Chapter 6 #2
“I’m going to have words with her.” She propped her chin on her fist. “Which do you think is better? ‘I’m curious if his STD results have come in’ or ‘how is he acclimating after that prison stint?’”
I didn’t expect to laugh. Then again, I’d been caught between annoyance, laughter, and lust since the first time her name appeared in my inbox. Had it only been a week?
The blond walked away from her booth. Had she overheard us talking about bathroom breaks?
Ryan popped up from her seat.
“No. Don’t. Ryan.” I lurched over the table and grabbed her hip when she started to take a step.
My fingers tingled as I upped the pressure. Heat flashed up my wrist. At this point, I wasn’t even surprised.
Touching Ryan was an electrical event every damn time.
She gazed down at me through her darkly lashed eyes. “If you wanted to touch, you just had to ask.”
I didn’t let go. If anything, I gripped that soft handful of flesh harder. Possibly leaving marks she’d remember later. Maybe even burns.
Surely I couldn’t be the only one who felt that incredible warmth every time we touched? I didn’t dare ask, but from the way she trembled faintly in my hold, she had to be feeling something.
Her throat moved and she slicked her tongue over her lips. “Don’t like the STD question? I could pretend to be an ex of his and slap her and call her nasty names. That’d probably work too.”
“Sit. Please.”
“You going to unhand me first?”
I did, reluctantly. I took my seat again as she sat in hers, and then let out a long breath. “I appreciate the gesture. Truly. But he’s your boss too.”
“Temporarily. And if he’s a sea cretin, maybe I don’t want to work for him. That ever occur to you?”
“No, because I didn’t know you had an aversion to sea cretins.”
“I do. They give me hives.” She shuddered. “Easy enough to tell someone you’re not feeling it anymore and you need to go.”
I picked up the napkin that had fallen off my lap and spread it over my trousers. “Yes, when there isn’t a million-dollar fortune at risk. That makes it harder.”
She didn’t even blink. “Are you excusing what he’s doing? You didn’t look like you were cool with it when you sat down. Or is that the bro code kicking in?”
“Bro code? He’s my father. The woman he’s hurting is my mother.”
“Then?” She snapped out her napkin over her lap.
“He’s a divorce lawyer. I’m not going to say we become immune to endings, but we definitely see how transient relationships can be.” I jerked a shoulder. “People aren’t forever, but money lasts a good long while.”
“Nothing is forever. Especially not money. You can’t take it with you. Unless someone forgot to tell you that.”
“No, but you can’t take supposed love with you either.”
“Supposed, huh?” She shook her head, but not as if she disapproved of what I was saying. More like she was disappointed in me.
Hot on the heels of my father’s deception, that stung.
“Let’s just say I’m not a believer in Valentine’s Day. This is not helping my outlook.”
“You sound jaded as hell.”
I had been privy to far too many broken relationships, many of which ended due to tawdry extramarital affairs, frequently with staff. No wonder I took work boundaries so seriously.
I smoothed my hand over my napkin. “Yeah, well, do my job for as long as I have and see how you feel.”
“So don’t do it anymore. If it doesn’t feed your soul, let it go.”
The laugh that cracked out of my chest was loud enough to make the couple beside us look our way. For all I knew, my father had heard me too.
I didn’t care. I wasn’t the one who should be hiding, even if I’d traveled to the other side of Crescent Cove in case anyone saw me lunching with my brand new assistant and assumed things they shouldn’t.
Guess the joke was on me.
“If you’re able to construct your life that way, you’re lucky. I’m not. A role was waiting for me when I was born, and I stepped into it.”
The compassion that softened her expression made my shoulder blades itch. “Your brother must have too. But he enjoys his work.”
“Oh, you know that much about him already, hmm?”
She gave a dainty shrug, and her spaghetti straps slipped a fraction lower on her shoulders. “We chatted for a few minutes.”
“Before he asked you out.”
“Actually, you asked me out before he did.” She smiled serenely as our server rolled a covered cart to our table. “To lunch,” she added while I stared at her.
I waited to speak until the server set down our lunches and left. “This isn’t a date. It’s a working lunch.”
“Right.”
“It is,” I insisted.
“Silly me. Here I thought you were staking your claim, in deed if not words. You know, pissing on my tree before your brother could.”
I didn’t know what part of that to unpack first. “Absolutely not. Fraternization is vigorously frowned upon at Shaw, Shaw, and Shaw, Attorneys at Law.”
Hypocrite. The voice in my head was even louder than the drowning waves of lust this unusual woman inspired in me.
“It’s frowned upon in marriages too, I believe, and I know of one Shaw who likes to bend the rules there.”
