By Luck Read online

  Gideon walked towards the slot machines. He never played the slots, but ladies loved to play and they were between him and food, so it was the best possible path to take.

  Gideon’s chest tightened … there she was again, in a tiny black dress that made his heart hurt. He shook himself, trying to dislodge the vision from his sight, but she remained. He watched as she pushed a nickel into the slot and then pulled down the lever. Her eyes lit up as she watched the dials spin around. She laughed and stomped her feet just a tiny bit when nickels started to pour from the bottom of the machine. She had a little cup in her hand but it wasn’t enough; the nickels were falling on the floor, pelting her toes.

  Gideon had lost complete control over his body. He felt himself move toward her even though his brain was screaming at him to run. She was so close. He could smell her now. There was a special blend she wore. She’d explained it to him once about how she’d had it custom made to enhance pheromones and work with them rather than against them. He couldn’t quite recall exactly what the process was and it didn’t really matter—it was intoxicating. As was she.

  “Need a hand?”

  Shannon looked up at him, doe-eyed. “Gideon! Well, isn’t this embarrassing.”

  Gideon laughed and took a few steps to reach around the machine and grab another few cups from the stack on the other side. He handed them to Shannon. “Which part?”

  Shannon took the cups, her fingers grazing his in the process, sending a chill up his spine.

  “The part where I have no idea what I’m doing, and not only are there many witnesses, I know one of them. I was hoping to keep this little mishap to myself.”

  Gideon smiled and helped her to put some of the coins into the cups. The machine had stopped spitting them out at this point, which was a huge help. “So, you win big on the slots and were going to keep it to yourself. Why?”

  Shannon shrugged, but Gideon noticed her face turning the slightest shade of pink as they both stood, putting the full cups on the small table next to them. “Spill.”

  Shannon’s cheeks went from pink to red. “Well, it’s just obvious I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t like that. I like knowing things.”

  Gideon nodded. He could understand that. But he had first-hand experience that she knew lots of things … things that kept popping into his brain at the most inconvenient of times. Like right now. He couldn’t stand there having a casual conversation with her with her while he was picturing her spread out over his desk at home. Couldn’t take her to dinner when all he could think about was resting those black pumps on his shoulders. He put a hand in his pocket and pinched himself on the leg through the fabric. “There’s a learning curve to Vegas. No worries, you’ll get the hang of things quick.”

  He picked up three of the four cups of change on the table. “Here let’s take care of this, and I’ll take you to dinner.” Even as he said the words he wasn’t sure what he wanted her response to be. He didn’t do unsure. He always knew what he wanted, and then took it. Shannon though … she did things to him. Made him do things he wouldn’t normally. Made him think things he wouldn’t normally either. So when she smiled, her cheeks having turning back to their alabaster white, and questioned him with narrowed eyes, a pit formed in his stomach. He forced a smile on his face and told her, “Just dinner,” but didn’t quite get the response he was looking for. She was less than enthusiastic, and only gave him a slight nod of her head.

  Four

  Gideon was all twisted, didn’t know which way was up. He’d enjoyed dinner with Shannon. They had a ton in common, loads to talk about. He knew all that already … it felt different now, somehow. He found himself comparing his time with her to the times he’d spent with other women; he couldn’t think of a moment that held a candle to how he felt when he was with her. As unsettling as those thoughts were, he found them semi-comforting, but also noted that they left a vacancy, one that he didn’t quite understand.

  “So, how will things work tomorrow? Aaron and Seth weren’t exactly clear on what our mission was for this event.”

  Gideon laughed. “The two of them have been a bit preoccupied lately.” He turned to her as the elevator doors shut behind them. “Emma and Julie might have something to do with that.”

  “Could be. I think that Lily and Oak are as much a part, though.” He couldn’t help but slightly enjoy the twinge of sadness he saw in her eyes.

  He shook his head. “They’re not any more worried about that than I am. We’ve got this. No, the women in their lives distract them. It honestly doesn’t have anything to do with the case.”

  Shannon looked at him, he held his smile while she searched his face for whatever reassurance she needed. “How can you be so sure?”

  Gideon looked away. He stood staring at the doors and watched the buttons that indicated floors light up as they rode to the top. “Because Aaron, Seth, and I, we’re meant for this business. We didn’t search it out, it found us. We’re here for the long haul.” He peeked back at her as they arrived at their floor and the doors opened. “I promise.”

  Shannon held back as Gideon stepped off the elevator. She shook her head as she watched him turn and reach for her hand. “I wish I had your confidence.” She placed her hand in his.

  “You are an extremely confident female. No reason to change for this silly little thing. Watch … it’ll be over before we know it.”

  They’d reached his room door. “Now, on to more important matters. Care to join me for a night cap? We can go over strategy for tomorrow.”

  Shannon smiled and took her hand from his as she shook her head. “No thanks. I think that maybe, considering the circumstances, that I should be surprised by all that will be tomorrow.”

  Gideon tried not to look as disappointed as he felt, and nodded. “Let me take you to your room then.”

  “There’s no need.” She turned and pointed to the door across the hall. “Aaron and Seth made sure I was taken care of.”

