Shaking her head at her own foolishness, she laid his card on the desk and brought up her e-mail.
Dear Mr. Sinclair,
Thank you for your generous donation to the Youth Center of Amesport.
I am in receipt of the package you sent today. I hope you will be able to accept payment arrangements for the contents. Although I was planning to purchase some products I needed from Dr. Pope, I hadn’t planned to buy all this right now. It’s an unexpected expense that I haven’t budgeted to purchase. Can I make monthly payments to you?
Regards,
Emily Ashworth
His reply came through within a few minutes.
Emily,
Your glasses are scratched and you need them. I used to wear glasses when I was younger, and trying to see around scratches is annoying. If you try to pay me, I’ll find a way to get my donation back. And there is no Mr. Sinclair at this e-mail address.
G.
Emily knew she should be angry, but she actually burst out laughing at his reply. There was no professional politeness with Grady. He got right to the point. She sent a lightning-fast reply.
Mr. Sinclair,
We’ve already discussed the terms of our agreement, and this was not part of that verbal contract. Are you going to take the installment payments or not?
Regards,
Emily Ashworth
His reply arrived within seconds.
Emily,
No. I’m not. The agreement was never solid and is still negotiable. I specifically remember you saying you would do whatever you could to get me what I wanted. That’s a pretty broad statement. I wanted to give you the glasses and contacts as a gift. End of discussion. I also want you to call me Grady, or you’ll pay later for ignoring my request.
G.
It took Emily several minutes to compose herself, shocked and amused by his candid response. She couldn’t help herself . . . she answered.
Grady,
How do you plan to make me pay if I call you Mr. Sinclair?
Emily
His response was immediate this time.
Emily,
Try it and you’ll find out.
G.
Oh, Emily was so tempted. Grady was pushing and she wanted to push back. But sparring with him was dangerous to both her physical and mental well-being. He fascinated and unsettled her at the same time.
Her fingers itched to type a reply, but she deleted the e-mails and closed the page, determined to ignore her attraction to him. She wasn’t used to a man doing anything for her, and she wasn’t quite comfortable with Grady’s gift. It was too thoughtful, too insightful. Just the fact that he’d noticed such a small thing about her glasses was perplexing. At the age of twenty-eight, she wasn’t a virgin. There had been one boyfriend in college and one after she graduated, but neither of them was anything like Grady Sinclair.
Emily sighed, drew the glasses off her face, and inserted the contact lenses. It was a relief to have clear vision again, and the prescription was perfect. Not that she expected anything less from Grady.
Placing the glasses carefully in her purse, she tried to get back to paperwork, but her mind wandered the rest of the afternoon, daydreaming about what Grady might do to punish her. Chances were, she’d probably love it.
“I want my truck back,” Emily told Grady irritably, stomping her foot in what looked to Grady like a female temper tantrum, but he wasn’t entirely sure. Most women he knew just took, and they didn’t argue.
Emily had just arrived, toting her suitcase and boxes of red-and-green decorations along with her. She was wearing a Christmas sweatshirt that shouldn’t turn him on, but it did. Decked out in Christmas cheer from her tinkling bell earrings to the Christmas socks he could see quite clearly now that she had taken her sneakers off at the door, Grady decided there was one thing he liked about Christmas now—Emily. Even though she was glaring at him, she looked beautiful decked out for the holidays.
In the last two weeks, Grady had felt like he was losing his mind, his only contact with Emily a brief phone discussion about when she’d arrive at his home, communication that had hardly satisfied his need to be close to her. He’d waited for this day for what seemed like forever, and now she was pissed. But he refused to back down, and honestly, he was finding her temper pretty damn adorable and sexy. “No. I already signed the truck over to you.” He was handing her the pink slip to his truck, but she was staring at it like it was a snake that was ready to bite her. “Your truck wasn’t safe. You’ve been driving this one for two weeks. If it isn’t what you like, I’ll get you something else.”
“Of course I like it. It’s big; it’s completely loaded. God, it even has heated leather seats to keep my ass warm. But that isn’t the point. It doesn’t belong to me. The only reason I’ve been driving it is because I don’t have my truck. You told me we would trade when I got here for Christmas.”
“I lied,” he answered, not feeling even a tiny bit of guilt. There was no way he was going to give her back an unsafe vehicle to drive. Her hands were propped on her shapely hips, her eyes staring at the paper he was holding out to her, but making absolutely no movement to take it. “Take it. It’s one of the things I want,” he said, waving the title in front of her face.
“I want my truck. Where is it?” She ignored the paper being held in front of her, and shot him an obstinate look.
Grady didn’t think now was probably a good time to tell her that her truck was probably in a scrap metal pile somewhere in another city. “It’s gone. It was unsafe to drive.”
“It was perfectly safe. It just needed new tires. Give it back.”
Grady smirked. “Or what? You’ll have me arrested for giving you a better truck?”
“You stole my vehicle,” she accused, swatting at the hand holding the title to her new ride.
“I replaced a piece of shit with a brand-new truck. It only has a couple hundred miles on it,” he told her reasonably.
“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked him, her deep blue eyes confused and vulnerable.
Oh, Christ! Although he liked seeing her all fiery and pissed off, he didn’t like her looking upset. Those wide blue eyes sucker punched him in the gut, and he quickly tucked the title of the truck into the back pocket of her jeans and scooped her up into his arms.
He sat on the leather couch, bringing her down on top of him. “What did I do? I thought you’d be happy to have a newer vehicle. Yours sucked,” he grumbled quietly, watching her angelic face as she stared back at him and tried to scramble off his lap. “Don’t move,” he demanded, holding her tighter, but not hard enough to hurt her. Having her shapely rear wriggling against his rock-hard cock was torture, but having her warm, cuddly body pressed against him was worth it. “I’m keeping your ass warm,” he informed her in what he hoped was a casual voice. “I thought you liked that.”