Frankly, it was a little scary to see him like that. For a minute or two there, I had found myself nodding along as if I was a puppet on his string and I was pretty sure if he’d ordered me to march off a damn cliff right then, I’d have done it.
To have that kind of power had to be exhilarating, if a little terrifying. Having someone wield that kind of power over you, however, was just plain terrifying. I wasn’t afraid of Joseph or anything, but when he got intense, it was really, really… intense.
Someone should have made it illegal for someone who looked like him to have that kind of personality to go with the looks. It should have been a rule: hot, stupid and plain or ugly, smart and commanding. Done, no combinations or substitutions allowed.
Unfortunately, no one had consulted me before the rules had been made. Clearly. Because Joseph was the most lethal combination of those things that there was.
The worst thing about it was that it really worked for him. The man was already gorgeous, but when he got all intense and fired up like that, he was sexy as all hell.
Those hazel eyes flashed and became more, somehow. Brighter, sharper, just… more. And the tone of his voice and the way he held his body? God, there might have been a brief moment where I allowed a fantasy to flash in my brain. One where he commanded me to drop my panties right there in his office.
Just thinking about it was getting me all hot under the collar again, and I didn’t have time for that. Besides, the dude was my boss. Hot bosses were practically begging to be fantasized about, but not at work and not when you were on a deadline.
Since I was both at work and on a deadline, it was really not the time. Pulling my shoulders back and giving myself a firm reminder that I had work to do if I wanted to get home on time, I walked back to my desk and dug in once more.
When I came up for air again, it was just over an hour later. I had everything mostly under control and I felt confident enough in the work I’d done that I gathered up my things to go home. If I didn’t leave now, there was no way I’d be there on time to tuck Lincoln into bed.
“Goodnight,” I called from the door to Joseph’s office, my purse hanging over my shoulder.
Ollie was sitting in the chair next to the one I was usually in. He twisted around to give me a friendly wave, but his eyes were red and tired. “See you in the morning, Lilo.”
Joseph’s jaw clenched as he looked up at me, thunderclouds rolling into his hazel eyes. “You’re leaving?”
I nodded. “I have to go put Lincoln to bed. I’ll see you both in the morning.”
“I see,” Joseph said through gritted teeth. “Leave then. We’ll be here, burning the midnight oil.”
My head jerked back as if I’d been slapped, but I didn’t say anything. Instead, I turned around and walked to the elevator. All the way home, I thought about what Joseph had said and how he had said it.
While I’d perceived him as many things before tonight, a dick hadn’t been one of those things. His comment before I left the office, though, had me placing him squarely in that category.
I didn’t know what his problem was. He’d known that I had a son when he hired me and he hadn’t seemed to have any issue with it. Hell, he’d even offered to arrange for someone from daycare to stay and take care of Lincoln while I worked late.
Whatever. He’s probably just tired. I rubbed my own eyes, a yawn escaping as I unlocked my front door. I glanced down at my watch when I heard voices coming from Lincoln’s room and noticed that neither Alisha or Lincoln was in the living area.
Crap. I’d made it home by bedtime, but still only just in time to kiss him goodnight. Guilt threatened to rise over not being there to read him his story or get his pajamas ready, but I swallowed it down and rushed to his room instead.
The lights were already off, but there was enough light filtering into the room from the hall that I could see Alisha sitting at the foot of Lincoln’s bed and my little boy nestled under the covers. Both of them looked at me as I walked in.
“You’re here to tuck me into bed,” Lincoln said, his voice low and sleepy. “Goodnight, Mommy.”
“Goodnight, baby.” I flashed Alisha a grateful smile as she got to her feet and jerked her head in the direction of the kitchen, telling me she’d be there when I was done. She left the room after that, giving me a few minutes alone with Lincoln before he drifted off to sleep.
Sitting down next to him, I leaned over and kissed his forehead. “Want me to tell you a story?”
He nodded, but his eyelids were already drooping. I’d barely gotten through the “one day, a long, long time ago” part of whatever mystical tale I had been about to conjure up when he was fast asleep.
I smiled, standing up quietly and half closing the door behind me, making sure to leave it open just a crack so there would still be a sliver of light shining in.
Alisha was in the kitchen like I’d known she would be.
What I hadn’t expected was the steaming cup of tea sitting on the counter next to a bowl of pasta. She pushed it across to me when I walked in. “Saved you some dinner. I was worried you wouldn’t have gotten to eat because you were rushed to get home.”
A wave of gratitude crashed into me so hard that my eyes became misty. “What did I do to deserve you? Thank you so, so much. I didn’t eat, but you didn’t have to worry about me.”
She flashed me an easy grin. “Me? Not worried? I’m not wired that way and you know it.”
“True that.” I nodded my agreement, sinking down into a chair and happily tucking into my dinner. After swallowing the first bite, I looked at her again. “This is awesome.”
“It’s nothing.” Alisha waved her hand dismissively. “Took me ten minutes to throw it together. I knew you’d be dog tired by the time you got home, but damn. You don’t look so good. I’m not even convinced you’re going to make it to your bed tonight.”
