But no way was this over.
Chapter Nine
Her life was hell.
That was what rolled through Lauren’s mind as she entered her apartment that evening. Finding it dark, she wondered how her mother was doing. Having moved only a few doors down, her mother seemed happy. But Lauren missed her. Privacy wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Alone was very…well, alone.
Dropping her purse and keys on the entrance table, she headed straight to her bedroom. She flung her shoes off, mumbling as she did. Once she had comfortably donned a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, she stuffed her feet into her fluffy blue slippers.
Her next stop was the kitchen. After a long few moments of staring into the contents of the refrigerator, she grunted and slammed the door shut.
No way could she eat. Unless…chocolate. She had a stash. It might make her feel better. Making a bit more money these past few months had allowed a few luxuries. Not many but some. Chocolate had been the big one she loved.
Heading back to the bedroom she walked to the closet and flipped the light. She had a small chest inside where she kept her stash. A few moments later, chocolate in hand, she headed to the bed and flopped down. Remote in hand, she hit play. It had been months since she’d watched “Red Hot Secrets” but still she’d taped the episodes. Maybe a several hour marathon was needed.
Once the first episode started, she began the consumption of sweet candy bliss. With piece number six aimed at her mouth the phone rang. She dropped the candy in the bag. It hadn’t tasted the way it normally would. Not as sinfully perfect. Nothing felt right. Everything felt wrong.
Lauren shoved the bag of chocolate aside, and reached for the phone. “How was the first day at work?” It was Cat. No hello. Just straight to conversation.
Lauren sighed. “You’re never going to believe what happened.”
“Judging from your tone, it’s not good.” A pause. “Wait. Tell me that’s not ’Red Hot Secrets’ I hear in the background. I thought we’d broken that habit.”
Reaching for the remote, Lauren hit the button and ground her teeth in irritation. “Would you please focus? I have a problem.”
“It can’t be as bad as you’re making it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lauren asked defensively.
“You take life too seriously.”
“I have to.”
Cat snorted. “No, you do not. What’s got you so worked up?”
Eager to prove her point, Lauren said, “Remember Matt?”
“As in the only man you’ve spoken about who isn’t a part of the ’Red Hot Secrets’ cast? How could I forget him?”
“He’s my new boss.”
Cat laughed into the phone.
“What’s so funny? This is a disaster!”
“A disaster? Hardly. No food on the table. An earthquake. A tornado. These are disasters. You don’t have a disaster.”
“Then what do you call it?” Lauren demanded.
“Interesting,” she said quickly.
“Are you hearing the words that are coming out of my mouth?” Lauren said. “The man is my boss. What in the hell am I going to do?” A pause. “He’s my boss!”
Cat laughed. “Do you still want him?”
“He’s my boss.”
“Do you report directly to him?’
“Not exactly,” Lauren reluctantly admitted because clearly Cat had some agenda.
“And do you want him?”
“Cat—”
“You do. Okay. Does he want you?”
“Stop answering for me.”
“He does. Good. What exactly is the problem? You aren’t his direct report. Your relationship started before you were employed. It seems fairly simple. Have a fling and get him out of your system.”
“Sometimes I just don’t understand you,” Lauren said, reaching for the bag of chocolate again. It seemed a better comfort than Cat.
“Look,” Cat said, “it’s not a big deal. Keep it simple, keep it private.”
Lauren was silent a long moment, trying to process her thoughts and Cat’s loudly spoken opinions. The problem was she wasn’t sure her heart wasn’t already involved. But she wasn’t about to admit that. Not even to Cat.
“People have office affairs?”
Cat snorted. “Oh please, honey, all the time. You really are naïve sometimes. Stop making it so complicated.”
A few minutes later Lauren hung up the phone, but she didn’t feel any better than before her talk with Cat. In fact, she felt worse. To think Matt might want to have a heated little office affair with her, and then pretend it didn’t happen later… Well, any way she sliced it, she didn’t like it. Could she have an affair and then act like it had never happened? Or even now, in public? She wasn’t sure she was built that way. And it had been hard enough to forget Matt after one night. She might never recover from an affair. Lauren reached for the remote and flipped on the television, reaching in her bag of candy, hoping to forget Matt for only a few minutes.
