Page 1 of Pleading Innocence
Chapter 1
Tiffany
Oureyesmet.Shocksof light flew off our bodies like spark plugs. It was already like the tenth time today. About the hundredth time of us being held captive by each other’s gazes this month. It was agonizing.
Jared Crawford had asked his assistant Melissa to call me, two weeks after he fired me, with an offer to get my job back because I’d managed to save his ass that was on the line due to a grave misunderstanding. And ever since my return, we’d fought our bodies to reject each other until it made me sick. Regardless of how much I resisted making eye contact with him, no matter where he was in a room, my body knew before my mind did and my eyes would find him.
The way my body reacted to his mostly gray hair with darker strands peeking through was unjustified. Not to mention the way my pulse reacted to his deep brown eyes or his salt-and-pepper beard. I didn’t want to swoon over his more youthful face with slight wrinkles more evident in his three years off from forty. I shouldn’t have cared about how handsome he was because he was a pig. A handsome, mean, pig of a man.
He wasn’t forgiven for the way he’d tossed me out of here like trash a mere few hours after he pleasured my walls with his long, hard rod. It shouldn’t matter how well his gray suit fit those swim-enhanced shoulders that I remembered gripping beneath my fingertips. Whether or not his outfit was brand spanking new, making him look like he just walked out of a magazine, should not have even been on the horizon of my thoughts.
His glance moved past me as if I was interrupting his wandering eyes. They didn’t linger on me like mine had on him, and I cursed myself for staring, dropping my head back to the document I couldn’t focus on, pretending that I wasn’t aware of the steps he took as he left the associates floor.
At first I’d rejected his offer to resume working with him, but after a couple days, I’d called Melissa back to accept because other job offers weren’t coming in like I’d hoped. Regardless of my exceptional merits and leaving law school with honors at only twenty-one, recruitment week had been over and the other job offers required the one thing I couldn’t give them: experience in practicing law. I had asked Chris not to say anything to our parents because I knew they’d have been disappointed, so I couldn’t go to them asking them for a job at their law firm.
Besides, they wouldn’t let me work there until I proved to the world that I was an exceptional lawyer in my own right, worthy to wear the Levine surname and walk down the Levine LLP hallways. That’s why they worked me so hard—so that I could never fail. And I never had. Not until I was fired because I’d experienced such sweet pleasure that I lost my head. I’d never known any other thrill but beating my own best in tests throughout law school, achieving the academic goals I’d set for myself and that my parents emphasized. But at twenty-one, I’d gotten to sample a few thrills. I’d experienced sex for the first time and I couldn’t get enough of it, which eventually led to what happened between us.
Jared first met me when I was dazed from newly found pleasure with Mario, and I couldn’t shake the fact that perhaps he would’ve preferred meeting the girl I used to be. In fact, sometimes I missed that girl. Not that I was interested in trading in my newfound pleasures, I simply wished I could find a way to balance that part of me with this new me, because I took pride in my work.
Jared could not be convinced of that though. He disrespected my passion every chance he got. I told him he had stop if it was the last thing he did. And he did stop. At least to my face. Since he’d kicked me to the curb and I’d stormed out of his office without any intention to look back, he’d never uttered another syllable to me. It wasn’t what I’d been expecting when I came back here.
After working here for less than a week before he let me go, I couldn’t mention Crawford & Beam on my resume, and I had no other work experience to talk about. That’s why, as much as I’d told myself I never wanted to see his slimy, pompous face again, I’d accepted his offer to rehire me. Thinking it would give me a chance to rectify that lack of experience on my resume, I prepared myself to see him again. If he tried to offer reconciliation, I was prepared to reject him. I’d never soften myself to him again. At least that was what I wanted to believe. I was just there to work…and maybe partly to ‘work’ near Mario Sharpe and Anthony Whitlocke again. But mostly just there to work and avoid Jared Crawford.
I’d stepped back into the office on the first day, the second, the third, with my shoulders straight and my head held high, ready to refuse any of his attempts to discuss anything other than work with me. To my disappointment, none of that came from him. Weeks passed and Jared didn’t address me at all.
He never offered an apology. Never tried to pull me aside. In fact, he avoided me like the plague. Just like I avoided him. And I began to realize that he didn’t rehire me because he was sorry or even that he figured I was an asset to the company after all. He didn’t rehire me because he wanted to see me or have an excuse to be around me. He only rehired me because I saved his ass from losing his job even after he fired me. Perhaps he thought it was only fair that I got my job back too.
