Over-Exposed (Perspectives Book 2) Read online

  by

  Julie Jaret

  He’s spent the last fifteen years living up to his reputation.

  She’s still trying to live hers down.

  Over-Exposed

  Book Two of the Perspectives Series

  Copyright © 2014 Julie Jaret

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distributing of this book without the permission of the author is unsafe, illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic virus-free editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Published by Julie Jaret, 2014

  [email protected]

  Edited by Jessica Heidish

  Cover design by Julie Jaret

  Cover photo by Peter Torsal

  * Warning - Adult Content *

  This book contains sexually-explicit scenes, adult language, and is intended for readers over 18.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedications

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Also by Julie Jaret

  About the Author

  Connect with Julie Online

  This One’s Dedicated to:

  My mom, for being supportive of my writing without judgment, and for having a sense of humor about the whole thing. And for the nice things you said about Extreme Close-Up. And for not reading this book. I’m not even kidding, Mom. Do. Not. Read. This. Book.

  My husband and kids, for supporting and believing in me, and for understanding (most of the time) when I’m here-but-not-really-here. Thanks for not killing me (yet). I love you guys.

  Author Stephanie Bond, for having encouraged me to write novels in the first place! Thank you for your friendship and mentorship, and thanks, especially, for the stories -- those told over too-infrequent lunches, as well as those between the covers of all your excellent books.

  My friend and PA, Kari Nappi, who goes above and beyond above and beyond to promote me and my work. I don’t know what I did to make the gods of indie authors send you my way, but I’m so lucky they did! Thanks for getting me and for calling me on my bullshit. You make me a better writer. 3!

  And my beloved Smarty-Panties Street Team, whose friendship and tireless support humbles me every day. Thank you, ladies!!! xoxo

  Chapter One

  “JAB. CROSS. HOOK. Front kick. Roundhouse. Side kick. Really? You call that a kick? That was a love tap.”

  Natalie Simmons bounced on the balls of her feet and glared lasers at the heavy punching bag held by her trainer. It pissed her off that no matter how hard she hit it, the damn bag never wobbled in Evan’s well-muscled grip.

  From her plank position on the floor nearby, her friend, Gabby snickered.

  “Fuck you both,” Natalie gasped. Dark strands of shoulder-length hair had escaped her ponytail and stuck to her sweaty skin.

  “Sweet talker,” Evan smirked. “Jab. Cross. Hook. Front kick. Roundhouse. Side kick. Keep going.”

  Natalie smacked her gloves together and went at the bag. Her rhythmic breathing was as loud as her punches. She tried not to notice how effortlessly Evan held both the bag and a conversation.

  “So you won’t hear for another few weeks.”

  “Yeah,” she grunted.

  “Haven’t you been up for partnership since we met?”

  She scowled at him in the mirror and pounded the bag with a particularly nasty left hook. “Thanks for the reminder.”

  With the shrug of a massive shoulder, he said, “It’s just surprising is all. I can’t imagine you going after something you really want and not getting it.”

  “You’re a tenacious bitch. Always loved that about you,” Gabby gasped, struggling to hold her plank.

  When they roomed together back in college, Natalie had instigated some of their best times. And the worst.

  “You’ve been gone a while, Gabs. Things change.”

  Evan held up a hand for the women to trade places. “Switch.”

  Gabby dropped to the floor, panting. “Man, I’m really feeling those two-hundred weeks of missed workouts.”

  “Get up or you’ll be feeling my foot hitting your ass.”

  “Make it your hand and you’ll have a deal,” Natalie laughed.

  “Yes, please.” Gabby stood and batted her eyelashes at their sexy trainer. “Why aren’t you single?”

  “Like that would make a difference,” he snorted.

  Natalie lowered into plank. “We’ll ask Kevin. Maybe he’d be willing to share.”

  “There’s a lot of me to go around, but I don’t go your way.”

  “Curse this vagina,” Gabby grumbled, punching the bag.

  Before Gabby moved back to Atlanta, Natalie had hung out with Evan and Kevin a few times, away from the gym the men co-owned. They were a lot of fun to be around -- both were attractive and built and their personalities complemented each other well. Even when they bickered, it was obvious how much they loved each other.

  Things got awkward once when she’d started flirting with them after a few beers. She leaned over the table, intentionally giving them a view straight down her top and slurred, “Before I was a bitchy lawyer, I was crazy. And I got lots of attention. From guys. Y’know what I think? I think it’d be fun to get lots of attention from two guys.”

  “Not these two guys, honey,” Evan chuckled and made her drink a glass of water.

  They all had a good laugh about it the next day, and she had held herself to a one-drink rule with them ever since.

  Knowing the effect alcohol had on her ability to refrain from doing stupid shit was why Natalie never accepted invitations to happy hour with her colleagues. Well, that and her father.

