Free Wire (Pierce Securities Book 2) by Anne Conley

she decided to just let herself ramble on. It was too late, anyway. “I was high on the adrenaline of a successful takeover and needed the release. That was supposed to be an anonymous encounter with a man I’d admired for a decade. Scratch something off my bucket list. I didn’t know The Crimson Lady would become this… this entity in my life only you could get rid of.” Helpless, she let her hands do most of the talking for her, gesticulating and waving around her.
    “So you weren’t ever going to contact me again? Give me a fake name and that was it? Disappear forever?” He was angry again, his temples pulsing with his teeth gritting. A sneer graced his face, turning it into a mask of something which made Paige hate herself.
    Sheepish, she mumbled. “Yeah. It was one night.”
    “Not for me.” He spoke quietly, his voice a low rumble shaking her to her core.
    Her eyes snapped back up to his in surprise. “What?”
    “I haven’t been able to get Sandra out of my head since April. I’ve been looking for you. I wanted more.” He didn’t specify more of what, and she didn’t ask, afraid he would say more sex. Even though that’s exactly what she’d wanted that night, a part of her wanted more of him.
    She didn’t miss his use of the past tense, and regret tinged with jubilation seeped into her skin. She’d messed up—made one of the biggest mistakes of her life. Evan Rocco was admitting that night had been special to him, too, and she’d fucked it up.
    “I had no idea.” Something inside her leapt, even as she tried to tamp it down. Damn the timing.
    “Well, now that I know better than to think you wanted more from me, I guess you got what you wanted, something to mark off your fucking list. I’ll just need one more thing from you and I’ll try to stay out of your hair so you can run your company.” His voice was still quiet, resigned even, as he rose from the chair.
    Afraid to ask, she did anyway, her gut sinking. “What?”
    Tossing a notepad on her desk, he muttered, “Write down every boyfriend and one-night stand you’ve ever had. There’s plenty of paper there. Friends, too. I need to know everything about your personal life. Everything.” He sneered at her, leaning over her desk.
    “You’re going to stand there and wait?” She knew he hated her now. If he didn’t before, she’d managed to push him away with her callous treatment of him. She regretted it but didn’t know how to go back and fix it.
    “Yup.” He popped the ‘p’ and a misplaced thrill of excitement pooled inside her.
    “Alrighty then.” She sighed, getting to work. The boyfriend thing was easy. With the exception of Dale, who was dead, she had two exes, both left under amicable circumstances. Making a notation of that, she continued, writing down everyone she kept in contact with, from her high school girlfriend to the lady next door. When she was finished, she slid the notepad back, then remembered Neil. Reaching for the paper, she wrote down his name and once again, passed it over to Evan.
    “That last name is a friend who’s been hanging around. I don’t really have any sort of definable relationship with him,” she muttered, utterly embarrassed to have her personal life ready for his examination.
    Evan studied the paper. “Neil Koen?”
    She sighed. “Yeah. I met him at Bar Night once, and he’s sort of like a puppy dog, keeps turning up.”
    “Have you fucked him?” The crass wording belied his quiet tone, but Paige didn’t mistake the intensity.
    She deserved his anger. And it made her want to cry to know she’d made him so mad, he was thinking she fucked anyone with legs. “Nope. Not even a kiss. Strictly platonic.”
    “When did you meet him?” Again with the quiet intensity, and Paige knew she’d lost any hope of a future with him. Not that it was possible, with her idiocy.
    She had to think about that. Staring at the ceiling, she stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth. “About