by Elise Faber
You have a nice smile.
Pedestrian.
But a compliment, especially one that wasn’t about her tits (which looked nice from the small glimpse of cleavage in her profile pic) or ass (which he hoped was lush, also based on the curves in her photo), so he figured it was a step up from hey.
A moment later, she replied.
You have nice eyes.
He grinned, the compliment flowing over him like warm water. Maybe this online dating thing wasn’t so hard.
Except . . . what did he say now? Another compliment, but would that be trying too hard? Should he ask her about work? Or would that come off as creepy, trying to get too much information when they’d just matched on an app and didn’t know each other?
Hobbies!
He should ask her about her hobbies.
Quickly, he navigated to her profile, saw a line in the description that said, Science geek. Golden Retriever lover. Wars over Trek.
The first and the last made him smile—the last especially—but he didn’t know if it was one of those things that women just said, trying to be all nerdy cute. Her picture certainly didn’t scream nerd in any way. But paired with the first, he felt a sliver of heat slide through him.
Damn. He needed to search up some science facts to impress her.
Except, what kind of science?
It was kind of a vast area of study, and . . . now he was overthinking this.
He’d stick with the dog. They at least had that in common, although he wouldn’t go so far as to say that he was a Sweetheart Lover.
Okay. Dogs.
You like Golden Retrievers?
He sent after navigating back to their chat.
Barely a few seconds before she responded. With a picture.
My Fred.
A hairy face. Friendly eyes. A tongue hanging out that would probably drool all over Ben’s expensive shoes. And the fucker was adorable. Not the evil and potential violence of Sweetheart, the I’m-gonna-cut-you-bitch gleaming black eyes.
He’s cute. I wrote. Why Fred?
Another message came through.
Why not Fred?
There was that.
You make a good point.
Her reply came in just a few heartbeats.
Wow. A man who can admit that. Have I stumbled upon a Unicorn?
His brows were drawn together.
A unicorn?
A buzz.
No. Not a unicorn, but rather a Unicorn. Capital U.
Um. Okay . . .
Her next reply came, thankfully, before he’d been required to come up with a reply for that.
You like dogs.
Well, now, that wasn’t phrased as a question, so he just let it lie there, not touching it, not revealing too much. He hadn’t let himself think too much about the things he liked or didn’t like, and he didn’t think the red-lipped, curved beauty would think much of him if he admitted that his dog-liking capabilities fell more into the realm of dog-tolerating.
Instead, he sent,
What kind of science are you a geek about?
This pause was a bit longer.
Physics.
His brows lifted.
Physics? That’s impressive. I nearly failed that class in college.
It was the single science class he’d been required to take for his business degree, and no joke, it had nearly killed him. He’d been thrilled to just pass with a C—the only C he’d received in all his advanced studies.
A bachelor’s. Two master’s.
School had been important to his parents and to him.
But thank fuck business administration and management hadn’t required a second round of physics.
Too bad I wasn’t around to tutor you. I wouldn’t have let you fail, nearly or otherwise.
He knew he would have studied until he passed out if Stef had been his tutor and then probably died for another reason—if one could die of blue balls. Because if he found himself taciturn and withdrawn now, he’d been cripplingly shy in his younger years.
Nose in a book.
Gangly as fuck.
All the way up until his dad had died, and then the fury had taken over. He’d been pissed to lose him, pissed that his mom was devastated, pissed that the world had lost the one person he thought deserved to live over everyone else.
Ben’s dad had been good.
So fucking good.
And he’d died for absolutely no reason. Same as his mom. Fucking cancer. Fucking people who just wanted something that didn’t belong to him. Fucking . . .
World.
He’d hit the gym after his dad died. Hadn’t stopped through his mom’s illness, the cancer having been found just months after they had put his dad in the ground. And it had crept through her, taking her strength, her hair, her eyelashes, and finally, her life.
So, sometimes he wanted to go punish something, and he did that to a punching bag. Sometimes he wanted to punish himself, which he did running and lifting until he could barely move the next day.
Now, at least, he wasn’t scrawny.
But he still hadn’t mastered the art of talking to women.
Case in point, what happened next. Ben sent,
Do you want to grab a coffee?
Then waited for her to reply.
And waited a little longer.
Then still longer.
Or not, he typed. If you’re not comfortable.
His pulse thrummed as he held his breath, waiting, but after long minutes without her responding, Ben knew he’d fucked up. Pressed too soon, asked her before she was ready. “Fuck,” he muttered, tossing his cell on his nightstand and shoving himself out of bed.
Coffee had been the wrong move.
But seriously, this was why he stayed in his world. Because business negotiations were less complicated than women. Maybe he should have doled out another compliment, stuck with asking her something about herself, about fucking physics, rather than moving straight to asking her out.
