what. She was going to go home, type up her First-Call reports, send them out over the wires, and then take a long, cold shower. A very long, very, very cold shower. A shower capable of killing even a trampy callgirl’s sex drive dead in its tracks. And if that didn’t work, she supposed there was always rat poison.

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Chapter Eight Miranda had just stepped out of the most frigid shower on record when her cell phone rang. After spending a marathon four-and-a-half hours at her laptop dashing off the First-Call bulletins detailing Maxwell Moore’s new, upside-down stock rating system—something that Miranda feared might well bring about the end of her financial career—she’d spent another hour in the shower stall, dousing her arousal-addled body with a steady stream of ice-cold water. When she finally emerged, she was shivering and her lips were blue but, to her dismay, her mind-blowing desire for Max’s touch hadn’t diminished in the least bit. She glanced at her ringing land line’s Caller ID screen. It displayed a number with the same exchange as her office downtown, but she didn’t recognize the extension. Shivering, teeth chattering, and wearing nothing but a towel, she clicked the ‘Talk’ button on her cordless handset. “H-H-Hello?” “What the hell are you doing working from home?” a familiar voice yelled, so loud that Miranda had to hold the receiver three inches from her ear. “I want you back here in the office now, goddamn it.” It was Max. He’d tracked her down. The man just didn’t let up. Miranda glanced at her hall clock. Six-fifteen. “Pardon me, Max, but the close of today’s business was over an hour ago.” She considered pointing out the fact they’d also wasted a couple hours of worktime screwing each others’ brains out, but decided against it. “Well, I expect all my executives to work well past five o’clock. So I suggest you hightail it on back to the office right away. I have work for you to do.” “I’m sure it can wait until tomorrow morning,” Miranda said as she walked into her bedroom, still clutching her damp towel wrap to her body. “I’m—indisposed right now. How did you get my home number, anyway?” “I called Personnel. They had it. Along with your home address.” “Max ….” He cut her off. “And since you insist on being so difficult, I have no choice to come to your home to address our issues.” Miranda sank down on her bed. “Issues? We have issues?” she snarled, aghast. “Look, buddy. The only issue we are having right now is the fact that you are borderline stalking me. If you value me and my position at your company, you’ll leave me the hell alone. Starting now.” Max was having none of it. “I’ll be over in twenty minutes,” he said, and hung up. Miranda threw the receiver against the wall in a fury. The nerve of this man! Who the hell did he think he was, ordering her around like that! Invading her personal space, her private time—her home! He had no right to manipulate her like this. No right at all. Max was nothing but a bully. Well, she’d show him. Miranda ran a comb through her damp hair, threw on a pair of jeans, sweatshirt, and sneakers, shouldered her purse, and walked out of her apartment. Maxwell Moore, Junior might

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be showing up at her private home in less than twenty minutes, but he wasn’t going to find her there. No sirree. Miranda turned the corner of her residential street and headed down Lincoln Avenue, the Lincoln Park neighborhood’s namesake and busy main thoroughfare—a bustling boulevard lined with dozens of restaurants, bars, and coffee shops. She selected a bar at random, went inside, and picked the darkest, most hidden spot to sit. She ordered a very dry double martini from a blonde cocktail waitress, then flipped open her cell phone to call her best friend, Mitzi Althorp. Miranda needed moral support. Lots of it. And Mitzi Althorp, a former Maxwell Moore and Company options trader-turned Lincoln Park housewife who’d also once been Miranda’s college roommate and sorority sister, was the only one Miranda could trust to provide it. Having left the stress of the finance business behind five years earlier, Mitzi now divided all her time and energy among three major areas—her three kids, her needy lawyer husband John, and Miranda Johansson’s personal problems. Miranda dialed Mitzi’s number and her best friend answered on the first ring. “Hello?” “Mitzi, it’s Miranda. I need your help.” “What is it today, Randi?” (Mitzi was the only person left on the planet who could still get away with calling Miranda by her sorority pledge nickname). “Having a bad hair day? Crummy blind date? Break a nail? What?” Mitzi’s tone was sweet and teasing. Miranda knew that her busy-married-mom best friend found Miranda’s single-working-girl life these days hopelessly trivial. But today’s events were far from frivolous. Miranda took a deep breath. “Well, I lost eighty-seven million dollars of my clients’ money when the market tanked this morning, and then I took a coffee break and ended up screwing the new CEO—before I knew he was the new CEO. And now, the new CEO that I banged is stalking me. He’s on his way over to my apartment right now, so I’m hiding out at John Barleycorn’s until the coast is clear.” “Whoa,” Mitzi said after a long pause. Miranda could hear the Teletubbies blaring in the background and a screaming toddler—probably Laura, Mitzi’s youngest. “Eighty-seven million dollars, huh? That’s pretty heavy, Randi, but—oh, wait a sec—the kids are trying to kill each other. Bobby, DO NOT feed your sister Drano! That’s poison! Put that down RIGHT NOW!” Miranda had gotten used to Mitzi scolding her children in-between sentences long ago, but tonight, she really needed her best friend’s full attention. “Do you think you could get away from the house for a little while and meet me?” she asked, feeling guilty. “There’s a lot more going on than what I just told you. On top of this crazy new CEO I slept with stalking me, Victoria Markham is trying to sabotage the company somehow, and I’m caught in the middle.” “Oh come on, Randi. When isn’t Victoria Markham trying to sabotage the company? I’m sure whatever she’s up to this time, it’s no big deal.” Mitzi must have been in the kitchen, because Miranda heard a blender running, followed by a garbage disposal and running tap water. “I’d love to help, sweetie, but I’m super-busy right now. Bobby needs me to bake cupcakes for preschool tomorrow, Jonah has an ear infection, and Laura has impetigo.” “Impet-what?” “Impetigo. A skin rash. You know, creeping crud, big pink sores oozing pus and all that. All kids get it around her age. Anyway, we have to keep an eye on her at all times so she doesn’t scratch—Jonah! Get out from under the sink! You know you’re not supposed to be in there! Laura, stop scratching!” Miranda sighed and rubbed her temples. “Mitzi, I know you think that I’m a total airhead when it comes to my personal life, but it’s really important that you at least listen ….”

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“Bobby, what did I TELL you about playing with the bleach? STOP it! All right, that’s it! Time out! No more Teletubbies!” Miranda heard the TV click off, followed by the piercing wails of three children all under the age of five. She silently thanked God she had no kids yet. “So Randi, what were you saying about a new CEO again? I didn’t hear you the first time.” Miranda bit her lip. “Which part didn’t you hear?” “Between the blender, the kids, and the Teletubbies, all I picked up was ‘new CEO’, ‘eighty-seven million’, and Victoria Markham. Was there something more than that? Jonah! No climbing on the cabinets! GET DOWN FROM THERE!! Okay, sorry, Randi. I’m listening now, I promise.” Miranda bit down on the inside of her cheek before replying. “You obviously didn’t hear the part about me screwing the CEO this morning? On a coffee break? Before I knew he was the new CEO?” “Ohmigod!” Mitzi shrieked. “You banged the new CEO on your coffee break? The CEO? Holy crap. Are you sure?” “Oh, I’m sure. I went to the coffee shop for an espresso, met him there, went to his private office where he gave me like, eleven hundred orgasms. It was totally casual—I didn’t even ask his name until it was all over. And then he called my office twenty minutes later to tell me he was my new boss.” “Holy freaking crap!” Mitzi shouted. Miranda heard cooking pots clanging, then the whir of an electric hand-mixer, then more screaming children. “Okay, I guess you weren’t kidding when you said this was important—Laura, Jonah, Bobby--BE QUIET!!! Sorry. Where are you again?” “John Barleycorn’s. The one on Lincoln, right around the corner from your house.” Miranda guzzled the dregs of her martini and flagged the waitress for another. “All right,” Mitzi replied. All the motherly sarcasm and condescension was gone from her voice and replaced with the sisterly concern and love she and Miranda had shared since college. “John’s due home any minute. When he gets here, I’ll bop right on over. Sit tight. And try not to get too drunk in the meantime.” Too late, Miranda thought as she downed her second double-martini in less than ten minutes. **** Forty minutes later, Miranda was well into her third double martini, and Mitzi still hadn’t shown up. Miranda figured either John was late coming home from his busy law practice again, or one of Mitzi and John’s three children had managed to burn down their million-dollar, threestory brownstone house on Fullerton Avenue. Or—and far more likely, Miranda thought—Mitzi had forgotten about Miranda and her frivolous single-working-girl problems altogether. But just as Miranda was about to give up, pay her bill, and leave, Mitzi finally breezed in. She was dressed in a prim blue suit, dark blue pantyhose, and matching heels. Her hair was in a perfect, sleek bob, and she had sparkling diamond studs in her ears that matched the exquisite three-stone pendant that peeked out from underneath her suit-jacket collar. She looked surprisingly well put-together for a mother of three who’d been running the gauntlet of the kitchen Olympics when Miranda had called her less than an hour ago—a remnant of the confident, efficient, and stylish options trader Mitzi had been before her marriage. Although she loved her best friend dearly, Miranda had always been more than a little envious of Mitzi’s

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seemingly effortless style and uncanny ability to hold both herself and her family together even under intense stress. “Sorry I’m late, sweetie,” Mitzi purred, reaching down to give the now-sloshed Miranda a hug. “I had to explain to John how to use a hand mixer and fill the muffin tins for Bobby’s cupcakes before I could leave. Plus I had to shower and change. No way was I coming over here in my mommy sweats.” She looked at Miranda’s sloppy outfit and still-damp hair, and frowned. “Funny. If a stranger were to look at the two of us together right now, I’m sure he’d think I was the high-powered businesswoman and you were the desperate Lincoln Park housewife.” Miranda ran her finger around the rim of her empty martini glass. “Oh, don’t even start with me, Mitts. You have no idea what kind of day I’ve had.” Mitzi called over to one of John Barleycorn’s many blonde, college-student waitresses. “Hon, bring me a Maker’s Mark on the rocks.” She turned back to Miranda, took her hand, and smiled. “Well Randi, from what you said on the phone it was a day from hell. Or, it could very well be the best day of your life. It all depends on how you look at it.” Miranda stared at her best friend, incredulous. Best day of her life? Mitzi might as well have told Miranda that she’d grown another head. “What the hell are you talking about?” “I’ve just finished reading a great book—Bad Day: New Beginning. It’s by this pop psychologist-slash-Wiccan priestess lady who believes that our so-called bad days are really spiritual windows into our next life—doorways to a higher psychic-emotional plane or something. She says that bad days are the way your chakras work to facilitate soul destinies. When you told me all that happened to you today, it totally reminded me of one of the examples she gave in her book.” Miranda stared at her best friend, wide-eyed. Chakras? Soul destinies? Wiccan priestesses? None of these New-Age-y, mythical things gelled with what she knew about Mitzi Althorp. Like Miranda, Mitzi Althorp was a traditional, strait-laced, money-loving, Republicanvoting, very conservative young woman. She was a sorority-girl-and-sensible-businesswomanturned-housewife. Since when was Mitzi Althorp the kind of woman who cared about chakras and soul destinies, let alone what Miranda’s day straight from the Ninth Circle of Hell might have to do with facilitating them? Miranda had absolutely no idea. “Mitts, is there something going on in your life you aren’t telling me?” Mitzi’s drink arrived and she gave it two tiny, ladylike sips before setting it back down. “What do you mean?” Miranda rolled her eyes. “Chakras? Psychic planes? I never knew you were into that kind of hokey New Age crap.” Mitzi frowned, noticeably offended. “It’s not crap, Randi. It’s very educational, very intuitive. I’ve been reading into a lot of New Age stuff since Laura was born. It’s opened up a whole new world for me. I never told you this, but I had an out-of-body experience when I was in labor with her. It happened when I was about to go under anesthesia for the C-section.” Miranda’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. “An out-of-body experience? Huh? Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” Mitzi took another miniscule sip of her Maker’s Mark. “I haven’t told anyone. Not even John.” “Why not?” Mitzi pursed her lips before answering. “Because nobody I’m close to—not John, not my mother, not even you—understands or believes in that kind of thing. Miranda, you and me and

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people like us—we’re all just too uptight for our own good. The experience I had in the hospital with Laura taught me that. I’ve been trying to figure out what it all means for almost three years, but I’ve been doing it entirely on my own, and in private. Up until now, anyway.” Mitzi drew a deep breath and bit her lip. Then to Miranda’s surprise, she guzzled the rest of her drink and immediately ordered another. “What made you want to share this with me now?” Miranda asked, still stunned by her best friend’s revelation. “Well, like I said, once I quieted the kids down enough to hear all the details of your day, it reminded me of what I’d read in this Wiccan-shrink lady’s book. There’s a whole chapter about how she used to be a wound-up, single psychologist until she had a totally random onenight stand with a stranger she met on the subway. She never even asked the guy’s name, and she felt very guilty and cheap about it afterward. At first. But eventually, she had this whole spiritual and sexual awakening as a direct result of the encounter, and that’s what led her to become a New Age priestess. And then, about two years after she had the one-night stand, she ran into the same guy at random—again—at the gym. And they had another encounter right there at the gym, but this time, it turned into a real relationship. Now, they’re married.” Miranda’s mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding, right?” Mitzi gave her a serious look. “No, I’m not. Please don’t be offended when I say this, Randi, but I’ve been thinking more and more over the past couple of years that your life has become—well—a bit shallow.” “Shallow?” Miranda blurted a little too loudly. “I’m shallow? I can’t believe you, Mitts. I call you over here to help me with a serious problem and all you can do is insult me?” Mitzi’s expression softened. “I am not insulting you, Randi. I’m just trying to help you grow, that’s all. Ever since you broke up with Paul, you’ve been stuck in a rut. An absolute rut. Personally and professionally. It’s high time you had a breakthrough!” Breakthrough? What the hell was going on here? Miranda felt like her longtime best friend had been kidnapped and replaced by Dr. Phil. “Mitts, I really don’t see the need for ….” “Oh, there you go with the denial again,” Mitzi clucked, waving her hand. “You’ve been stuck in denial for more than four years, Randi. Don’t you see that?” “No!” At this, Mitzi burst out laughing. “Wow. You really don’t see it, do you?” Miranda felt her third double-martini starting to do its work. Her nose and forehead were both buzzing pleasantly. Her stomach felt soft and melty, and she was decidedly less tense than she’d been when she first arrived at the bar. The crowded barroom was even spinning just a little bit. In her relaxed, dreamy state, Miranda was at least somewhat willing to consider Mitzi’s version of relationship help, whatever it might be worth. “All right, Mitts, I’ll humor you. Exactly what do you think I’m in denial about? Be specific.” “Well, your sexuality, for instance. Big time.” “Mitts, come on ….” Mitzi held up her hand. “Let me finish. When I say you’re in denial about your sexuality, I’m not implying you’re a closet lesbian or anything like that. Not at all. I know you better than that, believe me. But ever since Paul walked out on you, you’ve completely repressed your sexual nature. You’ve hardly gone out on a date in four years, let alone hooked up with anybody. It’s like you completely shut down that part of yourself and immersed yourself in work instead. You barely even socialize without anyone outside of work. Researching stocks at Maxwell Moore and Company is pretty much your entire life. Am I right?”

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Even after three double martinis, Miranda still wasn’t too drunk to know that Mitzi was right. “Well, I’ll admit to being a bit of a workaholic, but ….” “But you’ve had basically no sex life—not to mention almost no other personal relationships besides your friendship with me—for the past four and a half years.” Miranda heaved a sigh. “Well yes, I suppose that’s true.” Mitzi beamed. “See? Doesn’t it feel good to admit you have a problem?” Miranda clenched her fists. “Problem? The only problem I have right now is, I’m involved in an improper sexual relationship with a man who is not only my boss, but a raging lunatic. He’s stalking me! He’s probably staking out my front door right now. He’s—he’s driving me crazy! I can’t get any of my work done. He’s constantly distracting me! He’s so obnoxious! He’s a bully! He’s ….” Mitzi’s eyes lit up, and she smiled. “Wow. It sounds to me you’re pretty taken with him.” “Mitts!” Miranda was livid. “You’re supposed to be helping me figure a way out of this situation, not—not ….” “Telling you that you obviously have a thing for this guy? You do, you know.” “I do not! How can you say such a thing? You don’t even know this man.” Mitzi just shook her head and chuckled. “I don’t have to know him to see how you obviously feel about him. Whoever and whatever he is, you’re falling for him, Randi. It’s written all over your face.” Miranda slumped down in her seat, dumbstruck. She’d been counting on Mitzi—her rational, sensible, oh-so-conservative-and-strait-laced best friend, to help her snap out of this infernal Maxwell Moore, Junior funk. But it apparently was not to be. Max had Miranda Johansson right where he wanted her. She was in complete and total submission to the sensual power this infuriating, obnoxious, and powerful man had over her mind and body. And now, anyone and everyone who looked at her—even her best friend— could tell that she was nothing but the two-bit office tramp that she really was. A two-bit office tramp who’d thrown herself wantonly at the last possible person she should. She was powerless, completely powerless. And now, not even her best friend could help her. Miranda put her head down on the table and started to cry. Mitzi got up from her chair and went to put her arm around Miranda. “There, there, sweetie,” she said, stroking Miranda’s damp hair. “Everything’s going to be okay. Really.” “N-n-nuh-no, it’s nuh-nuh-not!” Never a steady drinker, Miranda almost always lost control of her emotions once she had two or three cocktails in her and tonight was no exception. “I cuh-cuh can’t be involved with my company’s CEO! I can’t! I’d have to quh-quh-quit my job! And ….” “And you love your job, Randi. I know, I know. But has it occurred to you that you just might love this man as much as you love your job? Maybe more.” Miranda jerked bolt upright. “Excuse me? I don’t love Max! How can I? I just met him at ten o’clock this morning!” She glanced at her watch—eight-thirty. “I haven’t even known him for twelve hours yet!” Mitzi hugged her again and then squeezed her shoulder, hard. “A lot can happen in twelve hours.” ****

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Miranda finally dragged herself, still half-drunk, back to her condo around midnight after spending a couple of hours at the bar reminiscing with Mitzi on their college days. The subject of Maxwell Moore, Junior didn’t come up much in the latter half of their conversation and, for that, Miranda was thankful. But her best friend’s counsel had done little to console Miranda about her predicament. Miranda turned the corner of her residential street expecting to find Max waiting for her at her doorstep. She braced herself for his outrageous demands, his bold innuendoes, his double entendres. She would be ready for him this time—and this time, he would not get the better of her. She would turn the tables on him. Tonight, she would be the one in control, not him. But when Miranda arrived at her building, Max wasn’t there. And she was disappointed. So disappointed, in fact, that she almost burst into tears— again. What the hell was going on? Miranda was furious at herself. She should be relieved that Max had obviously given up hope of finding her tonight and gone home—not feeling as if she’d just been dumped. She felt the same pain in the pit of her stomach, the same nauseating dread and self-hatred she’d felt when Paul had walked out on her more than four years ago. The feeling that she’d been ripped in half, torn asunder by the callous rejection of someone she loved. Wait a minute. Someone she loved? This could not be happening. It just couldn’t. Forcing down a sob, Miranda unlocked her front door and trudged up to her apartment.

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Chapter Nine Miranda had gotten very good at avoiding Max at work. She almost had it down to an art form. In fact, she had succeeded in avoiding him for a full week. The first day was easy. She’d called in sick with a bad hangover and menstrual cramps that were more along the line of labor pains. The second day, she arranged an impromptu threeday business trip to visit the CEOs of several of the telecom companies in her stock research portfolio so she could explain the rationale behind Maxwell Moore, Junior and Company’s new stock ratings system. That day, she went straight to the airport instead of going to the office first, and told Annabelle to take messages for all but her most urgent calls. Max was calling her cell phone incessantly by the middle of the third day, but so far, Miranda had ignored all the calls, letting them roll over to voicemail and then ‘replying’ to each message by routing her responses through Annabelle. Miranda also conveniently ‘forgot’ her PDA at home during the trip, and when she finally returned late on Friday night and turned it on, there were 27 text messages waiting for her from Max, all of which she deleted without reading. Miranda spent the weekend tidying up her condo and organizing the files in her home office, ignoring every phone call and text message from Max demanding she come into the LaSalle Street office, and instead went shopping on Michigan Avenue. After all that had gone on with Max and her job over the past week, she decided she needed a new wardrobe. Miranda already had a walk-in closet full of expensive designer suits, but all those designer suits looked exactly alike—black, gray, or, at their most adventurous, pinstriped. Long, straight skirts and tailored, well-made slacks with cuffed hems and pleated fronts. High collars and severe, ultraconservative cuts that revealed little of her trim, petite figure. She thought maybe if she shed her frumpy, ultraconservative suits like a snake shedding its skin, she’d shed her growing feelings for Max along with them. Ironic as it might seem, Max had awakened a carefree, colorful side of Miranda she hadn’t realized existed. As she perused the shops up and down the Magnificent Mile, she found herself drawn to boutiques--and outfits--far removed from her normal conservative style. Instead of loading up on black and gray suits, Miranda gravitated towards bright, jewel-toned gauze skirts and peasant blouses. Instead of acquiring yet more pairs of pointy black kitten heels for her already extensive collection, she bought chunky espadrilles, strappy sandals, and knee-high boots. Where she might once have bought a long, straight wool skirt, she bought a short, flippy leather mini instead. She even ducked into a high-priced European-style lingerie shop and bought a slew of lacy bras, matching panties, and a black satin Merry Widow. Miranda Johansson had never owned a Merry Widow in her life, let alone a black satin one. Why was she compelled to buy one now? Why, indeed. Probably for the same reason she was compelled to make an appointment at a high-priced salon and day spa to have golden-caramel highlights placed in her dark auburn tresses and get a French manicure with matching pedicure. When Miranda returned to her empty apartment late Sunday afternoon, laden with scores of shopping bags and sporting a stylish new hairstyle, she not only felt more than a little guilty from the amount of money she’d spent, she also felt more than a little turned on. Her whirlwind

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shopping excursion had excited her. Her colorful, risqué new wardrobe excited her, too, as did her now-shaggy, flirty hair--which would no longer allow itself to be tamed into a tight, conservative knot at the back of her neck. The thought of Maxwell Moore, Junior seeing her come to the office with her hair cascading down over her shoulders in a golden-caramel layered waterfall and wearing a tie-dyed, embroidered sundress instead of a frumpy black suit excited her, thrilled her, moved her …. No. No, no, no. Miranda Johansson was not the kind of woman who got sexually aroused about pretty clothes, or sexually aroused about the idea of someone seeing her wear those pretty clothes. Or at least, she wasn’t that kind of woman until she met Max. Now, as she rode the train downtown Monday morning for her first day back at the office in a week, her stomach was queasy with nervous anticipation about the inevitable. She would have to face Max today, like it or not. She’d simply run out of excuses to avoid him. Miranda valued her job too much to keep up her disappearing act any longer. And Max would surely pursue her this morning with all the gusto he’d spent every other day of the past week. As Miranda glanced at her reflection in the El train’s window, she hoped she could make it through yet another day of body-tingling, mind-numbing, palm-sweating, panty-soaking excitement from Max’s ever-persuasive presence. It was getting to be far more than she could handle. Something had to give, and soon. **** Max paced his newly furnished office, his Italian loafers padding the nineteenth-century Persian rug that covered half the room. The antiques dealers had delivered the rug, tapestries, art, and heavy teak furniture for his new office late last week. He’d decided to return two of the Italian marble nude sculptures rather than install them in the display console behind his fortresslike desk. After what had happened between him and Miranda the week before, he figured displaying the beautifully suggestive statues in the office would be in poor taste, and he didn’t have a proper place for them at home. So, he’d returned the priceless artworks to the dealer against the terms of his purchase contract, having to resell them at a substantial loss. An ever-savvy and shrewd businessman, under normal circumstances Max would never, ever consider doing such a thing. But he hadn’t returned the statues for business reasons. He’d done so out of respect for Miranda Johansson, in deference to his steadily growing feelings for her. He’d done a lot of other things that week out of respect for her, too. Too bad she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do the same for him. Miranda had disappeared from the office, first for an ‘illness’ Max figured she’d probably faked, then for some off-site meetings that Max knew were completely unnecessary. She was purposefully avoiding him. That much was clear. And it absolutely infuriated him. Who the hell did Miranda Johansson think she was, anyway? Her callous, manipulative snubs were a deliberate slap in his face. A slap in the face that stung even more when combined with the fact that Max’s whole body ached with growing agony every day--nay, every second-he was separated from her. How dare she treat him like this? Did she enjoy tormenting him? Did she get a crude thrill out of causing him pain? Or was she just afraid? Afraid of her feelings for him, just as he was growing increasingly fearful of his feelings for her?

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Maxwell Moore, Junior was not the kind of man who fell in love. Never had been. He’d fallen in and out of lust a few times, certainly---most men did, after all. And his initial encounter with Miranda had seemed like simple lust at first. But as time passed, his desire for her didn’t— and it was a desire that went far beyond physical. At odd moments, Max found himself wondering what Miranda was doing, how she was feeling, whether she was happy, or sad, or indifferent. He woke up in the middle of the night wondering if she was safe, if she was sleeping soundly or tossing and turning with the same nervous anxiety, the same tension as he had every night for the past week. Miranda had turned Max into a walking ball of nerves. And every PDA message of his she deleted, every voicemail she ignored, was only making it worse and worse. If he didn’t see her soon, Max wasn’t sure he’d be able to function. Something had to give, and fast. **** Miranda took her time arriving at the office. Every possible minute she could delay facing Maxwell Moore, Junior again was a minute she could hold on to her sanity. She lingered for five minutes too long at the corner newsstand. She spent ten minutes longer than necessary in the coffee shop. She invented a need to run an errand at the drug store, where she spent another fifteen minutes strolling aimlessly up and down the makeup and shampoo aisles. Finally, at 8:45 am, Miranda’s cell phone rang. The stock market was already open for the day, so Miranda knew her ability to ignore this call after a week-long absence was next to nil. She pulled out her phone and saw Annabelle’s extension on the caller ID screen. “Hello, Annabelle?” “Hon? Are you coming in today or not? Please, please tell me that you are.” Annabelle sounded upset. “Yes, I’m coming in,” Miranda replied, trying her best to sound reassuring. Miranda felt her stomach tighten with dread. She simply couldn’t put it off any longer. She had to go back to work, back to her office, back to Annabelle—and back to Max. Miranda stepped out of the elevator onto her office floor less than five minutes later, lugging her overloaded briefcase, laptop, and shopping bag. She noticed her co-workers’ heads turning as she passed them in the hall. At first, she thought they were staring at her many packages, but then she remembered her drastically changed appearance. Miranda had come in to work at Maxwell Moore and Company every day for the past seven years wearing a black or gray suit, black kitten heels, her hair knotted in a severe bun, and little to no jewelry. Today, she wore a long magenta tie-dyed skirt with an asymmetrical hem, a ruffled peasant blouse in a lighter shade of pink, a chunky red bead necklace and matching bracelet, and long, dangly gold earrings that graced her shoulders and complemented the caramel highlights in her loose, layered locks. Quite a change from seven years’ worth of dowdy dark suits and schoolmarm hair. Miranda finally realized her co-workers were all staring at her. She arrived at Annabelle’s cubicle, not sure how she was going to handle being ogled by her co-workers all day long, not to mention the probing questions sure to start flying from her assistant’s mouth. But when Miranda arrived at her office suite, Annabelle was so engrossed in unpacking a huge stack of file boxes she didn’t look up when Miranda greeted her. So Miranda tried again. “Annabelle? I’m here. What’s going on?” Miranda eyed the towering stack of file boxes uneasily.

