Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading and reviewing… and this chapter will contain some nakedness – not on Draco's part, unfortunately – so be warned!
7: Jealousy
"Women are strange creatures, Jake." Draco said and stared at his friend. Jake nodded – he had seen the looks Draco and Ginny gave each other – and thought of his own wife.
"You've been with her?" He asked, and Draco grinned.
"I've taken her out to dinner twice. It keeps getting more interesting." Draco mused.
"And you've slept with her." Jake said.
"Yes."
Jake paused, then male curiosity took over and he leaned forward. "Well?"
"She is… fierce. I had trouble moving. " Draco grinned when Jake's face took an appreciative look. "Mine." He warned. Jake held up his hands as if in surrender.
"I've got my Emily." Jake said and immediately leaned back. "You're not curious?"
"Of what?" Draco asked, putting his feet on the other chair. Ginny was in her office, typing away, and he was barely forty feet away, yet his mind wandered to her, wondering what she was doing, thinking. Was she thinking of him?
"Of why she came to help you. You never gave a straight answer, you know." Jake put his feet up on his desk and he studied Draco's face which became every thoughtful.
"She knows who the Firestarter is." Draco said and Jake stared.
"Did she tell you who it is?" Jake demanded.
"No. I haven't asked. She knew the Firestarter was going to take down my company though… and I guess she helped him and felt responsible." Draco said and wondered. The seed of doubt had been planted already.
"Ah. You know you need to find out who it is, right?" Jake asked.
Draco frowned. "Yes. She won't tell me. I know she won't tell me." Draco said and sighed. "She's a Gryffindor – they're all the same." Except for her, she was different from anyone he ever knew, and that troubled him. Yet, he couldn't help but wonder why did she know the Firestarter? Why was she keeping his identity a secret? She knew the he had to be stopped before he took over the net. Another question bloomed in his mind. Were they involved? The Firestarter and her - lovers at one point in time? He felt a stab of jealousy and he shifted uncomfortably.
Why did he care?
Because you love her, idiot.
He stopped. Did he? The answer was seemingly crystal clear and he felt something he wasn't used to feeling: fear. Of what? Her? He snorted – then sobered. He didn't know.
Jake watched the emotions play across his boss's and best friend's face. He knew what was going on. Draco was falling – and falling hard – for the Weasley girl.
He didn't have anything against her; really, it was the company he was worried about. He knew the girl was brilliant when it came to computers but she was hired help from Draco, and had only been working for almost a month, while Jake had been working for Malfoy Securities since its birth into the world.
That gave him rights over the company, and he wondered if Draco was intending on handing the reins over to her. He wasn't sure since Draco was prone to making rash decisions – that usually ended up in making a huge profit, which is why he usually never questioned any of Draco's decisions – he didn't know he was intending handing over the reins to the Weasley girl. Jake bristled.
Draco's face was twisted into a frown, and for the first time since his teenage years at Hogwarts – he had no idea what to do.
"Ugh. Jake. She's so confusing. I think I love her." He said and Jake's eyes widened. This was unexpected.
"You think? You've known her for a month." Jake said skeptically, and Draco shook his head. "I've known her since Hogwarts. That's a longtime."
"Ah." Jake sat. This was a first for Malfoy, whose longest – and deepest relationship – had been Jessica Stanley, the sculpted blonde less than twenty feet away, and that lasted two months and four hours. According to Draco, he was close to finding his grandfather's old sawed-off shotgun to play Russian roulette with her if she didn't shut the hell up for two minutes.
Draco leaned back and stared at the ceiling, his head a jumble of thoughts.
In her office, Ginny mirrored his exact pose. On one hand, she felt something with Draco she hadn't felt in a long time, and on the other she had wrecked his company… and she lied to him about the aforementioned situation.
In truth, Ginny was terrified.
Her fingers tapped the armrest of the office chair, and she wondered. Draco had made it clear that they weren't just business associates, and they weren't lovers, Draco was something of a boyfriend, although it was a loose interpretation of 'boy.' He had made it clear that he wanted a relationship with her, and she knew that she couldn't say no. She knew already that she was falling in love with him – the man who during her school days made her life as miserable as he could – and there was nothing she could really do to stop it.
Sighing, she sat up and reached under the desk and pulled out her iBook. Ginny logged in and with a quick glance at the doorway, she angled the screen so the glare would impair the image to a person looking into her office, but not to her. Ginny typed a quick command and after busting through several hard firewalls, she was in the system.
