Bossy Silver Foxes (Bosses With Benefits #3)

Chapter 1

Lucy

For the first time in my life, the word ergonomic actually means something to me.

When I first sit down in the buttery leather chair, I let out a sigh without meaning to. It’s like sitting in a giant’s palm, a loving hand cupping every vertebra and gently supporting my muscles.

“Holy shit,” I whisper to myself, clutching the folder containing my resume as I sink back into the heavenly chair. I shouldn’t be relaxing. I should be sitting upright with perfect posture as I wait to go into the interview.

But, instead, this chair has me completely at ease, relaxing back against the perfectly firm cushions. As I sit, my gaze roams over Ember’s polished, luxurious lobby.

Once, in junior high, my class took a school trip to St. Louis to visit the art museums. While we were there, some of the other girls and I broke off from the group and slipped into Tiffany’s, and I’d been stunned silent by the stark contrast between myself—in a Mudd t-shirt and loose jeans that once belonged to my sister Mary—and the glimmer of wealth around me.

This feels like that, but now I’m an adult in a black dress and flats, and Ember is more intense than the jewelry store.

While that had been all soft blues and twinkling diamonds, Ember is more fervent, deep maroons and charcoal, clicking heels, the sultry scent of leather and vanilla rich in the air.

Rain spatters gently on the floor-to-ceiling windows, making the AC a little colder, the air a little sharper.

Just sitting in this space would give either of my parents a heart attack. While there’s nothing explicitly lurid about the lobby, it still manages to scream sex.

Which should stress me out and remind me of how ironic this situation is. Of all the applicants for this position, I’m definitely in the running to be the least experienced. In more ways than one.

But after landing the interview, I’ve done nothing but research Ember.

I crawled through LinkedIn until I found the HR manager—Linda Serle, a middle-aged woman with two corgis and a son completing a graduate degree at Stanford.

Linda gets her hair cut at the same place, the same way, every three weeks on the dot.

She loves hash brown pie and watching old musicals.

She puts way too much of her life online, but all the better for me—I’m going to knock Linda’s socks off today.

Which is good.

Because I just got to New York, and I’m not ready to leave yet.

Like she always does, Frankie flashes to mind, but I have to push the memories away. The last thing I need is to be weepy while I’m answering questions about my professional experience or lack thereof.

“Ms. Sullivan?”

I look up to find a young man standing in front of me, a bored expression on his face, and a tablet resting on his forearm.

He’s wearing a loose satin shirt with several of the buttons undone, straight-cut pants with a faded argyle pattern, and shining leather shoes.

Faintly, I recognize his face from the Ember HR department employee directory—I’m pretty sure he’s an assistant.

“That’s me!” I chirp, standing and realizing immediately that my voice is far too cheerful.

The sleek, slender woman at the front desk looks over at me so sharply that her straight black hair swings around her face, before going still again.

She stares at me for a second, admonishing, like this is a library and not a business.

Way to grab the wrong kind of attention, Lucy.

I almost whisper sorry, like a chastened kid, but manage to stop myself. It’s a good reminder for me that eagerness isn’t chic—an idea that the whole of NYC has been clubbing me over the head with since I stepped off the plane.

“Alright,” the assistant sighs, tapping something on the iPad, before bringing his disinterested gaze up to me. “Do you need water or anything before I take you up?”

He says it like he absolutely does not want to get me anything, so I give him a smile and shake my head in a way I’m hoping is less eager than before, more in line with the atmosphere around here.

Looking relieved, he leads me to the elevator, which I had no idea was there. It’s set so smoothly into a wall of onyx black marble that when he scans his badge and the doors open, I feel like I’m Indiana Jones, and the wall has opened like a gaping maw, ready to swallow us whole.

I glance over at the assistant, who doesn’t blink an eye, simply stepping inside. I follow him, and he scans his badge once more.

Apparently feeling me watching, he says curtly, “We take security very seriously here.”

The elevator glides upward so quickly that I have to swallow several times to pop my ears, the pressure building fast. The number on the little screen just keeps climbing until it finally drops the numerals altogether and just reads E.

The elevator stops, and I follow the assistant out into a hallway. Up until the moment I walk through the door to a large, modern office with a—frankly—unbelievable view of the darkening cityscape, hanging thick and heavy with rain clouds, I’m still expecting Linda.