“Neither am I,” I said, taking a few more bites before I explained what was going on. “Joseph, got a new account today and we’re on a crazy deadline if we want to keep them, which we obviously do.”
“Does that mean more late nights for you?”
My head bobbed up and down as I took another bite before answering her. “Definitely, but I don’t want you to worry. Joseph said he could talk to the daycare people and arrange for Lincoln to stay there.”
Alisha frowned. Hard. “Nonsense. I’ll help out as much as I can. If I can’t come get him on any particular day, I’ll let you know. Until I do, consider me there.”
I didn’t say anything for a second, once again overwhelmed by gratitude for this woman who had become my best friend and entire support system when fate had made her my neighbor. I smiled, reaching for her hand resting on the counter and giving it a squeeze. “Thank you. One day, I’m going to find a way to make all this up to you.”
“No thanks necessary. You know how much I love you both. Of course I’m going to be there to help out when either of you need me.”
“Even so.” I pulled my hand back and finished my dinner and tea. “I appreciate you more than I can express in words. You know that, right?”
She nodded and stepped away from the counter. “I’d better get to bed.”
“Yeah, me too.” I stood up and gave her a tight hug before going to put the chain on the door once she’d left. Deciding to do the dishes before they could start piling up, I filled the sink with water and got everything cleaned up as fast as I could.
After that, I took a quick shower, put on my most comfortable, ratty pajamas and collapsed into my bed. I wasn’t even aware of falling asleep.
It was one of those nights where the next thing I knew, my alarm was going off and Lincoln was poking my cheek. I groaned and buried my head in the pillow. “Is it really morning already?”
“Yes,” he answered, giggling and putting his little hands on my head to turn it to face him. “Time to get up, Mommy. Your phone won’t stop screaming.”
Suppressing another groan, I reached for my p
hone and then nearly fell out of bed when I saw the time. I got up and got ready to do it all over again as fast as I could.
Lincoln and I still got to the Matthews Financial building early, but it had been touch and go for a while there.
We hadn’t been able to find his dinosaur, then my heel had broken and after that, we missed the train we usually caught. I dropped Lincoln off at daycare, getting a kiss from him at the doors before I hurried upstairs. It had been a morning straight from the depths of hell, but I still forced a smile onto my lips when I stepped off the elevator on my floor.
Ollie was already at his desk, looking as sharp, fresh and rested as ever. He held up a coffee cup when I walked up to him. “Here you go. I got this ready for you. It’s going to be another long-ass day.”
“Thank you.” I smiled as I accepted the coffee, internally debating whether it was appropriate to give him an open-mouthed fucking kiss for as much as I appreciated the offered caffeine.
A bark coming from Joseph’s office, however, cut me off before I could reach a conclusion. “Hawkings. You’re late.”
I twisted my wrist and sneaked a peek at my watch before glaring at him over my coffee cup. “I’m ten minutes early.”
He didn’t acknowledge my response, his head already buried in a stack of papers again. Jerk.
My eyes narrowed as I turned away from him and walked into my office. I didn’t know how he’d changed so much in the week since I’d gotten here, but I was going to chalk it up to the new account making him bitchy.
One thing I had learned was the rumors and whispers in the office were true. Our boss really could be a damn dick when he wanted to be.
Chapter 11
Joseph
I groaned quietly and seriously considered getting into it with Lilac for being late when I heard her response. Sure, she was here before eight a.m., but I wasn’t going to give her a fucking medal for it.
I’d already been here for an hour, so had Ollie. This was a big account, an all hands-on deck situation. As it was, she’d gone home early last night and now she was arriving late.
She didn’t leave early and she’s not late, an annoying voice in my subconscious reminded me. Fuck.
It was that annoying voice that made me hold myself back from arguing with her. I caught the glare she gave me and dropped my head back to my work. Some of us actually took our work seriously and I was just getting into my rhythm of the morning. I wasn’t going to let semantics about her throw me out of my groove.
Burying myself in the contracts, I worked for a couple more hours before a ping from my computer drew my attention. It was the alert sound I had set up for something marked as urgent, forcing me to yank myself out of what I was busy with and read whatever email had just come through.
My jaw tightened when I saw it was from Lilac. I looked up from my computer and into her office, seeing her poring over some document or another with a deep frown on her face.
Clicking into the email, I read a notice she had sent me with a question attached to one of the contracts. It was one I’d reviewed last night, but she and I were reviewing them for different purposes.
Either way, I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. I was about to reply that everything was fine when I reread her question. Wait a second.
My eyes narrowed to slits as I rifled through all the stacks of paperwork on my desk and found the contract I was looking for. Double-checking the page number on her note, I opened it to the correct place and started reading through the paragraphs in question again.
By the time I was done, my eyes were so wide I was half worried my eyeballs were about to fall out. I sat back in my chair, numbness spreading through me. Thank fuck she caught that.