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Annabelle finally looked up. Upon seeing Miranda’s radically changed appearance, the older woman did a moderate double-take, then adjusted her reading glasses. “That’s a new look for you, hon. I really like your hair. What made you change it?” Miranda smiled tightly. “I just thought my old look was getting a little boring, is all.” Annabelle clucked. “I think you look nice, Miranda. You’re a lovely girl. I’ve always thought so.” “Thank you.” Miranda was flattered, but there was more important business to attend to. “So, how about telling me what’s going on here, Annabelle?” The older woman stood up slowly and worked some kinks out of her stooped back. “Well, the company’s being sued. Big time. That’s what all these files here are about.” Miranda bit her lip, apprehensive. Lawsuits were commonplace in the financial business, but something in Annabelle’s manner told her this latest litigation was far from routine. “Who’s suing us this time?” Annabelle chuckled. “Well, the more important question is, who isn’t suing us? There’s at least three different plaintiffs in four different cases. And that’s just as of this morning. At the rate we’re going, we’ll have several more lawsuits pending by the end of the week. You and Max are both named defendants in all of them, by the way.” Miranda’s stomach bottomed out. “What? How can I be a named defendant when the company is being sued? I can see why Max would be, since he’s CEO, but me?” Annabelle sighed and shook her head. “Hon, you’ve already asked me way more than I understand. I’m just a secretary, after all. All I know is, I have to go through all these files and make copies of each and every published statement you ever made about all the stocks in your research universe and send it to the lawyers. Every email, every conference-call transcript, every memo and First-Call. Every report you’ve ever published. I even have to provide them with copies of your business and travel schedule for the past five years.” Miranda felt a migraine coming on. “But Annabelle, why? What are we—I—being sued for, and by whom?” Annabelle slumped back into her desk chair and rubbed her temples. “Hon, I already told you. I don’t know. If you want to know the goods, talk to the Legal Department. Better yet, talk to Max. He’s pretty anxious to talk to you, by the way. He’s left you twelve messages just this morning.” “I’m sure he has,” Miranda muttered and stomped into her office. She took the elevator up to his private office floor, palms and forehead pouring sweat in nervous anticipation. Her heart raced. Her stomach danced with butterflies. Her head buzzed with anxiety. And not the kind of anxiety that comes with being the subject of a lawsuit. It was a sensual, lust-filled anxiety, the kind that only comes from a deep, urgent, unfulfilled need for sex. Oh, God. It was happening again. Her lower half pulsated with moist, supple warmth, and her nether parts began to melt with every passing inch the elevator made toward Max’s private office suite. She could feel the seeds of arousal bursting from every cell in her body, from the soles of her feet all the way up to the hair follicles on the crown of her head and everywhere in between. By the time the elevator doors slid open on Max’s floor, Miranda’s underwear was soaked through. And she was thankful her thin, gauzy peasant blouse allowed for plenty of air circulation. Otherwise, she might have fainted from the heat surging up and out through her body.

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She gingerly stepped off the elevator, fearful of passing out at every pace. The door to Max’s office was closed, but Miranda knew he was there. She could hear strands of Mozart wafting out into the corridor, along with the unmistakable sound of Maxwell Moore, Junior reading someone the riot act on the phone. Miranda put her ear to Max’s door to listen. “What the hell do you mean, you don’t have it?” Max boomed. “Well, find it, goddamn it! They are NOT getting this company back over some bullshit technicality! No fucking way!” There was a long pause as Max listened to the whining of whoever was on the receiving end of his string of abuse. Then, Miranda jolted at the sound of something fragile being smashed against the wall. “Look, I don’t care what it is you have to do,” Max shouted as the din of shattering glass subsided. “Just find that goddamn ad. Do whatever you have to do, but find it. I want to hear back from you no later than tomorrow afternoon.” Miranda heard a heavy thud, which she guessed was the sound of a phone receiver being thrown on a desk. The strands of Mozart were replaced with the grating guitar riffs of a rock band. She decided that now might be her only chance to get Max’s attention. She banged on the door, hard. The volume went down a bit. “Who the hell is it? Whoever you are, go away. I’m busy.” She set her jaw. “Max, it’s Miranda. You wanted to see me?” Max shut the blaring heavy metal off completely and opened the door. Over his shoulder, Miranda could see the shards of a broken crystal vase scattered on the floor by Max’s massive desk. There were deep circles underneath his electric-blue eyes. His hair was rumpled, and he had a twelve-o’clock shadow. Miranda guessed he probably hadn’t slept for at least two days. He looked tired, disheveled, burned out. But still incredibly sexy. “Miranda,” he said, his voice low and husky. “Why have you been avoiding me?” “I …,” Miranda stammered. Suddenly her tongue seemed made of iron. “I’ve been busy. I wasn’t feeling well on Tuesday, so I took a day off. Then I had to go explain to the CEOs of the companies I cover why their stock ratings changed ….” “You didn’t have to make that trip and you know it,” Max snarled. “You could have just as easily sent them each a glossy-cover memo and an Eli’s chocolate cheesecake and it would have been fine.” Max took a step closer to her, and she could feel the heat of his body charging the air molecules between them. Miranda stiffened. “Well, Max, I’ve always believed it’s very important for stock analysts to maintain personal relationships with the companies they cover. It encourages the CEOs to be honest and forthright in providing me with their financial performance.” She folded her arms, looked at Max expectantly. “Funny you don’t extend that philosophy to your own company’s CEO,” Max hissed. “You had no right to take off like that without consulting me first. No right at all.” “You had no right to show up at my private home against my wishes!” Miranda shot back. Max bit his lip. “All right, point taken,” he finally said. “But you didn’t have to disappear that night, either. All I wanted to do was talk to you. Why the hell didn’t you let me?” Miranda walked over to one of Max’s floor-to-ceiling windows and gazed out onto Lake Michigan. “You’re a bully, Max. Do you know that?” “I’m not a bully,” Max hissed. “I just like to get what I want, that’s all.”

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Miranda laughed despite herself. “It’s the same thing!” Max stuffed his sweating hands into his pockets. He’d been anxious to see Miranda for days, had even been looking forward to it, but now that she was here, he didn’t know how to behave. He alternately wanted to throttle her for her callous disappearing act, or to seize her in his arms and paralyze her with his kisses. Even stranger, both possibilities thrilled him equally. He decided that for now, at least, the best route to take was to stick purely to the business at hand. Otherwise, his primal instincts would take over, and he’d have her naked on the floor in less than a minute. Not that it would be a bad thing, but …. Max shook his head several times to clear it of all X-rated thoughts. There were far more important things to think about. “Miranda, as I’m sure you’ve heard by now, our company is being sued. Big-time. You and I are both named defendants, in fact.” Miranda sat down in one of Max’s antique leather sofas. “But why?” Max half-smiled. “Miranda, this is America. Anybody can sue anybody for any reason at all.” “I know that, Max. But who’s suing us, and what for? I tried to get more details from Annabelle, but she doesn’t know anything. Legal wasn’t much more help. They both told me I needed to talk to you about it personally.” “I’ve been trying to keep this under wraps as much as possible,” Max explained. “You see, the reasons behind the lawsuit are of a very personal, spiteful nature on the part of one of my ex-girlfriends—a woman I knew in college who has gone on to have a great deal of influence in American finance. A very influential, powerful woman who also holds a very old, nasty grudge against me. And now, apparently, against you, as well.” A terrible possibility began to form in Miranda’s mind. She thought back to their conversation at the Marquette Grill, recalled the jolting telephone call she’d received from Victoria Markham and Max’s even more jolting reaction to it. Was Victoria Markham behind this massive lawsuit? And even worse, was Victoria Markham really Max’s spiteful exgirlfriend? The very idea of her obnoxious Manhattan arch-rival being romantically entangled with Max, even if it was years ago, made Miranda’s blood boil. “Well, I think I might already have a pretty good idea who’s behind this, then,” she admitted. “If you guessed Victoria Markham, you guessed right. That woman’s been a pain in my ass for years.” “Really?” Miranda asked, almost jovial. “Because she’s been a major pain in my ass for years, too.” “Why am I not surprised?” Max sat down next to Miranda on the leather sofa, and his sudden proximity made her quake with desire. “Victoria’s a very difficult woman,” he said. “She’s got being a pain in the ass down to an art form.” “I’ll say,” Miranda said. “But what has she done now?” Max shook his head. “More like what hasn’t she done. As you may or may not know, Victoria Markham, along with several members of her family, were major shareholders in the private equity firm that bought out my father’s company in the early 90s. Several of my father’s colleagues tried to convince my dad not to sell out to them—he had several other offers he could have negotiated on—but Victoria and her cronies offered him the highest price. It was a very shady deal in many ways. Victoria comes from a very old and powerful family. Philadelphia Main Line, old steel industry money that went back something like six generations, big country

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estate, servants, the whole bit. Victoria does whatever she can to make life for me and my family miserable. And I suppose to a certain extent, she’s entitled.” “How do you mean?” Miranda asked. Max stood back up and began pacing the room again. His slim, compact body wore an aura of tense agitation that Miranda found oddly sexy. “I’m sure you’ve already figured this out, Miranda, but Victoria and I were college sweethearts at Harvard. We dated for almost three years, until about midway through our junior year. By then she was pressuring me to marry her as soon as we graduated. I’d actually thought about marrying her at one point, when we were still freshmen, but I was so young, how could I have known what I was thinking? By the beginning of junior year, I’d grown up, and also figured out that Victoria was not the woman for me. It took me a while to build up the courage to end it, though. I mean, I was young and immature. I had all this time invested in the relationship. I didn’t know what to do. Plus, I was getting a lot of attention from other women in my classes. There were plenty of nice-looking coeds from good East Coast families to choose from. I decided—the wrong decision, I know that now—that it would be easier to break things off with Victoria if she caught me dating other women.” Miranda could see where this was going. “Let me guess. She didn’t take it well?” Max chuckled. “That’s putting it mildly. One of the biggest reasons I thought I needed to end things with Victoria was her temper. As I’m sure you know, the woman has a very short fuse. By my junior year, I’d seen her have some mild flare-ups during our relationship—which weren’t necessarily that bad, considering how emotional college students can get—but there was always this sinister edge to her whenever she was upset. And it bothered me a lot. Even scared me a little. I felt guilty about the way I chose to end the relationship, sure, but Victoria’s violent reaction to what happened just proved all my suspicions right.” Miranda blinked. “Violent reaction?” “Yes,” Max sighed, wincing. “Granted, what she caught me doing would have made even the most reasonable woman pretty upset.” Miranda leaned forward in her seat. “What happened, exactly?” “Well, Victoria and I lived in the same coed dorm and, as longtime boyfriend and girlfriend, we had keys to each others’ rooms. I’d been dating other women here and there on campus for a while—innocently, mind you—hoping that Victoria would catch me with one of them. But so far, that strategy hadn’t worked. So I decided I needed to take it up a notch.” “Take it up a notch?” Knowing where he was leading, Miranda felt her body tingle with arousal. She felt a little guilty about taking pleasure in Victoria’s relationship misfortune but not much. After all, it gave her a tasty glimpse into Max’s sensual past. “This sounds interesting,” she cooed. Max rocked back and forth on the soles of his feet, remembering. “Well, it came to pass that I stopped dating the ‘good’ girls on campus and took up with a woman—I’ll just call her Grace—who was known about town as a bit of an easy lay. And I don’t mean this in a bad way. She was a nice, carefree girl who was just very comfortable with her sexuality—a pretty basic, meat-and-potatoes sexuality at that—but at that point in my life, I wasn’t looking for anything exotic. Just something quick and easy. I told her about my plan to break things off with Victoria, asked her if she would be willing to participate, and as per usual with her, she was.” Now, Miranda’s curiosity was piqued. “Go on.” “I brought Grace back to my dorm room that same night. We ahhh, we got hot and heavy pretty quick. But before we got hot and heavy, though, I called Victoria and asked her to come

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over. I told her I was studying, and asked her to just let herself in to my room using her key. Meanwhile, Grace and I got cozy. One thing led to another, and ….” “Give me details,” Miranda sputtered without realizing it. Max’s eyebrows raised. “Details? What kind of details? Why?” Miranda felt her face go warm. “Well, Victoria’s been causing me problems for pretty much my entire career,” she said. “I’d just really enjoy hearing about her reaction to your— sexual activities, is all.” Not to mention the fact that the idea of hearing about Max’s past erotic escapades—even with other women—made Miranda hot. But she wasn’t about to admit that to him. Not now, anyway. The right corner of Max’s mouth tugged upward slightly. “How detailed do you want me to be?” “Oh, well, you know,” Miranda mumbled. She was glad she was still sitting down, because she was fast growing dizzy. “The usual level of—detail on these kinds of things.” “Uh huh,” he chuckled and crossed over to the far side of the room to gaze out the window. “Well, suffice to say that Grace liked me to do it to her from behind. Hard. And it was also very easy for me to make her come. A lot. She was in the middle of her third orgasm, with me thrusting her from behind, when Victoria walked in.” “Oh,” Miranda breathed. Now her forehead and cheeks were so flushed with desire, they had reached approximately three hundred degrees. “So Grace was in the middle of—coming when Victoria—saw the two of you together?” “Yes,” Max replied, his own voice dewy and vibrating. He wiped his brow with his shirtsleeve. “And this infuriated Victoria to no end. Especially considering the fact the woman was frigid most of the time.” Miranda laughed. “Victoria Markham, frigid? How is that possible?” After enduring Victoria’s cruel, manipulative behavior from afar for so many years, Miranda couldn’t resist the sarcasm. “Suffice to say that as far as sex was concerned, Grace was the polar opposite of Victoria,” Max said, his eyes glazing over with the memory. “Up until that point, Victoria was the only woman I’d ever been with, other than a one-night stand in high school when I’d lost my virginity. Grace helped open up a whole realm of sexual possibilities for me that I’d never had a chance to experience with Victoria. Of course, Victoria didn’t see it that way. She took it very personally, as you might imagine.” “You said she was violent. Did she—hit you? Or Grace?” “Yes, she was violent. But not at first. When Victoria walked in on Grace and me, I think she just sort of went into shock. Grace and me, when Victoria walked in, we just sort of paused what we were doing, looked up at Victoria—who was standing there, mouth open and white as a sheet—and then went right back to what we were doing. Victoria left, but she showed up at my room the next day with a vengeance.” Miranda blew out a long, slow breath at the mental image Max had just conjured up for her. The idea of watching Max hard-pump a woman—any woman—from behind rendered her almost senseless. She needed a distraction, and fast. “So, umm, what did Victoria do?” she asked. “Violence-wise, anyway.” “Well, Victoria keyed into my dorm room the next afternoon. Grace and I were both there, asleep after another round of fast, hard sex. We were both awakened by the sensation of scalding hot water on our skin. Victoria dumped a pot full of hot water on our heads—hot

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enough to give us both nasty scald burns. Then she hit the both of us over the head with the empty pot. We both got mild concussions.” “Wow,” Miranda said, dumbstruck. “That—that’s crazy.” “Yes, it is. Now, I’m not saying that Victoria didn’t have the right to be very angry with me. In hindsight, I should have just broken up with her upfront instead of doing the whole passive-aggressive-sex-with-Grace thing.” Miranda laughed again. “Really? Ya think?” Max went to sit beside her and took her hand. Miranda felt his touch reverberate through her whole body like a powerful magnetic field. “Miranda, I was a horny twenty-year-old. We all do stupid things when we’re twenty and horny. Didn’t you?” Miranda didn’t reply. She’d spent most of her college career buried in books at the library. Her college sex life had been practically non-existent, other than necking with a couple of drunken fraternity boys one night after her sophomore-year Homecoming game. Max let go of Miranda’s hand and went on. “Anyway, had I known how Victoria would react, I never would have set up things with Grace in the first place. The burns and concussions were just the beginning.” “I can only imagine.” Miranda was disgusted, but not altogether surprised, that her old nemesis had resorted to violence to deal with a bad breakup. “Grace and I pressed charges against Victoria for the assault. Grace had to get medical attention for her burns, which were worse than mine, but the Markhams offered the both of us large sums of money to drop the charges. I didn’t need the money myself, but Grace was a scholarship student from a poor background, and she could use the cash. So the two of us accepted the Markhams’ money and dropped the charges and I gave Grace my entire share. She deserved it, and not just for her trouble. Grace was a decent, kind person, and hardworking. She even made an honest attempt to smooth things over with Victoria—not that Victoria was very receptive. My affair with Grace ended soon after the incident, but we remain friends to this day. She’s now a very successful lawyer in California, married with three children.” “That’s nice to hear,” Miranda commented. “But something tells me Victoria didn’t stop there.” “No, she didn’t. Victoria’s family promised after they paid out the settlements that Grace and I would have no more trouble from her. And that was true—at least, physically speaking. Victoria might not have hit me over the head with any more pots of boiling water, but she had other ways of hurting me.” “Through your father,” Miranda said. Max nodded. “Victoria knew that Dad was having problems in the company. She’d spent enough weekends with me at my parents’ home to know things weren’t going well. And Victoria, as I’m sure you already know, always had a penchant for sniffing out other people’s dirty laundry. She’s made a pretty sound financial career out of doing just that. I’ve followed her investment philosophy at Morton Myers over the years, and I know for a fact that her habit of recommending short sales in faltering companies—then buying up the cheaper shares afterward for resale to private equity firms when the stock price tanks—is founded squarely on her experience helping her family buy out my father and then sell him down the river.” Max shuddered at the thought of all the pain Victoria and her family had caused for him over the years, and his stomach turned at the knowledge she had done it all not just for profit, but for revenge. “This lawsuit that’s hitting the company now, it’s all part of Victoria’s latest scheme for personal vengeance. She’s bitter about the fact her partners agreed to sell their shares back to

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me against her wishes and used their collective power to outvote her on the board. Now as the largest single shareholder in the former entity, she’s invoking some obscure clause in the sellout agreement to sue the both of us. You and me. Personally.” Miranda cringed. “On what grounds?” “Victoria and her company, Morton Myers Corporation, bet the farm all our stocks would crash with their short sales, and now they’re pretty upset that isn’t what happened. So now they’re suing us for their lost profits.” So it seemed Miranda’s suspicions had been correct. Victoria had been scheming against her, and Max, and Max’s company all along. And even though Miranda was no lawyer, she had enough business savvy to understand that for a financial institution with as much wealth and influence as Morton Myers Corporation to sign onto Victoria’s lawsuit, her legal claims had to have at least some merit. “So, do you really think she has a chance to win her case?” Max swallowed hard. “Actually, yes, she does.” Miranda gasped. “But how is that possible?” Max stood up and began to pace again. “Victoria’s lawsuit rests on the allegation we didn’t give prior public notice of my corporate takeover as required by law. The problem is, I had my secretary place a classified ad in the Investor’s Business Daily, running under the Legal Notices section, as we’re required to do. And I know for a fact that the ad ran, at least in the limited late Chicago edition. But ….” Max paused, ran his hand through his tangled brown hair. “But now, there’s no trace of the ad anywhere. It’s gone.” Miranda’s jaw dropped. “Gone? But how? Doesn’t the newspaper have a copy in the archives? Didn’t we make a copy of it, or at least a copy of the bill? Or maybe a purchase receipt? Something?” Max shook his head. “In a normal, logical world, we would have all of those things as a matter of routine. But Victoria’s a very slippery and well-connected woman. Somehow, she and her cronies have made every single copy of that ad—as well as any record it existed, whether from our files or the newspaper’s—disappear. We can’t even find a spare copy of that day’s edition at the public library.” Miranda sucked in her breath, furious. She knew Victoria Markham was a conniving, manipulative bitch, but never thought her financial arch-rival could sink to such immoral depths as stealing and hiding legal evidence—and at such a scale! “How could she do such a thing? How could anyone do such a thing? Isn’t that illegal?” Max laughed. “Of course it’s illegal, Miranda. But that doesn’t mean this sort of thing doesn’t happen all the time. Especially when big, powerful corporations like Morton Myers are involved. My guess is, either Victoria or Morton Myers’ senior management has planted moles, both here at our company and at Investor’s Business Daily, to make sure that ad doesn’t turn up. Their whole case rests on the fact that we didn’t place the ad, so it’s in their best interest to hide all evidence that we did. Of course, we can’t prove that’s what they’re doing. Not right now, anyway.” Miranda walked over to where Max stood and without thinking, wrapped her arms around his waist. “So what do we do now?” Max returned the embrace and nuzzled Miranda’s earlobe, reducing her knees to orange marmalade. “You and I have a lot of work to do. We’ll be spending quite a bit of time together over the next week or so.” Miranda felt her belly quaver, felt her pulse rise as Max ran his hands up and down her back. Again, she had succumbed to this man’s irresistible sexual power despite her best efforts

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to resist. She suspected that their next tryst would be happening soon. Very soon. “And what exactly will we be doing during all of this time together?” she purred into the curve of Max’s neck. Max’s lips closed around Miranda’s right earlobe, sending her reeling as his tongue flitted in and out around her earring post. “Oh, I’m sure we’ll think of something.” Miranda felt her eyes roll to the back of her head at the intense sensations Max was evoking just by nibbling her ear. God help her if he started moving his mouth any lower on her body. “Don’t we have a lot of important, legal business to be doing right now?” she gasped, breathless. Max didn’t answer. He just picked her up, carried her across the room and set her down on his leather sofa while moving his tongue from Miranda’s earlobe down to the hollow of her neck. A mewling cry escaped Miranda’s throat. Her thighs parted of their own accord, and Max responded by thrusting one of his own thighs between them. “That’s more like it,” he breathed into her neck. “Now let’s get down to business, shall we?” “I don’t think this is very businesslike,” Miranda whispered in reply as Max’s fingers slid slowly, deftly underneath her gauzy blouse. “Sure it is. What you and I are doing …,” Max started easing Miranda’s ruffled shirt collar to one side with his teeth, “is absolutely crucial to my being able to conduct business on behalf of Maxwell Moore, Junior and Company. As you can probably see, Miranda, I am so hot for you right now that I must have you, possess you, ravish you immediately. Otherwise, my mind and body will be so jacked up with desire for you that I won’t be able to see straight, let alone be able to make any important business decisions. So of course you can understand why I have to strip you naked and make wild passionate love to you.” Max sat up straight, regarded Miranda’s heaving body for a moment with dusky, hungry eyes, then yanked her blouse off with a flick of his wrist. “There. Now isn’t that better?” Miranda’s breasts and nipples screamed for the feel of Max’s mouth on them, and her nether parts suddenly became very insistent that they be released from the lacy prison of her expensive panties. But Max, the ever-controlling, ever-powerful self-made CEO, was sitting back, biding his time. He took another moment to take in the petite, delicate beauty of Miranda’s torso, shoulders, and breasts, her milky-white skin, the sensual curves of her neck, hips, and chin. Just when Miranda was about to grab him, pull him to her because she couldn’t stand to be without his lips’ caress on her skin any longer, he leaned forward and placed his open, wet, luscious mouth on her collarbone, then ran his mouth, dripping with desire, up onto Miranda’s left shoulder, stopping at her lacy, scalloped bra strap—which Max took between his teeth. “Oh, please,” Miranda whispered. Her nipples were diamond-hard, and they couldn’t stand another second without Max’s mouth upon them. But Max still took his time, drawing out the long moments of tense, concentrated pleasure so gradually that it just sent Miranda to new heights of arousal. Having taken her left bra strap in his teeth, he slowly dragged it off her shoulder, nuzzling her skin with tiny nips and bites along the way. Keeping the loose strap in his mouth, he peeled back the demi-cup of her bra just the slightest bit, revealing the top curve of her breast, which he kissed with a feathery lightness that sent all of Miranda’s nerve endings into tiny starbursts, from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet. She had never known such sensations were possible from just the lightest of kisses on one tiny spot of her skin. It was all she could do just to keep breathing as Max’s mouth finally ascended the mound of her left breast and came down, poised just over the place where her left nipple was still partially covered with

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lace and satin. To her surprise and delight, he sucked her nipple through the fabric, taking both it and her rock-hard nipple into his mouth together. The feel of his lips, mouth and tongue on her aching flesh, combined with the delectable friction of the lace and satin of her bra in-between, was like no sensation she had ever known. There she was, still mostly clothed aside from one half-exposed breast, and she was already seconds away from going over the edge. “Oh Max …,” Miranda groaned, willing herself to hold off her orgasm for at least a few more seconds. “Please, hurry. I need you.” Max stopped working on her left nipple and was about to take her right bra strap between his teeth, preparing to give her right breast the same sensual love-torture he’d given the other one. “Relax, Miranda. Hush.” Miranda was about to protest, but he stopped her short with a deep kiss on the mouth. Their tongues intertwined in a long, slow tango that seemed to last for hours. When they finally came up for air, Miranda was shocked—pleasantly—when she found that Max had stealthily managed to relieve her of most of her clothing. Now the only thing that separated the two of them were Miranda’s peaches-and-cream colored lace thong panties, and the thick, rough fabric of Max’s wool slacks. In an act of both desperation and bravado, Miranda reached for Max’s belt buckle. She tore at it with such furor that she managed to tear the latch-hole in its expensive, velvety Spanish leather as she ripped it from Max’s trembling body. Max kicked off his Italian loafers just in time as Miranda pulled down his trousers. He tossed his suit jacket aside but left his socks, rumpled blue oxford, and jacket on as he ran his index finger down the curve of Miranda’s hip, then hooked it underneath the lace string of her thong. He paused there for the slightest moment, and Miranda instinctively raised her hips an inch or two off the sofa to help him slide her lacy lingerie off her body that much more easily. One quick flick of his wrist had the panties wrested from Miranda’s hips, and they landed somewhere behind Max’s massive desk. Miranda reached out for Max’s fully erect, rock-hard member, which was already smiling and dripping with hot happy juice. She ran her forefinger around and around its tip, smoothing and caressing in wider and wider circles. Max sucked in his breath, willing himself not to reach the point of no return before he’d even had a chance to slide into Miranda. As incredible as her touch on the most sensitive point of his body was, it still couldn’t compare with his overpowering need to come inside her, and soon. But there were far more important matters to attend to first. Max fondled the seam of Miranda’s sex, opening up her labia with long, slow, horizontal strokes. He slid one finger, then two, inside her, and passed his thumb back and forth across her plumped, round epicenter, which was just about to retreat underneath its juicy little hood. Miranda shuddered with ecstasy with every silken caress, and Max could feel the tension rising in her body beneath him. Every molecule of her being vibrated with need for the ultimate release. But as in all things, Max wanted to be in control. He caressed, pressed, and pushed on ground zero, then paused to blow hot air onto Miranda’s ultimate sex spot through pursed lips. He brought her to the brink a half-dozen times, and each and every time, refused to let her fall over it. After almost ten minutes of this torture, Miranda was begging for mercy. “Oh my God, Max, please. Please. I need to ….” “Come?” he finished for her. The knowledge that he had her under total and complete submission to his will excited Max so much that it very nearly brought him to the brink, as well.

