Chapter 17
Samantha
As the plane approached LaGuardia, I closed my laptop and put it away. I ignored the empty seat beside me, where my boss was supposed to be sitting.
It was Thursday. Aidan had left Chicago sometime while I slept on Tuesday, leaving me a simple text: Gone back to New York. Hope you feel better. I’ll be in touch. Enjoy your day off. A.
Of course, the first thing I wondered was whether his change of plans had something to do with me. Was he upset that I got sick on the day of the partners’ meeting? Then I realized that was egotistical and ridiculous. Aidan was a powerful man who could, and did, do anything he wanted. None of his decisions revolved around me.
We had corresponded since by text and email, and everything seemed fine. I had taken his advice and enjoyed my day off yesterday, spending the day with my parents in their small suburban bungalow, watching golf and talking gardening with my dad, going shopping with my mom. They had cooked me a big dinner—Dad fired up the barbecue—and fed me to bursting. All in all, it had been a great day.
Aidan had said he would take the day off, too, to visit family. But he’d gone back to New York instead. I wondered why—but that was none of my business.
As the plane taxied toward the terminal, I pulled my wrap around me and tried to push down the flutter of unease in my stomach. My migraine was long gone now, but there was no doubt it had been a weird moment between Aidan and me. I remembered the way it had felt when he put his arms around me—the texture of his fine wool suit against my thin T-shirt, the warmth of his body underneath. I remembered how he had smelled, the line of his clean-shaven jaw. I’d never been that close to him before. In the moment, I’d been afraid of throwing up, but thinking back on it, I could remember the details now that I wasn’t under a fog of pain and humiliation.
He’d put me in bed. He’d rubbed my neck. I’d put my hand on his wrist.
And he’d come back to my room sometime when I was sleeping and left his copy of my key on the table.
All of it made things awkward now, to say the least. How were we supposed to work face-to-face?
Maybe we would just move on, ignore what had happened. That was probably best. We were boss and employee. The neck massage while I was wearing nothing but panties and a T-shirt could fade into the past where it would hopefully be forgotten.
I winced to myself, standing up to grab my bag from the overhead. There was no way I was forgetting that, even if Aidan did. I’d remember the feel of his fingers massaging my neck forever. Talk about embarrassing.
You’re a professional, Samantha. Act like one.
I could. I would.
And if I wanted my boss’s hands all over me, rubbing more than just my neck, then I’d just have to suffer.
As it turned out,I didn’t have to worry about how Aidan and I would work together. Because he was avoiding me.
He had back-to-back meetings out of the office the first day I was back. Then he flew to Atlanta for a meeting. Everything was done by email and text, the messages concise and impersonal. Polite. He flew to Denver for another meeting. A week in, I got the idea. We were going to pretend that Chicago never happened, and we were going to do it by never being in the same room again.
It was exactly like the time after the meeting with the Egerton brothers. Obviously the Man in Black had some hang-ups when it came to talking to his assistant directly. Okay, last time I’d avoided him a little bit, too. And maybe I had been letting it slide for a week because it was easier. But it still made me angry. I hadn’t done anything wrong in Chicago, and neither had he. We hadn’t done anything together. Nothing at all.
Absolutely nothing, when I wanted to do so much.
Another week passed, and I didn’t see my boss. He took meetings in New Jersey and Washington, and when he was in Manhattan he came in to the office at some ungodly hour and left before I got in. Then—I realized when I saw the timestamps on his emails—he’d come in again after I left for the day, and he worked into the evening. All so that he wouldn’t have to be in the same room with me.
It was ridiculous. It didn’t matter that the work of Tower VC got done just as efficiently as it ever had; it was still stupid. It had to stop.
So one Friday night, I left work at six. I pretended I was going home, but instead I went down the street to the bookstore and browsed for an hour, picking out a novel to read and buying it. Then I walked back to the Tower VC offices and let myself in.
The office was dark and empty except for a beam of light coming from Aidan’s office. His door was ajar and his desk lamp was on. I crossed the open office space and stood in his doorway.
Aidan was sitting at his desk, his laptop open in front of him. He was wearing his customary black, though his jacket was flung over a chair, his tie was loosened, and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone. He heard me coming, and his dark gaze fixed on me.
