Chapter Seven #3
She wasn’t behind at all. She’d spent most of last night working in an effort not to think about Agustin and what it would feel like if things that first night had gone differently.
Her reaction should be fading by now. She should be able to set it aside, but the more they ignored what had happened, the more it seemed to grow inside of her. A fire that could not be doused.
She had never felt such a thing. She didn’t understand it. Her one and only long-term relationship had been…stable. A meeting of two like-minded people who wanted the same things out of life. Something safe that might provide stability.
Her entire life goal was stability, not some wildfire obsession that time did not seem to fix.
Particularly as Agustin became more and more adept at taking care of Julia. The sight of the small child in his impressive arms, the way he murmured soft words to her, showed a completely different side to her taciturn, private, cold boss.
She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to consider him cold again, and what a disaster that was. To see him as a whole person, to feel things for him.
This was not stability. This was not simply being needed and useful. This was a dangerous tightrope toward unpredictable, uncontrollable complication.
“You will simply walk the damn tightrope and not fall then,” she muttered to herself.
She got up out of bed. Julia was fast asleep and, if she kept to her pattern, would likely sleep for a good six hours without waking. Mara wouldn’t go down to the sitting room and work—that would be too far away, and she wouldn’t hear Julia if she awoke—but Mara needed…something. Movement.
So as not to wake the baby, she went to the door and eased it open before stepping out into the hallway.
She left the bedroom door open so that she would hear Julia if she awoke since it was her turn with the baby.
Perhaps she could pace a bit, right outside in the hall.
Do some minor exercises or stretches. That wouldn’t make any noise.
She just needed to move her body in a way that would make her tired enough to shut off her brain.
There was something else that might quiet her mind momentarily considering her body raged, but she refused to do anything about it in that regard. Not if it raged because of her boss. No.
So she paced the hallway outside her door. Down to the window and back to her door, making sure not to venture farther to Agustin’s.
Right there. He was in that room, sleeping no doubt. What did a man such as Agustin wear to bed?
Anything?
Get a grip, she told herself. When she made it to the window at the end of the hall this time, she paused there, gripped the windowsill and looked out into the inky dark.
Except the moon shone out there, down on the sea below.
It should settle her, this pretty little piece of paradise.
She inhaled slowly, exhaled even slower.
She just needed to calm down. She was certainly in charge of her own body, her own reactions, her own choices.
She always had been. Nothing changed. She wouldn’t allow it.
Sex was hardly worth all this torment. And sex with her boss would ruin her life.
She would no longer be seen as the in-charge assistant who could handle any problem.
She would no longer be a tool, useful and needed.
She would be a woman, and life had taught her one thing about that: women were very easily discarded when they offered nothing useful to the mix.
It didn’t have to be good or right or fair to be true.
She heard a creak and then another. Footsteps, coming up the staircase. The quiet almost imperceptible thud of feet hitting floor.
The only person who would be coming up those stairs was Agustin. He must not be in bed at all.
She couldn’t let him see her out here. So she pressed herself against the wall and into the shadows. Nothing positive could possibly come from another late night run-in.
He was to marry the countess. Potentially raise a child with the countess—surely he was considering Mara’s suggestion to do just that. It just made sense. Even if it was a marriage in name only, it was a marriage. Potentially a parenting situation.
She could hardly indulge in all this physical reaction even without any of that going on. Add it in and it would be worse.
Everything was already worse. Because she kept expecting it to get easier, a blip to be forgotten. Every second they were together the moment seemed to live in the room with them, a ghost of something that could be.
“It cannot be,” she whispered to herself firmly. Then she closed her eyes, willing him to go into his room and not notice her at all.
But he did not stop at his door, he went to hers, paused—most likely because it was open. Then he continued on, toward the window. Toward her.
“I am fascinated by the fact you talk to yourself, Ms. Valdez,” he said quietly as he approached.
Oh God. But he’d called her Ms. Valdez. Not Mara. This was business. This was work. He was her boss. Nothing more.
Fascinated. No, there could be no fascinating going on here. Everything was already difficult enough.
“Talking to oneself is scientifically proven to be good for the brain,” she responded primly in a quiet voice that would not carry into her room and wake Julia.
He made a considering noise. She couldn’t make out the expression on his face in the shadows, but she could hear his approach. “What cannot be?” he asked in a low voice that did nothing to neutralize the situation happening inside of her.
Perhaps this was all a dream.
Then he stepped into the little swath of moonlight she’d been trying to enjoy before his arrival.
Even though he had not been in his room, he was dressed for bed.
A T-shirt skimmed over the impressive muscle of his chest and abdomen, and loose lounging pants hung low at his hips.
His hair was a little mussed, in a way she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen.
This was not the put-together Mr. Delgado she had worked directly for these past two years. This was the man underneath. Agustin.
It does not matter. He is still your boss. This is still your job, your livelihood, your life at stake.
“Questions are meant to be answered, Ms. Valdez.” He drew out her name like a caress. Or a curse.
Both, definitely both.
“What cannot be?” he demanded, closer still. So close she could see nothing but his impressive form, half in shadows, half silver in moonlight.
She should look away, push away, not let herself be trapped against this wall by all she could not allow. But she was frozen to the spot, to his gaze. To him.
“This,” she whispered.
“I agree. It cannot be. And yet I lie in my room thinking of nothing but this.” He looked angry. “I dream of you. Nothing solves it. What am I meant to do with such a…such an inconvenience?”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. Inconvenience? What an inconsequential word for it all.
“But finding you here, I am coming to the growing conclusion that the only way out is through.”
Mara shook her head. She tried to speak, to deny, but she could not force the words out. Through. No, there could be no through.
“It is the unknown that haunts us,” he said, his tone recognizable because he used it at work when he could not be swayed. When he had made his choice. When everything that came next was inevitable in his mind. “So we will know it.”
She tried to refuse. Or she thought she was trying to refuse. But her voice would not work. Not when she could feel the heat of his body pumping off him. Not when he reached out and sank his hands into her hair.
Electric sparks seemed to rain over her skin at the touch.
“I cannot stop thinking about the way you look with your hair down. Free.” His fingers entwined in the unruly curls she always let loose at night because the taut twists she kept them in for work gave her a headache.
But his tight grip offered an ache that centered lower, throbbed deep within her as he tilted her head up by her hair.
“You have ruined this.”
She had never heard his voice sound ragged, and it thrilled her, even knowing it shouldn’t. Couldn’t. “I didn’t do anything,” she managed. She would not be blamed for whatever this was. She hadn’t changed the game. He was the one touching her.