Chapter 12 #2
“Fucking fantastic,” I grouse. “What about the staff? Have they been confronted at all?” And by staff I mean Bianca, though Rina told me there was no mention of her name anywhere and the picture they have of us, her face is partially obstructed by her arm and her long, distinguishable hair was up in a bun.
Still, if you know her, you know it’s her.
“Not that I’m aware of, sir. A perimeter has been set up since they’re officially blocking the front of a public building and most staff have been asked to enter through the back using their personal key card.”
“Good. Okay.”
That’s a relief.
“Let’s go.” Hopping into the driver’s side of the car, Axl doesn’t hesitate as he peels out and like a stupid asshole celebrity, I duck down in the passenger seat as we pass the front of my building.
I hate this. I hate everything about this.
I love my family and I’m proud of the foundation, but I just want to do my work without all this other bullshit.
I want to trust the people who enter my life.
I want to date women and I don’t want to have to question their motives.
I want to be able to go to the grocery store or a restaurant in peace without being photographed.
I want to fix tiny human hearts and sail and be with my family and fuck women. That’s it!
Why does that have to be so goddamn impossible?
We pull into the back lot that’s fenced in and partially covered—my mother was no fool when she picked this building—and I breathe out a sigh of relief.
The press can’t come back here. That doesn’t mean they can’t get photographs with long-range lenses, but at least there is some protection for the staff.
Axl and Slash wait until I’m inside before they head around the front of the building, and I take the stairs up to the third level, entering through the back door onto the executive floor. But I stop in my tracks at what I’m hearing coming from the kitchen, hovering right beside it.
“No, I don’t think that’s true,” someone who I think is one of the finance people says.
“I overheard her explaining it to Greta and Charlie this morning and they’re all friends.
She’d have no reason to lie to them. Bianca and Kaplan met up at his place because he was going to help her buy a car since she didn’t know where to go to do that here and he offered to help as her new boss. ”
Huh. Some of the tension in my shoulders ebbs.
She didn’t tell anyone she spent the night after watching a movie at my place or that we had dinner together prior to that.
She told her friends she came over that morning so we could go car shopping.
She made me sound like the good guy. An honorable guy helping out his new assistant.
A warmth I’m unaccustomed to spreads through my veins.
And dammit all if it doesn’t make me like her more than I was already starting to.
I don’t know what I was expecting her to say, but the fact that she isn’t trying to sell some story and is even hiding and downplaying some of what went down between us is not only unexpected but a relief.
I’ve come to anticipate the opposite from women when it comes to me.
“I don’t know,” someone else whose voice I don’t recognize retorts. “They looked awfully cozy and wasn’t that the same outfit she was wearing on Friday?”
“I thought it was a different top. Anyway, we all know the press blows stuff way out of proportion when it comes to the Fritz family. Bianca laughed and said absolutely not when Greta asked if they were secretly dating. I feel for Kaplan. I do. It can’t be easy to have that be your life.”
“But it’s worth it to see the murder on Jenny’s face this morning. I thought she was going to blow a gasket.”
“No kidding.”
The two of them start laughing and I take that as my moment to walk past the kitchen and head for my new office. I haven’t been here since my mother occupied it and from what Bianca said, it looks completely different.
Speaking of… Bianca comes sauntering out of a small office beside mine, a tablet in her face until she glances up and our eyes meet.
She offers me a timid smile and I ignore the way she looks in the snug-fitting burgundy dress she’s wearing that hugs her tits and hits just above her knees with matching sexy as fuck sky-high patent leather heels.
“Good morning, Dr. Fritz. I’m glad to see you made it in safely despite the mob outside.”
“Me too. Is everything ready for the start of the day?” Indifferent, I blow past her, entering my office, aware she’s trailing behind me. She leaves the door open, and I know that’s an intentional move.
