Maximum Exposure by Alison Kent - Smithson Group SG-5 10 - Maximum Exposure Page A

him with his team, and typed his user name and password.
    “The private showing at the gallery. You said you’d come as my date.”
    Christ. He didn’t have time for this now. “I may not be able to make it.”
    “You’d better have a damn good reason. I already bought a dress for the night.”
    “Something’s come up—”
    “Is that something your cock?”
    What the hell? “How many times do we have to go through this, Jodi? It gets tiring.”
    “It gets tiring for me, too.”
    “Then let’s not do it anymore.”
    “Actually, that’s why I was calling.”
    Five minutes. He’d give her five minutes and no more. Then again, better to deal with her now, be done with the distraction, without raising her suspicions by brushing her off.
    He closed his eyes, rubbed at his forehead with his free hand. “Why were you calling?”
    “I’ve decided to leave you alone.”
    His eyes flew open. He sat up straight.
    “That’s good news,” he said, hoping his words sounded more convincing on the phone than in person. He didn’t believe a thing he said.
    “I thought you might think so,” she said, though something in her voice—irony? sarcasm?—made him wonder what had motivated this truce. “Though I’m not sure being friends makes much sense, considering we’re not, not really.”
    “Finally, the girl sees things my way.”
    Her change of heart, if real, would make his professional life a whole lot easier. On the personal front, he’d be hurting. He enjoyed having her throw herself at him. He’d be a fool to want her to stop.
    She laughed, a deep throaty sound of sex and old scotch, and it was all he could do not to give her his address, take down his pants, and wait.
    “I’ll let you think that for now,” she said.
    The only thing he could say was, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    Unfortunately, he was still thinking about her kneeling between his spread legs and opening her mouth, so what should’ve been a querulous tone came out as a hungry growl.
    This time when she laughed, the sound was triumphant, and if there’d been any doubt remaining as to how badly he’d been boned, her laugh made it more than clear.
    “I’ll see you Thursday. Eight o’clock at the gallery. I’ll make sure you know what it means then.”

Eight
    T here was something about a sunrise over the Atlantic that made a night of insomnia seem like a bad dream. A mug of strong coffee in one hand, his sunglasses in place, his feet propped on the deck’s railing, Finn tried to think of nothing, to enjoy the simplicity of his life and ignore the complications he could see on the horizon if he made a habit out of Olivia Hammond.
    The breeze was salty and just this side of warm. Later in the day, he’d be more of a mind for a swim, a cold beer, and a really long nap. Five hours. Maybe six, his limit. He had zip on his agenda today, except delivering the pictures he’d printed from Monday’s surveillance. He was pretty sure Dustin wouldn’t find anything of interest in the pictures, but he could hardly say Finn wasn’t doing his job.
    It was like this in a lot of situations: Finn doing all he could to get his clients the information they were after and coming up empty. Or if not empty, then with the unexpected. A woman might want to catch her husband cheating to get out of a bad marriage with an even worse prenup instead of accepting his choice to work overtime rather than come home. An employer might suspect an employee of embezzlement rather than face the truth of poor management resulting in falling profits.
    Finn had dealt with a number of similarly motivated scenarios that had left clients less than pleased, and often blaming him for not bringing the results they’d set their minds on and built their plans around. It hadn’t been easy, but he’d learned not to let it get to him or to take it personally. And having done this for awhile now, he was just cynical enough that he expected some level of dissatisfaction