Chapter 8
8
Perhaps I am dense.
Maybe I’m clueless.
Certainly, my ex-girlfriend Lucy tried to hang the clueless gold chain around my neck. The time she dragged me to Bed Bath & Beyond to shop for towels then asked which ones I liked for our apartment.
I’d flinched. “Our apartment? But we don’t live together.”
She’d rolled her eyes and flashed a knowing smile. “Why else did you think I wanted to take you towel shopping? You’re so adorably clueless.”
At that point, I picked up on her clues loud and clear, and nixed things before she made a copy of my key and moved in late at night while I was sleeping.
But this seems a little different than Lucy’s off-hand comment. This seems like maybe, in retrospect, I might have jumped the gun.
Still, all the signs pointed to Doug telling me he wanted me to take over the practice, not him telling me his gorgeous, smart, sexy daughter is evidently going into business with us.
Talk about whiplash.
He gestures toward the door. “I think you’ve met once or twice, and I invited Sloane to join us tonight.”
I turn around, my heart squeezing with a myriad of what the fuck do I do now emotions as Sloane walks to our table as if on cue, looking as fascinating, as beautiful, as alluring as she did the night I met her seven years ago. I’d been singing karaoke at the fundraiser, and I’d nearly stopped in the middle of Isn’t It Romantic? , jumped off the stage, and made sure she didn’t leave. She stayed though, and it wasn’t even her beauty that demanded my attention, though of course I noticed her face. It was something in her eyes. A sparkle, a glint. Something intriguing that said there was so much more to her than the surface, and I had to know what was beneath.
Every time I’ve seen her since, it’s the same. The light’s on her, only her.
Like it was the other night on the street when she kissed me.
My dick stirs at the memory. Well, dicks do like kisses. All kinds of kisses.
That’s really fucking inconvenient—a semi when I need to stand up, say hello, and act like I don’t want to do bad things to her.
Not as inconvenient, though, as the rug being pulled out from under me.
“Nice to see you again, Sloane,” I say, stripping my voice to a monotone as I extend a hand.
She shakes. “Good to see you again too, Malone.”
We’re so business-like. I’m looking forward to receiving my Oscar for nonchalance.
“Your names rhyme,” Doug remarks. “That’s amusing.”
“Yes, it sure is,” I say, and honestly, isn’t the rhyming names proof enough that nothing should ever happen with us? Sloane and Malone sounds dippy.
Doug rubs his hands together. “Let’s dive into things, and then we can order. Sloane, why don’t you start with what we discussed earlier today?”
She squares her shoulders. “It’s always been my dream to save all the animals, so I started an animal rescue. It’s been going well.” She knocks on the table. “But you know how hard it is to stay afloat in that business. Well, I presume you do.”
“I get it. It’s tough,” I say, since it’s not an easy field to be in, but it’s such a vital one.
Doug wraps an arm around his daughter’s shoulders, and I wince a little bit at the reminder of who she is to him. Just, you know, his offspring .
“She’s been running it from a little storefront in Brooklyn, and the rent is going up, and the landlord is terrible. I thought we could bring her in-house, and we’ll handle all the spays and neuters. It’ll come from my cut,” he says, and he’s thought of nearly everything.
And clearly this is all he’s been thinking about discussing at dinner. Not my future hopes and dreams.
“I don’t mind providing free spay and neuter,” I say, still flummoxed that my expectations were knocked to their knees tonight. Wait, make that knocked to their ass.
“Nonsense. I’ll take care of it. I insist. But I do hope you’ll be okay with Sloane running the operation from my office,” he continues. “It’s all foster-based, with no animals kept on-site. They’re all placed with volunteers who foster them till they’re adopted, so it’s not a question of space. I should have asked you first, but honestly, I was so damn excited.”
He should have mentioned it to me, but he’s still the senior partner. He started the practice years ago. He hired me as an employee seven years ago and brought me on as a junior partner three years later. But at the end of the day, he’s still the big kahuna.
He still has more say.
But what was her say? Did she know about this plan the other night? Was her kiss designed to soften me up?
Well, it didn’t work.
It made me hard instead. So there.
Doug shares more details then asks if this is all okay.
“Sure.” What else can I say that doesn’t make me sound like a supreme douche? Besides, I have to admit—it’s a great idea for her rescue, and as someone whose father dreamed of going into business with his son once upon a time, I understand why he’d want this too.