That opened my eyes to a huge realization—that one of the reasons why I chose to come back was because I hoped he’d apologize. I found myself wishing he’d say something whenever we ran into each other in the hallway and elevator. When we stood next to each other in that metal box, I’d get a flashback to our moment in the file room where he’d taught me about a different type of passion—where anger and hate found a compromise in chemical release. When it felt like, combined with Mario and Anthony, he was the final puzzle piece. He fit. He brought our whole dynamic together and it made sense. My breasts would buzz for him when we’d find ourselves in the same space. I’d have to clench my fists together to fight off the hormones and remain stoic because he wouldn’t even acknowledge me as I stood next to him. It was like I didn’t exist. When our eyes eventually met, he looked at me like I was a stranger.
It hurt and it pissed me off that I cared at all. In some ways, it felt like another power play. I could feel myself softening to him again, breaking my promise to myself, and I couldn’t help it. And perhaps it wasn’t a power play on his part, but it didn’t matter to me. That’s what it felt like. Like, as he said, a fuck was just a fuck, and it didn’t mean anything. My feelings were a mess and I found myself sitting at my desk wondering how I’d ended up here. When I first met Jared Crawford, I couldn’t stand him, so how did he end up inside of me? Why did I let him in? And why was I craving him even now when I still couldn’t stand him?
It was becoming hard to focus on work because his rejection made him more desirable to me. It was a sick cycle that I needed to break. And though sneaking away with Mario and Anthony in the middle of the day in hidden areas of the building provided exhilarating distractions, I had enough distractions already with my thoughts of Jared. My work was suffering and I was missing deadlines. I was tired of waiting around for Jared to offer an explanation. It was clear he wasn’t going to, even if his eyes told me he had something to say. It was becoming so toxic that I couldn’t keep working here, so I made up my mind.
I had to leave Crawford & Beam. There had to be a boundary between business and pleasure. Most importantly, there had to be a wall between myself and Jared Crawford.
First, though, I needed some expert advice. Since I couldn’t focus on my work anyway, I went to Mario’s office and knocked on his glass door. His gelled, blond hair didn’t flop in his face even though his head was lowered while he read through some documents. He looked up at me as the sun shining through his office’s glass windows magnified the piercing, icy blue of his eyes, sending wonderful shivers down my spine.
“Hey, do you have a minute?” I asked, as he smiled at me and leaned back in his chair. His eyes roamed over my black shirt with a plunging-but-modest neckline tucked into my black A-line skirt and dark blue heels.
“For you, I have more than just a minute.” He smirked. “Change your mind?”
He had tried to pull me away from my desk earlier today, but I’d kind of flipped out at him. My mind was too fragile from the decision I was wrestling with. I couldn’t entertain the thought of sex with Mario at work anymore with the weight on my mind.
Though we’d managed to fool around since I came back, it wasn’t the same because I couldn’t get the words Jared said out of my head. He’d claimed that I was disrespecting his building and turning our place of work into a brothel, never mind the fact that he’d also been in me mere hours before. I’d succumbed to my unquenchable thirst for Mario a couple times since, but I was also afraid that we hadn’t learned our lesson.
Today, though, I’d lost my temper with him when he suggested we step away. I was stressed because I was missing deadlines. My work wasn’t what I knew I was capable of because I just couldn’t focus. And even though it wasn’t Mario or Anthony’s fault, I was just high-strung. They’d been nice about it, but if I wanted to maintain the fun dynamic I had with them as well as improve my work and bridge the gap between the old and new me again, I was going to need to separate business and pleasure.
I smiled at Mario. “No. I am sorry about how I reacted earlier though.”
He smiled and gestured toward the seat before his desk. “What’s on your mind?”
“I think I just forgot when you smiled at me,” I said with a grin. It wasn’t a lie. For a second there, I was blinded by the shimmering whiteness of his teeth, his breathtaking eyes, and how sexy he looked in his white button-up. His jacket was casually draped over the back of his chair. As always, at least before a hot hookup, there was not a single wrinkle in sight.
He smiled even wider in response to my admission.
“Are you blushing?” I teased.
“I thought you said you didn’t change your mind?” he asked, ignoring the question, but he was for sure blushing. I grinned. It was nice that I had that effect on him.