Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Sam
They weren’t you.
Those words played over and over in her mind all through dinner and kept her up well past the time she would have normally been in bed.
Which meant she slept through both of her alarms, and woke up to Dylan pounding on her bedroom door and calling her name.
“Sam? Your alarm has been going off for like half an hour. You okay in there?”
“Fuck! Yes!” Reaching over, she jabbed a finger at the button to turn the alarm off and jumped out of bed. A quick glance at the time on her phone told her she had about fifteen minutes to get out the front door, so no time for a shower.
Dry shampoo and extra deodorant for the win.
It took her ten minutes to get through a much shorter version of her morning routine and to throw on the outfit she’d thankfully laid out for herself the night before. Which only gave her five minutes to make her coffee, grab her purse and laptop, and head out the door.
But when she stepped into the kitchen, Dylan was snapping the lid onto her favorite travel cup. Glancing up, he smiled before holding it out to her. “The medium-roast k-cup, too much cream and way too much sugar. To go.”
Too grateful for the time he’d saved her to argue, she hurried across the kitchen to take the cup, but she allowed herself a moment to taste test just in case she needed to add something to it before she left.
Nope. Perfect.
How the hell did he do that?
Since she didn’t have time to grill him on his knowledge of her coffee-drinking habits, she just flashed a grateful smile. “Thanks. You’re a lifesaver.”
“You’re welcome. Just part of being a good Daddy.”
“I do not have time for that argument right now, so if you want to fight with me it’s going to have to wait until I get home from work. Or you get home. Whichever comes first. Last? Oh my god, I have to go. Thanks again for the coffee!”
Without waiting for a response, she all but ran to the front door to slip on her shoes, then grabbed her computer case and purse. According to the clock in her car, she made it with one minute to spare.
Unfortunately, she lost that minute and nearly sixty more thanks to an accident on the interstate.
On any other day, it would have been an annoying inconvenience.
But when she was supposed to be in a meeting at eight o’clock on the dot, it was damn near catastrophic.
Thank god she wasn’t presenting until later in the meeting, but needless to say, her day was not off to the best start.
She managed to get her computer docked and logged into the meeting a solid five minutes before her turn to present. If there was a God, or some higher power, her boss would be too wrapped up in the meeting to notice she’d slipped in nearly half an hour late.
No such luck.
Chase:
The workday begins at 8 am, Samantha.
Ignoring the message, she pulled up the files she needed for her part of the presentation on the bank’s proposal to build a brand-new online banking platform from scratch.
The numbers did not favor the decision in the least, but twenty years in the industry had taught her that the numbers wouldn’t matter nearly as much as they should.
Everyone wanted her to find and present the data, but nobody wanted to actually listen to it.
Corporate America at its finest.
At least there weren’t any major glitches with her presentation. A couple of the higher-ups wanted to argue her conclusions, but she’d come prepared to back up her findings with data and more data. By the time the meeting ended at ten, she was more than ready for a break.
But when she turned away from her computer, Chase was there, blocking the doorway with his hands on his hips looking every bit like a recalcitrant toddler.
“Care to explain why you were nearly half an hour late this morning, Mrs. Fleming?”
Care to go fuck yourself, Mr. Reinhardt? That was what she wanted to say. But like most women in the workforce, she was well trained in the art of smiling through the bullshit, so she painted a polite one on her face as she rose from her chair. “Traffic. There was an accident.”
“You should leave yourself enough time to account for such things.”
She had an extra twenty-five minutes built into her schedule every day, for that exact reason.
Without traffic, her commute was only about twenty minutes.
But she never left later than seven-fifteen, even on days like today when she overslept.
There was no fucking way she was going to leave her house at six-thirty every day, just on the off-chance she ran into extra heavy traffic.
Unfortunately, middle management didn’t care about any of that. Or at least men like Chase Reinhardt didn’t care. So she simply kept her polite smile in place and nodded in agreement. “It won’t happen again.”