There was a second of vertigo as I looked at him. He looked good, but he wasn’t as put together as usual. His hair was mussed slightly, and there was a shadow of beard on his jaw, as if he hadn’t shaved in a few days. The cuffs of his sleeves were roughly rolled up. The effect was so hot it made my knees weak. I did my best not to let on.
“Good evening,” I said to him.
What was Aidan’s expression as he looked at me? Anger? Annoyance? Something else? He wasn’t happy to see me, and he didn’t pretend otherwise. “Samantha, what are you doing here?” he asked bluntly. “It’s seven o’clock on Friday night.”
I crossed my arms. I was still wearing my trench coat, my purse and the bookstore bag slung over my shoulder. “It seems this is the only time I can get a meeting with my boss.”
He scowled. “If you needed a meeting with me, you should have scheduled one.”
“Would you have come?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Come on, Aidan. Ever since Chicago, we’ve been acting like two divorced parents who have to trade off the kids every weekend.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Nothing happened in Chicago.”
There was a second of silence, heavy and thick. I pictured his hand on the back of my neck, his fingers moving over my skin. I knew he was picturing the same thing.
“I agree,” I said. “Nothing happened in Chicago.”
His voice was harsh. “Then why are you angry with me?”
“Because I haven’t seen you in two weeks.”
“We’re not married, the last I checked.”
God, he was being an ass. I rolled my eyes. “I’m aware of that, and I thank God for it, believe me.”
Aidan pushed his chair back, laced his hands together over his stomach. Those hands. His strong wrists. My gaze dropped to them, and I pulled it away by force, made myself look at his face again. That was no better, because now I was looking at his cheekbones, the line of his mouth. The stubble on his jaw. Wondering what it would feel like on my skin.
“I don’t see a problem,” Aidan said. His voice was icy cold. I’d heard him use that voice in meetings when he was particularly annoyed. Most of his employees shook with fear when he used that voice.
“Then you’re blind,” I said. Never, in my entire career as an executive assistant, had I ever spoken to a CEO like this. It had never even crossed my mind. Yet with Aidan, the words came out. “If you don’t want me to work for you anymore, just say so. It can be a mutual agreement.”
“Why the fuck wouldn’t I want you to work for me?” Now he sounded angry. “When the fuck have I ever said anything of the kind?”
“Does this kind of thing work on your other employees?” I asked him. “Acting one way, then pretending the other person is crazy? Well, you can play your game if you like, but you’ll be playing it alone. If you can’t acknowledge a problem, then I’ll do it myself. And I quit.”
I turned away from the door, lightheaded. I hadn’t intended to quit. It wasn’t my plan. But there was no way I could work for a man who couldn’t be in the same room with me. I couldn’t even blame him entirely—it was hard for me to be in the same room with him, too. I wanted him so badly, and I couldn’t have him.
I started across the dark open office space, trying not to wobble as I walked. Behind me, I heard Aidan’s chair move, his laptop snap shut. The lamp went off and his door closed. His legs were longer than mine, his stride faster, and in seconds he had caught up with me. “Samantha. What the fuck?”
Normally, Aidan didn’t swear when he spoke to me. Now he couldn’t seem to stop. “I was clear, I think,” I said. I kept walking.
His hand touched my elbow. It wasn’t rough—it wasn’t even a grab—but my body stopped as surely as if he’d spun me around. That was how much control he had over me without trying. When I looked up at him, his dark eyes were blazing.
“You are not fucking quitting,” he said.
“You have no say in it,” I told him.
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t.” I turned again, moving harshly, even though he wasn’t holding me. Because it felt like he was.
As I moved, my bookstore bag fell to the floor, the book I’d bought spilling out. Before I could stop him, Aidan had stooped and picked it up. He looked at the title, at the back, and I felt my cheeks get hot. I’d bought an erotic romance, this one particularly dark. The title was One Night with the Devil, and the cover featured a photograph of a woman’s elegant hands, bound at the wrists with a thick red silk ribbon.
Aidan turned the book over, looking at the back. I knew he was seeing the words taken and possessed and unimaginable pleasure. I knew he was seeing the words in bold: I barely knew him, yet I couldn’t resist his command. The author’s name was Melina Cherry.
I stood there with my hands clenched, refusing to feel ashamed. I was a grown woman, and I could read whatever I wanted. “Give that back,” I said.