  Gideon was very pleased with his friends, and yet furious at them. They’d made it far too easy for the two of them to be with each other—or to not be—and that made his insides torque. “We’ll meet here at five-thirty, then? We’ll need to get down to the floor early to set up the table and talk about a game plan.”

  Shannon nodded. “Thank you for dinner,” she told him as she walked the short distance to her door. Gideon knew those few steps were going to torture him all night.

  “Good night Shannon.”

  * * *

  Gideon barely slept. He spent a lot of time pouring over Lily and Oak’s website and social media pages. He was determined to find something to get Genesis Inc. out of this lawsuit. He woke up to his alarm fully clothed, his face half on his keyboard, and a sharp pain in his neck. It took a short minute for him to realize that he only had thirty minutes before he was supposed to be meeting Shannon.

  Gideon showered and dressed quickly before gathering his things for the day. A lot of the stuff they needed for the expo had been delivered to the hotel and would be at their booth when they got there, but he still needed to bring his laptop and a slew of paperwork. He tucked everything into his bag and opened his door right at five-thirty.

  He hadn’t even stepped into the hallway completely before he looked toward her door and noticed the two of them were almost perfectly in sync. Shannon was has just stepped out of her room as well, but she had obviously taken more care to ready herself than Gideon had. It took maximum effort for him not to drool.

  “You look … you look … amazing.”

  Shannon looked up from busying herself with her bags while trying to shift the one into place on her shoulder. She smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

  One word had never hurt so much. He didn’t think a word could hurt so much. He swallowed hard. Shannon met him at his door as he was trying to get a hold of himself. “Since when do you call me sir?”

  Shannon looked perplexed. “Well, I just figured with today, it being a business thing and a
ll, with so many people from the industry and whatnot, that it would be best. A way to show professionalism.”

  Gideon nodded, and felt a little lighter as he punched the down arrow button. “Right. I keep forgetting that things don’t work everywhere the way they do inside Genesis.” He stepped into the elevator right behind her, and ended up not being able to think of anything but her behind—how sexy it looked in the black pencil skirt she’d worn today, or how hot it was when it was a little pink and ripe from her being bent over his knee. He shuffled uncomfortably as the doors closed and he hit the button for the lobby.

  Gideon slowly breathed in through is nose, letting the air fill his belly before exhaling slowly, trying to calm his body and his mind. None of it was working. Just her standing beside him had him aching. He was sure she had to be feeling it too, and before he knew what he was doing he dropped his things, slid hers off her shoulder and pressed her body between his and the back wall of the elevator before devouring her mouth.

  Shannon responded instantly. They were like magnets. Put proper ends together and you couldn’t keep them apart. She tasted exactly how he’d remembered. A little sweet, but mostly just of Shannon herself. His hands roamed her body as the elevator floors ticked by. Gideon tried to keep track, but lost that battle as the kiss deepened when Shannon lifted her leg, wrapping it around his. The thought that she couldn’t lift it any higher because her skirt was restraining her made his bulge grow harder, and he found himself grinding against her, the friction between them setting his nerves on fire.

  A faint noise broke through his haze, and he felt Shannon’s nails digging into his chest in a way that didn’t mean keep going. He released her and opened his eyes. The small space overwhelmed him, as it was now beginning to flood with people. People who were all avoiding eye contact with the two of them as they began to retrieve their things and shift their clothing back into place. They didn’t speak for the rest of the ride to the lobby, nor did they when they exited the elevator and made their way to the restaurant. Once seated, and having ordered while submerged in a cloud of awkwardness, Gideon finally got the nerve to speak. “Sorry.”

  Shannon smiled shyly at him, and it got his heart pumping again. This time some blood was actually reaching his brain and made him think. “Actually, no. I’m not. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Shannon was sipping coffee and looked at him with big doe eyes over the rim of her cup. “I see.”

  “No. I’m not sure that you do.” He took her hand and lowered the other back to the table where it could settle her cup so she wouldn’t end up covered in coffee. “I’m not sorry, because I wanted to kiss you. I wanted to do more than kiss you, but as you already know, we were interrupted. That is actually the only part I’m sorry about.”

  Shannon just looked at him and then at her coffee.

  “You think I should be? You want me to what, apologize?”

  Shannon still didn’t say anything. Gideon was going to go mad. His brain was trying to interpret her movements, her lack of eye contact, and the fact that she wasn’t smiling even a little. His head kept turning her actions into something melodramatic.

  Finally she looked up at him. “So, what’s our main focus going to be today? Are we looking for models? Selling the inventory we brought? “

  It wasn’t often that Gideon found himself trumped by another human being, but Shannon had just done it. He couldn’t avoid her questioning, and lord knew that even though he’d brought it up and desperately wanted to talk about what was going on with them, he just as desperately didn’t want to talk about it either. Gideon just liked to be. He liked to act on impulse, and often made split-second decisions. He’d kissed her because he wanted to, and it felt right. He knew she’d enjoyed it. He needed to let that be enough. He needed to shut down his brain and his crazy thoughts. He shook his head. He was behaving like a lovesick teenage girl and that shit could not happen. He would lock it down if it took everything he had.