Chase at least had the good sense to move out of her way when she stepped forward, though he kept the disapproving scowl in place.
And her day just seemed to get worse from there.
Dylan
So far, interning at one of the largest biotechnical firms in the world was far less glamorous than he’d pictured it in his head.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to pay his dues and put the time in.
But it still made him itchy that he couldn’t just dive into the actual work and was instead spending his time fetching coffee and running other ridiculous errands.
That was the gig, though, and at least he got to spend some time listening to people talk about the kind of research he dreamed of doing someday soon.
Dropping into one of the surprisingly plush chairs in the break room, he pulled out his phone and swiped open his contact list. After last night, he’d decided to give Sam a bit of space this morning to think things over, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t send her a quick text, let her know he was thinking about her.
And ensure she was thinking about him, too.
Hey, beauti—
No. That was cheesy.
Did you make it to work on time?
Hmmm. That could potentially come across bossier than he was really intending. Not that he didn’t plan on bossing the fuck out of her once she finally agreed to be his Little girl, but for now he probably needed to tone it down.
Dylan:
How’s it going?
There. Not too cheesy, not too bossy.
Maybe.
Why the hell hadn’t anyone bothered to mentor him on how to send halfway decent texts? If it was any other woman, he’d hit Ethan up for advice. But somehow, he didn’t think his buddy would be willing to help Dylan get his mother into bed.
Annoyed with himself, he hit send, then tossed the phone onto the table beside the chair and bit into the sandwich he’d snagged from the on-site deli. It was surprisingly tasty, which almost made up for all the cups of coffee he’d had to fetch over the course of the morning.
When his phone buzzed, he snatched it up and grinned when he saw her name on the preview. But the grin faded as he read her message.
Sam:
Shitty. You?
Damn. He’d been hoping her day had gotten better after the mishap this morning when she’d overslept.
Dylan:
If I never see another cup of coffee again, it’ll be too soon. Got any plans for dinner?
Couldn’t hurt to remind her he was interested in her as more than just a housemate and his friend’s mother, right?
Wrong, he realized when her next message came through.
Sam:
This may come as a shock to you, but my world doesn’t actually revolve around the kitchen. I’m sure you can figure dinner out on your own.
Frowning at his phone, he reread his message. Obviously she thought he’d been asking what she was planning to make for dinner, which couldn’t have been further from the truth.
Well, no better time than the present to flex those Daddy muscles.
Dylan:
I think we’ve had a miscommunication, Samantha. I didn’t ask what you were planning to cook, I asked if you had plans. Because if you don’t, I was thinking we could both use a drink and a nice meal neither of us has to cook.
Phone still in one hand, he took another bite of his sandwich as he waited for her response.
Sam:
Oh.
He couldn’t help but grin, imagining her sitting in her own break room, her face turning bright red as she read his message.
Dylan:
Is that all you have to say for yourself?
That was definitely pushing the envelope a bit, but he was curious to see how she would respond. If she told him to go fuck himself, he’d back off.
A little. For now.
Sam:
Sorry. Like I said, shitty day. Not really feeling up to going out.
Well, it definitely wasn’t a ‘fuck you’.
Dylan:
Apology accepted. How about I order us a pizza and we can watch a movie or something?
Sam:
What are you up to, Dylan?
Dylan:
What? A guy can’t do something nice for the girl he likes?
Sam:
I’m not a girl, I’m a forty-year-old woman. I can buy my own pizza, thank you very much.
He’d expected her to be stubborn, but damn if it didn’t make his palm itch all the same.
Dylan:
Then you can buy. But I get to pick the movie.
It took nearly ten minutes for her to answer again, long enough he was already halfway back to his new boss’s office before his phone buzzed again.
Sam:
Fine. You can buy me a damn pizza. But I’m warning you now, I’m not going to be good company.
Fine by him. He loved a good challenge.