Clean Slate by Holley Trent Page A

forcing her attention to his face as she gasped. When
she opened her eyes, he came, too, savoring the feel of her softness pressed
against his torso, her now-weak arms draped around his back, the smell of his
shampoo in her hair.
    She collapsed back onto the pillow, staring at him with
lips parted, breathing ragged, and skin flushed. “Oh my God.”
    He lay beside her and pulled the covers up over them both.
“You regularly pray after sex, Daisy?”
    She took a moment to catch her breath before confessing,
“No. I used to pray before it.”
     

CHAPTER TWELVE
    “Why are you so late?” Momma asked from her and Daisy’s
shared workbench.
    Daisy, more than three hours tardy for work, tried to
ignore Momma as she unpacked her bag. She carried her lunch, which it was
nearly time for, to the staff kitchen and stowed it in the refrigerator.
Fortunately, she didn’t pass too many staff members on the way through the
barn. She’d already dodged Jerry, since he was working from home. Trinity, she
didn’t care so much about. In fact, it was Trinity who’d woken her up. It was
the rest of the staff she was concerned about. What must they be thinking?
Daisy was never late. She never called out unless she was on death’s doorstep.
    “Daisy!” Nikki called the moment Daisy turned her back
away from the kitchen.
    Shit .
    She spun on her heel and tried to fix her face into a
smile, but couldn’t manage it. When she reached the office door, she paused at
the threshold, wringing her hands.
    “Why are you limping?”
    She swallowed hard. “Am I?”
    Nikki shrugged and made a beckoning gesture with her
hands. “Come in and close the door.”
    Daisy looked behind her, saw her mother on the other end
of the barn staring through the office window over the tops of her glasses at
her, and turned around again. She stepped in and pushed the door shut, taking
one of the seats in front of Nikki’s desk.
    When Nikki wasn’t immediately forthcoming with the expected
berating or anything else, Daisy looked up from her shoes and said, “I’m sorry I’m
so late. I—”
    “I don’t care,” Nikki interrupted. “You’re not one of my
problem employees. I’m not going to bitch over a couple of hours. Besides,
Trinity called and told me you were running late. Said you were working on some
secret ideas before coming in.”
    “Oh…” Lie. Actually, after rolling out of the bed and
realizing she was not in fact
dreaming and that she had spent the night with Ben, she’d driven
home—mortified—and tossed her cookies the moment she stepped into
the bathroom. She didn’t know what to do with herself. Was what she’d done slutty?
It didn’t matter how good the sex was, and how wanted Ben had made her feel when he was holding her. The fact of
the matter was they were practically strangers, and while enjoyable, what
they’d done wasn’t much more than a one stand. Oh yeah, and she’d fucking cried .
    “I should hook you and that guy up more often.”
    Daisy zoned back in to the conversation. “I’m sorry,
what?”
    “You and Ben? Stroke of genius on my part sending you two
to that trade show. You really represented the brand well.”
    Daisy sat a bit more upright and cocked up an eyebrow. “We
did?”
    Nikki closed her eyes and nodded. “Mm-hmm. No offense, but
you’re not all glitz and glamour. You’re quiet and your beauty isn’t
ostentatious. It’s just there without
you having to work at it too hard.”
    “I don’t work at it at all.” Daisy adjusted her baseball
cap, which had shifted from the bulk of her drying curls.
    “Exactly. You look like you use our products.”
    “I do.”
    Hell, they were free.
    “There you go. And paired with Ben, who apparently could
sell a weave to Rapunzel, you two really got this little company a lot of
notice. Look!” Nikki woke up her tablet computer and passed it across the desktop.
    Daisy took it, and tried to make sense of the reports.
“What are these?”
    “That’s