Excerpt of Tempting the CEO by Angela Claire

It was Gorgeous Guy, in yet another well-tailored suit, gray pinstripes this time, all red-power-tie and everything. He looked perfectly well rested, even though he’d been rocking my world all night, and I sported near- bruises beneath my eyes to show how I’d spent the time in his bed. Bob, with his apparent insensitivity to the emotions of others, completely failed to notice the immediate current of recognition between us, sitting down at the head of the negotiating table as his usual flurry of associates and underlings came in to assume their positions.

Jed—I knew he couldn’t be a Fred—recovered first.

“Angelina, is it? Pleased to meet you.” He grinned and pulled a chair out for me and I sat, opening my briefcase and calmly gathering my drafts as he took the seat next to me.

“Jed, you’re over here, next to me,” Bob said, indicating a chair, and his client gave him a look that reminded him he was the client without having to say it. “Or you could stay right there. That’s fine.” Blowhard Bob backed down.

Jed Worth. I scrambled to remember what my secretary had printed out for my background files about the CEO of Worth Industries. All I could recall, though, was that he was a little younger than thirty-five, a lot richer than any guy had a right to be, and a hell of a lot smarter than me or Bob or anybody else in this room for sure. He had taken a dwindling fortune inherited from his grandfather and turned it into a modern conglomerate, computers mostly, but what they liked to call adaptable these days. Jed Worth was one smart cookie.

But who knew he was so sexy? Why the hell hadn’t that been in the bio information? Or maybe, like, a picture of him?

I organized my papers in the appropriate order, last drafts first, and took out a blank pad, resolutely determined to ignore the complete and total awkwardness of the situation. See, this was why I never did hookups. That morning-after thing, possibly exacerbated by the “he turns out to be the client on the other side” thing.

His breath against my cheek brought with it a kind of a stress flashback to him moving above me and inside me, but I realized he was only leaning forward to hand me a pencil.

“This rolled off the table,” he said innocently.

I took the pencil without looking at him.

“So you do things the old-fashioned way, do you, Angelina? May I call you Angelina?”

I ignored the request to use my first name—the big faker— and concentrated on the old-fashioned comment. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Pencil and paper.”

I glanced at him.

“No typing your notes into a tablet?” he continued with a nod of his head toward the troop of young associates who were doing just that.

“No. And they’re probably just surfing the internet so they don’t have to listen to Bob.”