Sloane smiles, and it’s full of gratitude. Maybe relief too. “Thank you. I was so worried Best Friends wasn’t going to make it. This gives us a shot in the arm for the next year, and I’m confident I can have everything built up and solid by then.”
Doug lifts the bottle. “Why don’t you have a glass of wine, and let’s all toast together?”
She shakes him off. “You know I don’t like red.”
He arches an eyebrow. “You don’t like red?”
“She prefers champagne,” I cut in, and then I want to smack myself. How the hell would I know that from the occasional run-in with her? I only know it because of our time together.
Doug doesn’t notice though.
“Let me get you some white instead.” He flags down the waiter and asks for a glass of chardonnay.
The waiter brings it over, and the three of us raise our glasses. I take a hearty swallow. Hell, maybe I ought to get drunk tonight. Nothing makes disappointment go down quite like alcohol.
We peruse the menus quickly and place our order. When the waiter leaves, Doug remains eminently pleased.
“What could be better?” Doug asks, a satisfied grin on his face. “Can you think of anything better than this?”
“I can’t,” Sloane answers, and her smile matches his, but I can detect hints of surprise and a little bit of discomfort in it. “I definitely can’t think of anything better than this. I just didn’t realize that you were going to have Malone here at dinner.”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Doug asks her, narrowing his brow.
“I’m pretty sure I would have remembered it.” Her tone is light, but I get her meaning. “But then, I didn’t even know about your idea till earlier today.”
Ah, that must be for my benefit. She doesn’t want me to think she knew about this when she kissed me.
Doug spreads his arms wide, like he’s a magnanimous king. “I thought it’d be a great opportunity for all of us to get together and chat, see how we envision things working in the next year. My darling daughter,” he says, dropping a kiss to her forehead. Then he gestures to me. “And you’re practically a son.”
Sloane jumps in like a leopard, so I don’t have to. “He’s not your son.”
“And yet I care for Malone like he is,” Doug says, looking at me with import in his eyes.
“And you know I’ve looked to you like a mentor,” I say, emphasizing that word, because I don’t think of him like a father, though I suspect he wishes I did. Just because my dad is gone, and has been since I was eighteen, doesn’t mean I need a replacement. Doug’s been my business go-to guy, and I’ll forever be grateful for the role he’s played.
“Regardless of what we call it, my two favorite people are here,” Doug says, then downs the rest of his glass. “And now I must excuse myself to the little boys’ room.”
He exits, and the tension between Sloane and me tightens like a tourniquet.
I wish Sloane didn’t look so delectable, wearing jeans and a simple white blouse. Her hair is swept up, revealing her neck, a neck that she loves having kissed.
Must wipe thoughts of her erogenous zones from my mind. Besides, I need to know something. I want to be certain she wasn’t aware of her dad’s plans the other night. “Did you know what he had in mind? When I saw you?”
Her eyes widen, and she shakes her head. “I didn’t know he wanted to do this till this afternoon. It was a surprise to me. He gets an idea in his head, and he thinks he’s doing it the best way, because he knows how much I need this. But I didn’t know you were going to be here.”
That’s when something new and unpleasant occurs—the idea that she’d rather I not be here. “Is it a problem? Do you want me to leave?”
“No,” she says in an instant. “We’re going to be working together. We should be able to work together. I can try not to be around that often,” she offers, “if it makes things easier.”
“Why would it make things easier?”
“If things are awkward.”
“Why would things be awkward? Because of Plant?”
Her brow creases. “Plant?”
I wave a hand dismissively. “Bumper. Salad. Petunia. The guy you were having dinner with the last time I saw you.”
A laugh bursts out and she clutches her stomach. “Basil,” she says, choking on the word as she laughs. “His name is Basil.”
“Basil. Well, there you go. I was close.”
“Basil is a good friend. He’s a DJ. He’s into music. You’d like him.”
Doubtful.
“And you’re staying with him?”
“No. Nor was I dating him.” She stares at me like I’m a curiosity. “Are you jealous?”
I could play this one of two ways. Lying gets me nothing. The truth at least makes this night more . . . illuminating, and I’d really like some more light shed on this woman. “Yep. The full-on, one-hundred-percent, red-blooded kind.”
She swallows. “That’s interesting.”
“And do you think that makes things awkward?”