A tall, dark, and handsome hunk filled the screen. “I’m going to make love to you, Tara. I’m going to make you never forget me.”
Those had been Matt’s words. Lauren hit the off button on the remote. She was really learning to hate this show.
* * * * *
The next morning Lauren had hardly had time to sit down at her desk when a knock sounded at her door. “Come in,” Lauren said, trying to sound bubbly when she felt anything but. She hadn’t slept. Fretting over the situation with Matt had dominated her entire night. But she had awakened with resolve to fight for her career. Today she would dig in and make an impression based on her professional abilities.
Celia appeared in the doorway and offered Lauren a friendly smile. With her stood a tall, blond Adonis-looking man Lauren recognized from the board meeting. “Lauren,” Celia said, “this is Greg Marsh.”
Greg nodded, and gave her a really quite sexy, quite devastating, smile. If you liked his type. Lauren didn’t. But Greg no doubt had plenty of women after him. That was one of the things about her attraction to Matt. She never went head over heels over a man. Except Matt. Mentally she shook herself. Already her thoughts had drifted back to him.
“Nice to meet you, Lauren.” Greg said moving toward her with an extended hand.
Lauren accepted it reluctantly. There was a hint of interest in Greg’s eyes she didn’t want to encourage. “Nice to meet you,” she replied formally, and with what she hoped was distinct coolness.
Greg held her hand far too long. Celia and Lauren made eye contact, and Celia gave her a silent apology before she delivered the bad news. “Greg is your teammate for the BG account.”
Lauren managed to plaster on a fake smile. Words, however, proved more difficult.
“I’ll just leave the two of you to your duties,” Celia said making a quick exit. Yes, run, Lauren thought. Leave me as the victim.
“So, Lauren,” Greg said, making himself comfortable in a chair. Lauren didn’t like the familiar way he used her name or the flirtatious twinkle in his eyes. “Tell me about yourself.”
She bit back a retort. “I’d rather talk about the campaign.”
“If we’re going to be working together, I think we should get to know each other.”
“I’d rather get to know BG. Tell me what they’re all about.”
Lauren was relieved when he started talking, dropping all the flirtatious undertones. Since he liked to talk, it took several hours for him to relay all he knew about BG. Surprisingly, he knew a lot. The problem was they disagreed on what BG needed for the campaign.
“Look Greg,” she said thankful the lunch hour approached and thus an escape route. “Why don’t you draft your ideas and I will draft mine. Let’s meet tomorrow morning and compare notes.”
“We’re supposed to be working together,” he said firmly.
Painting on a smile that was beginning to make her cheeks hurt, she said, “But you have an upper hand. You
know the account, I don’t. I need to take the afternoon to research and understand what I am dealing with.”
He studied her a long moment. “How about we meet up for dinner to compare notes?”
A bark of laughter escaped her throat. “Ah, no. Bad idea.”
His eyes narrowed. “It would be strictly business.”
“Would it?”
He grinned. “Unless you prefer it be different.”
Her lips thinned. “I prefer we meet first thing in the morning.”
He gave her a knowing look as he pushed to his feet. “If you change your mind, buzz my office.”
Relief washed over her as she watched him walk toward the door. She had a campaign to think about. It was important to her to do a good job on this.
Chapter Ten
Lauren opted for lunch out, walking to a pizza place she’d seen only a few blocks away. She never got tired of pizza and in the small deli she’d hide in a corner and think while she devoured at least two pieces. No dinner the night before had her stomach in knots. The comfort of the small booth combined with her first bite of pizza delivered a rush of peace. This was her few minutes of private time to think.
She had just finished a second bite when a visitor slid into the seat in front of her. It was Matt. “What are you doing?” Lauren demanded, and then deposited her pizza on the plate.
He looked down at the two slices of pizza he’d set on the table. “Same as you it appears.”
“How… I mean—”
“I guess we just have a knack for showing up at the same places.”
“Oh,” Lauren said, because nothing more brilliant would come. The small table put them at arm’s length. He looked handsome with a dark suit and a maroon silk tie.
