All's Fair in Lust & War. Amber Page
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from?”
“Oh, here and there,” he said. “I moved around a lot.” From boarding school to summer camp to anywhere else his mother had been able to think of sending him that kept him far from home.
Looking around, he realized they were standing at the corner of Fifty-Third and Sixth. Tourist central.
“Hungry for some overpriced deli sandwiches?” he asked.
“Nope. Just spicy deliciousness,” she said, pointing to a food cart.
“Really?”
“Don’t look so surprised. It’s the best halal cart in town. And it’s cheap.”
A few minutes later, when they were seated on a bench with their plastic containers on their laps, he had to admit that she knew what she was talking about.
“This is good,” he said between bites of lamb and rice. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a street food kind of girl.”
“Really? What do I seem like? A steak and champagne enthusiast?” she said with a sarcastic grin.
“No, more like a vegan foodie.”
She snorted. “We don’t have vegan foodies in the Midwest. Just a bunch of overweight carnivores.”
“So what brought you here? To New York?”
Her expression closed. “The bright lights and big agencies, of course. Just like everybody else.”
She took a big bite of lamb and rice, then abruptly steered the conversation back to him.
“So. In all your moving around you never made it to the Midwest?”
“Nope. I have an aversion to corn fields.”
“Where did you live, then?”
“Well, I lived in New Jersey until I was ten,” he said, hoping that would be enough to satisfy her.
“And then...?”
Man, was she persistent. He sighed.
“And then my mom married a rich man and moved to Connecticut.”
“Didn’t you go with her?”
He laughed bitterly.
“Well, I had a room in her house. But I wasn’t really welcome there. She was too busy with her new family. I spent most of my teen years seeing how many boarding schools I could get thrown out of.”
Her eyes went round. “Why?”
Thanks to the years of therapy his mom had forced him to do, he knew it was because acting out had been the only thing that got his mother’s attention. But he wasn’t going to tell Becky that.
Instead, he shrugged. “Why does a teenage boy do anything? But I saw a lot of the East Coast. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine...everywhere fancy pants rich people live.”
Becky snorted. “I would have hated you when I was a teenager—you know that?”
He looked at her, genuinely surprised. “Why do you say that?”
“I was the kid doing extra credit projects and sucking up to teachers, hoping they’d help me when it was time to apply for college. I thought kids like you were idiots.”
“And what kind of kid was that?”
She looked at him, her eyes flashing with remembered anger.
“Kids who spent all their time screwing around, knowing they could buy their way into college even if their grades sucked. You would have been one of the people making my life miserable because I couldn’t afford to waste my time partying with you.”
He sat silently for a long minute, unsure of what to say. She was probably right. After his mom had married Bill money had lost all real value. No matter how much he’d charged to his stepfather’s accounts, or how outrageous the purchase, no one had blinked an eye. Except...
“Not me. I went to all-boys schools. Girls were rare and always appreciated, no matter how geeky. Besides,” he said, brushing her hair back from her face, “even if you were a nerd, I’m sure you were a gorgeous nerd. I would have been just as desperate to get in your pants then as I am now.”
She rolled her eyes, looking pleased nevertheless.
“Whatever,” she said, looking down at her phone screen. “Whoa. It’s almost seven already. What do you say we go back and get our war room set up? That way we can start fresh in the morning.”
“That’s a good plan. You’re just going to move your stuff into my office, right?”
Becky froze. “I...uh...thought we should set up shop someplace public. With more space, I mean. Like, you know, the conference room.”
“Why? Are you afraid to be alone with me?” Mark asked, half hoping that she was. He’d love to know he had that kind of power over her.
“What? No. Of course not. I just thought we might need the whiteboards or something,” she said, pointedly not looking at him.
“I’ve got plenty of whiteboards in my office,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I like a little privacy when I’m working hard. And everybody can see into the conference room.”
She picked at her fingernails. “I don’t know...”
He couldn’t resist the urge to tease her.
“I promise to be on my best behavior. I won’t show you my underwear even if you ask me to.”
Becky laughed at his reference to the first time they’d met.
“Okay. Deal. I won’t show you mine if you don’t show me yours,” she said. “But you’ll have to help me move my stuff.”
* * *
By the time they’d finished moving her desk, laptop dock and giant monitors, dark had fallen and the lights from the skyscrapers that surrounded them twinkled like stars.
Becky gazed out of the window and sighed.
“I could get used to a view like this,” she said.
Mark came to stand beside her. “It is pretty sweet. Definitely beats the view I had at my last office.”
“Oh? Where was that?”
“Los Angeles,” he said.
“Oh. Yeah... I can see how you’d get tired of looking at palm trees and bikini-clad babes,” Becky teased.
“I was a contract worker. Which meant I was one small step away from sitting in the basement with a red stapler. The only thing I had to look at was fuzzy cubicle walls.”
“Ah. At least I’ll always have Ryan Gosling to keep me company,” she said, motioning to the poster she’d tacked to the wall by her desk.
“If you get tired of looking at him I’m happy to pose for pictures,” Mark said.
Becky stepped back. “Now you want to be my eye candy, huh?”
“Nope. I just want you to want me to take my shirt off.”
If he only knew... But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t even kiss him—at least not again. That morning in his office had been an aberration.
“Dream on, buddy. I don’t sleep with the competition.”
“I know, I know,” he said. “But you can’t blame a guy for trying. You know, if you slept with me I might not try so hard to win.”
“Yeah, right. I’m pretty sure you don’t give up that easily,” she said, giving him a sideways smile.
Then she turned away. It was either that or give in to the temptation to rub her hands over the hard planes of his chest.
“I’m