Free Great Exploitations: Sin in San Fran by Nicole Williams

secretary, but I was about eighty percent sure. That was a lot better than two percent I’d been a minute ago.
    “You’re one to talk. How much exactly do CEO’s of multi-billion dollar companies make for showing up a few minutes shy of noon?” I asked.
    “I don’t know about those CEO’s, but this one just spent five hours in back-to-back meetings.” He inclined his head toward his office and followed me to it.
    Eighty percent up to ninety percent. Where were the pom-poms? “Early day, eh? Someone must have gone to bed early last night.” I was fishing, but I figured that was better than just asking if he’d screwed his secretary last night.
    Henry opened the door for me and gave me a sidelong look. “Actually, I didn’t really make it to bed last night. Which explains these things”—he tapped the hollows under his eyes—“and this.” He held out his hand, which was just barely trembling.
    My eyebrows came together as I flipped on the lights.
    “Caffeine overdose.” He reached for a coffee cup on his desk as soon as he set down his briefcase.
    My mind was back to playing ping-pong. It couldn’t decide if Henry not getting any sleep was a point in my favor or a point in her favor. “What exactly were you doing last night that kept you awake?”
    His eyes shifted to his door—or more precisely, the empty secretary desk. “What I thought was going to be an evening of ironing out my schedule for the next month turned into something much more complicated.”
    I settled—or collapsed—into the chair in front of his desk. “More complicated?” If more complicated included Henry and her getting tangled up in the sheets, I couldn’t decide whose neck I would wring first: hers, his, or mine.
    “Every month, I get together with my secretary to go over my next month’s schedule. As you can imagine, it can take a few hours, so we usually wind up staying late and I order in Chinese or something.” Henry slid off his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves before settling into his chair. “Melanie’s only been here a few weeks, so she wasn’t familiar with how these schedule meetings go. Probably my fault since I didn’t specify that grabbing some dinner meant delivery spread over a conference room table.”
    I could guarantee that whatever she’d done had been all her fault. Henry had given her the opportunity she needed, and she ran with it. It was exactly what I would have done.
    “Anyway, after my last meeting yesterday, I came back here to find her gone. I waited for a while until it was evident she’d left for the day, then I gave her a ring to see if something had come up and we needed reschedule the meeting. She told me she was ready for our meeting and waiting for me.” Henry cleared his throat. “At the Presidential Hotel.”
    “Classy,” I muttered before realizing I should have kept that thought to myself.
    “If it’s any consolation, she assured me she was waiting in the Presidential Hotel’s restaurant ,” he said, trying not to smile.
    “It’s only a consolation if that’s where she actually stayed ,” I replied, inadvertently glaring at her desk.
    “Which brings me to the next point,” he said, lifting his finger.
    I shook my head and huffed. Of course she didn’t stay in the restaurant. She had her eyes on an eight-figure payout. “After dinner, she casually invited you up to—what a coincidence”—I made my best shocked face—“the room she’d rented for the night. Of course, for nothing more than coffee and to finish banging out that monthly schedule.”
    Henry’s smile went up a little higher. Probably because I’d practically puckered up around the banging part.
    “Are you jealous? You couldn’t be.” Henry’s forehead wrinkled as he leaned closer. “The woman I knew didn’t allow herself to be jealous. She chose to run away before she could feel anything at all.”
    I hadn’t expected the conversation to take a turn in my direction, and I was