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He kept himself in check by issuing Miranda a direct order. “Come for me then, Miranda baby. Right now.” With one more deft stroke from Max, she obeyed his order. She screamed and writhed and moaned as her body exploded. The vibrations that radiated out from her lower body to her vulva, her legs, her breasts, her head, and everything in between were the most intense, most cosmic sensations she’d ever experienced. Her eyes scrunched up so tightly that her she saw stars—galaxies, even. Her ears popped, her teeth ground, and her limbs flailed in a dozen different directions of their own accord. And just when she thought her body had exhausted all possibilities for bliss, she came again. As her second orgasm in as many minutes wound down, Max took his cue to plunge into Miranda’s sacred depths. Miranda’s hips rose to meet him, and together they entered the plateau of ultimate passion. They galloped across the passion plains as one, riding faster and faster until Max exploded. Miranda followed him over the edge in a final, miraculous orgasm of her own, and they collapsed against each other, panting and sweating and crying their joy. They lay intertwined, basking in afterglow, for several minutes. The heady scent of Miranda’s perfume mixed with the musky, earthy odor of sweat and sex filled the room, lulling the both of them into a misty state of consciousness somewhere between sleeping and waking. And there they both stayed, floating in a sea of flesh-on-flesh, skin-on-skin decadence, until the sunbeams pouring in through the floor-to-ceiling windows shifted and shadows lengthened, showing them both it was well past noon. Still groggy from his post-love reverie, Max sat upright, careful not to disturb the stilldozing Miranda. He stared down at the length of her perfect, petite body, her alabaster skin, her impossibly dark nipples that matched the red-brown of her hair and eyes. He regarded the dozens of love-bites his ardor had left behind on her flawless skin, played a little game of connect-the-dots among them with a lightly caressing finger while he pondered what would happen next between him and Miranda Johansson. They were in over their heads, that was certain. Victoria Markham and all her family’s collective, considerable business power had Max and Miranda in their gun-sights, and Max knew enough about Victoria and her history to understand that there was nothing the bitter, frustrated woman wouldn’t do to destroy his life and happiness. Whatever Miranda had been through with Victoria in the past, Max knew it was nothing compared to what they would both face over the coming weeks and months. As Max relished at the sight of his beautiful sleeping lover’s face and body, he felt a rising tide of guilt, not only for the foolish romantic behavior of his youth that now had the potential to destroy his growing relationship with Miranda, but also at his own dishonesty. He’d told Miranda more about his past relationship with Victoria Markham than he’d ever imagined he would, but it was still only a tiny grain of sand when compared with the vast desert sea of the real truth. There was so much he hadn’t revealed, and even as Max grew more and more sure that he had fallen in love with Miranda Johansson, he didn’t trust himself to tell her the whole truth. How could he? The whole truth—the whole ugly, gruesome story of his entanglement with Victoria Markham and the entire Markham family—would only drive Miranda away. And Max had grown to treasure what he shared with Miranda far too much to risk losing her. Still, given the huge legal battle looming over both his own—and through no fault of her own, Miranda’s—heads, the whole truth was bound to come out at some point. The key would be how long Max could delay it from happening. The longer he could delay the inevitable, the

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longer he could revel in the joy he felt every time he and Miranda’s perfect flesh touched. Godalmighty, he loved her skin. Loved her hair, her hips, her neck, too. Loved her. The very thought of losing her made Max double over in agony. He wouldn’t, couldn’t let it happen—even as he knew that destroying any and all of his chances at happiness was exactly what Victoria Markham had spent the past fifteen years of her life doing. Max had no reason to believe Victoria would stop her rampage now that Miranda was part of his life. If anything, his love for Miranda would just make Victoria Markham hate him—and everyone close to him—that much more. Max stroked Miranda’s sleep-disheveled hair as he agonized over what his next move would be.

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Chapter Ten Victoria Markham—prim, petite, and bleached blonde in a designer suit and Italian stilettos—sat in her posh Manhattan office, filing her nails down to the quick as she simmered with rage. The brief from Maxwell Moore, Junior’s lawyers sat on the desk in front of her, its cover page crumpled and torn by her wringing, frantic hands. The attorneys’ letter stated, in hard, cold-blooded legalese, that Maxwell Moore, Junior and Company had absolutely no intention of cooperating with her demand to have all her private equity shares in Maxwell Moore, Junior and Company immediately returned to her full control. Of course, Victoria had never expected Max to surrender his company back to the Markham family without a fight. But she still hadn’t expected her reaction to his latest parry to be so strong. It irked her. A lot. She was very, very angry—even for her. And why? Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Max was sleeping with Miranda Johansson. Victoria had recently put one of the LaSalle-Majestic building’s security guards on the Markham family payroll, and it had paid off in spades. The security guard had not only notified her when Max had rented and renovated ten more office floors in the building—including his posh private office penthouse—he had also reported that Max had had at least three wild trysts with a certain young, attractive, and female Maxwell Moore and Company stock analyst in his private offices. Two in the management company’s first-floor lobby courtesy suite, one in Max’s new office penthouse. Victoria knew full well that the only female stock analyst at Maxwell Moore and Company was none other than Miranda Johansson. So she could have deduced that much on her own. The fact that, unbeknownst to both Max and Miranda, their torrid sexcapades had been picked up and recorded on the hidden security cameras Victoria had planted years ago was just icing on the cake. Victoria had paid her security-guard mole handsomely for that choice little tidbit. She had watched the tapes herself that morning and every fiber of her being seethed at what she had seen. The sight of Max sucking that idiot Chicago analyst’s nipples, biting her petite, scrawny little neck, pumping her obscenely from forward and behind—and God knew what else—had brought infuriating flashbacks of the horrible experience she’d had walking in on Max and Grace Pillman back at Harvard. The sight of Max pumping plump, low-class Grace from behind like a jackrabbit was a horrific, twenty-second XXX-rated stag film that had played itself over and over in Victoria Markham’s brain nonstop for the past fifteen years. Now it seemed that none other than her old nemesis Miranda Johansson had taken Grace Pillman’s sordid place at Max’s sexual table. Fine and dandy. The stage was set, then. When Victoria’s plan came to final fruition, not only would she have Maxwell Moore, Junior’s head on the platter she’d been polishing for him over the past fifteen years, she’d have Miranda Johansson’s head beside it as a pretty, redheaded garnish. Victoria Markham had always thought the old saying that ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’ was dead wrong. She preferred her revenge served hot, spicy, roasted, and fricasseed. And now that she had some grainy sex tapes to go along with her already unstoppable business

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lawsuit—a suit that was only weeks away from bringing Max to his knees—Victoria knew she was only a few weeks away from the final banquet. The thought made Victoria laugh out loud, lifting her spirits considerably. She glanced over at her trading computer for the first time all morning and saw that her stock research portfolio was up twelve percent across the board in the day’s trading. All the better. It called for a celebration. Victoria buzzed her secretary and told her she’d be going out for lunch. A plate of lox and capers at a posh food court was definitely in order. A couple pairs of expensive new shoes were, too. Nothing made Victoria Markham happier than the combination of fine Norwegian smoked salmon and a pair of matching salmon-pink designer shoes. Nothing, except maybe the thought of destroying Maxwell Moore, Junior’s entire life. With every videotape her mole security guard mailed her from Chicago, with every insurmountable hurdle the Markham family and its scores of business associates, allies, and paid moles threw in the path of Max and his lawyers, Victoria grew one step closer to her ultimate goal—revenge. It would feel soooooo good once she finally reached it. Of course, she’d considered blackmailing Max with the tapes right away, but decided it would be far more effective if she bided her time, perhaps waiting just for the point in time when Max thought he’d beaten her—and whammo! The tapes would appear, would be broadcast all over the Internet—Podcast, even. And that would be just the beginning. The Markham family had contacts at a half dozen major newspapers, and just about every other media outlet who’d take an interest in the explicit sexual antics of a mega-millionaire. Once that tape got out—along with Victoria’s tearjerker story of how she—the sole heir to one of America’s oldest and best families—had been wronged by this very same mega-millionaire so many years ago, would topple Max from his arrogant, two-timing pedestal once and for all. The very thought of reducing Max to a cowering, blubbering snail was enough to excite Victoria in ways that sex never could. **** Miranda was at her desk, trying furiously to catch up on writing the day’s First-Call notices on her stocks’ quarterly earnings reports. Earnings season was a busy time for stock analysts everywhere, but this spring’s season was especially hectic because, added to all the additional analysis, bulletins, and earnings models she had to publish on her research portfolio’s quarterly performance, she and Max were pulling tons of overtime trying to head off Victoria Markham’s all-out legal assault. All efforts thus far on Max’s, Miranda’s, and any number of other staffers’ parts to turn up a copy—any copy—of the Investor’s Business Daily legal notice Victoria’s entire case rested on had so far amounted to nil. But they weren’t giving up, not by a long shot. Max’s latest strategy was to hire two dozen graduate students from the University of Chicago journalism department to scour scores of public libraries throughout Illinois and surrounding states until they found an intact copy of the March 18, 2006 edition of Investor’s Business Daily, the date the public legal notice of the new company stock ratings system supposedly ran. Max and Miranda, along with the company’s entire legal team, were staking all their hopes on the fact that no matter how well-connected and powerful the Markham family and the Morton Myers corporation might be, they had to have missed some copy of it, somewhere.

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So far, nothing had come up. But Miranda held out hope that some rural library in some out-of-the-way town might be their saving grace. Saving grace or not, they were running out of time. The federal district court had set a deadline two weeks from Friday for Maxwell Moore, Junior and Company to either produce the proof of public notice or begin forfeit of company control to Victoria Markham, Morton Myers Corp., and a few other minor shareholders. Max’s lawyers were trying to obtain at least one more stay from the court on the deadline, but they were fast running out of options. If neither Max and Miranda nor the combined team of lawyers, grad students, and even some Maxwell Moore and Company clerical workers couldn’t produce that ad—or some other proof it had run—by the deadline, the lawsuit’s second phase would begin. And since the second phase directly targeted Miranda Johansson’s past seven years of stock analyst labor, it was the component of this looming nightmare she most feared. Well, second-most feared, perhaps. Her number-one fear right now—by far—was losing Maxwell Moore, Junior’s love. A pretty paralyzing fear to have when Miranda wasn’t even sure she had Max’s love in the first place. Especially lately. It had been almost two weeks since their wild romp in Max’s private office. Thirteen days, nine hours, and seventeen minutes, to be exact. Miranda had counted. She kept a log on her desk blotter, in fact. For reasons she couldn’t understand, over the past two weeks Max had gone from a mad werewolf desperate from her touch to a cold fish who barely noticed her presence—even when they labored long hours into the night together at the office, trying in vain to come up to a solution to their legal dilemma. Where they might once have relieved their stress and tension by banging each other’s brains out, now they simply shrugged their shoulders, said good night, and went their separate ways. Max’s mood grew dimmer with each passing day, his demeanor more abrasive and distant as his company’s legal situation grew ever bleaker. His usual dry sense of humor had disappeared completely, his appearance grew more and more haggard. When Miranda had last seen him—late the previous night, still at the office around 11 pm—Max had appeared a mere shell of the man who had so captivated her in the LaSalle-Majestic building’s lobby just weeks before. His rapid deterioration frightened her, hurt her more deeply than she ever knew she could hurt. The kind of hurt that tore at her insides, made her nauseous and faint, gave her headaches so bad they blurred her vision and made her sweat. There was only one cause for that kind of hurt—the knowledge that the man you love is in severe pain. If their past two lovemaking sessions were any example, Miranda knew she could relieve Max’s pain—and then some—if only he would let her. But she wasn’t counting on it, especially if his mood today matched his mood from the night before. A knock on her office door brought Miranda out of her reverie. She looked up and saw Annabelle standing in the doorway, looking frazzled. “Hon, when are you gonna have those First-Call reports ready for me to edit and format for the wires? The bulletins are due in by noon, unless you want the folks at Morton Myers to beat you to the wires this time.” Miranda definitely didn’t want that to happen. She took pride in the fact that her earnings reports were almost always the first to hit the newswires. If her quarterly bulletins appeared late, there might be market conjecture that Miranda and her employer were in trouble. And with the financial services rumor mill already buzzing with speculations about the nature of the Markham family suit against the company, Miranda knew it was absolutely crucial that she

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conduct business as usual. Neither the company’s mounting legal troubles nor her growing concern and feelings for Max could distract her from what must be done. “Annabelle, I promise I’ll have everything ready for you within half an hour,” Miranda finally said. “I just need to put the finishing touches on this earnings model and we’ll be good to go.” Annabelle heaved a sigh of relief. “Thanks hon. And let me just say—I think the fact that you can get any real work done at all right now, what with all this crazy lawsuit business, is a gosh-darn miracle.” (Annabelle never swore. ‘Gosh-darn’ was probably the worst thing she ever said in Miranda’s presence.) Miranda shook her head and sighed. As much as she enjoyed her secretary’s motherly compliments, though, the one person she wanted a compliment from the most—Max—wasn’t even giving her the time of day. “Thanks, Annabelle. I appreciate the compliment, believe me.” “You’re welcome, hon. By the way—and I don’t mean to pry—I’ve been meaning to ask you a question. Kind of a personal question, if you don’t mind.” Miranda swallowed hard. She’d seen this coming. It was inevitable, given how gossiphungry Annabelle had always been. “Go ahead.” “Are you all right, hon? You look pretty peaked.” Annabelle crossed the room and put her hand on Miranda’s shoulder. “Are you … ill?” “No, Annabelle, I’m not ill. Just tired. I’ve been putting in lots of long hours the past two weeks. Why do you ask?” The older woman bit her lip before answering. “You just haven’t been yourself lately, is all. The other week you were positively glowing, and now you look pale and nauseous. I know it’s none of my business, but you aren’t, ummm, pregnant, are you?” Miranda laughed. “No, I’m not pregnant, Annabelle. What would make you think a thing like that?” Annabelle laughed uneasily and started fiddling with her hands. “No reason. Just forget I said anything. I’ll get back to work now.” Miranda reached out and touched Annabelle on the arm, stopping her. “No, wait. I want to know why you would think such a thing about me, Annabelle. You and I have worked together a long time, and I would hope you can be honest with me.” Annabelle sighed, then sat down in one of the armchairs across from Miranda’s long, wide desk. “Again, hon, I know it’s none of my business, but I think you should know that a lot of people around the office are talking about there being something cozy going on between you and Max. Is that true?” Miranda took a deep breath. Could she trust Annabelle with the truth? Experience told her that her secretary was professional and discreet when it came to sensitive business matters, but where office gossip was concerned, that was something else entirely. Still, after working with her for more than six years, Miranda almost thought of Annabelle as a second mother. And with the growing rift between herself and Max as he grew more and more preoccupied with legal troubles weighing so heavily on her, Miranda could use some motherly emotional support. For the sake of her own sanity, Miranda decided she’d spill the beans and consider the consequences later. “Annabelle, to be quite honest, Max and I are—well, romantically involved. We were, anyway. I’m not sure we are now. Max is—Max has pretty much been ignoring me lately. He won’t talk to me at all unless it has something to do with the lawsuit.” Her lower lip began to tremble as a sob started to form down in her throat. Annabelle hugged her tightly. “Aw, hon, I’m so sorry.”

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Miranda choked down the sob, burying it at the bottom of her stomach. She would not break down and cry right in the middle of her office, absolutely would not, especially when she still had piles of earnings reports to do. “Well, I’m not going to let it bother me. I have work to do. We have work to do. So let’s hop to it. I’m going to email you the files I’ve created for the First-Call bulletins so far. That way you can get started on formatting while I finish up the rest. Sound good?” Annabelle smiled, patted Miranda lightly on the shoulder. “Sounds real good, hon. And by the way, it’ll be okay with you and Max. You’re a beautiful girl. I’m sure everything will work out just fine. And if it doesn’t—well, then screw him.” Miranda giggled. She’d never heard Annabelle use that kind of language about anyone, let alone their company CEO. “Annabelle, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t repeat anything I said to you about this,” she said. But she wasn’t holding her breath the older woman would keep quiet. “Oh, my lips are sealed, hon,” Annabelle quipped. “It’s everybody else in the office you’ve got to worry about. There’s a lot of talk, you know. Especially from all the other analysts. I never thought all those fuddy-duddy men were the kind to gossip, but it seems to me they’re all jealous of the way Max has been favoring you. And it’s not as if they can compete with it, either. No matter how much money their stocks might make, not a one of ‘em has a chance of becoming a pretty lady capable of melting the boss’ heart.” “That’s a very sweet thing to say, Annabelle. But Max doesn’t play favorites when it comes to business matters, believe me.” “Well, that may be true, hon, but it’s still pretty obvious to everyone who works at this company that you’ve melted Max’s heart. Just thought you should be aware of it.” Miranda smiled, shook her head, and went back to work. If only she could believe it. After the way he’d treated her over the past couple of weeks, she wasn’t sure if Max even had a heart. **** Max paced his office, his hands clasped tightly behind his back. The pressure on him and his company was growing at a snowball’s pace. Earnings season was in full swing and Maxwell Moore, Junior & Company was already making a big impact on the stock market with its new stock ratings system—a system Personal Finance magazine had already labeled as ‘startling, gutsy, and innovative’ in its latest issue. The entire company stock research and holdings portfolio had jumped eighteen percent across the board the day the report hit newsstands and had kept up its steady climb in the days since. Under normal circumstances, this would be happy news, and Max would be celebrating along with his employees. But circumstances were far from normal. Max’s company might be riding high on profits this week, but if Victoria Markham and her cronies had their way, by the end of next week, those profits wouldn’t even belong to him anymore. Max couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so agitated. His senior year of college, first year of business school, maybe. Those were the days immediately following the collapse of his father’s company. The agonizing defeat, humiliation, and pent-up ire that burned in his heart and belly right now came close to how he’d felt in those days, perhaps. But even then, he hadn’t been this furious or this tense. Anger, resentment, and rage rioted together in the pit of his stomach like a wild wrestling match. Invisible thousand-pound weights bore down on both his shoulders, pummeled his temples, too. He constantly felt as if something was watching him,

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ridiculing him, pointing bony fingers at him. Tormenting him for his emotional weakness, for his uncharacteristic lack of control under pressure. There was a very big, very ugly monkey on his back, that was for sure. Max had been under stressful circumstances plenty of times before. He’d been humiliated before, even lost his entire family fortune before, and he had always survived it with grace and decorum. One of the things Max had always prided himself on since early adulthood was his ability never to get emotionally involved in business matters, no matter how ugly, difficult, or deeply personal they might become. There was no reason this latest setback should be any different. Well, no—actually, there was a reason. Miranda Johansson. Max might never have mixed business and private emotions before, but now things were different. Very different. Like it or not, Victoria Markham’s all-out assault on Maxwell Moore, Junior and Company had Miranda in its crosshairs, too. And things would get worse before they would get better. Of that much, Max was sure. The question that had so tortured Max for the past two weeks—ever since he’d held the sleeping Miranda in his arms—was, how could he protect her? Could he protect the woman he loved from Victoria Markham’s wrath, from public humiliation, from the deep, dark secrets Max had yet to reveal to her? He’d searched and searched for the answer and every time he came up with the same answer, no. Knowing there was no way to protect the woman he loved from the coming tidal wave of degradation and disgrace made Max a nervous wreck. He’d never failed at anything he had ever done since leaving school and his parents’ home behind, and he didn’t intend to start now. As he saw it, the only way to keep from failing the woman he loved was to stop loving her completely. Easier said than done. Max supposed that he probably couldn’t stop loving Miranda. But he could probably make her stop loving him. That was something that was easy. All he had to do was ignore her, push her away, act as if they’d never been intimate, pretend they had never shared their bodies for a single earth-shattering, cosmic moment. A simple, efficient plan. Idiot-proof, really. A plan that would make any one of his old business school professors slap him on the back for its sheer ingenuity. Well, if it was so ingenious, why did it make him feel like shit? Max stomped into his private bathroom, stared at himself in the mirror. He’d been working through the night, hadn’t slept, hadn’t showered, hadn’t even changed clothes. He looked like hell. Two days’ worth of beard, and he wasn’t the type who pulled off the ‘rugged’ look well. Scraggly, unwashed hair. Rumpled oxford shirt with sweat stains under the arms. Dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, skin pasty and wan from too much coffee, bad takeout food, and lack of sleep. He glanced at his watch. It was almost noon. No time for a nap, but he could take a shower, shave, and change his clothes instead of going out to grab lunch. Max picked up the bathroom phone, dialed his secretary, told her to hold his calls for the next twenty minutes or so. He stripped off his rumpled, sweat-stinking clothes and stepped into the spa-style steam shower, complete with five massaging showerheads pulsating water from all directions that he’d had installed with sleepless, pressure-filled all-nighters like this in mind. Always a workaholic, he’d been pulling all-nighters for almost his entire career. But no allnighter he’d ever done had made him feel this spent, this agitated and awful. Instead of the rush

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of adrenaline and sense of accomplishment working through the night on a difficult problem usually brought him, Max felt like he’d been run over by a freight train. He turned the taps all the way over to ‘HOT’ and stood motionless under the powerful jets of water. He wouldn’t soap himself clean or shampoo just yet. Right now, he just needed to wake himself up, to wash away the aching torment that came from suppressing his desire for Miranda Johansson. He needed to rinse away his urgent need for her, rinse away the sexy thoughts about every pore of her alabaster body that gripped his mind day and night. He needed to forget her, forget what they had shared, and learn to think of her only as a business colleague and nothing more. He turned up the water pressure until the shower jets tore into his skin, leaving it red and raw. After standing under the coursing jets for almost five minutes, Max found that the hot water was having the opposite effect he needed. Instead of making him forget her, the steam shower just made Max hotter for Miranda than he already was. He gritted his teeth and switched the taps all the way over to ‘COLD’. All that did was make him shiver. He still wanted Miranda, goddamn it. No amount of hot or cold water was going to change that. Frustrated, he finished showering under lukewarm water, shut off the taps, and stepped out of the stall. As he stood there, dripping water from his long, hard body onto the floor while he reached for a towel, he heard a stirring in his office. There was the unmistakable click of kitten heels on the ceramic terrazzo entryway, then the muted pads of those same kitten heels on his thick Persian rug. The steps were light, the strides small. Max recognized the sounds and vibrations of those steps. He’d memorized them over the past two weeks as he’d willed himself to ignore the physical urges her presence always evoked in him whenever she stepped into the room perched on those very same kitten heels. Miranda was in his office, waiting for him. His secretary must have let her in, thinking they had important work to do. And they did. But somehow, the electrical charge that Miranda always brought to the air whenever she entered a room told him that Miranda had something else on her mind besides work. Namely, hot sex. Under normal circumstances, he would have been more than happy to oblige her desires. But these weren’t normal circumstances anymore. He was in a race against time to save his company, his reputation, and to protect the woman he loved from public destruction. And the only way he knew to do that was to hold her off a bit. If only he could manage to keep his distance from Miranda for awhile---at least until the lawsuit mess blew over---he might have a chance at saving their relationship. But it was easier said than done. Luck would have it that Max had a walk-in closet full of spare suits attached to his bath suite, which would save him the risk of appearing before Miranda in a damp towel, still dripping from the shower. Luck would also have it that Miranda—assuming she really was waiting for him in his office, just like the charge in the air told his aching body that she was—was biding her time, not doing anything to announce her presence to him. He dried off, shaved, and dressed quickly. He put on the best shirt and suit he had in his closet—a sharp, steel-gray Italian custom job—along with a silver-gray tie and black loafers. He moussed and combed his hair into a sleek, chiseled style, and then put after-shave on his cheeks, slapping them until they stung. Now he was prepared for battle. Now he could finally finish the job of alienating Miranda---at least temporarily. But it absolutely, positively must be done. For her own protection.

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And for his own survival. Max strutted into his office, head held high, shoulders stiff, strides long and strong. Just as he’d predicted, Miranda sat on his leather couch, tapping away on a laptop. An over-laden briefcase rested at her feet. She wore a beautifully tailored pink pantsuit with white trim and oversized pearl buttons—quite a change from the frumpy black number she’d worn on their first day together. Her hair hung loose except for a pearl-trimmed comb she’d stuck casually on one side of her head. It swept up some of her gorgeous, caramel locks away from her face in a way that was flirty, easy, almost naughty. She wore a shiny peach lip gloss that he wanted desperately to kiss off, and pink patent-leather sandals that showed off toes painted a shade that matched her luscious lips. She didn’t look up from her laptop work, even when Max approached. She just kept tapping, tapping on the keys so fast that her delicate, manicured fingers became a blur. Goddamn it, she looked amazing. Max’s cock cried out to be buried deep within Miranda again. He wanted her, needed her so badly it was sheer torture. And it would only get worse. “Good morning, Miranda,” Max grunted, stiffly. Miranda finished typing something on her laptop before looking up. “Good morning, Max,” she said, her voice tight and even. As she spoke, she leaned forward slightly, and Max caught a whiff of her perfume, the same light, floral scent she’d worn during both of their passionate encounters, the scent that she’d left behind on his own body both times. The memory of that scent—now reborn right in front of him—drove him insane. “I see you’re hard at work,” Max said. He had to practically force the words out of his mouth as he tightened his resolve not to grab hold of Miranda and ravish her on the spot. “Lots of work to do here these days,” Miranda replied smoothly. “I’ve just finished up the last of my quarterly earnings reports, so I thought now would be a good time for the two of us to strategize our next move in the whole Victoria Markham mess.” Max sucked in his breath and crossed to the far side of the room. He had to get away from the cloud of delectable perfume that hung around Miranda before he lost control completely. “Well, that’s very thoughtful of you, Miranda. But the fact is, until that damn ad turns up, there’s not a whole lot we can do, except wait and pray.” Miranda clicked her laptop shut and set it aside. “I’m aware of that, Max. I was thinking more along the lines of the lawsuit’s second phase. The part that’s suing me for all my seven-odd years’ worth of work for this company. What the hell is that all about?” Max shifted back and forth on his feet. He hadn’t thought much about the lawsuit’s second phase. He’d been so preoccupied with the prospect of losing the company he’d fought to win back for so many years that it hadn’t occurred to him that even on the off chance Victoria Markham lost her bid to reclaim it, she was still suing Miranda and him for breach of fiduciary duty, research mismanagement, and a host of other trumped-up charges. The fact was, even if he managed to protect Miranda from Victoria’s first legal onslaught, Miranda’s financial career might still be ruined anyway. “Well?” Miranda’s voice broke into Max’s painful thoughts. “Do you have an explanation for me or not?” Max bit his lip. “The only explanation I can offer is that Victoria is a malicious, vengeful bitch who doesn’t stop until she gets what she wants.” Miranda chuckled. “How about telling me something I don’t already know?”

