by Ava Storm
When it was made up, all three of us collapsed onto it. I was exhausted, but giddy. Like Madelyn, I couldn’t quite believe it was all mine. A month ago, I’d barely been able to afford rent on our tiny one-bedroom apartment. The only spare space in my bedroom had been the path from the door to the bed—Madelyn’s crib and changing table had taken up the rest.
Amanda read my self-satisfied sigh correctly. “It’s all yours, babe,” she said, patting my shoulder. “No kids allowed.”
Shelly rolled over on her stomach and kicked her feet in the air. “The question is, who is allowed?” She smiled fiendishly. “You should invite Ford over for a housewarming party of two. A bedwarming party, if you will.”
I tried not to blush. Uncharacteristically, I hadn’t told my friends what had been happening between us. I wasn’t sure why. It felt too raw, too intimate to share. I made an effort to be flippant as I said, “I’d rather keep the job that’s paying for this.”
“What about Will?”
They’d seen Will when they met me for lunch earlier this week. From a distance, they’d only seen his good looks and none of his bad attitude, so they were fans.
“Definitely not Will,” I said with a shudder. The more I got to know him, the less I liked him. It was getting harder to smile pleasantly and make small talk with him. Everything he said was so negative, and no matter how many times I shrugged off his hand, somehow it always found its way back to my arm or my shoulder or my back. He didn’t stray too far into inappropriate territory, but it still bothered me. Especially when Ford saw it and gave me that blank, inscrutable stare.
My phone dinged on the bedside table. Amanda reached over for it lazily and looked at the name. She made a face as she handed it to me. “Why is Alex texting you?”
I shrugged, tossing the phone down without bothering to read it. Every few months it was the same thing.
How are you doing?
Can we talk?
I miss you.
My friends left by eleven because Shelly took an early morning fitness class every Sunday morning no matter how many glasses of champagne she downed on Saturday night. I felt an unexpected mixture of giddiness and loneliness when I closed the door behind them and looked around at my new apartment. It had that barren, unlived in look that new apartments always had. The carpet was too clean. The walls were too bare. It wouldn’t last. Madelyn would make sure of that. But for now, it gave me a strange ache in my chest. I wish I’d convinced one of my friends to spend the night. Most of the time, I was happy alone. I liked my life with Madelyn. Amanda and Shelly were like family.
But every once in a while, I wished for more. For someone more.
Not Ford, I lied to myself.
That was the rule.
When I came into work on Monday, my desk was missing. I walked a full loop around the office and then asked Mrs. Winthrop if I’d been fired.
“Oh honey, no,” Mrs. Winthrop said, laughing. “Mr. Cavanaugh had your desk moved right outside his office. He said you two were going to be working closely together on the Nashville conference for the next few weeks and he didn’t want to have to track you down when he needed something from you.”
“Oh did he?” I asked, my eyes narrowing. Strange how the Nashville conference had been just as much a priority last week, but my desk hadn’t needed to be right outside his office.
When Ford came in, I brought him the morning reports. He was on the phone, but instead of leaving, I sat down and waited.
He shot me a look, and I smiled pleasantly.
“Mr. Cavanaugh,” I said as soon as he hung up. “I need my desk moved back to where it was.” Friendly, I coached myself. Yet assertive. Like the other night never happened.
He looked amused. “Your desk has been moved for my convenience. I’m sorry if that inconveniences you.”
“I’m not sure how it’s more convenient for you to have me outside of your office when I’m the one who always comes to you,” I said, my politeness beginning to fray.
He caught my gaze and held it for a long beat. My face heated up, but I pressed my lips together and refused to acknowledge what was unspoken between us.
“I could come to you,” he murmured. “Just say the word.
“We agreed,” I started. “Last week--everything was fine.”
“Last week, I was angry that you were lying to me. This week, I’ve stopped giving a fuck. Not seeing you for three days put things into perspective.”
“The rules…”
“I’m not breaking any of your precious rules, Paige.”
