5. Holden
5
HOLDEN
E ven with her reappearance and apology, I don’t really expect Leni to show up tomorrow.
She does, though. For eight hours straight, she sits at her desk, answers phone calls, makes polite small talk with coworkers, and organizes files in the cloud drive.
Then, she does it again. And again. And again.
Day after day, I sit in my office, trying and failing not to look up every time I see her reach into a drawer or pick up the phone or scratch her fucking nose. I try to convince myself I don’t care whether she likes her job or not, or whether her eyes will ever lose their dull, lifeless quality.
No matter how hard I try to keep my mind on work, or on other women’s tits when I work my dick every night, it’s no fucking use. The intensity of this thing only grows. Whatever it is, self-destruction or a mid-life crisis or a truly epic instance of karmic justice, the affliction shows no sign of letting up.
I may be losing my mind.
Insanity is more reasonable to me than having actual feelings—non dick-related ones—for Lenora Vogel. It’s not like I’ve never had a genuine connection with a woman in my life, because I have. Those attachments were fleeting, however, ending as I realized there wasn’t a single thing that I would give up to keep them in it. Including other women. Then, my business partner’s daughter smiled at me in a bar, and it was all over. I’m forty years old, and this is the first time I’ve experienced anything as intense as this.
Naturally, I have to get rid of her.
Firing her is out of the question. For one thing, she’s proving to be more than capable at her job, now that she’s put her mind to it. For another, Bram would lose his mind. Informing him that I fired his beloved youngest child so I wouldn’t fall to my knees and beg to eat her cunt one day, would undoubtedly not go over well. No, the only way Leni is leaving E&V is if she has something better to do, something she’s actually passionate about. I can do that. I can help her figure something out, and get rid of her in the process.
If reigniting the light in her eyes happens to be a byproduct of this plan, then all the better. I can send her on her way, knowing some good came of my feelings or obsession or whatever the fuck this is. When the woman is out from under my nose, surely this horrifying phenomenon will abate, and I can return to my meaningless sex with women who do not only want me in my fantasies. So, exactly one week after Leni started working at E&V, I resolved to formally begin my campaign to help her quit.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t counted on the pencil skirt.
“Good morning,” I greet her as I walk in, brushing past her desk, my mouth dry and my cock uncomfortably hard.
Previously, she wore what I guessed to be clothes borrowed from Honor or Sophie. The oversized garments were a mercy, and I almost choked on my own tongue when I walked into the office a moment ago and spotted her standing beside her desk in a black pencil skirt, tights, and a silky blouse. It’s the same sort of thing many women around the office wear. Not one part of it could be considered inappropriate. Apart from my dick’s reaction to the woman wearing it.
What I wouldn’t do to bend her over my desk and gather the pressed material in my hands, bunching it up around her hips while she squirms, moaning my name, “Holden, please.” I’d keep my eyes on her face, cataloguing her every response to my touch, learning how to reduce her to a panting, desperate mess who begs for my cock like she’ll die without it. The shit I would do to her if given half a chance?—
“Holden?”
I blink and realize I’ve been standing just beside my office chair, staring at the wall as if an image of Leni Vogel taking my cock is projected there. Clearing my throat, I sit down automatically, schooling my face into a passable imitation of fine as I turn toward the woman hovering in the doorway.
Leni stares back at me. “Are you okay?”
“Hi. Yes. Fine.” Jesus. I’m so fucked up. Clearing my throat, I reach down to retrieve my laptop bag just for something to do with my hands. My dick is like an iron rod, and throbs viciously when I see the edge of a lacy bra strap peeking out from beneath her blouse.
Leni doesn’t push the subject. “The Garath Group requested a meeting.”
I wince. The Garath Group, who own a chain of boat dealerships, hired us for their new expansion, and the project has been nothing short of a nightmare. “Did he say for what?”
Leni checks her notes. “Something about unfavorable proportions of the men’s restroom.”
Scrubbing my hand over my face, I nod. “Fine. Christ. Set it up.”
“If you’d like, I can make a note to interrupt ten minutes in with an urgent family matter,” she suggests mildly, scribbling all this down on a yellow legal pad. “Something about your grandmother getting run down by a bicycle messenger, perhaps?”
I chuckle, warmth spreading through my chest. “I like the way you think, Vogel. Brilliant.”
“If you say so. Is there anything specific you need from me this morning? If not, I’ll continue with the data entry for the quarterly reports.” She finishes her note and looks up, gazing at me through eyes that are as cold and empty as ever. She looks—well, she looks like a ghost, and I can’t fucking stand it.
“Yes,” I hear myself say before I realize the word has even left my mouth.
That isn’t what I was going to say. What the hell am I doing?
Leni gazes at me, clearly confused by the stretch of stunned silence following this pronouncement. “Yes?”
“Yes,” I say again, standing abruptly as I make up my mind. “There’s an important project I worked on breaking ground upstate today, and I need to put in an appearance. You should come.”