  Edmund Simmons, III was one of the founding partners of the law firm, Chandler & Simmons, P.A.. He was the primary reason Natalie had worked so hard to become a lawyer and why she’d busted her ass the last eight years to stay on partnership track. As a teenager, she had been just as vapid and frivolous as her sister and their friends, but during her first year of college she got serious and decided to become something more than a pretty flirt who could find Bloomingdales with a blindfold on.

  Almost everyone assumed she made the change as a result of what happened that night at the rock concert. She and Gabby had never heard of the band, but the music was loud and the lead singer was hot. Near the front of the crowded amphitheater, Natalie climbed on some guy’s shoulders and flashed her little tits at the stage. Turned out the band was (unironically) called “Disciples of Abstinence,” and flashing was frowned upon at Christian rock concerts. She was arrested for indec
ent exposure and her father had to pull a bunch of strings to get the charges dropped.

  She let people go on thinking that was why she’d decided to grow the fuck up, because impossible as it seemed the real reason was even more humiliating. Only Gabby knew the truth.

  The alarm on Natalie’s phone bleeped. She stood up and let Evan pull off her gloves.

  “Good job today.”

  “Thanks, Ev.” She gave him a sweaty half-hug and fist-bumped Gabby’s glove. “See you tomorrow.”

  A couple guys stopped working out to watch her walk to the locker room -- a phenomenon she cherished, but pretended not to notice. (Tallish, skinny brunettes with no rack didn’t turn a lot of heads, and construction workers didn’t whistle at a rarely-used pretty smile, or eyes that look light brown but actually have a lot of green in them.)

  As usual, she showered, dressed and was in the car en route to the office within fifteen minutes. Her professional wardrobe consisted of simple, tailored suits and sensible shoes -- the better to be taken seriously in a male-dominated world. To maximize her time, she listened to voicemail messages and returned most calls from the car, then dictated notes to herself so she’d remember to add the calls to her billable hours. Between calls, she scarfed down a granola bar, knowing she’d be lucky to have time to do the same for lunch.

  When she was around the corner from the office, she got a call from her father’s assistant.

  “Are you in, yet? He’s fookin asking for you.” Emma was from Wales, and Natalie was sure her father overlooked the occasional glimpse of a tattoo as a trade-off for having his calls answered in her pretty British “phone voice.”

  “I’m pulling in now, Em. Be up in five.”

  “Oi. Tear arse. I’ll say you’re on a call.”

  Natalie jerked the car into a parking space, having no trouble finding one in the near-empty parking garage, since it was barely 7:00 A.M. She grabbed her briefcase and ran to the elevator. Four minutes later, she arrived on the partners’ floor, breathless, only to find her father’s door closed.

  Emma gave her an apologetic look. “Sorry, hun. He didn’t fancy waiting any longer, so he left you a voicemail. He’s in with Jeff, now.”

  Ah, shit. Jeff Worthington, IV. Great-looking in that blonde, rich-boy way -- like the asshole in every eighties movie. He had been cozying up to Natalie’s father, trying to steal the partnership out from under her. And because her tolerance for alcohol equalled that of a gnat, the fucker was probably going to succeed.

  “Thanks for trying,” she said, opening the heavy door to the dank stairwell, which went nowhere but down.

  Walking along the hall to her own office, Natalie noticed a buzz of excitement among the arriving support staff. Her assistant, Kari was holding court at her desk and didn’t hear Natalie’s “good morning” over the anxious chatter.

  Once ensconced in the relative quiet of her office, Natalie skipped through messages until she heard her father’s voice: Natalie, as you may now be aware, we have been unsuccessful in our attempt to halt the film production which will shut down our street later this week. Besides the obvious roadway inconvenience, the partners are concerned our support staff will become distracted to the extent billable hours will be affected. Please speak to the women on your floor to prevent the same from occurring. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.

  Natalie’s thoughts started to run in a “Screw that -- why do we have Hitler running Human Resources if I’m forced to deal with staff problems” direction, but she quickly reined them in. Using her empty coffee cup as an unnecessary excuse to leave her office, she walked back out to Kari’s desk and cleared her throat to interrupt the giddy conversation.

  “Sorry to break up the party, ladies, but we all have work to do and hours to bill.” Despite trying to sound lighthearted it was obvious she was carrying out her father’s request, and she felt like a royal bitch doing it.

  It wasn’t like she never got bitchy without a directive from her dad. She’d been a lawyer for eight years. She could do bitchy. But this was different. It wasn’t so long ago that Natalie was lighthearted and giggly like Kari and her friends, and the reality of that made her uncomfortable.

  Kari shook her head as the other women returned to their desks. She leaned closer and confided, “They call you the ice queen, you know. It started with the clerks, but it’s catching on.”

  Natalie shrugged. “The new kid tried to flirt with me last week while he was supposed to be helping me prepare for a hearing.” No need to explain what happened next.