  “We’ll focus on networking with clients, but also with suppliers. Aaron, Seth, and I have given some thought about expanding and a place like this is the best place to get a feel for where everyone’s markets are. So, though we want to talk to others that do what we do, let’s try to branch out more.”

  Shannon nodded as Gideon continued. “When we have clients at the table, we want to be sure to push the new lines and direct them to the website. The catalog sales are diminishing quickly, and if we decide to get rid of it all together we want to be sure that our customers can find us online.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Gideon was in awe of how unflustered Shannon was. She was poised and confident as usual, despite their run-in with half the hotel in the elevator. Plus, his presence and even the kiss seemed to have stopped affecting her almost as quickly as it had started. He began to question whether she’d been affected by the kiss at all, until the server returned with their meals and Shannon about jumped out of her skin when the boy set the plates gently on the table. Her whole body tensed, almost shutting down, as his arm reached out in front of her. Gid let himself smile a bit at that. He wasn’t sure which part of him was more dominant or which part would prevail, but there were definitely two sides: one that just wanted her, and another that desperately wanted to not want her. Both were equally painful with their attacks.

  Shannon gasped as the floor of the convention came into view. It was just like the casino; bright lights and colors, lots of bodies, everyone smiling and laughing. She couldn’t wait. She’d been looking forward to this trip for weeks. At first it had been all about Gideon—getting to spend some time with him, uninhibited and out of the office—but she’d quickly realized that this type of event was what she wanted to run someday.

  Shifting the weight of her bags to her left side, she stepped onto the floor and instantly was jolted with energy. There was too much going on to know if it was from the room itself or having Gideon right behind her with his hand at the small of her back guiding her to their booth.

  “We’re A …”

  “14,” she finished for him. “I know. I memorized all the booth numbers of places I wanted to stop. Obviously, ours was first. So after we get everything set up, what do we do until the doors open at nine?”

  Gideon laughed a little under his breath. “Trust me. The time will go faster than you think. Mostly just talk to people. Get your face in their heads. Get to know them and their businesses. One can never know when a particular contact will come in handy.”

  Shannon agreed with a slight nod as they turned down the “A” aisle and discovered that they were the fourth booth from the corner which Shannon thought was really great. She was a little worried when she’d looked at the map last night that they’d be so far from the end that they wouldn’t be able to be seen from the end of the main aisle. She was grateful that she’d been wrong.

  Shannon set her bags on the floor behind the table that had already been draped with a cloth the same deep blue as the Genesis logo. She looked around, taking stock of all that was around her. There was a large banner that separated them from the table behind them that faced into aisle “B” that simply had the company’s sleek logo on it. There were boxes of things piled all around the space, including a box of their latest series of bullets. She giggled whenever she saw them. Genesis Inc. had taken a popular fad and run with it; in a stroke of clever genius, all the bullets were designed to look like superheroes, capes and all. They’d named them Super Bullets, and they were flying off the shelves. Shannon had thought they’d be the perfect things to bring with them. A fun little toy to add to the swag bags that people could try out and fall in love with.

  To their left was someone she’d actually heard of. Morgan Dooley was one of her favorite erotic romance novel authors. Erotica was Shannon’s guilty pleasure. She wasn’t really into the movies, but she loved a steamy read, and Morgan always delivered. Morgan wrote about realistic characters that lived fully, not giving a shit what anyone thought of any part of th
eir lives. They gave Shannon hope that she could get to that point one day. Shannon felt her face start to flush, and tried to hide before Gideon could see. She ducked down and began to examine boxes.

  “Just go introduce yourself and get her autograph. You can’t be ignoring, or rather hiding, from our neighbor all day.”

  Shannon looked over at Gideon. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Gideon took the box she handed to him and shook his head as he set it on the table. “Yes you do. I saw all her books on your iPad. Just go say hello. Might as well do it now before all the crazies converge on her.”

  Shannon narrowed her eyes at Gideon. “Why were you looking through my iPad?”

  “Oh, don’t go getting all dramatic. I wasn’t snooping or anything. You were reading laying right next to me, leaning on me in fact. I saw the screen. Sue me … oh wait, someone else beat you to it.”

  Shannon smiled and stood. Gideon’s words brought to mind a few of the times they’d spent time together outside of the office. It hadn’t happened much, as they both preferred to keep their relationship about causal sex and nothing more. Gideon’s office had sufficed perfectly, every damn surface of it. She shook herself, trying to wipe the thoughts of Gideon’s hands on her body from her mind, as well as gather enough courage to go talk to someone she never thought in a million years she’d meet.

  “Ms. Dooley?” Shannon solidified her resolve while staring at Gideon. The man did things to her. She couldn’t help it. She closed the distance between them and stuck out her hand. “I’m Shannon Potter, corporate assistant at Genesis Inc.” She turned and nodded at Gideon with her one hand clasped together with Morgan’s. “This is Gideon Rees, one of the three CEOs of Genesis Inc.”