“You’re cheating,” I whispered. “You know this is a bad idea.”
His eyes glinted. “I can’t help it if you’re having trouble sticking to them, Paige. It’s all about willpower, you know. The best executive assistants are disciplined.”
“Oh, I have willpower,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “I’m just not sure about yours.”
“I gave you my word. I’ll follow your rules as long as you do. Now…” he flicked a finger toward the door. “If you don’t mind, you have a lot of work to do.”
I opened my mouth, outraged at the dismissal until I saw the amusement in his eyes. He was provoking me just like before. Another game. I gave him the ingratiating smile I knew he hated. “Of course, Mr. Cavanaugh.”
“And Paige,” he said just before I reached the door. “Could you get me--”
My eyes narrowed.
“--the morning reports.”
I heard him laughing as I pulled the door behind me.
The last two weeks before the conference were filled with long days and entirely too much time being around Ford without being able to touch him. He stuck to his word and didn’t break the rules, but he picked at the edges of them, and he found a reason to keep me late so regularly I ended up finding a nanny for Madelyn. He usually chose Thursdays and Fridays to make the longest days. It was irritating to miss time with my daughter, but I was glad to have the excuse to give Will.
On the Friday night before the conference, I went into Ford’s office at six to go over the last of the details. He already had the files in front of him.
“Thank you for staying late, Miss Stafford. I audited your work on the travel arrangements, and you did a decent job holding everyone to the airfare and car rental budget.”
I tried not to roll my eyes at him. I’d done a great job. I’d caught Priya’s request for a convertible, and I’d stopped the usual suspects from buying the plane tickets on their own. The air miles I’d wrestled away from Jerry’s gang had earned me their undying enmity, but Blip had a 98% compliance rate for the first time ever.
“Thanks so much,” I said, unable to keep the sarcastic edge out of my voice.
“You’re welcome. But there was an oversight, I don’t see—”
“There’s not an oversight,” I interrupted. “I triple checked absolutely everything. I made people laminated itineraries with all of their information on them, maps, schedules. I’ve done everything but pair them up with a bathroom buddy.”
His eyebrows raised slightly. There was a watchful, anticipatory look in his dark eyes as he paused, waiting to see if I had more to say. I did, but I bit down hard on the insides of my cheeks to stop myself. Don’t bite, Paige.
“No one is doubting you’ve done your best,” he said in a lightly patronizing tone. “But you seem to have been so worried about everyone else that you forgot yourself.”
He pulled out the spreadsheet I’d made where I listed all the employees by last name and every detail of their travel arrangements. He ran his finger down the S’s. “Sabados, Silva, Simon, Small, Sterling.” He looked up at me. “No Stafford.”
“Myself?” I repeated, dumbstruck. “You never said anything about me going. Why would I go?”
“To assist me, of course.” He wasn’t even bothering to hide his smirk now.
“Ford,” I said, dropping the pretense of boss-employee formality. “I’m not going to Nashville to sleep with you.”
He stood up and came around the desk, leaning against it casually as though we were having a normal meeting. “Noted, Miss Stafford. In that case, we won’t need adjoining rooms. However, your attendance is still mandatory.”
“Why?” I asked again, frustration thrumming through me. Ford might have found it perversely amusing to drag me on a five-day trip to Nashville, but he wasn’t the one who had to worry about childcare. Even if Amanda and Shelly could handle Madelyn for nearly a week, I wasn’t sure I could handle being away from her for that long.
“You think these conferences run themselves?” He laughed softly. “It doesn’t matter how many laminated sheets you make people. Unless you’re in their face, telling them that they need to be presenting in Meeting Room B in twenty minutes, someone is going to forget. As my executive assistant, I’m relying on you to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“You’re bringing me along to be the team babysitter?” I spelled out, frustrated at the irony of having to find a babysitter in order to be one to a bunch of adults.
He spread his hands out, like there was nothing he could do. “It’s part of the job, Paige.” His eyes dropped to my mouth, lingered there. “But like I said, no need for adjoining rooms.”