“One too many rules. The blond in question is also his admin.”
Her exotically arched eyebrow spiked higher. “Not only did he go for another cookie jar, but he has doubly sticky fingers. And you thought you were a bad boy.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I hadn’t done anything as out of character as my behavior today since college, and look where that had gotten me?
She took a bite of her steak and let out an orgasmic moan.
“Good?” I asked in a strangled voice.
It went well with my equally strangled cock being imprinted by the angry teeth of my fly. My ardor should have cooled thanks to this ugly situation I’d found myself in, and yet…no. Nothing had cooled at all.
“Delicious.” She batted her ridiculously gorgeous eyes at me. “When does the work start?”
Instead of digging into my lunch, I withdrew a long sheaf of folded papers from the inside pocket of my suit jacket. Wordlessly, I passed them across the table.
Her eyebrow did that artful arch again as she began paging through the hefty document.
Granted, only the first page or so consisted of genuine tasks I expected her to complete this week.
The last two pages had been borrowed from a free legal resource I’d found online with tips to make your law office work smarter, not harder.
One suggestion was to use a white board and Post-It notes to visually shift tasks from the to do column to the done column as things were completed. That seemed like something she’d like.
Especially since they recommended including notes with inspirational woo-woo phrases among the work ones. Pithy quotes such as, “when life gets tough, turn your lemons into lemonade and add a garnish.”
How terribly helpful. But we were all just trying to set our souls free. Or some such bullshit.
“I’m only your assistant for a week.”
“I know and there are so many issues of Cosmopolitan to read. And all ten toes with nails to repaint.” I took a bite of my orange chicken and nearly let out a moan of my own before going back for more.
“You’re the one who flounced this morning before giving me actual work to do.
Although it took some time to craft this, didn’t it?
” She shook her head. “Make sure the water carafe in the waiting lounge is replenished twice daily? Seriously? I thought you’d mention something about that godawful filing system.
I don’t know how you find anything in that records room.
Dusty boxes of old client information going back to when, 1975? Those people could be dead.”
“My father started the firm in 1992. And those files are confidential. Did you sign an NDA?”
“Did you give me one?”
I could answer that in the negative. Upon first sight of her, my system had gone into lockdown.
Potential lust override. Abort!
“You’ll be signing one as soon as we get back.” I started plowing through my baby peas, since my chicken was now merely a puddle of orange glaze.
If I’d been alone, I just might have licked the plate. Since I couldn’t lick her and still face myself in the morning, why not?
“Oh, goody. My excitement is palpable. Can you tell?” She pushed aside the sheaf of documents and went back to her steak, eating with a gusto I had to appreciate.
I less appreciated how she downed two glasses of wine in short order, but perhaps her soul felt trapped. I didn’t see how since her dress was so…airy, but I was determined not to notice.
Even if I caught quite a few men checking her out. I may or may not have incinerated them with the power of my mind as they ambled past our table.
“Do you have a suggestion about improving the filing system?”
I didn’t think she’d have an answer. Or that she’d be so animated in sharing it that the sparkling crystals on her many necklaces would move with her body, catching and refracting little bursts of light. I was mesmerized by those shifting hues against the warmth of her skin.
Couldn’t help imagining wrapping her wrists in thin, fragile chains laced with those stones and pulling on them as I drove into her from behind.
“Are you staring at my tits?” she demanded, breaking the spell. “I’m not saying I mind, but if we’ve reached dessert, I’d appreciate more eye candy than your red tie.”
The cleared throat beside us was my warning someone had approached us—and not from the direction I’d anticipated. My father was staring at me with clear disapproval.
Me. As if I was out to lunch with my girlfriend while stepping out on my wife.
“Good afternoon. I didn’t expect to see you here, Preston.”
“I just bet,” I muttered.
My father extended a hand toward Ryan. “And you are?”
“Ryan Moon.” She didn’t hold out her hand, just glowered in his direction. “I know all about you.”
“Oh, is that so? I know about you too. You’re my son’s assistant.”
“Temporary,” we said in unison.
“Even so, lines exist for a reason.”
I couldn’t say I was struck speechless by his hypocrisy—okay, yes, I was struck speechless by his hypocrisy.
Ryan, however, had no such issue.
“Why, you pig. You’re cheating on your wife with your assistant, and you have the balls to accuse your son of impropriety?
” She jerked to her feet and pulled out a large, gleaming hunk of rock that she held in front of her as if she was warding off evil spirits.
“I’m getting out of here. This room is filled with bad energy. ”
She dug into her purse and tossed a wad of bills on the table before doing exactly what she’d accused me of this morning.
She flounced.