I let loose with a string of curses under my breath, bringing my hands up to massage my temples. Lilac had found a massive discrepancy. It would have rendered the entire contract null and void if we hadn’t found it and without that contract, the entire deal could have been blown.
I sucked in a deep breath, letting my lungs fill entirely and holding the air in for longer than usual. I tried to imagine the potentially disastrous consequences of having missed something like that and released the breath as I closed my eyes.
Thankfully, none of those consequences would come to pass. Because we had caught the discrepancy. Not we, Lilac.
It was part of her job to find stuff like this, but I knew all too well how easy it was for something as seemingly innocuous as this to fall through the cracks. A couple of words in a different order, a few apparent synonyms that changed the terms of the payment clause entirely? No one that didn’t have a very fine eye for those kinds of details would have picked up on it.
If there had been even a shred of doubt in my mind about hiring her, about her capability to do the job due to her lack of experience, it evaporated into thin air. The woman might not have a ton in the way of experience, but she made up for it with a natural talent to see things others didn’t.
Putting my hands back on the keyboard, I sent her back an email to acknowledge that she was right. After hesitating for a fraction of a second, I hit send and then followed that email up with a notification about lunch.
Joseph Matthews, CEO: I’m buying today.
It wasn’t really an apology, but it was as close to one as she was going to get from me. I had come to the conclusion that maybe I had been rude to her, and obviously, she hadn’t deserved it.
Just before lunchtime, I ordered two rib-eye steaks on the bone with green bean and yellow pepper salads. Lilac happened to look up when it was being delivered, and nodded to let me know she’d be right here.
I set our food out on my conference table and Lilac came to join me a minute later. The expression she wore was more wary than any I’d seen from her before, but she smiled as she sat down and reached out to pull her plate closer to her.
“Thank you for this. It looks divine. I still can’t believe I’m eating like this for lunch every day.”
“I have to do something to tempt my employees into sticking around.” I looked into her eyes as I said it, noticing different hues of blue swimming around in them for the first time. Her eyes weren’t just blue, they had ice blue crystals in them and—
Clearing my throat, I tore my gaze away before I made things awkward or uncomfortable. It landed on the smooth grains of wood forming the surface of my table. Seeing it and remembering the day the guy who’d handmade it had delivered it to this very office, I realized something.
“You haven’t made any moves to decorate your office or to add any new furniture to it.”
She blinked, pausing with her fork midway to her mouth before she started laughing. “Right, because I’ve had too much time to worry about décor between work, sleep and oh yeah, my son.”
“Fair enough.” I cut into the juicy steak, taking a few bites as I contemplated her response. No one who had access to the company decorator had ever taken this long to take advantage of it.
Most people who were senior enough in the company to have that particular perk got themselves set up the same week they started working for me. On the other hand, most of those people weren’t single mothers with young children. I supposed that would put a much different spin on things.
Since I was alone, I didn’t tend to think too much about families. I didn’t have any family members left and no family of my own, so it just didn’t really cross my mind all that often.
Plus, I was still a bit peeved about what had happened with Titus. That whole experience hadn’t exactly made me look kindly on family-related obligations.
Looking up at Lilac now, though, I realized that perhaps I’d been taking the Titus situation out on her. That’s not right.
Telling myself I wouldn’t do it anymore, I decided to change the topic back to work-related stuff. “It won’t be so bad for too much longer. You found that discrepancy, which was really good work. Once all this is signed off, we’ll go back to normal.”
She nodded,
but didn’t say anything. In fact, our meal was a lot more subdued than any other we’d shared.
As soon as our plates were empty, Lilac excused herself and went back to her office. I stayed at the table, my lips pursed as I thought about the revelation I’d had during lunch.
Eventually, I decided to give Grant a call. The man really should be my therapist at this point, but he swore that we were friends first and that was more important.
I didn’t have many friends, so I took it. Although, come to think about it, not having many friends kind of just strengthened what I was beginning to suspect about myself.
“Mr. Matthews calling during a school day. That doesn’t happen very often. What’s troubling you?” Grant’s voice was cheerful. It almost sounded like he was about to start whistling. I swore the guy was high on life sometimes, it was weird.
“What makes you think something’s troubling me?”
He sighed, then chuckled. “I’ve known you for a long time, Joe. You don’t just call during work hours to check-in, so what’s up?”
My head rolled back on my shoulders so I was looking at the ceiling and I licked my lips. Better to just get it over with, right?
“Do you think I’m too tunnel-visioned?” I asked, pausing to take a deep breath before I explained. “Like, do you think I’m too focused on work and that I neglect the other areas of my life?”
Grant burst out laughing, then laughed some more. After laughing some more, he hung up on me. I frowned, staring down at my phone for a long minute. What the fuck was that?
Chapter 12
Lilac
A few days after we’d gotten the account, I popped my head into Joseph’s office with a grim smile. He’d really lived up to his reputation as a dickhead this week, and I wasn’t looking forward to asking him what I wanted to ask him.
Come Work For Me Page 7