It was completely dishonest to hack into the mail account of the man she was sleeping with but her fingers itched to find out what he was thinking. She began to type his name when something made her stop. What if…?
Ginny typed in Jessica Stanley and hit enter.
Her laptop hacked through Jessica's flimsy firewalls and she found herself staring into Jessica's email. Her fingers led the mouse to the inbox where she sent email to Draco every half hour on the progress of the cubicles – and her own as well – as well as memo's meetings and everything Ginny totally wasn't looking for.
Ginny glanced at the sidebar and saw several folders, each one labeled with a number. Curious, Ginny clicked on the first folder and she saw steamy emails from a certain Garret – who, Ginny noticed, was in Jessica's blocked list – and grimaced when she came across a picture of 'Garret's' naked ass.
"Not bad," Ginny muttered.
She clicked on the second folder and saw only shopping catalogs from the stores that sold a pair of flip-flops for six hundred dollars. Rolling her eyes and at the complete predictability of Jessica's character, she clicked on the third folder and nearly screamed.
Percy?! Jessica had taken advantage of her brother? God, his standards were lax. Or maybe it was the fake breasts, Ginny mused.
Pausing for only moment she clicked on the fourth folder and her jaw nearly hit the keyboard.
"Draco Malfoy, you son of a bitch!" Ginny growled, aware of the white-hot stabs of jealousy currently pounding into her spine. She gritted her teeth. She had an idea that Draco and Jessica had a fling but Draco was hers now.
And with that thought, she stopped. Just what in bloody hell did she mean by hers?
"Oh my god, I think I'm in love with him." Ginny muttered, and for once shut off the laptop and for once didn't feel the desire to send several Trojan horses to burn Jessica's hard drive into a pile of bubbling metal.
Sitting with the truth heavy in her heart, she stared blindly at the screen, knowing that no matter how this would end, one of them would be hurt – and she was 100 positive it would be her heart who was to be broken – by her own doing.
Ginny covered her face with her hands and felt the resolute knowledge that she had to tell him, and putting on a calm mask, she got up slowly and made her way to Draco's office. She didn't glance at Jessica's desk, so it didn't register that the sultry blonde was missing from her designated spot, and with closed eyes she laid her hand on the doorknob and pushed the door open.
…
In his own office, Draco paced the room. He needed to have good, nice and long talk with Ginny, but every time he took a step towards the door, he stopped and went back to pacing.
With the idea that he could lose himself in his work, he sat down and began to monitor the progress. His own computer screen was divided into tiny little windows were he could see the re-building of the base. Thanks to Ginny, they were two weeks ahead of schedule. He was beginning to have hope for the future of the company again.
He clicked on Ginny's window and saw that she was typing again. He could almost imagine her eyes set on the screen, barely blinking and her fingers moving over the keyboard so fast her fingers almost blurred. Next he imagined her fingers undoing every button on his shirt, and then burying themselves in his hair…
Draco came very close to slapping himself across the face.
Giving serious consideration to calling it a day and then barging into a Ginny's office to do the naked tango, he leaned back again and rested his feet on his desk, and closed his eyes.
His ears didn't catch the sound of the door opening, or the sound of overpriced high heels across his carpet. The next thing he became aware of was the warm hand on his thigh and heat instantly flashed down his spine and into his loins.
A very masculine smile bloomed on his face when the hand slowly moved upward, exactly in the direction he was hoping it would go.
He said her name, and moaned when the hand began its work on a very sensitive spot and the other hand slid up his chest, and around his neck. He felt her breath on his neck and he inhaled her scent.
He froze.
Ginny did not smell like Calvin Klein's $300 perfume, she smelled like freesias. His eyes snapped open to see Jessica's face an inch from his, and he had a split second to register the shock before her mouth crashed down on his.
Draco jumped and tried to free himself from her vise-like grip when he heard the door open and Jessica jumped back, her hand still on his crotch and her lips swollen. He stared, something like fear building in the pit of his stomach when Ginny's face turned immobile, her hand reached out lean on the doorframe. Her eyes were as round as saucers, and the hurt inside them tore Draco's inside to shreds.
"Ginny - "
He barely got the word out when she turned on her heel, and clicked away. Draco slumped in the chair, his face completely white, and his thought stopped. He registered Jessica standing up and smoothing her skirt over her legs and then sliding from the room.