“There is?” She glances at her notebook. “I didn’t see?—”
“Forgot to add it to the schedule. Sorry about that. I would promise to be better about it, but I think a week working for me is sufficient time for you to deduce that’s bullshit.”
To my total amazement, Leni’s lips twitch. “Okay. Are we leaving now?”
“Yes.” I grab my phone and keys from the corner of the desk I just deposited them on. My arm brushes hers as I pass through the doorway, and the brief contact with her warm skin lingers for far longer than it should.
I wait for her to gather her things, and the two of us walk toward the lobby, side by side. If I had any plan at all, or had thought this through, I would have done this very differently. As it is, we have a real chance of running into Bram, who knows full well there is no important project breaking ground today, and will undoubtedly have questions I can’t answer about where I’m taking her. Leni’s father is nowhere to be seen, and I slow my pace to match hers as we leave the building together, walking in silence across the street to the parking garage.
Ordinarily, I’m decent under pressure, but with every step, I seem to get farther from a possible solution to the corner I’ve painted myself into. I did something stupid because the thought of this woman looking at me with those lifeless eyes for even one more minute made me want to vomit.
What the fuck am I supposed to do?
Leni is quiet as we stop beside my car, a vintage pickup I had restored a few years back. It’s my favorite, but not the most practical option for transportation. When I reached for the keys to my more modern vehicle this morning, something had me taking these instead. At the time, I’d attributed the change of plans to the fine, summer weather. How could anyone ask for a better day to take a vintage car out? However, as I sit in the driver’s side and lean over to unlock the passenger door, Leni’s obvious approval has me wondering if—subconsciously—I knew this was the day my willpower would finally break.
“This is really cool,” she tells me, eyeing the spartan interior. “What year is it?”
“Seventy-one. A neighbor passed away, and his wife offered it to me for free. It didn’t run.” The car rumbles to life beneath us, and my heart seems to be lodged in my throat as I pull out of the parking garage, hyperaware of the woman beside me and the very pressing issue of having absolutely no idea where we’re going.
For lack of another idea, I head for the interstate, hazarding a look over at her when we stop at the end of the street.
Leni looks perfectly at ease, strands of dark hair dancing around her face from the open window, and her stocking-clad legs crossed beneath that fucking pencil skirt. Her bedazzled cane is leaning against the seat beside her, and as I watch, she scratches absently at the edge of the padded handhold, roughening the material.
How do I make her smile?
Without warning, she looks around, and—fuck me—my heart stalls. Almost instantly, my emotionally stunted mind goes into denial, looking for other explanations for the questionable cardiovascular activity, but the damned organ knows the truth. It’s her.
We’re closer than we’ve been since she came to work at E&V, close enough to see a tiny smattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose and tiny flecks of green in her eyes. Things I didn’t notice on New Year’s—or couldn’t in the dark—somehow manage to add new layers of beauty to this woman who I shouldn’t think of in that context at all.
Beautiful doesn’t seem like a good enough word to describe how this woman looks right now. I’ve seen beautiful and there’s no damn comparison to be made. Lenora Vogel is more. At this moment, sitting beside me in my old truck, with the sun shining down on both of us and nowhere we have to be, I know I’m in this so much deeper than I thought.
I never want to stop looking at her.
At my side, my hand balls into a fist, a necessity to stop myself from reaching out and tracing the plump curve of her lips.
“Holden?”
I swallow, knowing I need to look away, yet as a wide, effortless smile blooms on Leni’s face, I can’t muster up the will to manage it. “Yes?”
“The light is green.”
Sure enough, no sooner has she spoken than a car behind us honks and I whip back around, heart thundering as we turn onto the interstate. I still have no idea where we’re going, but I can drive north for a while, pull off somewhere to get gas, and “see an email” saying the entire thing was canceled, can’t I?
“Where is this groundbreaking, exactly?” Leni asks, her voice rising above the rumble of the old engine. “Do you need me to put it in the GPS?”
I clear my throat, tightening my grip on the steering wheel. “I know where it is.”
Seconds later, I feel my pulse quickening yet again as she crosses her legs, that deadly weapon of a skirt riding a few more inches up her thighs. By now, I’ve watched every video I can find online of her dancing. Even in a line of other dancers, all perfect and beautiful in their own right, my eyes went right to the dark-haired woman with the bright eyes. It’s been on my mind a lot lately, the question of whether it’s just me, or did she have that magnetic effect on everyone who watched her perform?
“Can I ask you something?”
As if in answer to my own mentally posed question, it takes an inordinate amount of effort not to look at her. “You just did.”
“ Ha .” Leni scoffs. “I was just curious why you wanted me to keep working at E&V. That first day, I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about the whole thing, and you didn’t seem super into it when Dad brought me up. I kind of thought you’d be pleased when I fucked off.”
She doesn’t miss a damn thing.