  “Nat, you’re too young and cool to be this old and stuffy.”

  Really? Thirty-three felt neither young nor cool. “I can be young and cool when I make partner.”

  “Like Margaret Byington?” Kari’s eyes twinkled and Natalie held back a smirk. Poor Margaret was an eighty year-old woman in a forty year-old body.

  “Be nice,” she admonished somewhat seriously. “And don’t get distracted by this movie bullshit. It’s us against Jeff and I can’t do it without you.”

  “But it’s--”

  “I don’t care. I’m staying focused and so are you.” She turned back toward her office. “When I make partner, I’ll take you to as many movies as you want.”

  “Yeah, not really the same thing,” Kari grumbled.

  As she sat at her desk, Natalie got a text from her best friend, Lisa. “Lunch?”

  She frowned at the stack of files surrounding her like prison walls. “Wish I could!” she responded.

  Lisa didn’t have much free time, either, with her fast-growing fashion photography career. She and her ridiculously-sexy man had recently returned from New York, and were leaving again soon to shoot on location in Hawaii. It sounded exciting and romantic, but Natalie wasn’t jealous. Lisa was a great friend who had turned her life around after a bad marriage. If anyone deserved to be happy, it was her.

  You hate the tropics. If they were going to Europe you’d be jealous as hell.

  I know that. Shut up.

  Natalie felt awful turning Lisa down for lunch, but she knew she’d be picking up the slack this week, no matter what anyone said. The women of the office were too excited watching all the white tractor-trailers parked along the street, waiting for somebody famous to emerge, even though the shooting wouldn’t start until tomorrow. She kept her head down and drafted pleadings and emails on double-time, feeling the imaginary breath of her preppy rival on the back of her neck.

  Her tenth floor office had a great view of Midtown Atlanta, though she never had a chance to enjoy it. She was too busy to waste time looking out the window, and it’s not like anything interesting ever happened out there, anyway, a hundred feet up.

  Well, not often.

  Kari and the others had left about an hour before, so it was around six-thirty when Natalie heard the bump of a scaffold against the outside of the building. Her body responded before her mind did.

  A couple times a year, her inner-attention-whore showed up at the office. This would be one of those times.

  She locked her office door and tossed her suit jacket over one of the guest chairs. Removed her ponytail-holder and shook out her hair. Rolled up her starched, white sleeves. Unfastened the first four buttons until her sheer, lacy bra was almost fully-exposed. Then she responded to a couple emails.

  By the time the rigging came into view, her nipples were hard and her panties were wet. A large pair of work boots stepped side to side; a fat drop of soapy water drizzled down. She turned her chair to face the window, and drew lines over and around the hardened tips of her breasts with the smooth-pointed end of the Monte Blanc pen her parents gave her last Christmas.

  Her breath came in pants and she squirmed on the pleather seat, as baggy work pants gave way to a white t-shirted beer-belly and skinny forearms, bony hands smearing the window with cleaning solution. Natalie unzipped her slacks and worked the rounded pen down to the damp satin crotch of her panties, sliding over her attention-seeking clit. She like
d to challenge herself, to keep up the tease until the last possible moment.... so there was always the possibility she’d be forced to make a split-second choice between not coming and being seen.

  The high-backed executive chair wiggled on its wheels as she rocked herself to orgasm, finishing -- as always -- just in time to fix her clothing and turn back to her desk before the man’s face came into view.

  She calculated her billing for the day as her heart rate returned to normal. Any pride she might have felt for her greater-than-usual production was overshadowed by self-loathing.

  The fuck’s wrong with me? I bet Jeff has never rubbed one out at the office.

  As penance, she worked past ten that night.

  Chapter Two

  SWEAT DRIPPED FROM Natalie’s nose as she pushed through another punch-out drill, delivering body shots to the heavy bag as fast as she could.

  When Evan told her to switch places with Gabby, she walked in a circle to recover, pressing the stitch in her side. Before she could catch her breath, the alarm on her phone bleeped. “Crap. I’ve gotta get going. Video conference at eight.”

  Gabby stood and tapped her gloves together. “It’s early. You’ve got plenty of time.”

  “No, I have to take the scenic route. They’ve blocked off our street to shoot a movie.”

  Evan grabbed her arm. “It’s Hostile Takeover 3! I heard they were shooting here.”

  “Maybe. I dunno,” she shrugged.

  “What happened to Hostile Takeover 2?” Gabby asked.

  “Comes out next week.” The big, burly trainer made yummy noises. “If I didn’t have clients all day, I’d be down there stalking Sam Danmore.”

  Natalie let him pull off her gloves and scowled. “You’d have to get through his harem, first.” She glanced at Gabby and they both rolled their eyes.

  “Try to get a picture of him for me. Even if it’s from the window and he looks like an ant.”