She probably thought he just wanted to get laid.
Which, yes, that was his intention.
But he knew better—or at least he should know that this type of thing needed finesse.
He might as well have sent a dick pic.
Sighing, he cranked on the shower and set about getting ready for the day. He’d go into the office, get started on phase two for Hunt Inc. He wanted to go global, and in order to do that, he’d need to make sure all his plans for expansion were in place.
And to do that, he needed to focus on work.
So, he was done thinking about women with sexy red lips and a glimpse of curves he wanted to get his hands on.
Even if that glimpse had him wrapping his fingers around his cock and stroking as the water sluiced down his spine, as the release built up.
This was just as good as a woman.
He didn’t need red lips.
Or breasts.
Or an ass to grab on to as he pumped into her pussy, deep and slow and steady. She’d be tight. She’d grind back against him, and—
“Fuck,” he groaned, slamming his hand against the tile as he came.
Imagining red lips.
Imagining curves.
Imagining . . . Stef McKay.
And knowing his hand wouldn’t be anything when compared to her.
Chapter Seven
Stef
Do you want to grab a coffee?
Such a simple question.
An easy yes or no . . . and in this case, it should most definitely be a yes. Because Ben Bradford was gorgeous, and he’d said he liked her smile, and he hadn’t sent her a picture of his cock or asked her to meet up to fuck without any fluff.
He’d asked her to coffee.
And she’d launched her phone across the room in a fit of panic, startling Fred awake. Which had led to her pupper needing to get pottied and fed right then. Which was fine, because she couldn’t look at that message and not start thinking about what in the fuck she had be
en doing to have swiped on the sexy Denzel in his younger days, cropped hair, stubbled jaw, deep, beautiful eyes man who’d come across her feed.
She was short and stout—
Like a fucking teapot.
Her hair was mud colored. Her eyes were fine, albeit a boring brown. Her skin was nice, if someone liked the nearly see-through version of white of someone who worked in a lab all day and rarely saw the sun—unless it was on beach day, and then that was as the sun was going down, so it didn’t do much to add any color.
She didn’t match with a man like Ben, even if an app had let her pretend that might be the case, just for a minute.
So, she’d left her cell in the corner of the room, had let Fred into the back yard for a few minutes so he could do his business, and then set about making his brekkie, with his vitamins and his shredded chicken and his super expensive kibble.
Then she fed her boy, showered, and she set about planning her meals for the week, just like she did every Saturday.
She went to the farmer’s market, the grocery store. She chopped and threw chicken in the Crock-Pot and prepped her lunches for the week, using some of that chicken but saving most of it for Fred and his meals. While doing all that, she watched a couple of episodes of a promising new superhero show on Netflix, knowing she’d complete the eight-part binge that evening.
After beach time.
And beach time was glorious.
Beach time was beautiful, the perfect mix of late afternoon sunshine and early evening breeze, the stars just beginning to shine.
Fred was exhausted when they returned, having just barely summoned the energy to eat before putting himself in his crate, a rare occurrence that illustrated exactly how much fun her little man had had splashing in the waves.
So now, she was eating a salad and eyeing her phone.
Do you want to get a coffee?
She did. Stef wanted that. Bad. And that was what fucking terrified her. Because she’d barely recovered from Jeremy, and Jeremy had been an asshole. Ben Bradford might turn out to be an asshole, too, but he’d complimented her smile, and Jeremy had never done that, never complimented much about her, and certainly not just out of the blue. To avoid a fight? Oh yeah. To get laid? Certainly. But just something nice without being prompted? No, not that she could think of. All of which said something sad about her, something that she didn’t want to keep considering because it illustrated exactly how pathetic she’d been to waste her time with Jeremy.
Had he ever liked her?
Like at all?
Or had she been convenient and allowed herself to be a punching bag?
He must have been nice in the beginning. He had to have been. Right? Except . . . she couldn’t think of any examples, and that just made her feel worse about herself.
Which . . . seriously, how was that possible?
More than six months of pretending to be fine about the breakup while knowing that she hadn’t been fine before, hadn’t been fine while they were together.
But she was going to be fine.
And she was also kidding herself if she thought that Ben didn’t have an ulterior motive. He wasn’t looking for love. Just like Jeremy, he wanted to bone and then go on with his life.
Tell me how you know that.
Why—seriously, fucking why—did every second guess she had of herself come in the form of her mom’s voice? Always chastising and disapproving. Always making her second-guess what she was doing.
Fuck.
“Enough,” she murmured. “Just enough.”