I swallow, keeping my eyes on the road. “It means a lot to Bram. That you’re there,” I respond at last, settling for a partial truth.
This was a mistake.
I need to find a reason to turn around and get both of us back to work. Nowhere in my impulsive chain of decision-making did I consider the dangers of being alone in a confined space with a highly observant, intelligent woman who I shouldn’t want to fuck but do. Desperately. This whole day has been a confusing, illogical mess, and it isn’t difficult to find the cause.
For months, I’ve been thinking about her, obsessing about her to the point of jerking off to videos of her in a fucking tutu. Now, she’s under my nose eight hours a day, five days a week, and I can no longer pretend my attraction to her is the only cause of this raging obsession.
“I need to make a call,” I tell her, careful to keep my expression impassive. Up ahead, there is a snack shack, already busy with the early lunch crowd, and I pull in, not meeting Leni’s eye as I shove my keys and phone in my pockets before stepping out onto the asphalt.
Her gaze feels heavy on the back of my neck as I push the door closed and round the hood, striding around the side of the building toward the sign marked Restrooms . Nearly the moment I’ve turned the corner and disappeared from Leni’s field of vision, I collapse back against the aging brick, pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes, hard enough for white spots to appear in the center of my vision.
This is fucking ridiculous. I’m a grown man, being brought to my knees by my business partner’s twenty-two-year-old daughter. The way I feel about her, the things she’s making me want… It’s all brand-new. All of it. And I have no goddamn idea what to do with that other than fuck her.
I could love her.
The thought comes out of nowhere, temporarily halting my panicked spiral. Love her? No. I certainly couldn’t love her. I don’t want to. Falling in love isn’t an involuntary reaction. If it were, surely my depraved ass would have ended up endlessly devoted to someone other than Lenora Vogel long ago. As I haven’t yet been struck by that particular affliction, it seems to confirm that I have some control over the matter.
I never wanted love, and I haven’t gotten it. At this point, the odds seem stacked against me being capable of that shit at all. Ergo, loving Leni is not possible. This is just… I don’t know what this is, but it isn’t that .
Rattled, I allow my hands to drop back to my sides as I stare unseeingly at the cars flashing by. Enough of this. Making this woman happy isn’t my problem. She made it clear she doesn’t want to fuck me on New Year’s, and despite numerous other faults, I do know how to take no for an answer. I need to get a grip, walk back out there to tell her the nonexistent reason for our field trip was canceled, and head back to work.
When I finally will myself to move, rounding the other side of the brick building, my steps falter at the sight of the passenger seat of my truck. Leni isn’t where I left her, but I don’t have to look far to find where she’s gone. My heart is lodged in my throat as I move through the parking lot, rounding the back of the vehicle to see her clearly.
Leni is perched on the tailgate, knees dangling over the edge, and that fucking skirt bunched indecently high on her thighs. In one hand is a small dish of soft ice cream, and as her eyes meet mine, she brings the spoon to her plump lips, wrapping them around the white plastic.
My dick is going to fall off at this rate. For fuck’s sake.
“Hi,” she says mildly, and I was so busy staring at her, I didn’t realize there was a second dish at her side until she holds it out to me.
It would be rude not to sit with her and eat it, right?
Wordlessly, I draw closer, reaching out to take the ice cream from her hand. The truck shifts under my weight as I heave myself onto the tailgate beside her, gazing out at the overgrown field bordering the parking lot. Behind us, a speaker crackles to life, and a bored woman’s voice echoes over our heads, “Order thirty-one!”
“It’s a little early, don’t you think?” I ask, even as I bring a spoonful of the swirled chocolate and vanilla to my mouth. It’s not something I’ve eaten for years, favoring higher-end treats on the occasions I craved an indulgence. This is good though, better even. My childhood was mainly shit, but the taste of this reminds me of hot, sticky summer evenings, scraped knees, and fireflies dancing around bicycles as I rode into town with my friends.
As I look over at her, Leni shrugs, helping herself to another spoonful. It’s difficult to tear my eyes away, but even when I manage it, I’m hyperaware of her sitting just a foot away from me.
“I got an email,” I lie, turning the plastic spoon between my fingers. “The groundbreaking was pushed to next week. We can go back to E&V. I’m sorry to have wasted your morning.”
While I would hardly consider myself a dishonest man, I’ve never had a problem spinning a web of bullshit if the need arose. So, why do these words taste like ash on my tongue?
At my side, Leni hums, and I can’t resist turning to watch her scrape the bottom of the dish with her spoon, bringing the last helping of ice cream to her lips. “Okay,” she acknowledges at last, her eyes on the field before us.
What is she thinking right now?
I swallow. “We can sit for a while. If you aren’t in a rush.” Just for something to do with myself, I take another bite.
She nods slowly and turns to face me, the ends of her hair tangling around her face as they’re caught by the summer breeze. “I’d like that.”
I’m not sure if it’s my imagination or not, but I could swear there is something in her eyes that wasn’t there this morning.