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Max paced up and down his bank of floor-to-ceiling windows, being careful to give Miranda and her cloud of stimulating perfume a wide berth. After a few frenzied paces, he stopped. “To be quite honest Miranda, I haven’t given that portion of the lawsuit much thought. Neither have the lawyers, frankly. Our primary objective at this point is to hang onto my company at all costs. As far as the lawsuit that names you—and me—as individual defendants, I’m afraid we’ll have to put that on the back burner until the future of my company is secure. You’re welcome to retain your own personal counsel in the meantime and, assuming that we can win the first phase, then the second phase of the suit would then likely be dropped. If it isn’t, the company would take care of your legal defense as a matter of course.” Miranda choked. “But what if we—you—lose the suit and the company goes lock, stock, and barrel to Victoria? What then?” This was the part Max had been dreading. “I’m afraid then you’d be on your own.” “What?” Max spun around to face Miranda, who by now had gone purple with rage. Her tiny hands were fisted at her sides and her chest heaved with dozens of short, angry breaths. Jesus, she looked hot. But he had to stick to his guns. “Miranda, I think it goes without saying that if I don’t own this company anymore, that my business obligation to defend you—or any of my employees, for that matter—against lawsuits would disappear.” This just made Miranda even more furious. “Business obligation? Your business obligation to me? What about your personal obligation to me?” Max sucked in his breath. “Personal obligation, Miranda? I don’t know what you mean.” All the color drained from Miranda’s face. Her mouth dropped open, then clicked shut again. Her chest stopped heaving. It almost seemed as if she’d stopped breathing completely. “Fuck you, Max,” she snapped, then picked up her laptop and stormed out of the room. Well, I guess that means she hates me now, Max thought. Good. Mission accomplished. It seemed that Max’s master plan was well under way. The more Miranda hated him, the easier his whole shitty situation would be to deal with. That was the modus operandi, right? Right? Good Christ. What the hell had he done? Max slumped down at his desk and slammed his fist into the tabletop, hard. “Asshole,” Max snarled at himself, and choked back a feeling that felt a lot like tears.

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Chapter Eleven That evening, Miranda sat in her best friend Mitzi’s posh Lincoln Park living room, absently flipping through a dog-eared copy of a children’s magazine while she waited for Mitzi and her husband John to finish putting their kids to bed. Miranda hated to bother the harried couple on such short notice, but Max’s actions that day had left her no choice. Miranda tossed the old magazine aside and stared at the geometric pattern in Mitzi’s expensive Scandinavian area rugs. The living room and the rest of the house were orderly and spotless. Other than the magazine and a few carefully stacked toys in the hallway, one would never know this was a home that sheltered three toddlers. Mitzi was truly a remarkable homemaker. Sweeping her gaze around her best friend’s happy, beautiful home, with its solid, practical-yet-stylish furnishings and beautiful woodwork, Miranda felt an unexpected surge of envy. A month ago, Miranda never would have longed for the slower daytime pace and joyfilled evenings of a pampered Lincoln Park housewife. But given the way things were going between her and Max, Miranda was quickly finding the idea of abandoning her high-powered job and crawling into a domestic cocoon far away from the business world more and more appealing. Growing bored with the unfamiliar silence in Mitzi and John’s creaking old brownstone, Miranda was memorizing cracks in the ceiling plaster when Mitzi and John finally appeared, both looking tired. “Sorry it took so long, Randi,” Mitzi sighed, flopping into one of her designer-inspired leather chairs. “Laura’s just at the age where getting her to go to sleep at night is like pulling teeth. She fights it every step of the way.” “She’s afraid she’ll miss something,” John added with a chuckle. “Laura’s a precocious one, that’s for sure. Just like her mother.” Still dressed to the nines in his custom-made lawyer suit, cufflinks, and polished loafers, John leaned over to give the sweat-suit clad Mitzi a tender kiss on the cheek. Mitzi playfully squeezed her husband’s knee in return. The easygoing affection between the two of them made Miranda all the more self-conscious about the rapidly deteriorating state of her own relationship—if you could even call it that—with Max. “So what can we do for you, Miranda?” John’s voice was businesslike, almost impatient. He brought his stiff lawyer manners home, Miranda knew. He often worked late into the night on briefs and casework and rarely came home from the office before nine. An overloaded briefcase chock-full of pending cases and contracts sat at his feet. “It’s not like you to show up out of the blue like this,” he said. “Let alone for you to ask specifically to see me. And Mitzi just saw you a week or so ago ….” Miranda supposed John’s brusque manner meant she was keeping him from important client work so she got straight to the point. “Well, to be truthful, John, I’m here on a business matter. I need to hire a lawyer. And you’re the only lawyer that I trust to help me with a very sensitive … ah, problem.” Talk of business perked John up right away. He rubbed his hands together, leaned forward a bit in his seat. “I see. What kind of sensitive problem?” Mitzi stood up. “How about I go get us all something to drink?” Ever the dutiful lawyer’s wife, she left attorney and potential client to talk alone and headed for the kitchen.

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“There’s this kind of difficult—well, complicated situation at my work.” Miranda took a deep breath and all at once the sordid details of her office affair with Max, Victoria Markham’s lawsuit against both Max’s company and against her personally—ad nauseum—came tumbling out of her mouth. John settled back into his chair, templed his fingers underneath his chin. “Well, that’s a dilly of a pickle, Miranda,” he said in driest lawyer-speak. “What do you want to do about it?” “I don’t know. That’s why I need a lawyer.” John frowned. “Well, I have to confess that securities law is a little outside my practice area. But I do have experience in sexual harassment suits, assuming that’s a direction you want to take against your boss ….” “No! I don’t want to bring my personal relationship with Max—with Maxwell Moore, Junior—into this at all.” John frowned again. “I see. Then why did you just tell me all about how you had sex with him at the office—during working hours, no less—at his insistence? That’s quite illegal, you know. Unless you were a willing participant.” Miranda’s mouth went dry with embarrassment. “I … I don’t know why I brought that part up at all. I ….” Tears welled up in her eyes. She was doing this all wrong. What should have been strictly a business matter was now all screwed up and personal—thanks to Max. John put a hand on Miranda’s shoulder. “I assume that Mitzi probably knows something about this already?” Miranda nodded. “Well, even so, what you just shared with me will stay under the cloud of attorney-client privilege just the same,” John said. “Now, about this lawsuit problem. Max—that is, your employer—has retained counsel to deal with the portion of the suit attacking his company, am I correct?” “Yes, the company Office of General Counsel is handling that, mostly. Max—I mean, my boss—has also retained a team of private attorneys in case Victoria Markham is able to win the first phase of her suit,” Miranda explained with a shudder. “In case they want to file an appeal, or something. But as long as the public notice ad doesn’t turn up ….” “Then Miss Markham and her colleagues at Morton Myers Corp. would be able to take ownership of the company on the basis of this technicality.” John sighed. “And when they do, it’s entirely within their rights to sue you, personally, for fiscal mismanagement—both during the time that your employer was still owned by Victoria’s private equity firm and when it was back under Max’s ownership. It’s entirely within their rights to sue any current or former employee that they want, in fact. Although there’s no guarantee they’d win that part of the suit, especially considering that you are not a chief executive or financial officer.” John paused, looked at Miranda expectantly. “You can take some solace in that, at least.” Miranda nervously bit at her nails. “Even if they don’t win the personal suit against me, they know going through it will make my life hell. They know as a private individual I can’t afford to compete with their team of five hundred Harvard corporate law graduates, that I don’t have the time or resources to wade through a massive lawsuit and still keep up with the demands of my job. They just want to bury me in paper and legal fees, is all.” John clapped his hands. “Right! Smart girl. You could have made a very good attorney, Miranda.” Miranda just shrugged.

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John stretched his arms and cracked his knuckles. “What I don’t understand is, why are they only going after you and Max on the individual suit? Logically, if they can sue you, they could sue all of his executive team, not to mention any number of Max’s other stock analysts. Why single you out?” Miranda laughed. “Because Victoria Markham’s doing the suing, that’s why. She’s petty and mean. Very smart and competitive, but also vindictive. She and I have been professional rivals for years. And as it turns out, she’s also one of Max’s ex-girlfriends. They had a bad breakup several years ago.” John snapped his fingers. “Well, that explains a lot. My guess is she’s gotten wind of the fact that you and he are—or were—intimately involved and filed the second part of the suit against you as a personal vendetta. Unfortunately for you, though, the law is on her side. Especially as long as that newspaper ad stays buried.” Miranda shook her head and sighed. “I’m no lawyer, John, but I think the whole basis of both of Victoria’s lawsuits are complete bullshit. Even if it is perfectly legal.” John nodded his agreement. “I’m familiar with the case law they’re relying on for their suits. It’s a piece of very bad law that came out of a crummy court decision at one of the federal district courts—Massachusetts, I think—about eight years ago. We lawyers have a saying. Bad decisions make bad law. Your case is a classic example of that. Unless that Massachusetts decision gets overturned, I’m afraid we’re stuck with the bad law.” Mitzi appeared, carrying a tray laden with glasses of warm sherry. “John, is it a good time for me to break in with some nightcaps?” John waved his wife in. Mitzi gracefully set down the glasses of sherry down in front of lawyer and client, then disappeared just as gracefully. Miranda took a sip of the sherry, which made her mouth and belly tingle. “So, John, do you think I have any chance to fight this lawsuit? Be honest.” John took a long sip of his own sherry, then cleared his throat several times before speaking. “To be honest, Miranda, your chances are far less than fifty-fifty right now. Worstcase, you’re not only looking at losing your job, but also paying hefty legal fees, losing your stock analyst’s license, and possibly even financial penalties if they win the second part of the case. None of it justified, of course—but like I said, bad decisions make for bad law. The only way to protect yourself for sure is to just quit your job now. Then it will be a lot harder for them to go after you.” Miranda’s face fell. “I can’t quit, John, and you know it.” John took another long sip of sherry. “Why not? You’re talented, smart. Well-educated and you have a lot of good experience working for a top financial firm. I think you’d have no problem finding another job. Consider the whole mess just another opportunity.” Miranda sighed, ran her finger along the rim of her sherry snifter. “It’s not that simple. I have a lot invested in my job. Time, energy. Not to mention business relationships that have taken years to build. And my assistant, Annabelle, will be devastated if I quit ….” John set down his glass. “Forgive me if I sound too personal, Miranda, but I think somebody else will be even more devastated if you quit.” He meant Max, of course. John patted her on the shoulder. “Well? Am I right?” Miranda didn’t answer. She just stared into the dregs of her sherry. John pulled a legal pad out of his overstuffed briefcase and began to jot down some notes. “All right then, Miranda. It looks like you aren’t going to quit your job, and that’s fine.

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Since you’re a friend of the family, I’ll take the case. But don’t get your hopes up, and be prepared to settle if you have to. I’ll do the best I can to get you a fair deal, but it will likely end up being pretty expensive for you. How much do you have available in liquid assets?” Miranda took a pen off the coffee table and wrote a very large figure on John’s legal pad—all the money she would have if she sold her entire personal stock portfolio tomorrow. Even if she lost all of that, she would still have a modest pension account, an IRA, and the equity in her condo, but that would be it. Seven years’ worth of her hard-earned investment dollars would go down the drain, and all because of Victoria Markham’s conniving jealousy. And Max. Don’t forget about Max. John looked at the six-figure number Miranda had written and frowned. “It might end up costing you quite a bit more than this,” he said. “Do you have anything else available?” “I guess I could sell my condo,” Miranda sighed. “I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t come to that,” John said, trying his best to sound reassuring. “But remember, Victoria and her Morton Myers Corp. cronies have the most lethal, barracuda-type attorneys in the country at their disposal. Now, about my legal fee ….” Miranda cut him off. “If it’s going to cost me what you think it will to settle with these people, I won’t have anything left to pay you, John. I’ll be flat broke.” “I know, Miranda. Here’s what I propose. I’ll agree to take your case pro bono on one condition.” “Name it.” “You give me permission to use your case before the federal court that the case law all of this is based on is unconstitutional.” Miranda gulped down the rest of her sherry. John’s proposal sounded reasonable enough. But it still seemed a little too easy. “So, what’s the catch? John laughed. “I knew you would ask that. The catch is, you will probably get a lot of intrusive media attention as a result of being a plaintiff in a Supreme Court case—assuming it gets that far. It could get very stressful for you very quickly.” Miranda chuckled. “That’s no big deal. I’m pretty stressed out already.” “I’m talking about a very different kind of stress here, Miranda. You’ve never been through a major lawsuit before, let alone a federal appeals process. I just want you to know what you’re getting into could not only be very, very stressful—it literally could take years. I’d also have to ask you to undertake some rather—well—unconventional methods during the legal fight, methods that might be very difficult for you, both personally and professionally. I’ll get to that in a minute. And then there’s the little matter of payment ….” “You already said you’d take my case pro bono!” Miranda exclaimed. “True,” John replied, reverting back to his driest lawyer-speak. “But in the event that the federal appeals process comes out in your favor, you could potentially come out on top, get settlement money back—even be awarded big punitive damages. Not to mention the fame that comes with being part of a Supreme Court decision. Should that happen, I’d want to get my cut.” John leaned back, interlaced his fingers behind his head. “I’m still a cutthroat Lincoln Park attorney, after all. I’ve got my own bills to pay. And Mitzi has expensive taste.” Miranda pondered this a moment. She decided that John’s offer of counsel was the best she could possibly hope for. “All right,” she said. “We have a deal. Just tell me what I need to do.” ****

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The next day, Miranda arrived at the office more than three hours early. John wanted to get started analyzing all of her past achievements for Maxwell Moore and Company right away so he could begin building a legal defense for her. Miranda would normally have Annabelle do the tedious work of Xeroxing hundreds of documents, but John was adamant she keep the fact that she’d retained him as her private counsel a secret from everyone at the company. Everyone, that is, except Max. John said she had to tell him about it. Great. Desperate times called for desperate measures, or so the old saying went. And after his third glass of sherry, John had made some rather, well, unorthodox suggestions on what Miranda could do to rescue herself, Max, and his company from certain ruin. Suggestions that Miranda would have found highly offensive if they’d come from anyone but her best friend’s husband. Suggestions that she would have a very hard time carrying out. But with the federal court’s deadline fast approaching and still no copies of the ad the whole shebang rested on anywhere to be found, Miranda knew she was running out of time. Desperate times, desperate measures, Miranda thought to herself again as she fed the umpteenth document of the morning through the Xerox machine. As the copier whirred and sputtered its way through the massive copy job, Miranda grew more and more apprehensive. Would John’s plan work? Would Max help? Could Miranda use her ‘feminine wiles’, as John had called them, to make sure that Max got on board? Could she get his attention? Could she tempt him with her feminine wiles? Hell, did Max even care anymore that she had feminine wiles in the first place? Given the way he’d behaved yesterday morning, Miranda doubted it. He’d obviously used Miranda for his own purposes. Max had gotten all the thrills he could out of her and moved on. She’d ceased to be attractive or exciting to him and become a nuisance. More than a nuisance, in fact. A walking disaster area. So, Miranda was back to being a walking disaster area. Damn it all to hell. Miranda glanced at her watch. 7:08. She had to wrap things up and meet John’s messenger in the lobby. With a sigh, she stared at the small stack of copies she’d made, which barely made a dent in the boxes and boxes of files John would need to help mount her defense. She was in for a lot of early mornings and late nights at the copier. Shit. Miranda switched the copy machine off, gathered up the copies, and returned the boxes of originals to their place in Annabelle’s cube. John’s messenger—a twenty-something artist type with a punk-rock backpack and beat-up bicycle—was waiting for her in the lobby. He took the papers without a word and disappeared into the bustling early-morning crowd. Miranda took a deep breath as she watched the messenger go. Time to face the day. It wasn’t a day she was looking forward to, that was for sure. Her schedule was jampacked. She doubted she’d have time for lunch, or even dinner. There was also the little matter of talking to Max about her new legal strategy. When the hell was she supposed to have time to do that? Why the hell was John making her do it in the first place? Men, Miranda thought to herself as she rode the elevator up to Max’s private office floor. Whether they’re lawyers, bosses, or lovers, they only think of themselves.

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As the elevator made its silent, whisking ascent, Miranda made a quick wardrobe assessment. Tight miniskirt: Check. Stylish, figure-hugging Italian blazer: Check. Low-cut, lace-trimmed camisole peeping out from beneath said stylish, figure-hugging Italian blazer: Check. Black lace stockings: Check. Italian “Fuck-Me” stilettos: Check. Perfume that she knew drove Max insane: Check. Let’s do this thing, Miranda thought as the elevator stopped on Max’s floor. She strutted into his office without knocking, knowing full well he’d already be sitting at his desk, hard at work. Over the past few weeks, she’d learned his habits and knew he often came in at six a.m. to work on his most difficult projects in the peace and quiet that only the early morning could afford him. As Miranda swept into the room, Max sat at his desk, fully engrossed in a complicated spreadsheet on his laptop. Just as Miranda had predicted, he didn’t seem to notice her presence. Good, she thought. The element of surprise certainly couldn’t hurt. She sashayed up behind Max and slipped her hands over his eyes. “What the ….” Max jerked out of her grasp, spun his desk chair around, faced her. Miranda took a few steps backward so he could get the full effect of her seductive appearance. “Good morning, Max.” Max’s jaw worked as if to say something, but no sound came out. He got up from his chair, clenched his fists at his sides, unclenched them. After another moment or two, he finally managed to speak. “Miranda. I … I ahh, wasn’t expecting you here this morning.” “The early bird catches the worm,” she replied in a velvety voice. “Or so the old saying goes.” “R-Right,” Max stammered, taking a step backward. Was that perspiration on his brow? Was his chest heaving up and down just a little bit as he stared at her, took in her presence, relished her delectable scent? Yes to all three counts. Excellent. “You and I have business to attend to,” Miranda purred, her voice deep and sultry. “Since we both probably have very full days today, I thought it best to just drop in first thing in the morning. I hope you don’t mind.” Max swallowed hard. His Adam’s apple jerked up and down, back and forth. “I … I thought you were still upset with me,” he finally managed. “After what happened yesterday, I mean.” Max looked Miranda up and down, obviously undressing her with his eyes. Well, it seemed that at least so far, her strategy was working. She just might get him to sign on to John’s wild legal scheme after all. Miranda ran her tongue over her peach-glossed lips, slowly, seductively. “Oh, I am still mad about that, believe me.” Max choked, coughed, swallowed again. He wiped his now-glistening brow with his forearm. “Funny. You don’t look very mad to me.” He took a tiny step towards her, reached out his hand and placed it ever-so-lightly on her shoulder.

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Miranda let his hand linger there for a moment, then gingerly picked up his hand and hers and removed it. “Oh, believe me, I’m furious,” she purred. Max just smirked. “I can see that,” he joked. “Now, what is this little impromptu meeting of yours all about?” “Well, after the advice you gave me yesterday, I took it upon myself to hire a lawyer,” Miranda retorted, taking care to keep her voice smooth and scorching. “He came up with a plan to defend me against Victoria Markham’s lawsuit. The second part of the suit, the one that names you and me as individual plaintiffs. You remember that part of the lawsuit, don’t you Max?” Miranda’s voice took on an air of sultry condescension. “I’m ahhh, I’m familiar with it,” Max stammered. He forehead was sweating profusely now. “So what’s your lawyer’s plan? Tell me all about it.” Miranda sauntered closer to Max, until their chests were barely inches apart. The air occupying the oh-so-narrow space between them took on an electrical charge. Sparks were due to fly any minute. “Well, he does have a plan, but before I can tell you about it, you have to do something for me first.” With that, Miranda wrapped one leg around Max’s waist, jerking him against her body. She could feel him—every long, hard inch of him—heaving and throbbing against her thigh. Playing the part of naughty temptress was sure a helluva lot of fun. I really should try this more often, Miranda thought. “So how about it, Max? Are you ready to do my bidding?” Max’s breath caught. He thrust his groin against Miranda’s soft, supple body, then thought better of it and pulled away. Or tried to pull away, at least—Miranda’s gorgeous leg gripped him so tightly he could barely move. “I’ll … I’ll do whatever you say,” Max said. “Just ….” Miranda put a red-lacquered finger to his lips. “Just what, Max?” “J—j-just give me what I need, okay? Please.” Max took Miranda’s finger into his mouth, sucking it, then started raining wet kisses on the back of her hand, her wrist, her forearm. Miranda gasped as her body reacted to the feel of his mouth on her flesh, but only for a moment. She had to keep control of the situation and accomplish her larger objective. Just as Max started sliding his slick mouth and tongue up the inside of her forearm to the crook of her elbow, she jerked away from him so hard he toppled over backwards—hard—onto his firm, muscled ass. “What the hell, Miranda? I thought ….” Miranda stood over him like a queen at the execution as Max lay sprawled on the floor, sweating and unable to get his bearings. “What did you think, Max? That I’d let you have your way with me, right here, right now—after the shitty way you treated me yesterday? Hmm?” “I thought …,” Max mumbled, then trailed off as he rubbed his bruised behind. “Well, you thought wrong, buddy,” Miranda hissed. Boy, did it feel good to finally be the one bossing Max around! Miranda’s lip curled into a seductive half-smile, half-snarl as she looked down on Max’s long, lean, and oh-so-tangled body beneath her. She planted one foot on the left side of his waist, the other on the right, then bent her knees down into a very suggestive straddle squat—making sure to give Max full view of the fact that she wore no panties underneath her tight miniskirt. Seeing her thus, Max’s eyes rolled to the back of his head. Miranda’s chest swelled with the thrill of knowing she now had the man completely within her power and control. “You know Max, it’s funny. Yesterday you were so cold to me, I might as well have been a pile of dog turds. You made it pretty damn clear yesterday that you had absolutely no interest in me anymore, physically or otherwise. Don’t you remember?”

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Max didn’t answer. His sweaty face just got redder and redder, damper and damper. “You made me feel like shit,” Miranda went on. “And now today, you act like nothing happened. What’s up with that?” Again, Max didn’t answer. He wasn’t about to reveal what he’d just learned----that Victoria Markham was threatening to release a sex tape of Max and Miranda to the media unless he vowed to never see Miranda again. It was just the latest in Victoria’s long history of blackmailing him. No matter how much he might want Miranda now---or ever---Max had to keep his distance. For Miranda’s own protection. Hating every second, Max slowly scooted out from underneath Miranda’s spread, straddling legs and then managed to drag himself back over to his desk chair. Miranda stamped her dainty, stilettoed foot. “Max, let me just state for the record that there will be absolutely no more physical contact between us until you do two things for me.” Max took a sip from a water bottle on his desk, tried to regain his composure. “Name it.” “Number one, you explain why you’ve been so cold and nasty to me for almost the past two weeks. Number two, you agree to participate in a very risky, very bizarre plan that my lawyer has cooked up to get the both of us out of the Victoria Markham mess, and maybe even save your company in the process. Which would you like to start out with?” Max’s eyebrows raised. “Frankly, neither option sounds very pleasant.” Miranda turned on her heel, started walking out of the room. “I guess you and I won’t be having any more sex, then. Bye.” “Wait!” Max called after her. Miranda stopped short, glanced seductively over her shoulder for a moment, then kept right on walking. Max chased her to the door, put a desperate, sweating palm on her shoulder. “Miranda, please, please wait a second. Don’t go.” Miranda paused for a moment, keeping her eyes facing straight in front of her. Goddamn it, now she had the man begging! A slow smile spread itself across her cheeks as she turned around to face Max again. “All right, Max, I’ll stay. But only if you agree to my terms.” “I’ll … I’ll do whatever you say, Miranda. Just don’t—just don’t leave me alone in here right now. Please. I’m begging you.” With that, Max went down on his knees. Never, ever had Miranda reduced a man to begging on his knees before. Wow. It was hot. Maybe she wasn’t such a walking disaster area after all. “All right, Max. I’ll stay here for a little while longer. But no kissing, no touching, and no sex until you complete my two requests in full and in their entirety.” Miranda wagged her finger on each point for additional emphasis, tapping the end of her blood-red fingernail on Max’s forehead. “And that rule applies no matter how long it takes you to do what I’ve asked you to do. Got it?” Max swallowed hard, wiped dewdrops of sweat from his brow with his already-soaked shirtsleeve, and sighed. “Got it.” “Good.” Miranda strutted over to Max’s leather office couch and sat down, slowly, giving Max a brief crotch-view before she crossed her legs. “So, what’s it gonna be first, Max? Option one, or option two? You’ll need to demonstrate progress on at least one of them if you want me to keep sitting here. I have a lot of work to get to today, and I don’t have time to waste. Neither do you.”

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Max ran a dripping hand over his features and sighed. Miranda had him and his blue balls painted into a corner, that was sure—but he still had to stall her for time somehow. He wanted her—wanted her badly—and Miranda had used his crippling desire to her advantage with the cutthroat skill of a war general. He admired her sheer ruthlessness. Hell, there might even be a future for her in his mergers-and-acquisitions business. Provided he could actually hang on to his mergers-and-acquisitions business, anyway. Answering Miranda’s first demand—explaining why he’d been so cold to her—was out of the question. For now. No matter how much his heart, hands, and groin might ache for Miranda’s touch, Max had to protect her from his darkest, most volatile secrets. He couldn’t risk her getting involved if—well, more like when—Victoria Markham decided to take her mean-spirited attacks on the both of them to the next level. Hell, for all he knew, Victoria might have already mailed her alleged sex tape that would humiliate Miranda horribly---if it even existed---to the media already. Miranda’s second demand—that he sign on to whatever cockamamie scheme her likely two-bit lawyer had concocted—was far more palatable. He could do that. And maybe, just maybe, if he satisfied Miranda on this point, she’d forget about the other point altogether. He could always hope. “Miranda, if you don’t mind, I’d prefer to take option two for now. Tell me about this lawyer of yours.” Miranda glanced at her watch. “How much time do you have? Because this might take a little while.”