That was a sufficient amount of self-reflection and pitying for the evening. She needed to go back to what she did best—looking forward, picking up, and moving on. She’d done it when her brother had been sick, so sick, so troubled, struggling so fucking much, that she’d basically been on her own. Alone, even amongst her family, she’d needed to live her own life. She’d done it when he’d taken his own life and her parents had needed someone to pick up the pieces and move everyone on.
But she’d spent too long picking up the pieces for everyone else.
Now, she needed to pick them up, only for herself this time.
That was why she left her phone in the corner of the room, the battery slowly draining, while she and Fred finished bingeing that superhero show.
Chapter Eight
Ben, Three Months Later
He ran a hand over his head, feeling the bristles of his hair against his palm, knowing he needed a haircut, yet not wanting to take the time to bother.
Hunt Inc. was firmly in phase two.
He’d worked himself to exhaustion every night for the last few months. The company’s stock was up. He’d never been more productive.
But he couldn’t stop jacking off to red lips and deep brown eyes.
His cock twitched.
“Fuck,” he muttered, tossing the file he’d been reading onto his desk, just as there was a perfunctory knock at the door and Claire stuck her head in the opening.
“Do I need to escort you down to your car?” she said, leaning a hip against the doorframe. “Or are you going to leave at a reasonable hour for the first time in an eternity?”
Ben sighed, considered telling her to piss off, or maybe threatening to fire her again. But that never worked, and frankly, he didn’t have the energy for it.
Not today.
Not on this day.
He’d put his mom in the ground exactly one year before.
“Ben?” Claire asked, the sass leaving her tone, worry taking its place. “You okay?”
He blinked, pushed to his feet, and reached into the top drawer of his desk to retrieve his wallet. “I’m out of here.”
“You are?” she asked, shifting to the side when he approached the door. “Really?”
“It’s Friday,” he told her. “Why don’t you take off early, too?”
Her brows lifted before she lifted her wrist and glanced at her watch. “Early meaning eight-thirty?”
Shit. Was it already eight-thirty?
He glanced out the windows, saw that it was dark. Ah. Yeah, it was.
“Okay,” he amended. “Why don’t you get out of here now?”
“That’s the plan.” She followed him toward the elevator after briefly asking, “You want to come out with us?”
He snorted. “You want to drink a beer with your boss?”
She glanced up at him as they stepped onto the elevator. “You realize we’ve been friends for near on a decade,” she said. “Just because I’m your assistant—”
“Should I point out that you’re my assistant because you refused my offer to be VP?”
She made a face. “I don’t have the requisite fancy letters after my name to take that position,” she muttered, hitting the button to take them down to the garage. “I didn’t even finish high school, for God’s sake.”
Ben covered her hand with his. “You’re the smartest person I know. Bar none.”
A scoff, her fingers slipping from his. “So says the boy genius.”
He rolled his eyes. “So says your boss, who’s not going to hire another VP because I expect your ass to be in that office come Monday morning.”
“You won’t be able to get through your day without me.”
That was the worst part of offering Claire the position. He’d be out the best assistant in his crew. But also, he wouldn’t be the person who was going to hold her back, and God knew he should have made this move for her years ago.
She knew every role in the company, had worked every job, had been his right hand from the moment he’d started the business. His first employee. His friend.
“You’re right,” he said. “But I’ll have Spence and Baine and even though I won’t have another Claire, I’ll be happy because I know that you’ll be where you should be.”
“You’ll be miserable.”
“That, too.” He shrugged, not bothering to hide his smile. “Except, I also know that you’ll have a replacement ready for me on Monday, an
d you’ll train him or her up so he or she will be a mini-Claire before long.”
She made a face.
He shrugged again. “You’re only mad because you know it’s true.”
The elevator doors opened with a ding, and they stepped off, this time with Claire glaring up at him. “Only because I don’t want to hear you bitch about how incompetent your new assistant is, over and over again.”
“I don’t bitch about Spence and Baine.”
“Not anymore.” A beat. “And only because Baine is training Spence.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m not that bad.”
She just looked at him.
“Okay, fine,” Ben muttered. “But it’s not a bad thing to like things the way I like them.”
Claire smirked. “You’re a boring stick in the mud.”
Since that much was true, he didn’t bother arguing.
“Stick. In. The. Mud.”
He rolled his eyes. “Claire.”
“You deleted the app, didn’t you?” she asked, as he walked her to her car. “Without even bothering to match with anyone.”
No. He hadn’t deleted the app.
He’d left it on his phone, buried in a folder, and occasionally opened the message chain and called himself a moron. And then he’d scroll to that profile, to that picture, to those red lips.
And he’d want to get Moron tattooed on his forehead.
“I don’t have time to date.”
“So, you’re just going to work nonstop for another eight years, let the world pass you by, and not have anything on the other side of it?”
“Not nothing,” he said, tugging open the door for her. “I have you.”