He handed it to me. He didn’t scoff or laugh; he didn’t even have a derisive look in his eye. Instead, he looked at me with the same intensity he had before. “Is that how you get off?” he asked. “With books?”
That was tonight’s plan. I was pent up and wanted an orgasm, but that was none of his business. “Would you rather I do it with strange men?” I snapped, shoving the book back in the bag. “Would that be more acceptable to you?”
He looked furious, and for a second my breath stopped. “It isn’t acceptable to me at all.”
I made my voice work. “Well, that’s too bad. Once again, you don’t get a say.”
“I know I don’t.” Aidan stepped forward, closer to me. I didn’t step back. I could smell him, that deep, masculine scent, and this close I could see the stubble on his jaw. I clenched my hands again so I wouldn’t touch it. “Do you know why I’ve been avoiding you?” he asked me, his voice low with anger.
“In fact, I don’t. Why don’t you enlighten me?”
His jaw flexed. “I’ve been avoiding you because in Chicago, I wanted to fuck you raw. That’s why I left. That’s why I’ve stayed away from you.”
The words hung there, stark and dirty. I couldn’t breathe.
“You wanted it, too,” Aidan said. “You can say you didn’t, but you would be lying. Now who’s pretending that problems don’t exist?”
My lips parted. I wanted to deny it, but I couldn’t think of a single thing to say, because I couldn’t lie. Not now. Not to Aidan.
I put the book away and rubbed my hand over my face. “Aidan, we have a problem.”
“It’s only a problem if you quit.”
“We can’t work like this.”
“We can, because you’re not going anywhere.”
I dropped my hand and shook my head. “I don’t see how it can work. We can barely be in the same room. How are we supposed to work together? It’s better if I leave.”
His voice was a growl. “You are not leaving.”
“It isn’t because I want to,” I admitted. “I don’t. I like the job. I like the company. I even like you, when you’re not being an ass.”
“I’m rarely an ass.” He sounded so fucking sure.
I looked up at him, at his gorgeous face in the shadows of the darkened office. I’d missed his face. I could admit it. Seeing Aidan was one of the things I looked forward to every day. The first thing I looked forward to every day, to be honest. Not setting eyes on him for too long had made me unsettled and cranky.
And now, if I left, I wasn’t going to see him anymore. Not ever again, unless I looked him up in the tabloids.
“Samantha,” he said gently, as if he was reading my mind.
“Do you know what I think?” I said, the honesty coming out of me again. What did I have to lose? “I think that if you and I were different people, in another place, in another lifetime, this story would have had a different ending.”
Aidan blinked, something flitting behind his dark eyes. “Different people,” he said.
“Yes.” I looked away, thinking of the book in my bag, of the characters. I felt my cheeks go hot again. “If we were just… someone else. Both of us. But we’re not.”
He was quiet for so long that I looked at him again. To my surprise, he didn’t look angry anymore. Instead, there was a spark of something devilish in his eyes.
“What?” I said.
“We can be,” he replied. “Different people, I mean.”
I thought of the book again. Then I remembered my real life, the one I lived every day. It was a nice dream to be someone else, but it wasn’t possible. “We can’t be different people,” I said. “Not forever.”
Aidan’s voice was almost harsh. “Who said anything about forever? We’ll do what the book suggests. You and me. But not you and me at all.”
It hit me, what he was saying. What he was suggesting. One Night With the Devil. The idea started deep in my belly, like fire, and then my whole body felt warm.
Being someone else—someone entirely different—for a little while. One night. With Aidan. Was that the game?
One Night with the Devil.
We were silent for a long moment, looking at each other. I knew he could see my flushed skin, my dilated pupils. I knew he could hear my hurried breath. I’d had so many fantasies about sex with a stranger. If we did this, it would be like living out the fantasy. Except the stranger would be Aidan.
I could think of a million reasons it was a bad idea. But I still couldn’t think of a way to resist.
“It would have to be… for a little while,” I said at last. “And then it would end, and we’d be ourselves again.”
“Agreed.” Aidan’s voice was low and quiet now. He said one more word. “Tomorrow.”
Saturday. I had no plans, except to sit home with my dirty book and fantasize. Why do that when I could do the real thing? “Yes,” I said.
Aidan nodded. He lifted a hand and touched his finger to my jaw—just the lightest brush, as if he couldn’t help himself. It lit my skin like fire.
“Wait for my instructions,” he said, and then he was gone.