She licks her lips. “It would be awkward if you were still seeing Clove.”
It’s my turn to knit my brow. “Who on earth is Clove?”
She crinkles her nose, a touch derisively. “Who knows? Whoever the latest woman is who falls at your feet when you sing.”
I smile. “There’s no Clove. No Jane. No Cindy. No Madison. There’s no one.”
“If there’s no Basil and no Clove, why is there all this . . . tension?”
Checking the hall to make sure the coast is clear, I lean closer, my eyes locked on hers. “You know why there’s tension.”
“Why?” Her voice trembles.
Yup, the illumination is indeed growing brighter.
“Because you kissed the fuck out of me the other night, and because I’m still thinking about it. And because if your father wasn’t in the bathroom, I’d kiss you even harder right now. So hard you’d see stars. You’d grab your purse and say, ‘Let’s get out of here right now.’ Because you and I have unfinished business, and you know it.”
She shudders, and a gust of breath seems to pass her lips. Her cheeks flush red, and I love, fucking love, the effect I have on her. Even though I shouldn’t love it. I definitely shouldn’t love it at all. But I do, and I love it more when her tone reveals the truth—it’s breathy and hot as she says, “Is that how you’d kiss me? Like we have unfinished business?”
I lean back in the booth, never taking my eyes off her gorgeous face. “Sweetheart, you know exactly how I want to kiss you. You know exactly what we’d be capable of in bed.”
Her shoulders rise and fall as she peeks behind her. We’re alone still. Her voice goes softer. “If we were in an alternate universe right now, you could do all those things.”
I groan audibly. This woman is going to make it so damn difficult at work. “And maybe in some alternate universe we’d be in my building, the door falling shut, and you’d grab me and wrap your legs around me in the stairwell.”
Her breath hitches, but she shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”
I tilt my head to the side. “That’s not what would happen?”
The smooth sole of a shoe runs across my pant leg. She’s playing footsie. “No, you’d toss me over your shoulder, carry me up the stairs, and take me against the door.”
I grin wickedly. “And then on the counter.”
“And then the couch,” she adds. “Or wait, how about up against the window?”
“That can be arranged. I have floor-to-ceiling windows.”
Her eyes dance with mischief. “And is there a view?”
“Of all of lower Manhattan, sweetheart,” I say, and there is nothing awkward at all anymore.
“Take me to your parallel universe, please,” she says.
I’m about to say Let’s get out of here now , as if we’re on a date, as if it’s only the two of us.
And it hits me.
I’m doing it again.
I’m flirting with her.
Caught up in the vortex of Sloane Elizabeth. She’s a hurricane of sexuality, a storm of lust and desire, and I want to be caught in the eye.
“We should stop.”
She blinks and squeezes her eyes shut, then opens them. “Yes, we should.”
I have to be an adult. I have to be mature. I’m thirty-five years old, and I can’t let hormones control my actions. Those days are behind me.
“Let’s just agree that it was one kiss on the street, and it can’t happen again.”
“It definitely won’t happen again.”
Doug returns to the table, and I manage to be incredibly well-behaved for the rest of the evening. Tonight, I’m not simply the smart one. I’m the good one.
Even though I’ll be thinking about that alternate universe later when I’m home alone in bed.
And probably tomorrow morning in the shower too.
And honestly, that’ll be the trick to surviving having her in such close working quarters. For the next goddamn year of my life.
* * *
Water streams over my head. Images dance before my eyes. Yup, this is exactly what I need to recalibrate.
Steaming-hot water, a very active imagination, and that fantastic ability I happen to possess: being able to picture Sloane naked.
Sloane stepping into the shower.
Sloane wrapping a hand around my neck, tugging me close for a kiss.
Her hand sliding between our wet, slick bodies. Finding my dick, hard and aching for her.
A sly smile, a murmur, and that look in her eyes. The one that says Let me get down on my knees .
“If you insist,” I’d say, and I jerk harder, stroke faster as Shower Sloane takes me in her mouth, brings me to the back of her throat, and wraps her lips so nice and tight around my shaft that my vision goes hazy. Pleasure barrels down my spine, rushing hot and fast. I’m there, over the edge, shuddering. I slam a palm against the tiled wall, cursing.
Hell, that came on faster than I expected.
Then again, in my defense, I was pretty damn pent-up.
But now I’m all good, and ready to tackle the year ahead.