Read Online Great Exploitations: Sin in San Fran by Nicole Williams - Free Book Online

noticed eight missed calls on one of my phones. Of course it would be my phone for G. How long had I been in the shower? Apparently long enough to warrant eight missed calls. Damn. She was going to be pissed.
    I had just lifted the phone when it rang again.
    I barely answered the call before G practically shouted, “Where the hell have you been? And what the hell have you been doing?”
    I held out the phone a bit so she didn’t do any permanent inner-ear damage and started to answer her.
    “Never mind. For me to ask implies I actually care, but I don’t. Not the slightest bit. Not when I just got off the phone with our largest Client in history who was informing me that her husband is with another woman right now.”
    My eyes closed. “What do you mean Henry’s with another woman?”
    “Another woman as in the competition. You remember the girl I all but ordered you to get out of the picture by whatever means you deemed necessary? The very same one our whopper of a Ten is with right this very minute?”
    I checked the time. It was just past one in the morning in Tampa, which meant it was just past ten where Henry was. I sighed with relief before realizing that, for business purposes, even ten o’clock was too late to be with his secretary.
    “How does Mrs. Callahan know her husband’s with the other woman?” I asked, trying to approach the conversation from a logical standpoint and not an emotional one. That was difficult to do when we were talking about the man who happened to be my ex, the biggest Target of my career, and the same person who’d saved me a week ago. It was all very . . . confusing .
    “Does it matter?” G replied in a curt voice.
    I’d already rushed into the bedroom and was packing. “It matters because why did she call to tell you that? Was it merely to inform? A warning to step up our game? To gloat?”
    “To take us off the Errand.”
    That both shut me up and froze me mid-suitcase stuffing. I’d literally just closed the most deplorable Errand of my life, and G was telling me the other one—the one that was important to me for a million reasons—was closed. “My suitcase is packed. I’ll be checked out in ten minutes. I’ll be at the airport in a half hour, and I’ll be in California by morning. This isn’t over.” I clicked the phone over to speaker to wrestle into some clothes.
    “It’s over, Eve. Mrs. Callahan said her girl from the other company let her know she was closing it tonight.”
    I whipped my head from side to side, not accepting what G was saying.
    “It’s. Over.”
    “No. It’s over when I say it’s over,” I practically snapped. “And it’s not over, G. Not by a long shot.”
    “Eve—”
    “No, I’m not giving up. I refuse to take the word of some bitch of a wife who is taking the word of an even bigger bitch of a competitor. I’ve seen Henry with his secretary, and unless something’s drastically changed in a few days’ time, she was about as close to tempting him into bed as his Chief Technology Officer, Aziz.” As I slipped into a pair of heels, I grabbed my suitcase and charged into the bathroom to stuff things wherever they would fit. No time for a professional pack job.
    “You’re only believing what you want to believe and refusing to hear what I’m telling you.”
    G might be determined, but I was that and more. I wasn’t giving up on the Callahan Errand. I couldn’t . “And you’re giving up much too easily. After everything we’ve been through, all of the headaches and creative Errand solving, why are you so willing to accept defeat on this one? The one we’ve been dreaming about? Why, G?” I rolled from the bathroom into the living room, threw whatever was left into the stuffed-to-capacity suitcase, threw the half dozen phones into my purse, and was opening the door before G replied.
    “I’m not the best in this business because I never accept defeat. I’m the best because I know when to accept it and when not to. And