But the person sitting behind the massive mahogany desk is definitely not Linda.

It’s Dane Rourke, looking intently at a file in front of him, his silver-streaked dark hair precisely styled, his shoulders filling out an Italian suit.

I glance at the assistant, waiting for him to realize his mistake. But he’s already turning back to the door, leaving me to stand, frozen, in front of the CEO of the company.

“Thank you, Jonathan,” Mr. Rourke says curtly to the assistant, before snapping the file shut and shifting his attention to me. I feel it like a physical touch. “You must be Ms. Sullivan.”

My mouth goes completely dry, throat raspy, hands trembling around my folder like I had too much coffee with no food.

The sensation of being face-to-face with Dane Rourke rushes through me, starting at my feet and moving rapidly toward my head, like I’m on a theme park ride and my body is suddenly confused about gravity.

“Mr. Rourke,” I manage to choke out.

I was expecting Linda, had prepared for Linda. Not Dane fucking Rourke.

Dane Rourke. He’s never met me, obviously, but I know him the way everyone knows him. The way you know Michael Jordan, Hillary Clinton, or the Pope. It’s a name in the news, a name that means something.

You don’t even have to be a business bro to recognize his face, to know about his many, many successful ventures. To have seen the photos of him with his rich friends, standing in the spray of a massive yacht, thousand-dollar sunglasses reflecting the sun.

Fashion magazines do pieces on his “capsule” wardrobe. Business journals analyze his decisions. Cheap celebrity rags snap shots of him sliding into a Porsche, theorizing on the shadow in the passenger seat, asking in bold words on the front why he hasn’t settled down yet.

On the plane ride from Missouri, I watched a forty-minute YouTube documentary about all the products and businesses he had a hand in.

When I’d told my friend Marcie I was interviewing for an assistant position at Ember, she’d sent me an article titled Top 10 Silver Foxes I’d Totally Go Down On. Rourke occupied number one.

Which makes sense—he’s intimidating, private, and stupidly handsome.

Straight roman nose, trimmed dark beard, large hands folded in front of him carefully.

It occurs to me that of all the material I’ve ever read or consumed about this man—either purposefully or not—none of it has ever mentioned his eyes.

They’re just brown, deep enough that they seem to darken his pupils, but it’s not the color that’s notable. It’s the intensity, the cutting way they seem to focus, sweeping up and down, efficient. Cold.

When Dane Rourke looks at me, I have the sense that he already knows me and doesn’t need any additional information before making a judgment.

And, for some ridiculous reason, I feel the weight of that gaze right between my legs.

It’s the sound of the door shutting with a click that jolts me out of my stupor, and I stumble forward, thrusting my hand toward him like I’m flinging something from it. He looks down at my fingers for a second, then gestures to the chair facing his desk.

“Why don’t you take a seat?”

It’s really not a question, but a command, and it does nothing to help the subtle throbbing that spreads through me—completely inappropriate and wholly ill-timed.

I blame my lack of exposure to men like this.

My body has no idea what to do with this interaction, other than roll over and pray for mercy.

“Sure, of course,” I blurt out, nodding too jerkily and laughing a little through the words. I know it’s too shrill, that my movements are too clipped and unsteady, and still, I just can’t seem to stop it. Can’t control myself or find a center of gravity.

It’s like his is throwing me off-kilter.

My resumé trembles, folding slightly when I pull it out, hand still shaking. I straighten it and slide it across his desk, toward him, but he reaches over at the same time, and my thumb just grazes his.

A shiver shoots up my arm. It jolts over my skin and zaps through my shoulder, something like hitting my funny bone, but amplified. I settle back in the chair, trying to act like I don’t still feel the tingle.

Thoughts war in my head. Namely: What the fuck? I need to calm down. Stop being weird. What the fuck?

“You’re familiar with what we do here?” Rourke darts another one of those brief glances at me, eyes up and back down to my resumé in a flicker. It’s the only way he’s looked at me since I walked in the room.

Maybe it’s really that he only needs a second to get the information he needs, or he isn’t interested in any of this.

“I do,” I choke out through my desert-dry throat, wishing I’d said yes to that water now. “I am… it’s, uh, like… toys.”

Eloquent.