Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
CALLUM
The emails started flooding in around one o’clock that afternoon. “ATTN ALL,” one of them read in the subject line, “NEW STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE FOR REQUESTING FLIGHTS.”
She’d copied in the whole company.
Slightly incredulous, I opened the enclosed document and saw that Deena had scrapped all the checks that I normally did on our company’s travel arrangements, and instead moved all the managerial tasks to her own desk. She didn’t want me to have any oversight whatsoever. She was insane.
I stood and was at her door within seconds—and I stopped short.
Taped to the outside of her office door was a copy of her employment contract, with one section highlighted: “EMPLOYEE shall have full managerial control to oversee and amend procedures with relation to travel and accommodation.”
I ripped the document off her door and shouldered my way inside.
Deena sat behind her desk, click-clacking her new laptop’s keyboard, her eyes on the screen.
“I’ll be with you in just a moment,” she said, then dramatically pressed a button and looked up to give me a beaming smile. My pocket buzzed a millisecond later.
I held her gaze for a moment, then pulled my phone out to see another email with her name on it. “SURVEY: All staff to complete enclosed document and return to Deena by COB.”
“That’s so I can get a sense of everyone’s preferences, so I can work that into their profiles to streamline the booking processes. I noticed that you don’t have a database with everyone’s information.”
“You can’t just change things without telling me, Deena.”
She tilted her head, blinking innocently. “I think I can, actually. It says it right there in my contract. The one you’re holding in your hands right now.”
Our gazes clashed. She was doing this on purpose to push my buttons. Grinding my teeth, I crumpled the contract into a ball and tossed it in her wastepaper basket.
“Rude, but okay.”
“What’s your game?”
“Game?”
“You’re doing this to drive me crazy.”
“Do you think it might be possible that not everything is about you?”
I arched a brow.
She smiled in response. “Maybe your current process is clunky and inefficient, requires too much manual oversight by you, and as a result leads to missed connections, overbooked hotel rooms, and clients being poached right out from under your nose.”
My chest burned with the truth of her statements. “I want to be involved.”
“I know you do, honey,” she said, turning back to her screen. “That’s why I copied you on the email.”
I was at her desk without even realizing I’d moved closer.
“That’s not what I meant,” I told the top of her head.
She didn’t look up from her laptop, and I found myself staring at the twists of rich chestnut and glints of blond tumbling in waves down her back.
A tendril of hair had fallen against her cheek, and she brushed it aside before typing something.
From my vantage point, I could see the way her pants pulled across the hips, and how the light filtered through the gauzy fabric of her blouse to reveal the shape of her shoulders and arms. She’d worn that on purpose to torture me, I was sure. I was like a bull, losing control at the sight of red.
I thought hiring her would give me the chance to break her down and win her over. It was a hunt, and she was my prey. But now I didn’t know who was in control anymore.
Deena finally blinked up at me, uncowed. “You hired me because you needed help, Mr. Frost. If my particular brand of helpfulness is too much for you to handle, feel free to terminate my contract.”
“And pay out six months’ salary.”
She smiled. “No hard feelings, I promise.”
There were hard feelings, all right—they were pressed up against the placket of my pants as she sassed me from behind the computer I’d bought for her. I wanted her beneath me, so we could fight each other until she gave in. Until I saw those impenetrable walls fall down as she sighed my name.
I loved how hard she pushed back. I loved the challenge in her eyes. Loved how good she was at her job. Talking to Deena gave me the same kind of thrill as signing a multimillion-dollar deal. Touching her felt even better.
And she’d told me that I never would again.
As we stared at each other over the top of her desk, I knew she thought that was the truth. She believed she’d played her cards just right, and she’d walk away with the money without having to surrender to me again.
But she was wrong.
“Look at it this way,” she said, clicking her mouse as another email buzzed in my pocket.
“Even if you fire me, you’ll get something out of it: I’ve just rebooked a third of your current confirmed travel arrangements to account for customs and immigration time.
You would have missed at least a dozen business meetings if you’d kept the itineraries as they were.
So you can let me go right now, pay the severance, and you still win. ”
Like hell I did. I wouldn’t win until Deena was mine. Mind, body, and soul. The harder she fought it, the more I wanted her.
I took a deep breath, willing calm into my voice. “From now on, I would appreciate it if you informed me of the changes to company procedure before you email the entire company.”