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Chapter Twelve Forty minutes later, Max sat slumped over in his desk chair, feeling as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “Let me get this straight,” he said, heaving a frustrated sigh. “Your lawyer wants us both to just hand over the company to Victoria Markham without a fight?” “That’s right,” Miranda replied. “I was pretty shocked the first time John suggested it, too. But he’s explained everything, and believe me, doing it makes sense.” Max threw up his hands. “How the hell does that make sense? It’s ridiculous. It’s insane. I refuse to go along with it.” Miranda chuckled. “Fine. Consider our relationship—both personal and professional— over, then.” Max pounded his fist on his desktop. “That’s blackmail, goddamn it.” “Maybe so. But John told me unequivocally not to take no for an answer from you, and I fully intend to follow his counsel.” Max rolled his eyes. “Who the hell is this crackpot lawyer of yours, anyway?” Miranda slowly crossed and uncrossed her legs, relishing the moment and giving Max another tantalizing peek at her crotch in the process. “John P. Althorp. Of Hamm, Strauss & Althorp.” Max’s jaw dropped. “That’s one of the finest law firms in town. And John Althorp is— well, he’s a legendary trial lawyer.” Miranda smirked. “I know.” Max had always been impressed with Miranda’s business acumen but this latest development took the cake—and just made him want her that much more. “How in the hell did you manage to snag John P. Althorp as your attorney?” “I’m best friends with his wife. We were sorority sisters.” “Hmmm.” Max pondered this for a moment. “So you’re an old friend of the family, huh?” “You could say that.” “Is he repping you pro bono then?” Miranda smirked again. “Yes.” This piqued Max’s curiosity. He wondered if Althorp had something else to gain in agreeing to represent Miranda “Why?” “He wants to turn it into a Supreme Court case. That’s how he could get the company back for us once we give it up. On the grounds that the laws Victoria is using to obtain it are unconstitutional.” Max shook his head. “Sounds pretty far-fetched to me. What if he isn’t able to win the Supreme Court case? Or what if he can’t even get it to the Supreme Court?” Miranda bit her lip. “Well, then you’d lose your company. There is an element of risk involved.” Max slapped his palm to his forehead. “Well, that’s too much risk, goddamn it!” His breath caught. His shoulders hunched themselves up by his ears. Miranda already knew how heavily the situation pained Max, and the blow she’d just dealt him was only making it worse.

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She’d reacted the same way when John had first made his suggestions. But he’d taken the time to explain his rationale carefully and ultimately had convinced her. Now Miranda had to do the same for Max. Miranda’s expression softened. “Honestly, Max. The way things stand now, do we have any chance at all of winning the lawsuit?” Max’s eyes went black, his expression grim. “No,” he muttered. “Well, then at least this way, we have a chance at winning the company back from Victoria. If you settle out, sell the company back to her—John thinks he can arrange a deal that will at least get you to break even on what you paid out—and then put in the constitutional challenge. Chances are about fifty-fifty you’d get the company back, perhaps even with damages. It’s worth a shot.” Max got up and started pacing the room. “Has Althorp considered the fact that when one settles a lawsuit out of court, there’s usually a clause stating that the parties can’t re-sue each other later?” Miranda met Max mid-pace, put a tender hand on his shoulder. “Yes, he has. John explained it to me this way—if we bring the case in federal court, we wouldn’t be suing Victoria and company, per se. We’d be suing the Massachusetts court that handed down the crummy case-law decision Victoria based her lawsuit on. I know it sounds complicated. John’s a lot better at explaining it than I am ….” Max held up his hand. “Actually, what Althorp’s suggesting makes some sense, now that I think about it. Give me his number. I’ll call him myself and get the rest of the details.” Miranda brightened. “Does that mean you agree to sign on?” “It means I’m seriously considering it. Let me talk to Althorp more first, and I’ll get back to you.” At this, Miranda’s heart swelled. She wanted to throw her arms around Max’s neck, to shower him with kisses, maybe even strip off his shirt and pants and get busy with him right there on the floor. But a deal was a deal. Max had to satisfy both her conditions before that could happen. “I’m glad to hear that, Max. But you still haven’t told me why you were so cold to me over the past two weeks, especially yesterday. Something besides this whole lawsuit mess is on your mind, and I want to know what it is.” Max waved his hand at her in dismissal. “One thing at a time, Miranda. Now how about you get back up to your office? As I recall, you have earnings reports to write.” He wasn’t about to scare Miranda with tales about a sex tape where she had a starring role possibly getting out---even if he thought Victoria was probably bluffing about having it in the first place. With that, Max turned back to his computer and immersed himself in his spreadsheet, again oblivious to Miranda’s presence. Damn, Miranda sulked as she stomped out of the room. Well, she’d only gotten half of what she’d come for. The other half obviously wasn’t going to be so easy to come by. But it was a start. **** Max sat at his desk, nervously tapping a pencil. He’d talked at length with John Althorp over the past hour and, though he was skeptical at first, he’d found the savvy attorney’s legal plan convincing. Max told John he needed an hour or two to think it over first before deciding, but that was just a stall tactic. Max knew from the time Miranda had first mentioned it that John’s risky plan was the only chance to save Max’s company from the Markham family’s

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vicious grasp—at least, as long as the Daily ad stayed buried. And Max had every expectation that Victoria and company had had every copy of that ad destroyed. On the bright side, he’d satisfied one of Miranda’s demands. Progress, at least. But even that small accomplishment brought him little comfort when he knew that he’d never, ever be able to satisfy the other one. Confessing to Miranda why he’d pulled away from her physically and emotionally over the past two weeks was just plain out of the question. Her little dominatrix act an hour ago proved she understood all too well that his brush-off was fraudulent and forced, not at all representative of his true feelings for her. Max’s true feelings for Miranda were hot, passionate, possessive, and loving—and suppressing them, however necessary, made him crazy. Max knew he’d never be able to tell Miranda the real reasons he’d pushed her away. He’d done it to protect her, of course. But protecting Miranda also involved lying to her. And that was by far the worst part. Max never knew that lying to the woman you loved could cause such pain, such torture and torment that tore at his insides and kept him up at night with migraines and stomach nausea. Like most high-powered businessmen, Max had stretched and manipulated the truth plenty of times before in order to succeed. For Corporate America, that kind of thing was common—normal even. Lying was a requisite part of his job as a business executive, and it had never bothered him before. Why did the mere notion of lying to Miranda turn his stomach to oatmeal? The worst part about it was he hadn’t even lied to her yet. If just the thought of doing it that made him this sick---what would happen to him when he actually did it? Would he go into a coma? Drop dead of a massive heart attack? Or maybe just lose his mind completely? If he lied to Miranda, any and all of those possibilities could come true. That left Max only one option—to avoid the topic with Miranda altogether. He wasn’t exactly sure how to accomplish it. The woman was persistent, goddamn it. Her presence pervaded the entire building, mocked and manipulated him just as the rosy scent cloud her perfume left behind gripped and tugged at his head, heart, and scrotum with its intoxicating fire. But after about ten minutes of staring blankly out his floor-to-ceiling office window, the idea finally came. And like most things in his life lately, Miranda inspired it. Max decided to spend the next week or two deliberately avoiding Miranda—just as she’d done to him for the week following their first encounter. He’d drive her insane with his absence—just as she’d done to him. He’d make her feel rejected and ignored—just as she’d done to him. Ahh, sweet revenge. Now that he had a plan, Max could relax. For a little while, at least. Max dialed his secretary and told her to book him a ticket to New York. It was high time to pay Victoria Markham a visit. **** Victoria Markham marched into her office, stomach churning. Her secretary had called her back early from her salon appointment, saying there was an ‘urgent emergency’. When the call came through, Victoria was in the middle of a cucumber facial at Bliss Spa and hadn’t appreciated the interruption one bit. But her desperate secretary—the third one the employment agency had sent in as many months—was near tears on the phone, flat-out begging for Victoria’s return to deal with ‘the mean crazy man’ that had apparently taken over her entire office.

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This better be good, she thought as she stamped past her pasty-faced secretary and into her private office suite. “Good afternoon, Victoria,” said a familiar male voice just to her left. Maxwell Moore, Junior stood at her personal liquor cabinet, pouring two cups of cognac. “I thought you might appreciate a drink.” “Max,” Victoria sang through clenched teeth. “What a pleasant surprise.” Max handed her one sweating highball, then took a sip of the other. “I’m sure it’s wonderfully pleasant for you, Victoria. By the way, you really should get yourself some better cognac. This is so passé. Anyone who’s anyone these days drinks Courvoisier.” Not that Max cared. He only made the comment because he knew Victoria did care—deeply, in fact—if people thought anything she did was passé. Victoria grasped the highball awkwardly. Her long, French-manicured acrylic nails clicked against the damp glass. She shifted from one foot to the other. Victoria had known that, with his two-timing back up against the proverbial wall, Max was bound to drop in on her at some point. But she hadn’t expected it quite so soon. She hadn’t even had a chance to get the nasty sex tape on the news yet, for Christ’s sake. And Max hardly acted like a businessman who’d gotten his balls locked in a vise by none other than his old college girlfriend. There was an easygoing, carefree air about him that was almost casual. As he surveyed her office, leaning against her antique Spanish mahogany desk and nursing his cognac, he looked more like a confident playboy taking in the sights at a debutante ball than a man who was about to lose everything he’d ever worked for and loved. “Nice place you have here,” Max said, his voice slick and suave as polished leather. “Nice view, too. You can see all the way to Brooklyn from up here. Wow.” Not knowing what to do with her fidgety hands, Victoria set her untouched highball down and took a seat behind her massive desk. Her high, padded executive’s chair and fortresslike furniture were designed specifically to make her appear more powerful than anyone else in the room. “Sit down, Max, and stay awhile,” Victoria cooed, motioning to one of the tiny, uncomfortable chairs she kept opposite her desk specifically for the purpose of making her visitors feel inferior. Max folded his arms across his chest and shrugged. “No thanks, I’d rather stand.” Victoria choked at this, then caught herself. “Suit yourself. I suppose you’re here about my little lawsuit?” “You suppose correctly. By the way, Victoria, you don’t look good as a blonde. Too brassy. You’re far better as a brunette. Oh, and nice boob job, by the way. Did you get those in Costa Rica, by any chance? I ask because they’re just the slightest bit lopsided.” Victoria’s cheeks flamed. She tapped her plastic nails absently on her tabletop, didn’t reply. Max relished every second he could spend embarrassing Victoria. She made it so easy for him—the woman had an ego the size of Nebraska and the self-esteem of a snail. And the more he embarrassed and humiliated her, Max knew, the better chance he had at gaining an advantage. “So anyway, Victoria, I’m here to surrender to your will. You got me, and you got me good. Without the ad, my company has no way to defend the lawsuit, so our counsel has advised us to settle. My company is yours again, once you and I and the lawyers can agree on a price.”

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Victoria’s collagen-plumped lips pursed. She hadn’t wanted Max to come swaggering into her office, offering to surrender with an easy grin on his face. As he stood before her, arms akimbo on his hard, chiseled hips, he looked like a happy-go-lucky young bachelor, not a defeated businessman begging for mercy with his tail between his legs. She’d started this war so Max would suffer, not pull the rug out from under her by surrendering on her own damn battlefield turf. Victoria sucked in her breath, blew it out again. It was just too easy. He had to be hiding something from her. Had to be. “I’m sorry, Max, but that’s not the way I do things.” Max laughed. He sat down in one of her hard, uncomfortable chairs, unaffected by the fact that he now sat a good four inches lower than Victoria did. “Why not? I’m giving you what you want—handing it to you on a silver platter, in fact. You should be happy.” “Max, I know you well enough to understand that you don’t do anything that doesn’t offer you some kind of advantage,” Victoria drawled in her nasal Long Island twang. “You must think I’m terribly stupid not to be suspicious.” “On the contrary, Victoria,” Max retorted, never breaking his confident smile. “I know that you’re smart, very very smart. And I also know from experience that you like getting your way. My attorneys and I have decided that from a business case standpoint, letting you have your way this time is the most cost-effective course of action. I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I like the thought of losing my father’s company back to you after I spent the past fifteen years trying to get it away from you—but, in business, you win some, you lose some. It’s clearly time for me to move on to the next big thing. So that’s what I’m doing. You win.” Victoria picked up a pencil, rolled it back and forth between her bony hands, then set it back down. “Why are you doing this, Max? It’s just not like you to give up a fight.” Max sighed, then leaned forward to stare deep into Victoria’s eyes. It was an almost predatory stare, a harsh, penetrating look that unsettled the hard-hearted woman’s stomach. “Let’s just call it restitution for what happened between us back at Harvard,” Max said. “I behaved badly towards you back then, and I’m sorry. Handing you back my father’s company on a silver platter is my little way of apologizing for the pain I caused you.” Victoria searched Max’s face for clues to his real motivations. His features were familiar, the same features she’d come to know so intimately when they were youngsters together at Harvard. Features that were still as handsome—if not more so—on Max at age thirtynine as they were at age nineteen. While the wrinkles and lines that had settled into Victoria’s face in the ensuing years had only made her look older and less attractive, on Max, those lines made him look more rugged, more alluring. It gave her yet another reason to hate him. “Well, that’s big of you Max,” Victoria finally said. “I appreciate your gesture. I really do. But I will have to investigate further before I agree to anything.” Max blinked twice. “This offer will only stand for so long, Victoria. I suggest you strike while the iron is hot.” Victoria set her jaw and returned Max’s hard-boiled, ice-blue stare with one of her own. “I’ll speak to our attorneys about it. They’ll be in touch if settlement is an option. But somehow I doubt it. Is there anything else I can do for you today, Maxwell dear?” “As a matter of fact, there is.” Max leaned back, interlaced his fingers behind his head in a move that emphasized the hard, curved line of his biceps. “I’d like to ask you for a personal favor.” Victoria raised one eyebrow. “Such as?” “Stay the hell away from Miranda Johansson.”

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Victoria put a hand to her chest in mock-shock. “Why Max! I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “I think you know exactly what I’m talking about. I know what you’re up to, Victoria. And frankly, I think you’re bluffing about having a sex tape of Miranda and me. God knows where you could have come up with something like that, so I frankly think you’re lying about having it. But then again, I know what you’re capable of.” “Oh, Max, you’re imagining things!” Victoria sang. “I’ve known Miranda professionally for years. We’re old friends. Dear, dear friends! Why on earth would I want to stay away from her when we’re such pals?” Max made a face. “I don’t think Miranda considers you a pal at all. Quite the opposite, in fact.” Victoria gave a tinny, forced laugh. “Well, I am shocked and appalled that Miranda has changed her feelings for me. Why, I had a lovely conversation with her just last month and everything seemed fine between us then.” Max rolled his eyes. “Whatever you say, Victoria. But believe me, the world would be a much better place if you’d just leave Miranda and me alone from now on. Just do me this one favor, and I promise everything with the lawsuit will be settled in your favor. All right?” “Well, I make no promises Max, but I will definitely take your request into consideration,” Victoria cooed, obviously in need of the last word. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some very important meetings scheduled for this afternoon. As a big-time exec yourself, I’m sure you understand.” “But of course. Have a nice afternoon, Victoria. It was nice to see you again.” “Likewise, Max darling.” “I’ll just let myself out.” With that, Max left. Once Max was out of earshot, Victoria burst into sinister laughter. Stay away from Miranda Johansson, huh? Of course I will, Max. Of course I will, she thought. No problem. After all, she didn’t have to come anywhere near Miranda Johansson to ruin her life and Max’s, too. That was what the Internet and cable television were for.

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Chapter Thirteen Miranda was at home soaking in a hot bath when her land line rang. She ignored it, then turned the tap to add more hot water to her quickly cooling bath. After what Max had pulled today, she wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone. How dare he disappear on her like this! That morning she’d practically had the man eating out of her hand. An hour later, Max’s secretary called to inform her that Max had left the office for New York to pursue ‘pressing business matters’, and that he wouldn’t be back in Chicago ‘until further notice’. She had never heard for sure whether Max had lived up to his word and signed on to John Althorp’s legal plan for real, either. She’d left a message at John’s office asking if he’d had a chance to talk things over with Max yet, but so far she hadn’t heard back. Much as she hated to admit it, seeing Max cower with desire underneath her had thrilled Miranda in ways she’d never imagined. Her head told her she had to keep Max at bay—for the time being, at least—while John and the rest of the lawyers figured out how to get them both out from the rising tide of Victoria’s lawsuits. But her heart and her body were having none of it. She wanted Max, wanted him and his hard, throbbing cock inside her now—and she would settle for nothing less. And Max was nowhere to be found. The bastard. The phone stopped ringing for a moment, then started right up again. Miranda ran more hot water to drown it out. Talking to another human being was at the absolute bottom of her priority list right now. All she wanted to do was sulk, and then maybe masturbate. An orgasm— even if self-inflicted—was definitely in order just as soon as that damn phone stopped ringing. The phone stopped ringing for a minute or two, then rang again. Goddamn it. She couldn’t concentrate on how horny she was with all these disturbances. She half-considered getting up from her bath so she could pick up whoever kept calling— telemarketer, probably, or maybe her pestering mother—to get bent. Before she could, though, she heard a familiar female voice shouting over her answering machine’s tiny speaker. “RANDI!!! Randi, PICK UP!!!” Mitzi. Miranda rolled her eyes. Couldn’t her best friend have waited to call until after Miranda had a chance to release some sexual tension via a good-old-fashioned romp with the shower massager? “RAAANNN-DEEEEEEE!! Pick UP, goddamn it! I need to talk to you! NOW!!!” With a sigh, Miranda dragged herself out of her luscious bubble bath and, still covered in raspberry-scented suds, headed for her bedroom phone. “This better be really fucking good, Mitts. You got me out of the bathtub, and ….” Mitzi cut her off. “Miranda, is your TV on?” “No. Why?” “Have you looked at any Internet news sites in the past couple hours?” “Not since this morning. Why?”

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Long pause on the line. “Ummmm, Randi, I really think you should turn on your TV and tune it to News Channel.” “Why? I’m in the middle of a bath right now, Mitts. I don’t want to watch the goddamn evening news.” “Randi, as your best friend of more than ten years, I am telling you, turn on your TV and set it to the News Channel. Now. And you should probably boot up your computer while you’re at it.” “All right, whatever. Just give me a minute to get a towel. I’m soaking wet.” “Now, Miranda. You need to watch it right now.” Miranda was fast losing her patience. “Why?” “Because you’re ON the News Channel right now. You and Max both are. You’re … oh Jesus H. Christ, Randi, just go turn it on!” “Fine.” Fortunately, Miranda had a small television in her bedroom. She picked up the remote from her bedside table, clicked on the set, and tuned it to the News Channel. Her heart sank at what she saw. The Wiley Factor was on. One of Miranda’s favorite shows, in fact. But instead of taking his usual potshots at the Democratic Party, the caption on the bottom of the TV screen stated that tonight, host Bob Wiley’s topic was RANDY CEOs AND THEIR SLEAZY FEMALE EXECUTIVE MISTRESSES. The conservative commentator’s trademark smirk filled Miranda’s tiny television screen. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re just joining us, the topic on tonight’s Wiley Factor is the outof-control sexual antics of Corporate America’s most powerful CEOs. As if what the clowns running Enron and Worldcom did weren’t bad enough, now we have spoiled, rich playboys taking over respected financial services corporations by force, just so they can abuse their new positions to have wild sex in their corporate offices. Just a slap in the face of all the hardworking American investors who have lost millions in corrupt stock deals in recent years. It’s a common problem that is only growing more prevalent in Corporate America—especially in companies that have women executives among their top ranks. Sherry, run the tape again for those who have just joined us. And by the way folks, it’s a pretty graphic tape, so viewer discretion is advised.” The screen cut away from Bob Wiley’s wrinkled face to grainy, jerky black-and-white video footage—the kind recorded by security cameras. Although parts of the image were blurred over with digital masking, Miranda recognized the posh inside of Max’s private office just off the lobby of the LaSalle-Majestic Building. The blurry image of her first, impromptu encounter with Max in the lobby of his office building almost a month and a half ago played over and over again—with their faces and certain parts of their bodies strategically masked over with digital cubes, of course. But even those digital cubes weren’t enough to hide Miranda and Max’s identities. Miranda replayed the memory of that first encounter—in which she’d been the sexual aggressor—over and over in her mind along with the few passionate seconds captured by the videotape. Naked, still dripping water and suds, Miranda collapsed onto her bed and curled up in the fetal position. “Oh, God …,” she groaned. “Randi, that’s you in the tape, isn’t it?” Mitzi’s voice was soothing and startled at the same time. “Yes,” Miranda replied in a tiny voice. She wanted to disappear. Or better yet, she wanted just to crawl into a hole and die. “I think I’m going to hang up now.”

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“Randi, wait! I know it’s hard, but you need to keep watching for a minute or two. There’s something else going on.” Miranda didn’t answer. She loosened her fetal position just enough to be able to reach the remote control. Just as she aimed it at the television, though, the image cut from the grainy sight of her and Max engaging in a semi-censored sexual act to Victoria Markham’s pert, surgically altered face. She split the screen with Bob Wiley, who started peppering her with questions. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re just joining us, we are speaking with Miss Victoria Markham, top stock market analyst with Morton Myers Corp. and heiress to the Markham family fortune. Victoria, can you tell me a little bit about how you came to obtain this filthy, lewd videotape?” “Well, my family and I were formerly majority stakeholders in the company of which the ahhhh, gentleman in the tape is now CEO. The other shareholders in the private equity fund that owned the company—I won’t say which company it is—outvoted my family and I, and then sold it to the gentleman in the tape against our express wishes. It was a hostile takeover, really. My family and I have lost potentially millions in future earnings on that sale and now you can see what kind of unethical, horrible CEO is running the company that my family saved from bankruptcy more than fifteen years ago and ran faithfully since then. We were all very upset when we saw the tape. As you might imagine.” Bob frowned, shook his head. “I can definitely imagine, Victoria. Geez, I thought some of the antics the Enron execs pulled on the job were bad, but this takes the cake. How did you come by the tape again?” Victoria flipped her hair—freshly dyed from her former bottle-blonde to a more natural chestnut brown—with a manicured hand, and giggled. “Well, it was just completely by accident, Bob. You see, back when my family owned this company, the security guards always sent us— that is, me—security tapes to review whenever they thought something suspicious was going on in the company headquarters. And there was certainly something suspicious going on here. The ahhhh—activity in question took place the very day that this sex-crazed CEO publicly announced his takeover of this company, and the security officers weren’t aware of the change. They sent me the tape purely by mistake.” “Looks like it was a pretty fortunate mistake, though,” Wiley quipped. “Now Victoria, I know you’ve been reluctant to name the company in question, as well as who the people depicted in this, uhhhh, video really are. But you know our viewers just aren’t going to be satisfied until they find out the truth. Especially if they have their money invested with this firm—a well-known financial services firm based in Chicago. Isn’t that right?” Victoria gave another fake laugh. “Well Bob, I’m now involved in a lawsuit with this company—not to mention the two sex-crazed lunatics in the video—so I just can’t comment on that. Confidentiality clauses, you know.” Wiley grinned. “But there’s nothing in those confidentiality clauses that would preclude me from revealing the truth on the air, is there?” Victoria batted her artificially extended eyelashes. “Oh, I don’t think so, Bob. Knock yourself out.” Wiley smirked even wider. “All right, then I will. The company in question is Maxwell Moore, Junior and Company, and the randy CEO in the video we just saw is Maxwell Moore, Junior, son of the well-known but disgraced businessman Maxwell Moore, Senior, which some of you might recall ran into some trouble in the early 90s savings-and-loan scandal. Seems Junior

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bought his bankrupt dad’s company back from the Markham family in a hostile takeover, then used his newfound authority to seduce one of the company’s female execs, one Miranda Johansson. Or rather, she seduced him, as you could probably see from the video. When we come back from commercial break, we’ll be talking about whether sexy young female execs like Miss Johansson here can impair the judgment of competent CEOs on the job. Our guest this segment has been Miss Victoria Markham of Morton Myers Corp. Up next, Ann ….” The TV cut from Wiley and Victoria Markham to a commercial. Miranda clicked it off. “Randi? Randi, hon, are you still there?” By now Miranda had completely forgotten she still had the phone held to her ear. “I’m here,” she croaked. “Randi, I just want you to know that I’m sorry this has happened to you. And by the way, no matter what may have happened in that video, John and I still back you up one hundred percent.” “Still? What do you mean, still back me up?” Miranda hissed as she jerked bolt upright. “Are you implying that I’m some kind of sleaze or something ….” “Randi, calm down. Look, I didn’t mean for it to come out that way. We just want you to know that we love and support you, no matter what.” Miranda knew her friend was trying to be kind, but Mitzi’s choice of words sounded cold and judgmental. “Whatever, Mitts. I really need to go now.” Mitzi sighed audibly. “Randi, before you hang up, you should know there’s also an uncensored version of the tape circulating on the Internet right now. I’m sure Victoria is behind all of this, by the way. John’s working on incorporating the whole situation into your legal case somehow. We’ll keep you posted.” “Whatever.” Without waiting for Mitzi’s reply, Miranda hung up. **** The next morning, Miranda sat on her living room sofa, flipping channels. The “RandyTo-The-Max” story, as the News Channel had dubbed it, was all over the networks. She felt sick. Worse than sick, actually. Miranda felt dirty. And cheap. She was back to being a walking disaster area. Since the story had broken, Miranda’s phone had been ringing off the hook, and her answering machine had maxed out hours ago. Nine frantic messages from her mortified Episcopalian mother, who wanted to know ‘what the hell is going on’, thirty or so more from supermarket tabloids who wanted ‘exclusives’, two from the Financial Times who wanted Miranda’s take on how the scandal would affect her financial career, three from John, who assured her that he had everything for the brewing legal case under control, two more from Mitzi, who told her to ‘keep her chin up’, several more from a Los Angeles porn-film producer who wanted to offer Miranda a contract. One from Richard Donner, the office playboy, asking if she was free for dinner and a movie on Friday. God only knew how they’d all gotten her unlisted phone number. And finally, one call from Annabelle, wondering if Miranda would be making it in today. But not a single call from Max. Miranda ignored all the messages. It went without saying she wasn’t going in to work today. In fact, she doubted she could ever show her face in public again. Especially considering

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that a large number of paparazzi had set up camp in the alley behind her building. Miranda had pulled all the blinds shut and dragged a chair over of her front door, fearing that one of them might try to break in, or at least photograph her coming naked out of the shower using their huge telephoto lenses. Miranda curled herself into a ball on the couch and cried. Her career was over. Hell, her life was over. She was doomed to live the pathetic life of a high-profile floozy, like Marla Maples or Monica Lewinsky. Before she knew it, she’d be hawking tooth bleach on late-night infomercials or trying to market her own line of ugly handmade purses. She never wanted to see another human being again. Except maybe Max. So she could throttle him. Max was the only person on earth right now who could possibly have any sympathy for her. And he was nowhere to be found. In all likelihood, he’d seen the whole thing coming and headed for the hills beforehand. She hadn’t gotten so much as a phone call since the whole thing had blown up, and didn’t expect she ever would. Walking disaster area, indeed. Now Miranda felt more like a walking nuclear fallout zone. And not surprisingly, as the ‘sleazy female executive mistress’ in the Randy-To-The-Max scandal, Miranda was bearing the brunt of the media assault. Other than having grainy images of his body in various states of undress broadcast round the world, so far Max had emerged from the whole ordeal relatively unscathed. The news outlets and tabloid TV shows viewed him as a harmless, spoiled playboy who’d been corrupted by Miranda, an oversexed Jezebel temptress who had no business working in the senior ranks of Corporate America. Typical, Miranda fumed. Blame the woman. As a conservative, card-carrying Republican, up to now she’d never been someone who considered herself an oversexed Jezebel temptress—let alone a feminist. But maybe it was high time Miranda changed her political tune. Desperate times, desperate measures. The familiar refrain filled Miranda’s mind as she headed for the refrigerator in search of some chocolate ice cream for breakfast, maybe with some fudge-pops as a side dish. After all, there was no point in trying to maintain her trim figure when she was never going to leave her leave her condo again. **** Max sat in his suite at the Plaza Hotel with the curtains drawn and all the lights turned off. The TV was on, tuned to the News Channel with the volume muted. Empty bottles and cans from the mini-bar littered the floor. Max was drunk. He stared straight ahead, trying in vain to focus his gaze on something—anything— through his drunken haze. After soaking up so much booze over the past thirty-six hours, he had a splitting headache and ‘the spins’ so badly that he was certain that he and his chair were trapped in a wild centrifuge of motion. After what seemed like an eternity, Max managed to focus his attention on what was on the TV screen. He rummaged around on the trash-littered floor for the remote control, found it, and clicked the ‘MUTE’ button to restore the sound. Special Report was on. The program’s host was talking to a panel of ‘experts’ on improper behavior among the high-powered corporate executive set. One of the ‘experts’ was Victoria Markham.

