BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

When the door opened, he indicated for her to step out before him then quickly passed, making his way up the hallway as he pulled his key card from his wallet. The presidential suite was lofty with a living area, full bar, and four poster bed through an open set of French doors. He placed a “do not disturb” card on the outer door handle, and as soon as he locked the door he stalked towards the bar and began fashioning two cocktails. Mira edged into the living area, as he worked. She took notice when he shed his suit jacket and draped it carelessly over the bar, but for the most part she was thinking about her prior conquests. There had only been three a bartender in Cincinnati, a graduate student in Northern Florida, and a marketing manager who worked at a start-up in Silicon Valley. Other than this ritual of bedding a stranger before a high stakes demonstration, Mira rarely found time to date. She’d had one boyfriend in undergrad and had made no attempts to improve her love life si

The construction site was an ugly tangle of cranes and bulldozers, cylinder pipes and scattered materials, all along a ten-mile trench where construction workers barked at each other over the growl of their idling machines. Mira spied the corporate executive trailer through her binoculars. She could see shadowy figures through the drawn blinds and not much else, so she scanned the trench, surveying the progress that the Starlight Energy Project had made. It never failed to boggle her mind how quickly projects like this could get underway. In less than two weeks, Starlight had dug the trench where the pipeline would be assembled then buried over. According to their timeline, the pipe would be laid and gas would be flowing in less than three weeks if she didn’t shut them down. The sun was creeping up the horizon as she lowered her binoculars and turned to face her team, a twelve person environmental group called One World, which she had founded the year after graduating college “We s

Convincing One World that she would be in a position to negotiate privately with NateMontgomery if only they packed up and left the site felt strangely like a lie. In the past, Mira had always fully disclosed her negotiations with her team and never backed down from a fight. The fact that she was ordering her group to retreat without explaining the full picture made her feel conflicted, but she had no choice. If the executives found out that Nate was slipping into the throws of an affair, he would surely cut it off and kill her chances of shutting down the pipeline. And if Mira’s team found out her negotiations would include canoodling the handsome billionaire, she would lose all respect. As conflicted as she felt about telling half-truths and dodging prying questions, she pressed on, and within an hour, One World had completely vacated their site twenty yards off from the Starlight trench and were holding steady in their motel rooms at the Travel Lodge on the north side of Bellevue.

When the door slid open with a ding, she stepped out onto the rooftop garden where lounge chairs were clustered around various glass tables and a bartender was waiting eagerly behind a long, oak bar. The hostess, a young woman wearing a black cocktail dress, her blond hair slicked up into a high ponytail, greeted them then escorted them to a table near the glass wall that lined the perimeter. As they sat, Nate asked her for two coffees, and Mira mentioned she would like cream and sugar in hers. The hostess returned with their drinks a minute later. “So did you want to start, or should I?” she asked. “Ladies first,” he said with an amused smile. “Good,” she said, gathering her thoughts and trying not to get sucked into his alluring looks. He leaned back in his chair, tilting his head and eyeing her with interest that seemed to go far beyond the points she was preparing to make. “The Starlight trench,” she began, “runs through Bellevue, weaving between schools and residential home

“Where have you been?” Carter filled the doorway of her motel room, his dark eyes probing her for an explanation. She had barely scurried from the limo to her room, breathless with anxiety as she made sure her entrance went unnoticed, and had changed into her jeans and a tee shirt before Carter had knocked and opened the door. “I had a meeting with the CEO of Starlight,” she said, feeling decent to be telling the truth. Her thoughts skirted over Nate his lips, the firm wall of his chest that she’d caressed, the way he felt inside her, the wild impulse they’d both succumbed to in the back of the limousine. “I got him to pause the project for the rest of the day.” “Meaning?” “Meaning, he’s going to review the possible hazards of the materials and reconsider.” Carter snorted a skeptical laugh. “Possible hazards? It’s common knowledge Davey uses toxic materials.” “To us it’s common knowledge. You know we’ve been fighting an uphill battle to prove as much. This is a good sign, Carte