LITMIR.BIZ

       Eight

      “I handled it badly, I know that.”

      “Yeah,” Mick agreed cheerfully the following day. “That about covers it. Were you trying to piss her off?”

      “No,” Simon said, shaking his head as he thought about the night before. Hell, he couldn’t remember much besides the urgent need he had felt to get her under him. Although the fight afterward was etched clearly enough in his mind. He still wasn’t sure how it had happened. He hadn’t meant to alert her to the fact that he was aware of the power she held in the situation. Hadn’t meant to throw down a gauntlet just so that she could hit him over the head with it.

      All he had really wanted to do was let her know that he wasn’t going to be led around by his groin. That he was more than his passions. That sex with her, no matter how astounding, wasn’t going to change him.

      Simon made the rules.

      Always.

      But somehow, when he was around Tula, rational thought went out the window. Today, here in his office, away from the woman who was making him crazed, he was able to think more clearly. Now what he needed to know was what exactly Mick had found out about Tula Barrons Hawthorne.

      “Never fight with a woman after sex,” Mick was telling him. “They’re feeling all warm and cozy and whatever. Men want to sleep. So hell, even talking after sex can be dangerous—if you ever want sex again.”

      Oh, he did, Simon thought. He wanted her the moment she left his room. He had wanted her all night and had awakened that morning aching for her. Want wasn’t the issue.

      “Just skip the advice and tell me what information you turned up.”

      Mick frowned at him and Simon thought that this was the downside of having your best friend work for you. He was less likely to take orders well and more likely to deliver his opinion whether Simon wanted it or not. “What did you find out? I know she’s related to Jacob Hawthorne, but how? Niece?”

      “A lot closer than that, as it turns out. She’s his daughter.”

      “His what?” Simon went on alert. “His daughter?”

      His mind raced as he listened to Mick give him more details.

      “Hawthorne and his ex split when Tula was a kid. Mom moved with her to Crystal Bay. Tula visited her father often, but several years ago, she appears to have cut all ties with people here completely—including her father. My source didn’t know much about it, just that Tula’s a sore spot with the old man.”

      He had already known about her moving to that little town with her mother, Simon thought. But why would she cut all ties with everyone here, including her father? And why had he never heard about a daughter before? Was the old bastard protecting his child? Simon wouldn’t have thought Jacob Hawthorne capable of familial loyalty.

      “And,” Mick added, “seems that when she started publishing children’s books, she began using her middle name, Barrons. It’s a family name, after her maternal grandmother. That grandmother left a will that provided a trust for Tula so that she—”

      He straightened up in his desk chair and leaned both forearms on the neatly stacked files on his desk. “How big a trust?”

      Mick thumbed through the papers he held. “To you, fairly small. To most of the world, very nice. It at least allowed her to buy her house and support herself while writing.”

      “Her books don’t earn much?”

      Mick shook his head. “She has a small, but growing readership for her Lonely Bunny series. The money will probably improve, but between her writing and the trust, she gets along and lives well within her limited means.”

      “Interesting.” Her father was rich and she lived in a tiny house nearly an hour away from the city. What was the story behind that? he wondered.

      “She hasn’t seen her father in a few years that I can find,” Mick continued. “But then, the old man almost never leaves the city, either.”

      Hell, Simon thought, Jacob hardly left the Hawthorne building. He had a penthouse suite at the top of the structure that was his company’s headquarters. He ruled his world from the top of his tower and rarely interacted with the “little people.”

      But as he thought that, Simon had to wince. Until the other day when he had deliberately gone through the store chatting with his employees, people could have said the same thing about him. There were some very uncomfortable similarities between Simon and his enemy.

      “Is there anything else?” he asked, mainly to get his mind off that realization.

      “No,” Mick said, laying the sheaf of papers on his lap. “I can probably get more if you want me to dig deeper.”

      He thought about that for a moment. If he turned Mick loose and told him to dig, he’d have every piece of information available on Tula Barrons within a couple of days. But did he need more? He now knew who she was. He knew that she was the daughter of his enemy.

      That was plenty.

      While Mick talked, offering advice that he wasn’t listening to, Simon tried to consider the situation objectively. He was attracted to Tula, obviously. The passions she stirred in him were like nothing he’d ever known. But now he knew who she was and damned if he could bring himself to trust a Hawthorne. So where did that leave him?

      “What’re you planning?”

      He glanced at Mick. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

      “Right. I’ve seen that look before,” his friend said, settling into the chair in front of Simon’s desk. “Usually just before you’re plotting some major takeover of an unsuspecting CEO.”

      Simon laughed and missed his point deliberately. “No CEO is ever unsuspecting.”

      “Damn it, Simon, what’re you up to?”

      “The less you know, the better off you are,” he said, knowing that his friend would try to argue him out of

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