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“Jesus H. Christ,” Max said aloud. “How much fucking airtime are they going to give to this?” Then, Max remembered that the Markham family were major investors in the News Channel media empire. Victoria could therefore get as much airtime she wanted and on pretty much whatever topic she wanted. “I really think something needs to be done about the whole situation,” Victoria quipped. With a drunken chuckle, Max could see she’d followed his advice and made the switch from garish bleach-blonde to a more muted brunette. “If we’re going to be passing all kinds of laws about executive compensation and ethics and whatnot—you know, because of what those bad apples at Enron did—then I think we need to be passing laws about this, too. Not to mention the sleazy women who tempt them into it.” Special Report’s smarmy host grinned. “So what you’re saying, Victoria, is that we should change the laws in this country so that corporate executives who engage in sex on company time can be federally prosecuted, along with the women they cavort with, and perhaps even pay for their sexual services out of company funds?” “Oh, absolutely,” Victoria sang. “The lawsuit my company and I are pursuing against one of these depraved individuals is trying to set a precedent to do just that.” The camera cut to another ‘expert’, who served as devil’s advocate. “Now that would have a hard time flying in this country, what with our right to privacy and all, but ….” The host cut him off. “Well, our so-called ‘right’ to privacy is a bit exaggerated, I think, especially when you look at what this Miranda Johansson woman did on the now-infamous security tape ….” Max clicked off the television and threw the remote across the room. He wasn’t too drunk to know that this had gone far enough. He’d had enough of watching the woman he loved get raked over the coals time and again on national television. He’d been Mr. Nice Guy for long enough. It was high time for Max to take the gloves off and bring out the big guns. He managed to stagger over to the telephone table, where he dialed room service for a pot of extra-strong black coffee, then stumbled into the bathroom for a cold shower. Once he was sober enough, he’d do whatever he had to do to put a stop to all of this. And then, he’d go back to Chicago to see Miranda.

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Chapter Fourteen About four hours later, Max stood in the darkened lobby of the New York Journal building. He checked and re-checked his watch, trying hard not to make eye contact with the building security guard, who was eyeing him with suspicion. On a whim he’d called his old college buddy, Joe Melman, who’d spent the past fifteen years as a Journal reporter. Even though he and Melman hadn’t spoken in over a year, his friend had been eager to hear from him and had agreed to meet Max at the Journal offices in an hour to discuss a possible breaking news story. True to his usual form, Joe Melman was late. When the two were frat brothers at Harvard, Joe Melman had earned the nickname ‘Melsloth’ for his perpetual tardiness. Max hoped that as a prominent reporter, Joe at least had enough sense to meet his writing deadlines, even if he was late for everything else. And half-past midnight wasn’t exactly an ideal time to keep Max waiting in a dark building in lower Manhattan. After several more minutes Joe finally burst into the lobby, carrying a greasy brown paper bag. “Sorry I’m late, Max. I just needed to pick up some grinder sandwiches for us on the way here. From what you said on the phone, you and I will be pulling an all-nighter on this story, and I wanted to make sure we had sufficient junk food to get us through.” Max smiled, slapped his portly old friend on the back. “Thanks for meeting me here, Joe. I really appreciate it. Those wouldn’t happen to be meatball grinders from Brooklyn, would they?” Joe laughed, then flashed his security badge at the guard, who then ushered the both of them past the gate to the bank of elevators. “You betcha, Max. I made a special trip out on the ‘A’ train to pick these up, then hustled back to Manhattan in a cab so they wouldn’t get cold on the way back. Figured you wouldn’t mind me being a couple minutes later if I had these with me.” “You figured right,” Max replied as they both stepped onto the elevator. “And with the killer hangover I have right now, the more I can load up on greasy meatballs, the better.” They rode up to Joe’s office floor in silence with the delectable smell of beef fat, fresh Italian bread, and marinara sauce filling the elevator car. Max’s mouth watered as he anticipated biting into one of the famous subs, which he hadn’t had an opportunity to eat in the many years since he had worked as a small-time Wall Street trader early in his career. The elevator finally arrived on the thirty-eighth floor—the mergers-and-acquisitions news and analysis department. At this late hour, the only people working were junior copyboys and entry-level beat reporters, keeping their eyes on the wires for any late-breaking stories that might need last-minute insertion into the next morning’s edition. Joe led Max down a long, dark hallway, flipping on light switches along the way. They ended up in Joe’s private office, which featured a wall-sized plasma-TV screen that split between a real-time worldwide markets ticker and a live media feed. At this late hour on a Sunday, the only markets open were the Nikkei in Japan and Hang Seng in China—both in light morning trading. Max noticed that the rolling news-feed running across the news portion of the screen made brief mention of the ‘Randy To

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The Max’ scandal—more decorously calling it ‘recent controversy surrounding two Maxwell Moore, Junior and Company executives’. Joe motioned for Max to sit down in one of the office’s many leather easy chairs. “I’m so glad you called me, Max. I’ve been itching to get an inside scoop on this whole scandal since it broke the other day. But I didn’t feel right calling you for it, since you and I are old friends and all. Unlike most of the reporters on the paper, I still have a soul. I won’t sell a friend down the river on the front page unless he specifically asks me to.” Max laughed, glad that Joe Melman had kept his trademark sense of humor intact for all these years. So many of his old school friends had been corrupted by the brutal Wall Street system—but not good, decent old Joe ‘Melsloth’ Melman. Joe pulled both dripping sub sandwiches out of the greasy paper bag, along with side orders of french fries and onion rings. “Here you go, buddy. Help yourself. Take your choice of side dishes. But if I remember your day-trading days correctly, my money says you’ll pick the onion rings.” “Yep,” Max replied, reaching for them. “Did you remember the barbecue sauce?” The paunchy Joe pulled open a desk drawer, took out a half-empty squeeze bottle of barbecue sauce. “I maintain my own supply, my friend. Here, just use one of these napkins as a plate to squirt it on. My desk is already coated in the stuff as it is.” “Looks like your gut is a bit coated in it, too,” Max said, nodding towards Joe’s ample beer belly. He took a bite into the sub, followed it with a couple onion rings soaked in barbecue sauce. Delicious. “You really know how to treat a guest, Joe. Thanks. This hits the spot.” Joe took out a reporter’s pad and pencil. “Of course you understand that as a reporter, I do not give away free meals without expecting a scoop in exchange. What have you got for me, Max?” Max took a minute to chew and swallow his mouthful of sandwich and onions, savoring every artery-clogging morsel. Joe Melman had always given Max’s mergers-and-acquisitions business good coverage in the Journal, and he was the only journalist Max trusted to help present a balanced version of the ‘Randy-To-The-Max’ scandal. The trick was to give Joe the scoop so that he had no choice but to present it in a way that made Max and Miranda look good, and Victoria Markham look bad. Not an easy task when you considered the subject matter. “Joe, I’m sure you recall from our college days that Victoria Markham and I used to be romantically involved.” Joe nodded through a mouthful of greasy meatball. A thick dab of marinara sauce bobbed on his chin while he chewed. He swallowed, wiped his mouth on a wadded-up paper towel. “Yep,” he said, chewing. “I also recall that you two had a pretty nasty breakup. Not that the frigid bitch didn’t deserve to be dumped hard and cold,” he said, shaking his head. “No offense, Max, but I never did understand what you saw in that woman.” “Neither do I.” Max took another bite of his sub, chewed, swallowed. “And as you can probably see from the news, Victoria holds grudges.” “Yeah, I figured.” Joe shook his head and sighed. “I can see why she was upset with you, but Christ, it happened fifteen-twenty years ago. Victoria’s a pretty low individual if she feels the need to take revenge on you like this after all this time—not to mention dragging your girlfriend into it.” Max leaned back into his chair and stretched. Hearing Joe talk about what had happened so long ago made him feel old—that along with his full-to-bursting stomach. He’d only eaten three bites of the heavy meatball sandwich and was already full. In his early twenties, he could

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have polished off two of them and never even gained an ounce. “Was it that obvious to you that Victoria was simply out for revenge with all this?” Joe nodded. “Oh, sure. But then again, I know something about your history. Most people don’t, so that’s why the media has clomped onto this like a pitbull does a T-bone. Sex sells, as you know. Mix in a rich-kid playboy with a disgraced dad—i.e., you—and no news editor can resist it. Plus, Victoria’s family’s got the whole News Channel board of directors in their pocket. And you know that News Channel pretty much lets anybody willing to pay them an appearance fee appear on their news network, whether what they’ve got to say is newsworthy or not. Gotta say, though, from my vantage point, the story does not reflect well on you at all.” Max frowned. “Thanks for pointing out the obvious, Joe.” His portly friend’s eyebrows raised. “That doesn’t mean I can’t turn the story around for you, Max. You know I always like to give you good press. You said on the phone you had a hot scoop on Victoria. How ‘bout laying it on me so I can use it to turn the crimson tide in your favor, huh? I might even be able to get it in the Monday morning edition if you talk fast.” Max glanced at his platinum Rolex. Twelve-forty-five. “What time is your final copy deadline for tomorrow’s—rather, today’s—edition?” Joe grinned. “Three a.m. If you want me to get a story written up and past the copyboy by then, you better start talking.” “Okay,” Max said. “You might want to make some strong coffee. It’s kind of a long story, and I’ll need the caffeine to talk faster.” Joe clapped his pudgy hands together. “You betcha. I’ll have one of the late-night girl Fridays downstairs brew us up some Sunday-night sludge. I’ll even order in some more subs if you need the extra fuel.” “That won’t be necessary,” Max said, rubbing his full belly before settling in to spin a very long, very ugly yarn.

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Chapter Fifteen “Joe, you already know the story about how Victoria and I broke up,” Max said with a sigh. “So I’ll spare you the retelling of all that. What you don’t know—well, nobody does, really—is the full story of what happened between Victoria and me after the breakup.” Max rubbed his temples, blew a puff of air out through his mouth. Telling this story would be the hardest thing he’d ever done. Joe glanced at his chrome Timex. “You sure you can get all the details out in time for my deadline? Otherwise we’ll have to push it off ‘til the Tuesday edition.” Max got up from his chair and started to pace. “I’ll do my level best. I’ll just need to move around a lot while I do it, if you don’t mind.” Joe nodded in sympathy. “Do whatever you have to do, buddy.” “All right. You remember Grace Pillman, don’t you Joe?” Joe laughed heartily, grabbing his ample belly. “Christ, Max, who doesn’t? The lady got around.” “Well then, I won’t need to go into what went on between Grace and I, will I?” Joe shook his head, chuckled again. “Fine. After the situation regarding Victoria’s boiling-water bedroom assault of Grace and me had blown over, there was a bit of a lull—about five months or so—before Dad started having big-time problems at the company. As you might remember, Grace even tried to smooth things over with Victoria after she paid out the settlement. Victoria wasn’t exactly receptive to Grace’s offer—mostly because she looked down on Grace as being low-class.” “Grace was a poor kid. Scholarship kid from a trailer park, as I recall,” Joe offered. “That’s true,” Max agreed. “But truth be told, Grace had more class in her little finger than Victoria had in her whole prep-school body. Grace had something that Victoria didn’t— kindness, decorum, compassion, and respect for everyone. That’s class, in my book. Victoria has none of that.” “You can say that again,” Joe agreed. “God knows there’s a lot of self-righteous snobs at Harvard, but Victoria was by far the worst one I ever met.” “I wouldn’t even go so far as to call Victoria self-righteous,” Max scoffed. “I’d just call her an evil bitch and be done with it. At any rate, Victoria might not have been that receptive to Grace’s kind overtures. But she was receptive to something else.” Joe’s eyebrows raised again, higher this time. “Which was?” “Me.” Joe choked on a mouthful of meatball. “You’re kidding, right?” Max stopped pacing, leaned against the glass wall of Joe’s office, folded his arms. “No, I’m not. And unfortunately for me and my entire family, I acted like a total idiot about it.” “What do you mean?” Max shook his head as a look of deep pain clouded his sky-blue eyes. He flopped back down in one of Joe’s side chairs and sighed. “One night in the spring semester of our junior year, there was a party at the Alpha Phi Alpha house. The Roman Centurions party. You were there, Joe, as I recall.”

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Joe smiled fondly, remembering. “Yep, I sure was. I dressed up as a Gothic barbarian, and I ‘raided’ the keg every ten minutes for booze, swearing I would bring down the Empire, or some kind of hokey shit like that. I seem to remember you went dressed as Marcus Aurelius. And you became a very, very drunken emperor, too, didn’t you?” Max laughed uneasily. “I wouldn’t know. Apparently I drank so much at that party that to this day I can’t remember most of what happened. Unfortunately for me—to say nothing of my father, my mother, my family’s reputation. And now, the reputation of the woman I love.” Joe’s brow furrowed. “Sorry, Max. I don’t quite follow.” “Joe, while you were off raiding the party keg for the Barbarians, I was upstairs in one of the frat-house bedrooms doing Ever-clear shots with Roddy Doyle from Pi Kappa Alpha. Do you remember Roddy?” “Of course,” Joe chuckled. “The guy was like a walking beer factory. Getting drunk with him once was more than enough—I almost died of alcohol poisoning.” “You’re not the only one,” Max replied, his face pulling into a look of deep despair. “I don’t know exactly when it happened, but at some point after I’d inhaled about thirty Ever-clear shots with Roddy, Victoria showed up at the party, found out where I was, and made her way up to the room where Roddy and I were partying. Roddy then conveniently made himself scarce, and Victoria and I ended up having sex. Unprotected sex.” Joe templed his fingers underneath his chin and frowned. “Wait a minute. If you were so tanked that you blacked out the whole night, how do you even know you had unprotected sex with Victoria?” “I woke up naked on the floor with my arms and legs wrapped around a naked Victoria the next morning,” Max explained. “And a month later, she turned up pregnant.” “Whoa.” Joe picked up his reporter’s pen and pad. “Now you’re giving me something I can use.” “It gets worse,” Max said, grimacing. “Or for you, maybe better, given how you’re looking at it from a dirty-laundry perspective. When Victoria showed up at my doorstep claiming to be pregnant, I refused to acknowledge it.” “Hmm,” Joe intoned, chewing his nub of pencil. “Interesting. Why would you do a stupid thing like that?” “Because I was a selfish twenty-year-old idiot, for one thing,” Max said, cringing at his own crass behavior. “And given the fact that I had blacked out that whole night—not to mention the crazy antics Victoria had pulled on me already—I wasn’t entirely sure it was my kid.” Joe cocked his head thoughtfully. “Seems fair enough. But being young, pregnant, and Victoria, I doubt she saw it that way.” “You could say that,” Max said, then started to fidget. “After a week or so I came to my senses, though. Of course it was probably my kid. Even with all the bad blood that had passed between us, Victoria still had a soft spot for me. I was her first love, after all, and that’s something special for any woman. You get a couple of young, horny kids together, you get a couple of drinks in them—well, biology just took over. I didn’t like the idea of sleeping with her any more than I liked the idea of knocking her up. But hey—I was a dumb, irrational, hormonecrazed twenty-year-old, and so was she. Shit happens.” “And to a lot of people,” Joe agreed. “Same thing happened to my sister when she was at Smith. Only she up and decided to keep the kid, drop out of school, and get married. Ended badly. Now she has a crummy job and goes to night school, and the kid hates her. Go figure.”

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“That’s exactly the kind of ending I didn’t want to see happen. Neither did Victoria, really. She never brought up marriage. She offered to take care of the abortion herself, didn’t even ask me to go with her. Told me it was a simple mistake—an accident—that I should just forget about it and move on with my life, that she’d keep it a secret, that she’d never bother me or my family with it again. Problem was, I took her at her word. That was my first mistake. Because where the Markham family is concerned, nothing is ever simple. Or secret.” “Hoo boy,” Joe said, his pencil nub poised over his rapidly filling pad. “This is getting good. Maybe a little too good.” Max stood up to pace again. “What do you mean?” “The Journal is a financial news publication, not a gossip rag,” Joe replied, shaking his head. “As juicy as this scoop is, you’ve got to tie it to your business problems somehow, or I’ll never get it past my editor. You’re welcome to take it down the street to the Post if you like. I know one of the editors over there ….” “No Joe, I’d rather stick with you. You’ve always done right by me. I’ll give you the business connection, don’t worry. As if it isn’t obvious to you already ….” “No, it’s not obvious, Max. I know Victoria’s an evil bitch, but you’ve got to give me hard, quantifiable proof that she’s setting you up in revenge right now for something that happened over fifteen years ago.” “I don’t know if I can get you proof,” Max acquiesced. “But I can get you some pretty good leads. You’re the reporter. You go track down the proof.” “I think you can forget about making next morning’s edition, then,” Joe sighed. “Just finish up on the pregnancy story, then I’ll see if the rest of it’s got any legs.” “Well Joe, if it makes you feel any better, I might not have hard, quantifiable proof to connect what Victoria’s doing to my business now to a college pregnancy scare in 1991, but I can give you hard quantifiable proof that it had something to do with my father being forced to sell his company to the Markham family in 1992 or face total ruin.” Joe’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “Well that is exactly the kind of story my editor will buy,” he said. “All right then, Max. I’m all ears. Dish.” Max paused mid-pace. “Well, the last I’d heard from Victoria, she was having an abortion, and she’d assured me I wouldn’t have to worry any more about it. Victoria disappeared from campus for a time, in fact. I never looked into where she’d gone. I just figured she’d gone and taken the semester abroad she’d been planning for a while. But it came to pass about sevenand-a-half months later, I got a call from a private maternity hospital in Boston. From a delivery nurse. Wanting to know if I wanted to be listed as the father on the birth certificate, or if I was willing to terminate all my parental rights so Victoria could put the kid up for adoption.” Joe whistled. “Hoo boy. So I guess that means she didn’t go through with the abortion.” “Apparently not. Of course, I totally freaked out on the phone and refused to give the nurse a straight answer. I headed straight into Boston and over to the hospital. Once I got there, I demanded to see Victoria and the baby, but was told they’d both already checked out.” Joe chewed his pencil thoughtfully. “But how is that possible? You hadn’t given them an answer about the birth certificate yet. And without that ….” “They couldn’t release mother and child yet, I know, I know.” Max shook his head. The story still pained him after all of these years. “But they did it anyway. Probably because Victoria Markham is part of a very rich and powerful family that pays people to bend the rules for them.”

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“Seems reasonable enough,” Joe said. “But if they did that, it means you were left off the birth certificate and wouldn’t have any rights to the child. Am I right?” “Yes, you are,” Max said gravely. “Not that I was thrilled at the prospect of fatherhood as a twenty-year-old college kid.” Joe pondered this, pursed his lips, and sighed. “Understandable. So what happened next?” Max shut his eyes for a moment, picturing the scene at the hospital so many years ago. He had been so young, so angry, and so frightened. The memory of the mixed emotions grappling him that day still brought tears to Max’s eyes. He’d felt small, helpless. “I tried to track Victoria and the baby down, but came up with nothing. They’d disappeared, and the hospital wouldn’t give me any information. I tried to tell them I was the baby’s father, but they either didn’t believe it or the Markham family machine had paid them not to listen.” “Probably the latter, knowing the Markhams,” Joe commented. “Yeah,” Max agreed. “I’ve always thought the same myself. When it became clear that I wasn’t getting any more information from the hospital, I gave up and went back to campus. I figured that Victoria had made a choice to shut me out of her and the child’s life and to give the child up to boot. She’d made her decision without me, and I didn’t feel I had any more say in the matter. And this was well before the whole fathers’ rights movement had started up, so of course I was too naïve to know I could have had other recourse if I’d just made more of an effort. And even if Victoria was keeping the baby, with the size of her inheritance it wasn’t like she needed child support. I decided to forget about the whole thing, put it behind me, and pretend it never happened.” Joe polished off the last of the french fries, then greedily licked the grease and ketchup from his fingers. “Max, did you ever tell your parents about all of this?” Max’s eyes went glassy with tears. “No. Never.” “So they don’t know they have a grandchild out there somewhere?” A tear spilled out onto Max’s left cheek. He wiped it away, trying with all his might to keep his composure. “No. I never told them.” “Why not?” Max turned to face the wall. “Because I was afraid. I’m still afraid. Especially after I watched my father have a severe stroke when his company collapsed. My parents were—are— very conservative, traditional people. If they’d known I’d fathered a child out of wedlock on top of the public humiliation and financial ruin of the bankruptcy, it would have been very hard on them. Had they known the whole disaster was my fault—that Victoria and her family had orchestrated the whole Markham family takeover of Dad’s company and then had him sold down the river in revenge for me knocking her up—well, it would have killed them both. It was all I could do to hide the real truth from them at the time. Victoria was blackmailing me via letters she kept sending that threatened to go public with the whole thing. I never was able to track her or the baby down during that period of time. She went into hiding, mailed the letters from an untraceable postmark. The baby vanished—adopted, I assume. And Victoria knew I’d never pursue it beyond a certain point because I was afraid of the news getting out and harming my parents. She used that to her full advantage. The Markhams blackmailed me for years. A few years back, we called a truce—I paid Victoria off a large sum of money in exchange for her promise to let the matter drop once and for all. She did, but as you can see, she’s found plenty of other ways to make my life hell.”

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Joe set his pad and paper aside. “So why bring it up now, after all these years? And so publicly? Your parents are frail and elderly now.” Max steeled his jaw, sat down across from Joe. His eyes were still misty, but his bluegray irises were now flinty and hard. “Joe, I was never that close with my parents. Emotionally, I mean. Dad always looked on me more as a potential business partner than as a son. My mother was a socialite who spent a lot more time planning charity balls and dining out at the country club than she did with me—even when I was a very small boy. I went to boarding school from the time I was thirteen. I kept this whole thing from them then for two reasons. One, I was a young kid, and I still was still dependent on my father for a job once I finished up at Harvard. I still desperately wanted my parents’ approval. I’d learned years before not to expect their love—or at least, not to expect them to show it. But having their approval was crucial. Of course, once the family business collapsed and Dad spent my entire inheritance, I didn’t care about their approval any more. I was too busy trying to figure out a way to make a living. Now that I’m successful in my own right, I don’t need my parents’ approval, and I don’t care much about how this information coming out now would impact them—mostly because they’re both quite frail and living on a remote Caribbean island where they don’t even so much as read a newspaper. They’ll never know. And even if they did, they are not the most important people in my lives. Not anymore. Somebody else is.” Joe gave Max a brotherly smile. “And I think I have a pretty good idea who that somebody else is.” “Miranda. I love her, Joe. I need to protect her. She’s caught in the middle of a battle that’s been quietly going on between Victoria and me for years, and it’s high time I got off my ass and finished the war.” Max reached into the briefcase he’d carried with him to this clandestine meeting. In it were several files of documents, financial statements, and the like—all related to the transfer of Maxwell Moore Senior and Company to the Markham-Morton Myers Private Equity Fund and Trust in 1992. There were also some of the handwritten blackmail letters that had been passed between Max and Victoria. “There’s more than enough hard, quantifiable proof for you to use right there,” Max said. “You’re welcome to print any and all of it. If you still want more, I have names and numbers of some very discreet lawyers that I hired to work behind the scenes to engineer the deal without any of that information coming out and harming my father. They’ll back up my story. The things Victoria did to screw my dad out of profits after the sale—well, that’s all a matter of public record. Now you just have a context in which to place it.” Joe got up and hugged Max. Surprised, Max hugged his sweaty, portly old college friend back—but found he could barely get his arms around Joe’s enormous body. “Max, I knew you’d come through for me. This could very well be the biggest story of my career. Hell, I just might get the Pulitzer for this.” Max scoffed. “Don’t hold your breath.” Joe held up his hand. “With as much as you’ve just given me, I could conceivably do a whole series of articles on how the Markham family has corrupted and blackmailed its way into some of its most lucrative M&A deals. I can get an introductory story to print for the Monday edition. Just a taste to hook the masses, mind you. But the really sweet stuff will come later. I’ve got some pretty good investigative reporters at my disposal—if you don’t mind, I’d like to get them involved. With what you’ve given me so far, I could probably sniff out some more of the Markham family’s dirty dealings. I mean, Victoria and her parents are connected as hell. If

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they did this to you, chances are they’ve done it to somebody else, too. The rich and powerful among us have a habit of finding a dirty racket that works for them and then sticking to it. I have a feeling this tangled web of Victoria’s could stretch pretty damn wide.” Feeling exhausted, Max stood up to leave. “Do whatever you want to do with the information I just gave you, Joe. Just get the national media talking about something other than how much of a skanky whore the beautiful woman I love is. That’s all I ask.” With that, Max left.

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Chapter Sixteen Miranda had been locked in her condo hiding from the world for three days. And things were getting desperate. She was running out of groceries. She was running out of toilet paper. And she was running out of patience. In fact, Miranda thought she just might be running out of sanity. Miranda peeked through her bedroom’s shuttered mini-blinds and gazed down the alley behind her building. Most of the paparazzi that had been camped out there for days had mysteriously disappeared. Thinking they’d perhaps relocated to the front of her building, she dashed down the hall to peek out her living room blinds. No paparazzi there, either. She could have sworn that just a few hours earlier, there had been scores of photographers and cameramen surrounding her building, all angling for whatever grainy shot of Miranda hiding out in her home their telephoto lenses could capture. And now they were all gone! Just like that. It didn’t make sense. Miranda trudged to her kitchen to look for something to eat. A thorough check of her depleted cupboards and refrigerator didn’t turn up much—a half-empty jar of olives, a tin of sardines, a bag of frozen peas, and some ancient saltine crackers. She dejectedly micro-waved a bowlful of peas and spread the smelly sardines on the crackers with a side of olives while she pondered what her next move would be. On a whim, Miranda picked the remote control off her kitchen counter, clicked on the television and tuned it to the News Channel. She expected to see yet another iteration of the ‘Randy To The Max’ story on, but all she found was a midday news report that focused on trouble in the Middle East. She flipped to another news channel where a reporter was doing an investigative report on consumer fraud at used-car dealerships. She tried another and found the host doing a rerun documentary. Miranda laughed softly to herself in a pleasant wave of relief. It seemed that in the fickle world of broadcasting and current events, ‘Randy To The Max’ was now old news. Thank God. Now maybe she could leave her house and buy some more damned food and toilet paper. She could even go back to work. Well, maybe eventually she could go back to work. She was sure to be the target of ridicule and insults on the job for a long time to come. Unless Max came back from wherever he was hiding and did something radical—like publicly declare to everyone on earth that Miranda Johansson in fact wasn’t the woman in the grainy sex video broadcast round the world. That the whole thing had just been a big misunderstanding. That Miranda Johansson was in fact the chaste, wholesome, virginal woman of his dreams whom he wanted to marry in a televised fairytale wedding. Of course, Miranda knew the chances of that happening were about the same as finding a flock of flying pigs outside her balcony. Oh well. There was no changing it now. It was over and done with. Like it or not, Miranda had to pick up the pieces of her shattered life and move on as best she could.

