Mistress to the Magnate: Money Man's Fiancée Negotiation. Michelle Celmer

eyes lit with excitement. “There might be something on it that will shake my memory!”

      “I thought of that. I booted it up, but it’s password protected, so unless you remember the password….” He watched as Melody’s excitement fizzled away. “Tell you what,” he said. “When we get back to San Francisco I’ll have the tech people at work take a look at it. Maybe they can hack their way in.”

      “Okay,” she agreed, looking a little less defeated, but he could see that she was disappointed.

      In reality, he would be calling work at his soonest convenience and with any luck one of the tech guys could walk him through hacking the system himself. Only after he removed anything pertaining to the baby or the affair, or anything personal that might jog her memory, would he let her have it back.

      It would be easier to have the hard drive reformatted, but that might look too suspicious. He’d thought of not mentioning the laptop at all, but it stood to reason that since she was a student, she would have one.

      He could have lied and said it was destroyed in the accident, but unfortunately it was too late for that now.

      “Can you do me a favor?” she asked.

      “Sure.”

      “Can you tell me about myself?”

      “Like what?”

      “My family, my friends, where I’m from. Anything.”

      The truth was, despite living together for three years, he didn’t know a heck of a lot about Melody. If she had friends at school, she didn’t mention them, and when she wasn’t in school, he really wasn’t sure what she did with her time, other than cooking his dinners, cleaning their condo and of course shopping. She had always kept personal things pretty close to the vest. Either that or he had just never thought to ask.

      But she looked so hopeful, he had to come up with something.

      “Your mom died before I met you,” he told her. “Ovarian cancer, I think. You told me that you never knew your real father, but you’d had something like five or six stepfathers growing up.”

      “Wow, that’s a lot. Where did I grow up?”

      He struggled to remember what she had told him when they first met. “All over, I think. You said that she moved you around a lot. I know you resented it.”

      Just as he had resented so many things from his own childhood. The cancer not even being the worst of it. But he was in no mood to dredge that up. Besides, she had no idea that he’d been sick. It just never came up. He and Mel knew each other, especially in the biblical sense, but they didn’t really know each other.

      He’d been so sure that was the way he’d wanted it, so jaded by his marriage, he never considered that he might want more. Not until it was too late.

Four

      Melody had this look, like the playground bully had just stolen her candy. “Wow. It sounds like I had a pretty lousy childhood.”

      Ash felt a jab of guilt for painting such a grim picture.

      “I’m sure there were good things,” he told her. “You just never talked about it much.”

      “How did we meet?”

      The memory brought a smile to his face. Now, this was something he remembered. “A company party. At Maddox Communications.”

      “That’s where you work, right?”

      He nodded. “You were there with some cocky junior rep. Brent somebody. A real jerk. But the instant I saw you standing by the bar, wearing this slinky little black number, I couldn’t look away. Hell, every man in the room had their eye on you. He was droning on, probably thinking he was hot shit because he was with the sexiest woman at the party, and you had this look like you were counting the minutes until you could send him and his overinflated ego packing. You looked over and saw me watching you. You gave me a thorough once-over, then flashed me this sexy smile.”

      Her eyes went wide. “I did that?”

      Her surprise made him laugh. “Yeah. At that point I had no choice but to rescue you. So I walked over and asked you to dance.”

      “How did my date feel about that?”

      Ash grinned, recalling the shocked look on the kid’s face, the indignant glare as Ash led Mel onto the dance floor and pulled her into his arms. “He didn’t look very happy.”

      “What did he do?”

      “What could he do? I was CFO, he was a lowly junior rep. I could have squashed him. Although, if memory serves, someone else eventually did. I don’t think he lasted long with the firm.”

      “So we danced?” she said, a dreamy look on her face.

      “All night.” Ash had been the envy of every man at the party. At the time he’d still been reeling from his divorce and the ego boost was a welcome one. It wasn’t until later that he realized just how thorough of a boost she intended to give him.

      “Then what happened?” she asked.

      “You asked if you could see my office, so I took you there. The instant the door closed we were all over each other.”

      She swallowed hard, looking as scandalized as she was intrigued. And maybe a little turned on, too. “Then what?”

      “You really have to ask?”

      “We had sex in your office?” she asked in a hushed voice, as if she worried someone would overhear. “Right after we met?”

      This from the woman who had never hesitated to tell him exactly what she wanted, when she wanted it, in the bluntest of sexual terms. Language that would make a lot of women blush. Or blanch.

      He grinned and nodded. “On the desk, on the sofa, in my chair. Up against the plate-glass window overlooking the bay.”

      Her cheeks flushed bright pink. “We did it against a window? “

      “You’ve always had voyeuristic tendencies.” He’d never met a woman more confident, more comfortable in her own skin, than Melody. Though he would never admit it aloud, her brazen nature could be the slightest bit intimidating at times.

      But obviously now something had changed. There was a vulnerability in her eyes that he’d never seen before. A hesitance she had never shown. Truth be told, he kind of liked it. And maybe it softened him up just a little. He may have supported Mel for the past three years, but he would never make the mistake of thinking that she depended on him. Had she not met him, she would have managed just fine on her own.

      He’d forgotten what it felt like to have someone need him.

      “I can’t believe I slept with you on the first date,” she said. “I can’t imagine what you must have thought of me.”

      “Actually, with my divorce barely final, it was exactly what I needed.”

      “You were married before?”

      “For seven years.”

      “Why did you split up?”

      “I guess you could say it was due to a total lack of appreciation.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “She didn’t appreciate the hours I worked, and I didn’t appreciate her screwing her personal trainer in my bed.”

      She sucked in a surprised breath, clearly outraged on his behalf. “She cheated on you?”

      “For quite some time as I understand it.” He wondered how Melody would feel if she knew she had done the same thing? Although, as far as he knew, never in his bed. But that was just geography. Cheating