“No chance of adjoining rooms.” I was so annoyed that I didn’t think twice about jabbing my finger in his chest. “I’m the one who makes the reservations, remember? I’ll share a double with Will Davis before I put our rooms anywhere near each other.”
I hadn’t been serious, but it was the wrong thing to say. His gaze went black and his hand snapped up to encircle my wrist. “If I find out you’ve let Will Davis so much as sit next to you on the plane, he’ll be looking for another job.”
I tried to yank my hand back, but his grip tightened. I hadn’t realized how close I was to him until I couldn’t pull away. His gaze, always watchful, was still on my mouth. Slowly, it rose to meet mine. My own frustration was confused by the lust that shot through me when our eyes locked. The vortex of need was swirling around us again, dangerously familiar. We’d been here before, and we knew two ways it could end. Once had been with him pulling me back against him in a penthouse suite, once had been with me pushing me away. “You broke the rules,” I murmured, staring at his hand wrapped around mine.
“Fuck the rules.” He yanked me closer.
I stared up at him, his mouth just above mine, so tantalizingly close. My body desperately craved the feel of his, but my brain was screaming at me.
He is your boss!
You need this job!
They were distant, tinny voices. I could ignore them so easily. It would feel so good.
What about Madelyn?
That voice was loud, an explosion in my ear drums. It jolted me out of my stupor just a moment before I would have given in. I ripped free and pushed back against his chest, hard. It didn’t move him a millimeter, but it did stun him. He looked like I’d thrown cold water in his face. He was blinking and confused. It wasn’t just me, then. We both felt that overpowering, all-consuming pull that was so hard to deny.
“Paige,” he said, his voice raspy and uneven.
“Mr. Cavanaugh,” I backed up. The back of my knees hit the chair behind me. I grabbed for it, putting it between us. Not because I thought he’d come after me, but because I was afraid I’d get pulled back in no matter how loudly the voice screamed.
It worked. The confusion dissipated from his eyes, leaving them hard and steely. “I won’t apologize because we both know this isn’t one-sided, but I won’t touch you again until you tell me to.”
“I won’t tell you to,” I said, unable to inject a single note of authenticity into my voice. “But Ford, about Nashville.”
“Isn’t negotiable,” he interrupted. “You’ll fly out on Tuesday afternoon with me. You’ll fly home Sunday morning.”
I nodded numbly. There was no fighting it, and I didn’t have the energy left to fight against anything else anyway. Just keeping the chair between us took all the strength I had. Already, the burst of rationality that had seemed to clear moments before was getting foggy again. I wanted him, and I wanted to be allowed to have him, but there was Madelyn. Always Madelyn.
I let go of the back of the chair with trembling hands. I didn’t want to just leave with this thing still smoldering between us, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. No good night, no goodbye, no I’m sorry would extinguish what we’d set fire to. How could I have been so stupid? I needed this job. I really, really needed it.
But I wanted Ford, too. I wanted him so badly I was willing to risk almost anything to have him again.
“Paige,” he said suddenly, and my heart leapt. But when I looked at him, it dropped again. Not an inch of him had softened. His shoulders were set, his face was carved in stone. “I meant what I said about Will Davis.”
It took a minute for my mind to rewind back to what had started this. My flippant comment about sharing a room with Will. The last thing I’d ever want to do, but Ford had taken it so seriously. For someone who had made a fortune analyzing people and giving them what they didn’t even know they wanted, he really couldn’t read the people closest to him. If I’d been a stranger, he’d have known in an instant that I was repulsed by the idea of sharing a room with Will. But because I’d slipped past the armor somehow, I was a mystery to him. I should have been glad. If he couldn’t see through me, he couldn’t suspect the magnitude of what I was hiding from him.
But instead, it made me sad. And that made me honest. “Will is nothing to me,” I said quietly. “He never will be.”
I left before he could reply, afraid that if I didn’t, the eddying tide of desire that was swirling between us would pull us back together. Pull us under. Drown us.
