Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dexter
“Do we have the same drink?” Hollie asked, holding up her glass and squinting as if she were trying to spot a koi carp swimming in her glass.
“You have vodka,” I replied.
She slammed her glass down. “Well that was a bad idea. I’m seeing lots of things . . . everything—there’s two of everything.”
“Vodka was what you asked for.”
“You should never listen to me. Ever,” she said, dramatically shaking her head. She was a cute drunk. And cheap. She was only on her third drink, albeit each one had been different. She’d started with whiskey. “I have terrible brain ideas.”
“Brain ideas?”
“Like coming to London.” More head shaking. “Should have saved my money.”
Charles Ledwin was a shit. I hated him for making Hollie wish she’d never come to London.
Sparkle hadn’t even offered to pay her air fare home.
And then it hit me—if she was out of a job, there would be no reason for her to stay.
She’d be heading back to the US before we’d even got to know each other properly.
“I thought it was the start of something, you know?” She pinched her brows together, earnest in her drunkenness.
I knew exactly what she meant. If she’d stayed the extra few months, I’d have liked to have hung out with her more. She was sexy and fun and sagely na?ve. And I hated that she felt bad.
“You’ve still had the experience though, right? You’ll still get something out of it.” I was grasping at straws, trying to say something that would help.
“We shouldn’t talk about it.” She craned her neck toward the bar. “We should drink more. What’s this?” She held up her glass.
“Vodka.”
“Right. I think maybe wine would be better.”
No amount of wine was going to make this better. But I knew I could help.
“I have an idea,” I announced. I was pretty sure Beck would tell me it was a terrible idea if he was here. And probably so would Gabriel. But I didn’t care. I couldn’t stand by and let Sparkle kill Hollie’s dreams. I just couldn’t. “You should finish your internship at Daniels & Co.”
“Definitely wine,” Hollie said, wincing as she swallowed the last gulp of vodka.
I’d expected her to throw her arms around me and tell me I was her hero. But she seemed more focused on her drink. “Did you hear me?” I asked.
She clasped my shoulder. “God, I’m being awful company. I’m sorry. You said you have an idea.” She pointed at my head and I couldn’t help but grin. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen anyone quite so adorable when they were drunk.
“I have several.” I called the waiter over and ordered some soft drinks while Hollie held a conversation with the candle.
I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her toward me.
“Hey, what are you doing?” she asked. “I thought we were going to drink wine?” Dropping her voice to a stage whisper, she asked, “Are we going to have sex?”
“Absolutely not.”
She turned to me, the expression on her face as if I’d just insulted her.
“Hollie, you’ve had far too much to drink . . .” I paused. That wasn’t quite true. She hadn’t had much to drink at all. She was just drunk. “You’re too tipsy to be—I’m just moving you closer so you can hear what I’m saying.”
Sex wasn’t going to happen. Not tonight. Not when she was in a position to be able to regret it.
“I want to talk business with you,” I said.
“You don’t want to sleep with you?” Her stage whisper had transformed into a semi-shout. “With me, I mean. You don’t want to have sex with me?”
I chuckled. “I think you just proved my point.” Our tray of nonalcoholic cocktails arrived.
“Pretty!” Hollie said, bouncing in her chair as the waiter transferred each of them from tray to table. “I like this better than wine.”
I should probably wait until tomorrow to talk to her about working for Daniels & Co, but I wanted to cheer her up. And it would stop her booking a flight home.
“So, what do you think about being an intern for me?” I asked.
She turned to me, looking at me over her shoulder. “You want me to dress up? Like role play? That’s your thing?”
“Hollie, will you focus?” I took the martini glass out of her hand. “Look at me.”
“I’m looking,” she replied, staring at me. The blue flecks in her green eyes seemed to have expanded over the course of the afternoon.
“Stay in London and finish your internship at Daniels & Co.”
She seemed to be following what I was saying and her eyelids fluttered open and shut a thousand times and she reached for me.
“You would do that?” she asked, stroking the palm of her hand down my cheek.
I swallowed, trying to push down the instinct to scoop her up and take her home. “It makes sense. We need more hands on deck now we’re through to the finals. And you need a job.”
“You are so sweet.” She sighed. “The British.”
“So that’s agreed. You’ll start on Monday.”
She picked up her martini glass. “Absolutely not. I shall not work for you.”
I groaned. I should have waited until she was sober after all. “We can discuss it again tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to offer me a job to get into my panties. You are welcome there. There’s a little brass band down there, ready to say hi whenever you’re ready. They have banners and balloons. There is no job required.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or be completely horrified by the idea she thought I was offering her a job in return for sex.
And I guess I should also be slightly freaked out by the idea of her vagina band.
“I’m not offering to swap you a job for sex.
