The Elliotts: Mixing Business with Pleasure. Brenda Jackson

slide into the backseat.

      She nearly moaned at the toasty temperature inside. A jazz CD played. Erika wouldn’t mind spending the night in such comforting surroundings. Getting a cab would have been nearly impossible, and walking those blocks to her brownstone would have been a freezing pain in the booty.

      He turned to Erika. “Did you ever think I ended our relationship more for you than for me?” he asked in a low voice.

      She looked at him in surprise. “No,” she said in a quiet but blunt voice. “You told me from the beginning that we had to be discreet because your grandfather frowned heavily on Elliotts getting romantically involved with coworkers.”

      “Right,” Gannon said. “Ever thought whose reputation would suffer most if our relationship had become public?”

      She opened her mouth, then closed it. “No,” she admitted.

      “Who do you think would suffer more? Me? An Elliott? Or you?”

      “A non-Elliott,” she said. A non-Elliott without a tenth of Gannon’s power, let alone his family’s power.

      “I don’t want the press involved in my sex life.”

      “But what about Lydia?” she asked. “Her name and your name were all over the place after you dumped me.”

      “It’s none of your business, but I was never intimately involved with Lydia. She didn’t work for EPH and she loves making the society pages.”

      “She’s quite beautiful. The two of you made a lovely couple,” she said in a voice that couldn’t hide her resentment.

      “You still don’t get it, do you?” he asked, shaking his head. “I went out with Lydia after you and I broke up to throw the attention away from you. I learned a long time ago that I didn’t want the press commenting on my intimate relationships. On people I care about. So I keep the people I care about out of the limelight. I keep it private.”

      She looked at him for a long moment while his explanation sank in. Was he saying that he had cared about her? That their relationship had meant something to him?

      “Since I graduated from college I’ve had a goal of getting engaged before the press could even guess at the woman I’ll marry.”

      Erika shook her head. “I don’t know, Gannon. With your family’s high profile, that may be nearly impossible.”

      Gannon gave a half grin. “Maybe. But remember, nearly impossible is what Elliotts do best.”

      She couldn’t argue with that. Her mind still humming with what he’d said about protecting the women he’d really cared about from the press, she stared out the window. As the driver turned onto her street, Erika noticed that the entire block was dark. No light emanated from the doorway of her brownstone. Her stomach sank.

      “Looks like the power outage hit your place,” Gannon said.

      “Yes, it does,” she said and shrugged. “It probably won’t last long.”

      “Probably not,” he agreed, and a full silence dangled between them, growing and swelling with each passing second.

      “You could come over to my place,” he offered.

      She immediately rejected the idea for the sake of her sanity, her two-foot rule and her time limit, which she hadn’t come up with yet. “That’s nice of you but not necessary. I’m sure it won’t last long. I’ve got a little battery-operated TV-radio that my father gave me for Christmas. He even gave me batteries, so I know it works. I have great quilts and snuggly socks.”

      “I know,” he said, his voice holding an undercurrent of sensuality. “I remember.”

      Erika felt a punch of awareness in her stomach. It hit her so hard she instinctively covered her belly with her hand.

      She ignored his response and reached for her door handle as the driver pulled the car to a stop. “Thank you for the ride. It was a treat to dodge mass transit and the snow.”

      “Just curious—why did you accept the offer of a ride when you wouldn’t accept the offer to sit out your power outage in my apartment?”

      “Well, there are two things you never turn down. A ride home during a snowstorm in a nice, warm vehicle as long as you know you’re not riding with a serial killer.”

      “And the second?”

      “A trip to South Florida in the winter.”

      “But you do turn down the offer of a warm apartment with power while your place is likely to be cold and dark. As long as the offer isn’t from a serial killer.”

      “Yeah. Because in this case the offer is from the Big Bad Wolf.” She smiled. “Thanks again. G’night, Gannon.”

      She stepped outside the car and struggled to maintain her balance and dignity as she trudged toward the door. When she arrived still standing, she turned to wave and received a snowball hit to her shoulder.

      The icy splat surprised her. Gannon laughed and she looked up at him as he approached her. “What are you doing?”

      “Sorry,” he said without an ounce of sincerity. “I was aiming for your back, but you turned.”

      Peeved, she backed away as he came closer. “That’s not even fighting fair. Aiming for my back?”

      “Snowball fights are always dirty,” he said. “I just wanted to get your attention. You’re being stubborn and silly.”

      “Excuse me?”

      “You are. I’m offering you the use of my warm apartment and you’d rather stay in your cold place. It’s stubborn and silly.” He lifted his hands. “I won’t touch you.”

      His declaration pricked her ego. But it shouldn’t, she quickly told herself.

      “Unless you beg me to touch you,” he added in a sexy, casual voice that should have disarmed her.

      But she knew better. She knew how irresistible Gannon could be. She hadn’t ever begged him to touch her because he’d always initiated their lovemaking until the breakup. After that, she’d been too wounded to consider approaching him.

      “I’m not big on begging,” she said.

      “Too much pride,” he said.

      “No. I’ve never found begging necessary.” She turned toward her door.

      His hand on her shoulder stopped her, and her heart raced in her chest. “C’mon, Erika. It’ll just be for a little while, and my genetically grown gentleman’s genes would never allow me to let you freeze in the darkness while I’m warm with a glass of whiskey and watching the New York Knicks.”

      “Your guilt would spoil the enjoyment of the game,” she said, turning back around to face him, unable to resist responding to him.

      “Something like that,” he said, his gaze holding hers the same way it used to when he’d looked at her as if she was the most fascinating woman in the world and he couldn’t get enough of her.

      She should run screaming into her cold, dark apartment. Now, she told her feet. Go now.

      Her feet, however, didn’t budge an inch.

      Seven

      Gannon could see the argument she was holding with herself flash in her eyes. His gut tightened. One of the things that had always fascinated him about Erika was the way her eyes told stories about what was going on inside her. He had the sense that if he paid attention, he could eventually read her like a book. She was a book he wanted to read again and again.

      Breaking up with her had been necessary and he’d been mostly successful in putting her out of his mind, especially after she’d moved to HomeStyle. He hadn’t second-guessed his decision. Breaking