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Her first step would likely have to be finding another job. Not only was it impossible for her to work with Max after all that had happened, quitting would make her far less of a legal target for Victoria Markham and her powerful cronies. It irked Miranda to know she was letting her arch-rival win, but she had no choice. The sex video scandal had almost destroyed Miranda’s sanity. She hardly thought she had the emotional stamina to go through a long, drawn-out lawsuit now. Even worse, she had to try and go on in a bleak, lonely life that wouldn’t include Max …. It was far more than she wanted to think about this morning. Time to move on, move forward, never look back. Looking for a distraction, Miranda decided it was time to catch up on the day’s market news, so she switched the channel. Once she knew what was going on in her investment research portfolio, she’d draft her resignation letter for Max. Then she’d have to call John Althorp and explain that with her quitting her job, she probably wouldn’t need his legal defense services after all. Miranda had no idea what she would do after that. But she would figure something out. She cleared her head of all that pointless worry and focused her full attention on the news. The financial news channel was on a commercial break, showing ads for mutual funds, insurance companies, golf supplies, and other dull, conservative topics appealing to the retirees and financial professionals that made up most of their audience. When the commercial break finally ended the main financial news program came on. And Miranda’s jaw dropped at what she saw. A photo capsule appeared on the blue-screen behind the anchor, and that photo capsule contained a picture of Victoria Markham. A very unflattering picture, in fact. In it, Victoria’s face was twisted into a petrified, tearful grimace, and she was holding one manicured hand out in a vain attempt to block the camera. The screen cut away from the anchor’s face for a moment and showed video of Victoria Markham running away and hiding from a crowd of shouting reporters. The video featured her cowering into a waiting limousine, covering her face with a Burberry plaid jacket. “Our lead story today focuses on explosive allegations first detailed in yesterday’s edition of The New York Journal,” the newsman droned in his deep, resonant voice. “According to Journal reporter Joseph Melman and his investigative team, Victoria Markham and her family have been illegally blackmailing noted investment banker Maxwell Moore, Junior for more than fifteen years. The Journal also reports that this same blackmailing scheme may have directly influenced the Markham family acquisition of Maxwell Moore, Senior and Company—that’s the company founded and run by Maxwell Moore, Junior’s father—in 1992. There are additional allegations of extortion, insider trading, stalking, and numerous other charges coming forward as well. The Journal is dedicating a weeklong series of articles on this topic and investigative financial reporter Joseph Melman is promising that there is more to come. Mr. Melman is here in the studio with us today. Joe, can you comment?” “Sure, Carl.” The TV screen cut back to the hulking news anchor and his special guest, an overweight, balding news reporter in a rumpled white oxford shirt and tweed blazer. “We uncovered explosive evidence of these allegations Sunday night, at the height of the ‘Randy To The Max’ sex scandal which many of you in the audience probably remember. It seems that Ms. Markham obtained the videotape figuring in the scandal quite illegally and used it as yet another

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blackmail ploy in a family extortion ring that has targeted Maxwell Moore, Junior and his family for more than fifteen years.” Family extortion ring? Joe Melman made the Markham family sound like the Mafia. Miranda gasped. “The whole extortion scheme, which had many elements, is directly traceable to a romantic relationship between Victoria Markham and Maxwell Moore, Junior that occurred when they were both students at Harvard. There was a bad breakup that initially caused some friction between the two ….” Miranda laughed out loud at this. From what Max had told her, calling physical assault with boiling water ‘friction’ was the understatement of the century. “--But the event that clinched the start of the fifteen-plus year extortion schemes,” Joe Melman went on, “according to Maxwell Moore, Junior himself, was the birth of an illegitimate child he allegedly fathered with Ms. Markham during a brief reconciliation of their relationship in 1991.” Miranda gasped again. In shock, she dropped a sardine-laden cracker on the floor. No less shocked himself, the anchor did a double-take. “There’s an illegitimate child caught up in the middle of this? Wow. And tell me Joe—what exactly do you mean by alleged illegitimate child?” The plump reporter swaggered his shoulders a bit, preparing to unleash the biggest scoop of them all. “Well, I say ‘alleged’ because when Ms. Markham and her family began this extortion and business manipulation scheme more than fifteen years ago, it centered on Maxwell Moore, Junior wanting to keep the fact he’d fathered a child with Victoria Markham hidden from his family. Victoria Markham claimed to be pregnant with Max’s child following an encounter they had at a fraternity party. However, Ms. Markham disappeared from sight for more than a year after she told him she was pregnant. Mr. Moore has never once been able to confirm that this child even exists, let alone whether he is truly the father.” The newsman looked puzzled. “Well, if he was never sure he was the father, why did he tolerate the alleged blackmail scheme for all these years—and allow his father, Maxwell Moore, Senior, to be bankrupted and bought out by the Markham family in the first place?” Joe Melman smirked. “Good question, Carl. As you know, myself and a team of investigative reporters are publishing a series of articles on this saga in the Journal this week. If you and the American public want more details, they’ll just have to read about it in tomorrow’s issue. That will be the third article in the series. We’re also planning a pretty big spread in next Sunday’s edition.” The news anchor laughed. “Well, I guess you’ll be keeping us in suspense, then. This truly is a remarkable story, Joe. Like a soap opera, almost. And quite a departure from the usual subject matter of interest to the readers of the Journal.” Joe Melman nodded. “Well, it’s true we wouldn’t normally cover a story of a personal family nature such as this. But when these personal family issues were a direct influence on one of the most important financial merger-acquisitions of the past fifteen years—not to mention the possibility of illegal activity connected to that merger—then it does become of interest to the American investing public, which is the readership the Journal serves.” The newsman nodded and smiled. “All right then. Joseph Melman of the Journal, thanks very much for being with us today. And now, these messages.” The show disappeared from the screen, and was replaced by a commercial. Stunned and dismayed, Miranda clicked it off.

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Okay, now Miranda knew she had to leave the house. She had to get to the newsstand around the corner from her building and buy up three days’ worth of the Journal. Not to mention pop in over at Mitzi’s house to see what she and John thought of this latest bizarre development in Miranda’s increasingly bizarre, unpredictable life. Max had had a child with Victoria? Why had he never said anything about it before? From what she’d seen on the television, Max hadn’t told anyone about it before. Not even his own family knew. It was an explosive, scandalous secret laid wide open. And what did this child—assuming he or she really existed—have to do with Max’s father losing his company more than fifteen years ago? Was that the catalyst that had motivated Max to fight tooth and nail to get his father’s company back from Victoria for all those years? Clearly there was a lot more than met the eye in this ever-widening scandal. There was so much about Max that Miranda didn’t know. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to. If Max had hidden the true nature of his past relationship with Victoria Markham from her, there was no telling what else the man might be hiding from her. The very notion that Max had kept her in the dark on what was perhaps the most important fact of his personal life—not to mention being played for a fool by both him and the vindictive, backbiting Victoria—made Miranda’s blood boil. Still, the fact that Max had never been able to find his alleged son or daughter after all of these years made her wonder if Victoria hadn’t just made up the whole thing as a ruse to manipulate Max and take advantage of his family. Miranda was perplexed. The Max she knew was a strong, aggressive, and intelligent man who didn’t at all seem the type susceptible to crude manipulation and blackmail. Even so, Miranda knew she couldn’t possibly know the particulars of a situation that had happened so long ago. And Max was probably a very different person back then. The only way to know what had really happened—and what it might possibly mean to her relationship with Max—was to go straight to the source. She would confront Max directly and demand an explanation. Well, she’d confront him whenever she figured out where the hell the infernal man had disappeared to, anyway. Which meant she’d have to track him down somehow. Obviously the Journal reporter she’d seen on television knew how to find Max. Maybe a call to the editorial desk at the Journal was in order? Miranda had plenty of experience talking to Journal reporters from her years working as a top financial analyst, so getting through to Joe Melman should be no problem. She had the Journal’s main switchboard number in her home office Rolodex, after all. But calling the Journal for tips on where Max might be hiding could wait. There were more important matters for Miranda to attend to first. Like take a shower, for instance. She’d so feared the paparazzi’s prying lenses that she’d refrained from stripping down for a bath since the whole ‘Randy To The Max’ scandal had broken three days ago. Then there were groceries to buy, three days’ worth of Journals to catch up on, and a visit to John and Mitzi Althorp’s home to make. Oh, and when she was finished with those mundane chores, Miranda would have to get cracking on what might end up being the two most important tasks of her life—first, confronting Max, and then trying to resurrect her ruined financial career. Not necessarily in that order. And as much as she hated to admit it, Miranda didn’t have any good ideas on how she would accomplish either one. Miranda decided to start with a long, hot shower. That much she could handle, at least.

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**** “I’m so glad I finally reached you, Randi! I’ve been trying to call you for two days!” Mitzi Althorp screeched when Miranda showed up on her Lincoln Park doorstep a few hours later. “Where the hell have you been hiding? John and I have been worried sick.” “I was barricaded in my condo with all the blinds drawn,” Miranda explained with a sigh as she followed her best friend into the Althorp brownstone’s beautifully tiled foyer. “I turned my phone off two days ago. It was ringing off the hook, driving me nuts. You wouldn’t believe the weirdoes that come out of the woodwork when videos of you having sex are plastered all over the Internet,” she said with a shudder. “Do you realize that I actually got a couple of calls from porn-film producers wanting to know if I’d star in one of their films?” Mitzi took Miranda’s coat and umbrella and stashed them in a hall closet. “You’re kidding, right?” “Unfortunately, no. There were about five hundred paparazzi camped out behind my building, too.” Mitzi gestured for Miranda to follow her into the kitchen. “My God, Randi. You’ve been through hell. I’m so sorry. John and I feel so badly for you and the whole situation. So bad, in fact, that we’ve made you a special dinner.” When the two women arrived in Mitzi’s vast, gourmet kitchen, Miranda was stunned to see a full three-course Italian dinner spread on the Althorps’ long, rough-hewn farmer-style kitchen dining table, which was laden with plates overflowing with lasagna, fresh-baked garlic bread, antipasti, spinach salad, smoked salmon and capers, and at least three different kinds of wine. John and the three Althorp children stood on one side of the table, all dressed in their Sunday best and wearing huge smiles. The eldest, Bobby, handed Miranda a handmade construction-paper card that all three children had colored with crayons and signed. The slightly sticky card read ‘WE LUV U MIRANDA’ in a child’s scrawl and featured a colorful array of scribbles, crudely drawn flowers, and a few stickers. The entire Althorp family enveloped Miranda in a group hug that brought tears to her eyes. Once they released her, Miranda fell backwards into a kitchen chair and dabbed her eyes with her sleeve. “Thank you,” she blubbered, trying hard not to lose it right in the Althorps’ kitchen. “This is so beautiful. It means so much to me to know you all care about me so much. Especially after all that’s happened the past few days ….” A gruff, familiar male voice just behind her left shoulder cut her off. “The Althorps aren’t the only people who care deeply for you, Miranda.” She spun around. Maxwell Moore, Junior stepped out of the Althorps’ walk-in pantry. He carried a huge bouquet of roses, which he thrust into Miranda’s arms before she could protest. Miranda stood there—her arms full of fragrant flowers—too floored to say a word. Max held his arms out wide. “Can’t a man get a hug?” Miranda took a tiny step backward. Every cell of her body wanted to throttle Max right now, to throw his pathetic floral offering at his Italian-leather-shod feet. The nerve of this man, disappearing for days when Miranda was being skewered as a whore in the national media—and then showing up out of the blue at her best friend’s house expecting a hug? As if nothing out of the ordinary had happened? As if he, his evil ex-girlfriend, and his mysterious love child were not currently the focus of every newspaper and TV gossip program in America? Ha. As if.

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However, as much as Miranda might want to throttle Max—well, tearing the cocky asshole limb from limb was probably more appropriate—neither option was permissible in her best-friend’s kitchen with her best friend’s husband and children standing four feet away. No, Miranda had to be on her best behavior. There was a dinner party in her honor, after all. She could deal with Max and his infernal, insensitive ego later. “Well, Miranda?” Max’s deep, sexy voice broke Miranda out of her reverie. “I’m still waiting for that hug.” Miranda noticed for the first time that instead of his usual business attire, Max was wearing a pair of tight-fitting jeans and a short-sleeved golf shirt that clung to his welldeveloped pecs and biceps. He’d had a haircut since she’d last seen him, too, and the new, closecropped style suited him well. Goddamn it, Max looked amazing. And it was hard for Miranda to stay mad at this incorrigible man when he stood before her looking like some kind of Greek god. Max had Miranda painted into a sex-crazed corner yet again. What the hell was she supposed to do now? “I …,” she stammered, and excused herself to the bathroom. Once there, Miranda closed and locked the door. She stood in front of Mitzi’s designer sink, with its hammered copper basin atop a long pedestal base looking oddly phallic. She turned on the modern-art faucet to splash some cool water on her face. Damn it, just when she thought she had things under control, Max had to show up! And at her best friend’s—not to mention her lawyer’s—house to boot. What the hell did that man think he was doing? In typical Maxwell Moore, Junior fashion, he’d dropped himself right back into Miranda’s life at the least convenient moment, throwing her off-balance at a time when she desperately needed to be in control. The damn man infuriated her. Enraged her, too. Infuriated her, enraged her, and aroused her, all at the same time. The whole situation was getting out of hand. Miranda would not let Max screw up her carefully laid plans. Absolutely not. She would get through this dinner party without speaking to him once, unless it was to ask him to pass the dinner rolls. She would be the picture of grace, decorum, and good manners. Then she would go home. Alone. She’d deal with Max and his mountain of deception on her own time. Miranda dabbed her face dry with a velvet washcloth she found on a hook beside the bathroom door. She was glad she’d gone without makeup that day. It saved her from having to reconstruct her face, just the way she’d done the morning she had met Max in the lobby of the Lasalle-Majestic Building. Miranda could do without reminders of the day she and Max had shared their first, passionate tryst. She had more than enough on her mind already. She could do this. She could have a pleasant, normal dinner with her best friend’s family and pretend that the events of the past several weeks had never happened. Sure, it was possible. Easy, even. Miranda was a tough, smart, educated, and successful businesswoman, after all. Well, maybe not quite so successful any more. Thanks to Max. She’d show him a thing or two. The minute he’s taken his last bite of lasagna, I’ll take him to the proverbial woodshed, Miranda thought. I’ll give him the tongue-lashing of his life. He’ll never know what hit him. Of course, Miranda didn’t exactly know what had just hit her, either. Max’s unexpected presence here tonight had caught her completely off guard. She couldn’t fathom how she could

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be so furious at the man, could feel so betrayed and enraged by him—and yet be so completely, utterly attracted to him at the same time. As Miranda stared at herself in the oval bathroom mirror, she saw that her normally porcelain-pale skin had taken on the now-familiar flush it always did when she was sexually aroused by Max and his stellar physique, his irresistible masculine voice, his power, his charm. Her eyes were dewy and coy, her mouth and lips were already swelling and salivating at the thought of feeling Max’s kisses upon them, and her nether parts were getting deliciously warm and damp …. Stop it, Miranda ordered herself. You didn’t come here tonight to get laid. You came here tonight to get moral support from your best friend and your lawyer. Then once you’ve gotten it, you’re going straight home to your apartment to plan your next move. Period. No sex. No even thinking about sex. Miranda pounded her sweaty fist on the sink to drive her point home. She was not going to let Max’s ample sex appeal hijack her plans for her future, or her plans to confront Max on her own turf and on her own terms. No fucking way. She was a smart, disciplined, and rational woman. She could handle this. She would handle this. And in time, she would handle Max, too. And if Max didn’t like it, he could just go to hell. Her resolve strengthened thus, Miranda strutted back to the kitchen. Once there, she found Mitzi, John, the children, and Max already seated around the table, hands all neatly folded in front of their plates in anticipation of Miranda’s return to dinner. “Are you all right, Randi?” Mitzi asked, concerned. “You look a little—ahhm, flushed.” “Oh, fine, fine,” Miranda lied just as she felt her face grow hotter. She noticed the beginnings of perspiration on her forehead. “It just feels a little warm in here, is all. Maybe from the stove, or the umm, oven? Could you open a window or something?” John and Mitzi exchanged looks, but said nothing. Without being asked, Max got up and slid open the Althorps’ glass patio door. “Better?” he asked, his voice as smooth and sexy as ever. Miranda grunted a noncommittal reply and pretended to be profoundly interested in the Althorps’ dinner plates. “This is beautiful china, Mitts,” she stammered, making a point to keep her eyes focused on the tiny gold-leaf pattern around her coffee cup’s rim. “Is it Wedgwood?” Mitzi coughed. “No, Randi, it’s Noritake. Our wedding china. You helped me pick it out when you were my maid of honor, remember?” “Oh, right. I remember now. When you registered at Nordstrom’s?” “Marshall Field’s,” Mitzi corrected. She and John exchanged mystified looks again. “Oh yeah, right,” Miranda stammered. Now she felt like an idiot. A very turned-on idiot—she could feel the electricity starting to build between her and Max even though she was sitting almost six feet away from him at the far end of the long dining table. The sheer force of will Miranda had to use to keep her body in check and force her arousal-addled mind to stick to the plan she’d made for herself in the bathroom was soaking up all her available brainpower. In addition to the warm, melty feeling growing in her groin, Miranda could feel a splitting tension headache coming on. Something told her she would have to make sure this dinner was a short one. John seemed to notice Miranda’s growing tension. “So. How about we pour some wine? I brought up three of the best vintages in our wine cellar in honor of tonight’s celebration. A 1988 French Beaujolais, a 1998 Burgundy, and a 2002 Chianti. Which should we break open first?”

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“Definitely the Chianti,” Max said brightly. “It’s got the highest alcohol content, after all. And I think we could all use some. The children excepted, of course.” “An excellent choice, Max,” John replied. He produced an old-fashioned corkscrew from his breast pocket and expertly withdrew the cork with one hand. “In case you can’t tell, I put myself through law school working as a wine steward.” Mitzi gave a tinny, forced laugh in a vain attempt to break the tension. “I wish I could have seen that, John. I’ve only known you as a high-powered lawyer. The very thought of you waiting on anybody cracks me up.” John gave a forced grin and loosened his tie. He poured hearty glasses of wine for all the adults present and passed them around. After taking a liberal sip from his own glass, he settled back in his chair and turned to face Miranda. “I suppose you’re wondering, Miranda, why Mitzi and I set up this impromptu dinner for you, and arranged for Max to be here, too.” Miranda almost choked on her Chianti. “Umm,” she stammered. “Yes, I guess I was sort of wondering that. But ….” Max’s eyes bore into hers from across the table. “But what?” Miranda set down her glass, took a deep breath, and did her best to keep her temper in check. “John, Mitzi—I don’t want to seem ungrateful or anything, but I am really not in the mood to talk with Max right now. I appreciate all that you’re trying to do here, but the only thing I want right now is to have a nice quiet dinner with the two of you. I think it would be best if Max would just leave. I don’t want to see him right now.” Max crumpled his napkin in his fist. “You could at least talk to me directly instead of referring to me in the third person, Miranda,” he hissed. “I’m sitting right across from you, for Christ’s sake.” Miranda forced herself to turn her gaze away from Max’s hypnotic blue eyes. “Please just do this one thing for me, Mitts,” she pleaded to her best friend. “I’ve had a horrible few days, as you know. And frankly, that’s Max’s fault. He’s honestly the last person I want to see right now.” Miranda’s cheeks burned with conflict and guilt as she said this. Although her brain wanted to get as far away from Max as possible, her heart and body felt otherwise. “He can take his flowers back too, by the way. I don’t want them.” John and Mitzi stared into their empty plates, their expressions awkward and strained. Laura, the Althorps’ youngest, started to wail. “I wannnaaaaa EAT now, Mommy! Why can’t we EAT?” Max stood up, his chiseled chest heaving with anger underneath his clinging golf shirt. “Well, I guess I can see where I’m not wanted. John, Mitzi, thank you both for the kind dinner invitation and the wine. Shame I couldn’t stay to enjoy it. Miranda, if you don’t want the flowers, I’m sure Mitzi and the children will enjoy them. I’ll just let myself out.” With that, Max stormed out of the kitchen, stomped down the Althorps’ front hallway, and left the house, slamming the Althorps’ mahogany front door so hard the whole brownstone shook. The impact sent all three of Mitzi and John’s children into wailing, high-pitched sobs. “MOMMMYYYYYYY!” Jonah yelled. “WHY is Uncle Max so MAD?? Why did he LEAAAVVVVE! I wanna play with Uncle Max!!” Uncle Max? Mitzi rushed to calm down her caterwauling children. Looking helpless, John turned to Miranda. “Max has been here most of the day,” he explained. “He also cooked a lot of this meal for you—as you can see, the man does a killer lasagna. When he wasn’t cooking or talking to me about the legal case, he played with the kids. The children are really quite taken with him.”

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“I see,” Miranda replied, feeling petty and small. Mitzi finally managed to calm the kids down. She patted Miranda on the shoulder on the way back to her seat. “Everybody dig in,” she sighed. “The food’s getting cold.” John piled lasagna, salad, and garlic bread on Miranda’s plate without being asked, but she didn’t touch it. She’d suddenly lost her appetite. “I suppose it was naïve of me to think you’d be ready to sit down and have a regular dinner with Max after all that’s happened,” John said after taking a few bites of his cheese-andspinach-laden pasta. “But Max really wanted a chance to give you his side of the story. And he thought it best that Mitzi and I be here while you heard it. He thought you could use the moral support. Not to mention the comfort of knowing a lawyer was present to keep it all under the protection of attorney-client privilege.” “Max has your best interests at heart, Randi,” Mitzi said as she spoon-fed Laura bits of smashed artichoke hearts. “He really wants to make things up to you, to help you understand what’s happened. And John thinks now there’s a good chance Victoria Markham will have to drop the legal proceedings against you both. Isn’t that right, John?” John nodded, took Miranda’s trembling hand, and squeezed it. “Yes, it is. Miranda, you could also stand to receive significant punitive damages from the fact that Victoria obtained that sex surveillance tape illegally and had it broadcast without your consent. Given Victoria’s powerful family, you might have had trouble getting a judge to award damages before now, but with this blackmail scandal coming out, you’re sure to get a lot more sympathy. Max has given me most of the details of the blackmail he endured to protect his family, not to mention the fact his father had to sell his company to the Markhams under duress in 1992. And in my legal opinion, Victoria and her family are looking at big criminal fines, maybe even jail.” “What about the child Max fathered?” Miranda blurted. “Why didn’t he tell me about that? Even if all of this other crap hadn’t happened, he still shouldn’t have hidden the fact he had a kid with Victoria from me. Not after he found out that Victoria and I have been professional rivals for years.” John’s expression softened. “You’ll have to talk to Max about that yourself. I know he wants to tell you his side of the story very badly. And from what I understand from Max, I think there might be some surprising news coming out on that subject in tomorrow’s paper, as well.” Miranda absently pushed some lasagna noodles around her plate with a fork. The looks on John and Mitzi’s faces were getting harder and harder for her to stand. And the three Althorp children obviously despised her for driving away their newfound friend ‘Uncle Max’. “What do you think I should do?” she finally asked in desperation. Mitzi smiled. “First, try to get some decent food in your stomach. Then you might consider dropping by Max’s apartment for a little chat. We have his address if you need it.” “I’ll even give you a lift,” John offered with a sly grin. “Consider it part of my pro bono legal counsel that you and Max try to straighten things out once and for all.”