I made my reservations for Nashville. Amanda and Shelly agreed to take Madelyn. I packed my suitcase. And still, at every interval, I expected him to change his mind. He was distant and civil in the office, something that everyone noticed, and no one took personally, except me.
“He always gets like this before a big conference,” Mrs. Winthrop told me at lunch one day. “He has to be on the whole time, and it wears him out. He’s an introvert, you know.”
I snorted, thinking of his ability to be the smoothest, most charismatic man I’d ever met when he felt like it.
“No, really,” Mrs. Winthrop insisted. “People think that introverts are always quiet and shy. That’s not true. Introverts can be confident and outgoing, but if they don’t get time alone to recharge, they get burned out quickly. That’s Ford. He keeps his friends close and no one else.”
“I’ve noticed,” I murmured. I eyed Mrs. Winthrop speculatively. She’d been with Blip since they opened the office. Surely, she’d met Georgia. I knew her well enough now to know it wasn’t hard to get her talking. The key was to make her feel like she was sharing valuable information rather than gossiping. She was dead loyal to the four co-founders of Blip, but she was a talker.
“If that’s the case, I want to handpick who he sits with at breakfast,” I said, thinking quickly. “It has to seem random, but I think I can nudge the right people in the right direction if I know what I’m looking for. What type of people is he comfortable with? I know what his friends are like, and he was engaged once, right? What was she like?”
It was a leap. If Mrs. Winthrop hadn’t trusted me, she might have narrowed her eyes right then and said, “Who in their right mind would want to make a man eat breakfast with someone who reminds him of his ex?” But she thought she knew me. Thank God I was normally so trustworthy.
“Georgia.” The name caused a full body shudder to go through her. Her grey-blue eyes filled with dislike. “She was a cat person.”
I blinked, the connection lost on me.
“Ford is a dog person,” Mrs. Winthrop explained. “You probably thought all introverts are cat people, but dogs are extremely sensitive, very good for introverts.”
I’d never given a thought to what personality type
preferred which pet. “So Georgia was an extrovert?” I said, trying to follow her logic.
“No, Georgia was a robot,” Mrs. Winthrop said flatly. “She was like a human metal detector. When someone pointed her at a fortune, she lit up. All bells and whistles. Very sneaky, too. Like a cat.”
“Okay,” I said after a moment. “So don’t make him sit with robot cat people. Anything else I should know?”
“Just—no one too slick, if you know what I mean.” Mrs. Winthrop waved her fork around, trying to stab the right description out of the air. “It’s not about looks, although Georgia was beautiful. It’s about entitlement. Anyone who acts like they’re entitled to something because they’re beautiful or rich or what have you, that’s the wrong energy for him. Sometimes he sees right through the bs, but sometimes he doesn’t. Then he’s on edge and he doesn’t know why.”
In her strange, convoluted way, Mrs. Winthrop was telling me some of what I wanted to know about Georgia. She was an entitled cat person who had only been after Ford’s money. But she was also beautiful.
“But he must have seen through her eventually,” I prodded. “They broke up.”
“Eventually,” Mrs. Winthrop agreed. “But it took too damn long.” She blinked, like she suddenly realized we were off topic. “Pick college students,” she said. “Earnest ones who think they’re going to change the world with their ideas. Those are good for him. They remind him of how he and the others used to be.”
There was no way to drag the subject back to Georgia without arousing her suspicion, so I pulled out my notepad and wrote it down. Earnest students. No cat people.
On Tuesday morning, when I brought in the morning reports to Ford, his suitcase was in the corner of his office.
“You should have brought yours too,” he said shortly. “It would have saved you a trip.”
Our flight was at seven thirty, but I was bringing Madelyn home before I went to the airport. Shelly or Amanda could have picked her up, but I wanted to spend all the time I could with her before I left. “I’ll be there on time,” I said, putting the report on his desk. “I’m going to make coffee. Do you want some?”