“Do you want to talk about the paper yesterday?” Her voice is barely above a whisper. “About the picture of us in it? Because for anyone who asked I told them—”
I hold up a hand, stopping her. “I know what you told them. I overheard someone else talking about it. Thank you for that. And no, I don’t want to talk about it again.”
She nods, smiling a smile at me that has me forgetting about the morning I’ve had and the fact that I’m currently working a job I have no desire to work.
“I hope you like your office,” she says, a hint of nerves hitting her face and just like that, spell broken.
Glancing around, I take everything in, impressed that she threw this together so quickly and somehow, without knowing much about me and prior to coming into my home, hit my style perfectly.
Everything is a combination of antique and modern, distressed, and clean lines.
From the desk to the bookshelf to the table and chairs in the corner to the worn-looking leather sofa.
I catch sight of the metal piece she made for me, the sculpture of Typhon that’s sitting prominently on the top shelf of the bookcase and grin. It’s better in person than it was in the picture. She has real talent. And she made that for me. Which means she was thinking about me.
I like the thought of that entirely too much.
“It’ll do,” I mutter blandly as I set my bag down and fall onto the leather chair behind the desk. “I trust your move yesterday went well?”
I wanted to help like the stupid asshole I seem to be with her but restrained myself.
I haven’t looked up her address in her HR file.
Haven’t even looked her up, though I’ve been tempted.
My mother said her background check was pristine and I don’t question that.
My mother is thorough, and Bianca is well, Bianca.
But the temptation to learn more about her is growing like an itch I need to scratch despite my efforts to squash it. I don’t want her around but now she’s unavoidable. At least until I go back to the hospital next week, and she stays here.
“It went very well, thank you. I don’t have a lot of stuff here other than some suitcases but the rental furniture I picked out came on time.”
I wonder if she feels it. This tense, swirling energy between us. Or if it’s just me.
“Great. Are we done with the bullshit morning chatter now or is actual work not part of your agenda for the day?”
Annoyance and frustration strike a path across her face, causing her eyes to narrow and her lips to purse.
I know I’m being an asshole. I know I’ve been hot and cold and everything in between, but I can no longer be anything but this with her.
Here especially. It’s the only way I’ll survive her working for me.
She affects me and I can’t stand it. I love verbally sparring with her, which is also half the reason I’m an asshole.
The other is self-preservation. The way she looks today in her dress with her dark hair down and messy—like she just had sex—is driving me wild.
Her curves. Those luscious fucking curves are all I picture when I close my eyes at night.
All I think about when I take my cock in my hand.
I return her withering stare.
“Actually, I was coming in here to inform you that your first video conference call starts in less than ten minutes, followed by a meeting with the grant review team. After that is a budget and event planning session for the three charity events coming up.”
“And I’m required to attend that one?” Why couldn’t Rina have been born first? Or even Oliver since he’d be better at this nonsense than I am. I have no interest. Nor do I know what I’m doing with any of this. What the hell do I know about planning events?
“Yes. It would be helpful for me if you did so I know how you operate in those, and I can eventually take over that position for you. Would you like me to get you some coffee?”
“Are you going to spit in it?”
“I was thinking of blowing my nose into it instead since the last thing I’d ever want to do with you is swap spit.”
The air crackles with electricity, a storm brewing between us, and I know I’m not the only one who feels this.
It’s all over her, from the heavy pants of her breaths to the way her eyes glitter and darken.
I’d consider this our own brand of foreplay if I wasn’t positive our interactions will never go beyond this.
Still, that doesn’t stop all the available blood in my body from traveling straight to my dick when she licks her lips.
“Coffee. Minus the snot. Black.”
“Like your soul.”
“Like my soul, Echidna.” With that she turns to leave, only I stop her with, “Starting next week, I’m going to need you to work from the hospital at least three mornings a week.”
Because apparently, I’m a man who can’t help himself and lives for pain.
The door to my office slams shut behind her and it isn’t until I turn on the camera for my video conference that I realize I’m smiling.