It might surprise you to know that I don’t have to pay for it. ”
“There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” she said, suddenly completely sober. “Why would you even do such a thing?”
I got it. She was a gorgeous girl and I could imagine that she’d been offered a number of things to sleep with a guy before. “I do not want to have sex with you.”
“Rude!” she said. “I thought . . .”
This girl gave me whiplash. “Yes, of course I want to have sex with you—if nothing else so I can meet the tiny brass band in your underwear.”
She started to giggle and it was so bloody delightful that I wanted to grab her hand and escape somewhere I could hold her for the rest of the evening in front of a roaring fire, watching the London rain freshen up the city.
“I’m not offering you the job so you’ll have sex with me. I’m offering you the job because you need a job and I need the help.”
“Really?” she asked. “Tell me the truth.”
“Okay. That’s the truth. Also I don’t like the way Sparkle has treated you, and if I get to right some of their wrongs, that makes me feel good.”
“Any other reason?”
No more holding back or skating on the surface. “And I’d like to hang out with you some more and if you fly back to Oregon, I won’t ever see you again.”
She looked at me, concentration freezing her expression. “The problem is . . . if I’m your intern, I can’t sleep with you. Because I want to be taken seriously. I want people to see that I’m hardworking and that I have potential, not that I’m humping the boss.”
“Humping?”
I got where she was coming from. Daniels & Co wasn’t that kind of organization. The people I worked with were professional. They weren’t gossips but she wasn’t to know that. “Looks like I won’t be getting laid, then. Not if you’re back in Oregon and not if you stay in London.”
She grinned, as if the thought delighted her. “Are you serious? You want me to intern?”
“I have two conditions. First, I need to be open with my head designer, Primrose, about how I know you. I don’t keep anything professional from her. But she’s discreet and won’t judge either of us.”
“And the second condition?” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously at me.
“Everyone who works for Daniels & Co gets paid. So, for the next nine weeks, you’ll get a salary. Just above minimum wage, so don’t get too excited.”
“Are you serious? No, I mean, I couldn’t. It wouldn’t be right.”
I just offered her a minimum-wage salary and she’d reacted as if she’d won the lottery. “Take it or leave it. But you’re not working for my organization for free. That’s not the way I operate.”
“Life is freaking ironic, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Why? Because the day you lose a job, you get one so much better?” Sparkle were idiots.
She tilted her head to the side. “No. Because I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to sleep with a man more than I want to get naked with you. And now you’re my boss and it’s strictly not allowed.”
Before I could respond, she called the waiter over and asked for the bill—or “check” as she put it. “I’ll get this,” she said. “As a thank you.” She took the bill from the waiter at the same time as I handed him my card. There was no way I was going to let her pay.
“Hey,” she said. “This is my treat.” And then her eyes widened at the total. “Okay, well, maybe I’m going to let you get this. But I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything. Be a good intern. That’s all you need to do for me.”
“I’m going to have to tell the guys in my panties to stand down,” she said. “It’s disappointing for them. They’ve never been so . . . animated.”
I chuckled. “Animated. Right.”
“But,” she said, and I could almost see the cogs in her brain whirring, “I’m not technically your intern right at this moment, am I?” She slid off her bar stool and stood, her body slipping between my thighs. “A kiss wouldn’t hurt, would it?”
Hollie was an adorable drunk. Adorable and gorgeous, particularly when she pouted, drawing my attention to her pillow-like lips. “I think a kiss would be acceptable,” I replied, standing and turning so I had her pinned against the bar.
Her hands slid up the lapels of my jacket, and I breathed in the clean scent of sunshine and summer flowers as she looked up at me with those green-blue eyes that I wanted to dive into.
She pushed her fingers into my hair, and I bent, pressing my lips into hers, sinking into her softness, relishing the warmth of her. Instinctively, I groaned at the sensation of relief and satisfaction I got from feeling her, from tasting her, from being this close to her.
She sighed against me as if the feeling was entirely mutual and I pushed into her with my tongue, wanting more, needing to be closer.
When had kissing ever been like this before? It felt so perfect, so intimate, so completely necessary.
A loud cough brought us back into the room and we jumped apart like guilty teenagers.
My heart juddered in my chest and my blood ran thick in my veins as I tried to compose myself.
What would I be missing if I couldn’t have more of Hollie Lumen?
She looked up at me, her cheeks flushed, an expression of longing on her face. I had to stop myself from tossing her over my shoulder and sprinting home with her.
I cleared my throat, trying to get a grip of myself before I did something I’d regret. “We’ll be friends,” I said. But I wanted more.
“Absolutely,” she replied. “You’re my best friend in London.”
Although I knew it was hardly a compliment—she knew almost no one in the city—a warmth gathered in my chest at the thought of being someone important to her. Even if it was temporarily.