She held my gaze as she leaned back in her chair. “Of course, Mr. Frost,” she said, all wide-eyed obedience. Except for that little spark of challenge hidden deep in her eyes.
It was that spark that kept me hooked. It was that spark that made the wanting inside me feel like a gnawing, pulsing need.
But she needed time. If I pushed her now, she’d run. I straightened, holding her gaze, and relished the way a tendril of doubt entered her gaze. She wasn’t sure if she’d won this exchange, after all.
“Good work, Ms. Brand,” I replied, and stalked out of her office, feeling her eyes on me the whole way.
Deena reminded me of me at work. She was utterly focused and unrepentantly bossy. It was a complete counterpoint to the way she was in the bedroom—or billiards room, as it were—and it made total sense to me. She kept everything together out here so that she could let go in there.
Except I saw the look in her eyes in the billiards room, before we went all the way. The conflict. The creeping, growing shame. She wasn’t used to letting go at all.
Her first week was a whip crack of new procedures and shuffled itineraries.
I left for London on Wednesday and was back by Friday morning, new contract secured and nary a travel disaster in sight.
She was right; she’d more than paid for her salary, even if she quit before the six months were up.
Not that I was going to let that happen.
By her second week, Deena had charmed most everyone in the office.
Especially me. My feelings for her became a twisting, writhing mass in the depth of my gut, growing a little bigger every day.
I’d listen for her footsteps. My breath would catch when she’d pass by my door.
I’d walk into her office and pretend I wasn’t inhaling the scent of her skin.
Her walls stayed up, but I knew how to bide my time.
On Tuesday around two o’clock, I heard a voice that made me look up from my desk.
“UNCLE CAL!” Lila screamed, brandishing a paper.
She sprinted toward me and barreled into my office.
Erica and Mary, the nanny, followed. “I drew you a picture at school,” my niece said.
She ran around my desk and crashed into me, arms up, knowing I’d be there to lift her into my lap.
I did just that, setting her down on my knee as she slapped her drawing on my desk.
“It’s you, me, and Mommy. We’re at the park. Look. That’s Zeus.”
Zeus was a dog. When I’d gotten back from North Carolina, I’d taken Lila and Erica out for ice cream. Erica hadn’t eaten hers, but she’d been smiling as we sat there. Lila had made it a mission to pet every dog in the park and had fallen in love with a floppy-eared spaniel.
“You got the exact color of his fur,” I said, pointing at the brown she’d used to draw Zeus.
“Yep,” she confirmed, nodding.
A soft smile pulled at Erica’s lips as she eased her way down into a chair. My ribs tightened at the sight of her the way they always did, because she didn’t walk so much as shuffle, and her face was lined with exhaustion. But she was out of the house, and she was smiling. That was something.
“Thank you,” I said to Lila. “I love it.”
“Will you hang it up in your office?”
“Definitely. Where should I put it?”
“Hmm,” Lila said, studying her surroundings. She slithered off my legs with the drawing in her hands, marching around the room to find the best spot to hang her artwork.
My sister’s gaze met mine. “That second opinion you wanted agreed with my normal doctor. He doesn’t want to do another surgery. He says it looks like the treatment is going well, and he agrees with my current treatment plan. I’m almost through the worst of it, according to him.”
I dipped my chin. It was good news, but it made me feel powerless.
“Right here, Uncle Cal!” Lila called out. She was holding her drawing up in the middle of the biggest wall, between two pieces of very expensive artwork.
I grinned. “Let me get something to hang it with.” I rifled through my drawers and came up with some tape. As I crouched next to Lila and attached loops of tape to the back of her drawing, I heard someone clear their throat.
Deena stood in the doorway, her laptop in her hands. Her gaze bounced from me to Lila to Erica. She took note of Erica’s head wrap, and I remembered that I’d told her about my sister that night I couldn’t resist calling her.
“Sorry to disturb you,” she said. “I’ll come back.”
“That’s okay. We have to head out soon anyway,” Erica said. “Little miss ma’am needs to get some lunch into her.”
“Mom! Not yet. We’re hanging my picture!” Lila had all the attitude of a teenager in a tiny little body. I couldn’t hide my smile as my gaze bounced from Lila to Erica—and finally to Deena.