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Chapter Seventeen An hour or so later—once Miranda had enough time to let her heavy pasta dinner settle— she was speeding down Lake Shore Drive in John Althorp’s car towards Max’s condo. Mitzi had stayed behind at the brownstone to put the kids to bed. John pulled up in the circular driveway front of Max’s address—a stately Art Deco high rise in the posh Gold Coast neighborhood facing Oak Street Beach and Lake Michigan. “Max should be home,” he said. “I’ll wait downstairs for a few minutes just in case he’s not. Call us at the house if either of you need anything—no matter how late it is.” Miranda nodded and stepped out of the car. If John Althorp gave all his legal clients this kind of service she could understand why he was one of the most sought-after lawyers in Chicago. A uniformed doorman greeted Miranda in the lobby. She gave her name at the desk and another uniformed doorman said he would escort her up to Max’s private penthouse. Penthouse? Miranda thought. A private penthouse facing Lake Michigan atop one of the most beautiful high-rises in the tony Gold Coast neighborhood made Max’s home one of the most prized addresses in all of Chicago, worth several million dollars at least. She knew Max was wealthy, but she didn’t know he was quite that wealthy. Just thinking about it intimidated her. Not exactly the best frame of mind to be in when it came to confronting Max about his intimate deception. Well, she’d just have to do the best she could. Mitzi and John’s revelations during dinner had definitely taken her fury at Max down a couple of notches, but Miranda still felt betrayed by Max’s unexplained absence during the height of the sex scandal—not to mention his hiding the true nature of his relationship with Victoria Markham from her. If Miranda and Max really did have a future together, Max would have to learn to be honest and open with her. Starting here, starting now. “Miss?” asked the doorman, who’d stepped onto the building’s mirror-lined elevator and was holding the door for her. “Are you coming?” “Yes, sorry.” Miranda stepped into the glistening, marble-floored elevator car and the uniformed doorman ran a magnetic keycard through a special lock labeled ‘PENTHOUSE SUITE’. The elevator sped upward at such a speed that Miranda felt her ears pop. “Here you are, miss,” the doorman said as the elevator doors slid open to reveal a lavish entryway. “The elevator opens directly into the penthouse,” he explained. “Have a seat anywhere you like, and Mr. Moore will be with you shortly.” He gestured toward several overstuffed plush velvet chairs and settees. Miranda stepped out of the elevator car, the doors slid shut instantly, and the polite doorman disappeared. Miranda selected one of the wide red velvet settees and stretched out full-length on it. She needed to relax a bit before confronting Max. She needed a minute or two to calm her mind and body, too. Every molecule in her body was firing on all four cylinders in anticipation of being in Max’s imposing, arousing presence once again. The full-throttle assault her tingling belly and groin sent to her senses told Miranda that perhaps at some levels, she had judged Max

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unfairly. He was human, after all, and therefore entitled to make mistakes, right? And those mistakes shouldn’t stand in the way of him making love to her right now …. “Miranda?” Max’s deep, resonant voice brought her back to earth. She turned, found Max standing beside her, hands thrust sheepishly in his pants pockets. She could smell his musky aftershave and the lingering scent of soap on his skin. It was a heady, masculine scent that sent her already spinning head and fluttery stomach reeling. “Thank you for dropping by,” he said. “I know it must have been hard for you. I also know you’re very angry with me, Miranda, and I guess I can understand why.” Miranda looked up at Max, who now stood over her, a look of great tenderness in his blue eyes. All the hostility and swaggering bravado he’d employed at the Althorps’ house was gone and replaced with the gentle, compassionate man she’d come to know during their most intimate moments. Miranda couldn’t help being touched by his dramatic change in attitude. Still, the events of the past few weeks hung between them like an iron curtain. “You have a lot of explaining to do,” she said, working hard to keep her tone even and businesslike despite the searing heat in her nether parts. “Point taken,” Max acquiesced. “Come into the living room and stay awhile, Miranda. Let me pour us a couple drinks, and then I’ll make my full confession.” Max turned on his heel and started walking down a seemingly endless hallway before Miranda could reply. After some hesitation, she followed him, her kitten heels sinking deep into the luxurious snow-white pile carpeting. The hallway snaked in an elliptical curve around the perimeter of Max’s enormous penthouse—which as far as Miranda could tell, was shaped like a perfect circle. After about ten paces down the narrow, twisting hallway Miranda emerged into a huge, light-filled room filled with massive antique furniture, expensive-looking crystal vases and porcelain figurines, shelves of leather-bound books and even a few Victorian landscapes in goldplated plaster frames. The walls were paneled in burnished walnut with ivory inlay. An Art Deco-style Winged Victory nude sculpture stood in one corner, holding up an oblong frostedglass electric lamp that sent colorful prisms of light onto every polished surface. The entire room oozed money, power, influence, virility. As her amber eyes scanned the room, her mind was instantly transported back to the private lobby suite at the Lasalle-Majestic Building where she’d first seduced Max in their wild, anonymous lovers’ tryst. As she gazed at Max’s rippling shoulder muscles while he stood at a gleaming lacquered bar, pouring and mixing martinis, Miranda again felt the familiar grasp of animal instinct overtaking her rational mind—just as it had during their first meeting. Could she keep her overwhelming physical desire for this man in check long enough for him to confess his sins to her? I have to stay in control, Miranda told herself. Have to. Max finished mixing the drinks, handed one to her in an intricate baccarat glass. He’d made it strong. The heady scent of vodka and vermouth attacked Miranda’s nostrils. She took one tiny sip that nearly scorched her insides. Adding alcohol to the mix when she was already dangerously close to the precipice of desire was probably a bad idea. She found a cork-lined coaster on the coffee table and set the drink upon it, focusing her gaze on the sweating beads of water that formed on the expensive crystal. Miranda folded her arms, set her jaw, and prepared for battle. She knew that in order to retain her composure and keep the delightful warmth rising in her thighs and belly from driving her completely mad was to keep her eyes locked at floor-level. If she allowed her line of sight to take in Max’s long, hard body, his toned pecs, his huge biceps or his hypnotic, glacier-like eyes, she was done for.

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As if reading her mind, Max said “Miranda, if you’ll just look me in the eye, I’ll tell you my side of the story.” Damn. She cheated her eyes up to meet his, trying hard not to let them focus. Ha. As if she had a chance. Max’s passionate stare drilled into her, and the entire lower half of Miranda’s body went up in flames. “Miranda, the only reason I kept my supposed love child with Victoria a secret from you was, frankly, the same reason I kept it from my family. To protect you. Just like I wanted to protect them. Misguided ambition, I know that now. As you’ve probably seen on the news by now, the Markham family have a corner on the elite blackmail market. I just didn’t want you to have to go through what I have for the past fifteen years.” “I thought you and Victoria had called a truce a while back,” Miranda countered. “We had. But as you can see, Victoria decided to start things up again with that videotape. And this time, she did it publicly, and attacked you viciously in the bargain. Keeping you in the dark about her pregnancy, I thought I would protect you from precisely that kind of attack. Obviously, I failed to protect you. And for that I am truly sorry. You have no idea how much emotional torture watching this whole thing unfold has been. The thought that Victoria was able to hurt you this way because of something I did when I was twenty years old is pretty damn excruciating. I guess that’s why I never let myself fall in love with anyone before now. It hurts too damn much to watch the person you love most get hurt.” Miranda’s jaw dropped open with a click. What was Max implying? Did Max actually love her? Was it possible? Apparently so. Max knelt at Miranda’s feet, eyes brimming with tears. “I know you probably thought I’d abandoned you when I disappeared to New York when the scandal broke. And I probably should have told you where I was going first instead of leaving you in the lurch.” “I’ll say,” Miranda quipped, doing her damnedest not to reach out and take him into her arms. “I couldn’t even leave my condo for three days, what with all the paparazzi and everything.” “I know. I heard. You have to understand, Miranda, that the whole reason I went to New York the way I did was so I could take the media heat off you somehow. I did it by blowing the lid off what really happened between me, Victoria, the Markhams, and my family’s business. Why do you think the paparazzi finally moved on? Because there was a bigger, better story for them to cover. Victoria’s story. The real story. And in order for that real story to get out on my own terms, I had to do things in secret. For my protection, and for yours. I should have let the truth out of the bag years ago. But I was afraid.” “Why?” Miranda was puzzled. Max hardly struck her as the type of man who harbored irrational fears. Unlike her. “Let me show you something.” Dabbing his eyes with his sleeve, Max stood up and walked over to a heavy, elaborately carved cabinet. He withdrew a tiny key from his back pocket and used it to unlock one of the cabinet’s many small drawers. He opened the drawer and pulled out a small, leather-bound ledger—the kind used by accountants to track expenditures in the days before computers. The small book was battered and worn, its covers nearly falling off from heavy use. There were scores of receipts and tiny slips of paper stuffed between its yellowed pages, too. “This is a diary that my father kept around the same time that my

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relationship with Victoria was breaking down. My father was very intelligent, but he was also absent-minded and forgetful sometimes, especially as he got older. He would write all kinds of things down in this little book to try to keep track of his business. My mother and his secretaries would write him little reminder notes all the time, too. He would carry those around with him inside this book. Each evening he’d write the details of conversations and business meetings he’d had that day so he wouldn’t forget them the next.” Max handed her the time-worn book. “Have a look. Compare the pages at the beginning with the later pages. Be careful not to spill any of the receipts.” Miranda opened the book carefully to its first page. There was a laundry list of daily tasks, errands, and business notes written in a neat, even hand. A dry-cleaning receipt, a train ticket, and a candy wrapper were clipped to the top edge of the page. The next several pages in the book were all very similar. “I don’t get it,” Miranda said. “Why are you showing me this? What does it have to do with hiding things from your family?” Without a word, Max used his index finger to flip to a dog-eared, fingerprinted page in almost the exact middle of the diary. “Take a look at that.” Miranda glanced at the page Max indicated. At first she didn’t understand its significance at all—it looked remarkably similar to the ones she’d seen at the beginning of the diary. Then her eyes strayed to the bottom of the page. ‘MET WITH BOBBY AND JANE, WENT TO ZOO, LOVELY TIME, BOBBY’S BIRTHDAY’ was scrawled across the bottom of the page, alongside a Brookfield Zoo ticket stub affixed to the page with a rusty staple. There was also a reddish-brown smudge of something that might be lipstick. A strange possibility formed in Miranda’s mind. “Who are—or were—Bobby and Jane?” Max sighed audibly. “Jane was my father’s mistress. Bobby was Jane’s son. My halfbrother.” Miranda’s eyes widened. “But how is that possible? I thought your parents were very proper and conservative.” Max sighed again, louder and deeper this time. His eyes glistened with more tears. “They were. That’s why my father kept his mistress and illegitimate son a secret from the family for more than ten years. In the old days, it was commonplace for businessmen to keep mistresses, even have children by them. It was always kept completely under wraps, though—and my father was no exception. No one ever would have known about it at all if he hadn’t made himself a note about it in this book. My father became a victim of his own mind.” “How so?” Max took the battered diary from Miranda and lovingly smoothed his hand over the dogeared page. “My father and Victor Markham—Victoria’s father and namesake—belonged to the same gentlemen’s club. The Mid-Day Club, which used to have branches in downtown Chicago and on Wall Street in New York. In the old days, bankers and stockbrokers would take clients to their private clubs for drinks and cigars to talk business. No women were allowed, except the cocktail waitresses that worked there. An old-boys’ club in every sense of the word. Jane was a cocktail waitress at the Chicago location, and she always waited on Dad whenever he had a meeting there. That’s how they met. The day after this entry,” Max turned a page, “Dad had a business meeting with the Markham Private Equity fund managers, who were in Chicago for a convention. Victor Markham attended along with his two right-hand men. The original goal of the meeting was for Dad to inquire about buying a large number of fund shares up for his own personal portfolio. But when he excused himself to the bathroom, he left this diary sitting open on the bar. Victor Markham took a look at this entry, saw Jane serving their drinks, and put two

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and two together. He already knew Dad’s company was in trouble, that Dad only wanted to buy up Markham equity fund shares to pad his retirement account before the whole company came crashing down. And now, a secret mistress in the mix. Victor knew he could use that information against my Dad. He saw an opportunity to take my father to the cleaners, and like the super-successful businessman that he was, took advantage of it.” Miranda still didn’t fully understand. “How did you find out about this? Didn’t Victor confront your father about Jane right then and there?” Max chuckled. “Well, that’s the thing. My father never knew that Victor read this page in his personal diary. Still doesn’t know. Victoria and I were embroiled in our own conflicts at Harvard around the same time that this happened. She’d disappeared with the baby to places unknown. Victor saw a parallel between my father’s behavior and my own. He confronted me with it himself. Came to my dorm late one night, unannounced. Called up to my room on the lobby phone and said he had a business proposal for me. “I was pretty stunned, of course, given what had been going on between me and his daughter. But I went ahead and let him come up to my room. He’d somehow managed to photocopy this page in my father’s diary, and had even hired a private investigator to confirm his suspicions. Victor told me that he was fully prepared to go to the media with both the story of my father’s mistress and my supposed love child with Victoria. He wanted to ruin us, to destroy our family name and business reputation with the public, and would set the wheels in motion the next morning unless I agreed to make a deal with him.” “What kind of deal?” “If I got my father to agree to buy 100,000 Markham private equity shares at a 20% premium—which would have given Victor Markham a personal profit of almost four million dollars on one transaction. The plan was, Victor would take the fund shares off the open market for a brief time and only sell them in private transactions at a price he set. Somehow I’d have to convince my father that the shares were sure to skyrocket once they went back on the exchanges, that it made good financial sense for my father to buy them privately even though he could have got them cheaper on the open market. Victor was counting on the fact that my father’s increasing age, frailty, and forgetfulness would cloud his judgment and make him easy to convince. Of course, he was right on all counts.” “And did you do it?” Max’s lower lip trembled. Miranda could see he was holding back sobs. “Of course I did. What other choice did I have? Young and naïve as I was, I saw it as the only way to protect my family name and ensure that my father’s company didn’t fall into ruin under the weight of scandal. I was also naïve enough to think Victor Markham would keep his word. Of course, I learned otherwise. I’ve spent the past fifteen-odd years trying to stay one step ahead of whatever blackmailing, manipulative scheme the Markham family cooked up next.” Miranda could see where this was going. All these years, Max had been carrying an enormous burden on his shoulders. “So you feel responsible for what happened to your father? For losing your father’s company, too? Is that why you fought so hard to get it back?” Max took both of Miranda’s hands into his and squeezed them tightly. “Yes. You understand me so well, Miranda.” Miranda squeezed his hands back, raised her golden eyes to meet his brimming azure ones. “It doesn’t take much to understand something that’s right in front of you,” she said, feeling emotion rising in her throat.

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Max pulled her closer. “The thing is, all these years I was fighting this battle with one hand tied behind my back,” he said. “I always thought that the Markhams had me backed up against the wall—even after Victor Markham died five years ago, even when I managed to buy Dad’s company back. It wasn’t until I met you, Miranda,” Max lightly caressed her cheek, “that I realized I had always had the power to stop the whole mess from the very beginning. Powerful people who engage in blackmail and intimidation do it not because they need the money or the validation, but because they get a thrill out of exploiting other people’s weaknesses. I was weak. I couldn’t see that I had always had the option to go public with the whole thing and use the truth as a weapon against Victoria and her family. But you taught me differently. You taught me what it means to be strong by always standing up to me, by showing your feelings and desires without inhibition, by becoming intimate with me that day we first met and not even expecting anything in return. That’s why I fell in love with you, Miranda. And when I saw how my weakness all these years had allowed you to get hurt—terribly—well, I decided it was high time I turned the tables on the Markham family once and for all. I did it for you.” A single tear rolled down Max’s chiseled face. His hands trembled upon hers. In fact, his whole body shook. Miranda knew that what Max had just told her had taken every ounce of his strength, heart, and courage. Her heart went out to this man, who had risked everything—his work, his company, his reputation—for her. She reached to take him into her arms, but to her surprise, he backed away. “Wait a second.” Max checked his watch. “There’s something coming on the television right about now that you’ll need to see.” Max opened a Chinese wardrobe that hid a small plasma-screen television. He flipped it on and tuned it to the news. On the screen, Victoria Markham stood behind a podium, flanked by several well-dressed men who had to be her expensive lawyers. There were at least forty different TV microphones wired to a stand in front of her and dozens of flashbulbs popped from the huge gaggle of reporters surrounding the podium, which bore the emblem and seal of the Eighth Federal District Court. The caption at the bottom of the screen read ‘Victoria Markham Federal Court Plea Press Conference’. Miranda’s heart leapt in her chest as she saw the despondent, defeated look on Victoria’s videotaped face. “What’s happened? Does this mean it’s all over?” Max wrapped his arms around Miranda’s waist and kissed her lightly on the back of her neck. “Yes. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals took a second look at the bad federal decision that Victoria’s suit based itself on. John filed a secret brief last week. The court overturned the decision and upheld the previous law, which makes what Victoria wanted to do with my company illegal. That, along with all the blackmail and extortion her family engaged in for years has got her looking at a possible jail sentence. Apparently she’s pleaded no contest to all charges on the advice of her lawyers in hopes she’ll just get a slap on the wrist. John and I got the news this morning. The whole reason he and I wanted to have that celebratory dinner for you over at the Althorps was to break the happy news. Obviously, things over at the Althorps went a little awry. My fault, again. I hope you can accept my apologies.” By way of reply, Miranda threw her arms around Max and kissed him passionately. So much for having to confront Max for his indiscretions. Now Miranda didn’t need to. After pouring his heart and soul out to her for the past twenty minutes, he’d made up for his faults and foibles, and then some. The fact that Max was kissing her back with even more passion and tenderness than she was was just an added bonus.

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After their lips and tongues waltzed together for more than a minute, Max broke away from her. “Look, the press conference is starting. Watch.” On the television, one of Victoria’s lawyers read a long statement. Miranda’s heart and mind were too full of happiness and desire to listen to most of it, but she caught enough phrases like ‘unfortunate turn of events’, ‘Ms. Markham is very sorry’, ‘we plead but we admit no wrongdoing’, etc., to know Victoria was in very hot water indeed. Still, one thing remained unresolved. “But wait!” Miranda cried. “What about your—child? The baby you fathered with Victoria? What about that?” Max smiled. “Keep watching.” The TV screen cut away from Victoria and her teary-eyed press conference to the perfectly coifed, impeccably made-up face of a late-night cable news anchor. “Good evening, welcome to Market Update. That was the press conference given at the Federal District Court of Appeals by Victoria Markham and her attorneys. Ms. Markham is the sole heiress to the Markham family fortune and a former employee of Morton Myers Investment Group ….” Miranda arched a brow. “Former, huh? Guess that means she’s fired.” “Shhh!” Max hushed her. “Listen!” The bleach-blonde, doe-eyed news anchor rattled on. “In addition to the civil and criminal charges Ms. Markham is battling, stunning new revelations have arisen this evening in this increasingly bizarre story. Apparently, the alleged fifteen-year blackmail scheme against Maxwell Moore, Junior and his family was based in part in keeping a love child fathered by Moore with Ms. Markham a secret has been exposed to be completely false. Ms. Markham in fact never had a child—any child, fathered by Maxwell Moore, Junior or anyone else. Again, no such love child exists. Ms. Markham previously alleged that she had had a child with Maxwell Moore, Junior during college but later put it up for adoption, but investigators have found that story to be totally false. Details on how this extraordinary fabrication was successfully maintained by Ms. Markham for so many years were not released.” Miranda gasped, turned to Max, completely floored. “Wha …? You mean she lied about it? How in the hell—I thought you said that the hospital where she delivered called you—that her father even ….” “All lies. The nurse who called me from the maternity hospital was paid by the Markhams to lie to me. It was all a big lie. Every bit of it.” Miranda fell backwards onto an overstuffed sofa. “That—that’s just insane. I mean, I always knew that Victoria was mean, and manipulative, and cutthroat, and nasty but—she’s, Jesus Christ ….” “A sociopath?” Max finished for her. “Yes. How did all of this finally come out, anyway?” Max chuckled. “My friend Joe Melman at the Journal has a bunch of grad students from the Columbia University School of Journalism at his disposal. They did some digging based on my tips, and voila! There it all was. And all thanks to you, Miranda. Thank you for giving me the courage to look in places I’d never dared to before.” He gave her a smile that warmed her insides and practically knocked her flat. “You’re welcome,” she cooed. “Consider yourself forgiven, by the way. You have no idea how furious I was with you.”

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Max laughed. “Actually, I think I do have a good idea. You were pretty damn nasty to me a couple hours ago.” He sat beside her on the sofa, placed his hands on the curve of her waist. “I’m thinking I’d like you to get nasty with me again. Except in a different kind of way.” “I think that can be arranged,” Miranda whispered as they attacked each other with fervent kisses. In a split second, Max had her blouse off and was working on unhooking her bra. Miranda sucked on Max’s neck while her hands went to work on his belt buckle and fly, her fingers moving at lightning speed to free the long, steel-hard length of him from his oh-so-tight jeans. Before either of them knew it, most of their clothes lay on the floor, and only the slightest afterthoughts of fabric still clung to their bodies—a sock here, a scrap of satin panties there. A half-minute more, and they were both gone, too. The weeks of building sexual tension in both their bodies let loose in an explosive frenzy. Max pushed Miranda backwards on the sofa, swept open her legs in one swift motion and immediately went down on her. The taste of her on his tongue was salty-sweet, pure ambrosia. He licked the whole length of her seams and folds, pushed and probed with his tongue on her sweating inner lips, then went straight to work on ground zero while working first one, then two, then four fingers inside her, pulsing and pumping them in perfect rhythm. “Come for me, baby,” he breathed between delectable, divine licks of her precious jewel. “Come for me right now.” Miranda obeyed. And just when she thought she’d reached the point of no return, she came again. This time, her orgasm became almost an entity into itself, taking control of her body and mind, while Miranda pumped and gyrated on top of him. He cupped her beautiful breasts, squeezing her golden-red nipples, then leaned forward to take one into his mouth, then the other. Miranda cried her joy as she came again, and as she did she spread her legs even wider, pumped even harder to take Max deeper and deeper into her. She and Max settled into first a quick, fast beat—then a slower, deeper one that allowed him to caress her clitoris in time with every stroke. They went on and on, until Miranda came for an unbelievable fifth time. And even in the throes of her own incredible supernovas of delight, she still managed to tease Max, to bring him to the brink again and again—only to slow down and hold back just as he was about to skydive over the precipice. Miranda had had her five earth-shattering orgasms. Now it was time for his. Max leaned forward, grabbed Miranda’s tiny waist, and flipped her over with one hand— never once breaking the incredible connection between them. Placing his hands on either side of her firm, rounded bottom for stability, Max pumped Miranda from behind, so hard and fast that the head of his long, hard cock knocked itself against the firm mound of Miranda’s G-spot, sending her into a squealing, mewling, shrieking frenzy as he pounded her faster and faster, harder and harder until he finally went over the edge in his own massive eruption, crying out in a long, deep growl as his orgasm racked its way throughout his entire body until he finally saw stars and went limp onto Miranda’s curved back. There they both stayed, leaning into one another, basking in the afterglow, for several minutes. Finally Max went limp, and had to pull himself out of her sweet softness. Miranda whimpered as they separated, but Max took her tenderly into his arms and eased the pain of his withdrawal from her by nibbling gently on the curve of her neck. “We belong to each other now,” he whispered softly into her ear, then blew gently on her skin, sending a thousand tiny prickles of delight down Miranda’s spine, like the touch of an invisible fairy’s wings. “No,” Miranda corrected. “You belong to me.”

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Epilogue One bright and brisk Saturday morning six months later, Miranda was having trouble with the zipper to her wedding dress. “Mitts! MITZI!” she shrieked at her best friend and maid of honor, whose svelte frame was poured into a lime-green bridesmaid’s sheath. “Help!” Mitzi set aside the reception favor she’d been stitching up—a pouch of peach cotton netting that held a handful of matching peach-colored sugared almonds—and rushed over. “Randi, I thought you said you didn’t need any help getting into your gown.” “I only said that because I needed you to focus on getting the reception favors finished! My mom’s plane got delayed last night and she got in so late that she didn’t have the time to work on them at all.” Mitzi shook her head and fussed with the zipper, which was caught in layers of taffeta from Miranda’s cathedral-length train and tulle from her luxurious bridal veil. “Randi, why didn’t you wait until AFTER you got your dress zipped to put the veil on? And why isn’t your mother here helping you out?” “She was still in the shower when I left my condo.” Miranda sighed. “Mom was so exhausted from her plane delay and jet lag she almost didn’t get up this morning.” Mitzi finally detangled the zipper and got it fastened. She fussed with Miranda’s hair and veil, straightened out her train. “Well, it’s a shame she’s not here at the church helping you get ready. Every woman should have her mother with her in the last few minutes before her wedding. By the way, where the hell are the flowers? They were supposed to be here an hour ago.” Annabelle burst in, wearing a matronly pink suit and matching hat. “Don’t you worry, ladies. I’ve got everything under control. The flowers just arrived and the florist will be bringing them inside any minute. Your mother and father are on their way over. I ordered them a taxi with a police escort so they won’t be late.” Even on Miranda’s wedding day, Annabelle was the picture of secretarial efficiency. “I’ve checked on the cake and the caterer, too,” she gushed. “They’re already at the reception hall and everything will be set up in time for the guests to arrive. As long as Max shows up on time, anyway.” Miranda and Mitzi exchanged looks. “What do you mean?” Miranda blurted. “You mean he’s not already here?” Annabelle clucked. “Well, rumor has it he’s on his way over in the company limo. A little bird told me he went to the office this morning at five a.m. to catch up on work related to some huge merger deal. Such a workaholic, that Max Junior is!” Miranda shook her head and sighed as Mitzi helped her pull the blusher portion of her veil over her creamy complexion. “Max promised me he wouldn’t do any more work until after the honeymoon. He puts in long enough hours as it is.” “I suggest you get used to Max’s long hours, Randi,” Mitzi chuckled. “Something about marriage makes men want to work even more than they already do. I know John puts in a lot more time in the office now than he ever did when we were dating.”

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“Hmph,” Miranda scoffed. “That’s probably because you’re a stay-at-home mom and you can take care of all of the housework and kids stuff yourself. Max and I are co-workers and business partners. We intend to share all our work—business and otherwise—equally.” Mitzi smirked, then knowingly patted Miranda’s slightly swollen middle. “We’ll see about that when the baby comes.” Annabelle’s eyes flew wide. “Miranda! You’re expecting? My goodness! I didn’t know ….” Miranda held a French-manicured finger to Annabelle’s lips. “And you still don’t know. That news is entirely on the Q-T until after we get back from the honeymoon.” Annabelle giggled and fluttered her false eyelashes. “Oh, my lips are sealed, hon.” Sure they are, Miranda thought as she fussed with her skirt and veil. A florist appeared, handed out bridal bouquets, then disappeared just as quickly. Miranda stood poised and prim with her heavy orchid-and-ivy bouquet in her hands, a snow-white mountain of tulle, pearls, and meringue. Mitzi and Annabelle fluffed and primped her, then stood in frozen boredom as they waited for the cue from the minister it was time to start. After what seemed like an eternity, the minister finally popped his head in the bride’s chamber. “Pardon me ladies, but Max has just arrived, and we’re ready to start. And a good thing too—the guests are getting restless. Miranda, your parents are here and your dad is all ready to give you away.” Ten thousand butterflies took off at once in Miranda’s stomach. “Good luck, hon,” Annabelle whispered, then embraced her carefully so as not to crush her magnificent gown and veil, then left the bride’s room dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. As the only female member of the wedding party, Mitzi made her solo journey down the aisle ahead of Miranda, taking her appointed place just to the left of where Max stood beaming in an ultra-formal cutaway tux and tails beside his best man Joe Melman. As Miranda floated down the aisle on her father’s steady arm, she could hardly believe that just six months before she’d been an uptight, no-nonsense, and celibate stock market analyst who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing anything but a severe dark suit and black kitten heels, a woman who blushed at the very thought of sex. Now she was a pregnant bride in a mountain of lace, satin, and tulle rushing to the altar to marry a man that she’d first seduced in an officebuilding lobby—a man who was her partner and equal in every possible way. A remarkable transformation, to be sure. Who knew what exciting changes were in store for her next? Miranda’s father kissed her and gave her right hand to Max, who stared transfixed at Miranda’s beautiful bridal glory. The minister began reciting the traditional ‘Dearly beloved. . .’ speech, but Miranda and Max didn’t listen. They only had eyes and ears for each other. “You’re late,” she whispered through her veil. “Why were you at the office this morning? I thought you promised not to do any more work until after the honeymoon.” “The market waits for no man, Miranda,” Max whispered back. “I was busy finishing up my latest acquisition. By the way, we’ll have to make a stop in New York for a meeting tonight before we jet-set off to Paris. I just bought a company for you to run.” “What?” Miranda screeched. Heads turned all over the church. The organist abruptly stopped playing. “Ahem,” interrupted the minister. “Maxwell, Miranda, if you don’t mind, hold off on your business conversation until after the ceremony? I have two more weddings to perform today and I think everyone present would prefer us to get on with it.”

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Embarrassed, Miranda nodded, and the ceremony went on. As Max recited his vows and placed the ring on her finger, something told Miranda they were in for a ‘working honeymoon’. All that was fine with her. After all, from the very beginning, Max and Miranda had made love best in office buildings.

THE END