“I used to come here years ago. Glad it’s still around.” Matt took a bite of pizza. She wanted to ask for more detail but she didn’t let herself. Dabbing at his mouth, he smiled. “Why, you ask? My father was a workaholic so Mom and I would come by and visit him. We’d take him pizza and sit in what’s my office now and eat as a family.”
She reached for her pizza feeling odd watching him eat. Clearly, he planned on staying. “Sounds like your family is close.”
“We are. Or were. My mother passed away several years ago.”
Lauren swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. “What about you? Are you close to your family?”
This wasn’t a question she wanted to answer. She placed her pizza on the plate. “Why are you here, Matt?”
He smiled and picked a piece of pepperoni up. “Great food.” He popped it in his mouth and swallowed. “You know, I consider myself a connoisseur of good pizza.”
“Oh, I—” Crap. Lauren started to tell him she considered herself the same. She knew all the cheap good places. But then, cheap wasn’t an issue to him and she didn’t need to get personal with her boss and ex-one-night stand. “Wouldn’t have guessed.”
One dark brow inched upward. “No?” he asked. “Well, I am. I’m the single closest thing to a pizza expert in this city.”
Okay, that was a challenge. She had to respond. “I doubt that very seriously,” Lauren said.
“Really?” he asked a hint of a smile in his voice. “I suppose you can do better?”
She nodded and finished off her first piece of pizza. “Prove it,” he said.
“How?” she asked, only half believing she was having this conversation with Matt.
He pulled a pen out of his jacket pocket and then reached to the napkins and handed her one. Lauren accepted it but with confusion. “What’s this for?”
“Write down the top three pizzas in town. I’ll do the same. I want to see if you know your stuff.”
“Didn’t you just move from LA? How do you know the pizza in New York? And who’s going to be the judge of which one of us is right?”
“I grew up here.”
Lauren shook her head. “That’s not good enough. Things change.” She held out her hand for the pen. “You’re going to lose.”
Matt laughed. “Not a chance. But give it your best shot.”
She accepted the pen, but not without a brush of his fingers. Her eyes went to his, and for a moment, electricity crackled as they stared at one another. Lost in each other. Lost in what was and what could have been. A glass broke somewhere, and Lauren jolted back to the present.
Averting her gaze, she wrote on the napkin. Satisfied with her answers, she slid the pen across the table not prepared to risk more hand-to-hand contact. Needing the distraction, she started on her second slice of pizza. Matt seemed to ponder his answers.
“Tough, huh?” she challenged because she couldn’t help herself.
He winked. “Just making sure I weigh my options.” Then, he started writing. Done with his task, he slid his pen back in his pocket, and then offered her his list. “Let’s exchange.”
Lauren hesitated. Why did her list of pizza places suddenly feel very exposing? Very personal? For one thing, she knew hers were all hole-in-the-wall, cheap places.
Matt gestured toward her list. “No holding back. Let me see.”
Having no option, she offered him her list, and reached for his. She blinked and read it again. Then, she sat down the napkin. “New York Pizza is not better than Johnnies. That alone proves you don’t know your pizza.”
Laughing Matt tossed down her napkin. “Ah, but have you tried their new triple cheese?”
“What are you talking about?” Lauren asked. She didn’t know about this or she would have already tried it.
Matt leaned forward, his hand covering hers where it rested on the table. “How about after work I take you to try it?”
All of a sudden Lauren couldn’t breathe. How had she gone from avoiding Matt to this? “We both know that’s not a good idea.”
“It’s pizza and some conversation. We both know we need to talk and not when we have a lunch hour deadline.”
Why she didn’t move her hand, she wasn’t sure. He didn’t hold it in a way that kept her from extracting it. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“How about us?”
“There is no ‘us’.”
Matt sank back against the bench and studied her a long moment. “I’ve never had anything like this happen.”
“Anything like what?” Lauren said feeling a flutter in her chest as she waited for the response.
“I don’t date employees. Work and personal don’t mix.”
“Exactly.”
“But what do two people in our circumstances do? We met outside of work a year ago. It’s a unique situation I never thought to find myself in. What do you think we should do, Lauren?”
This should be an easy question to answer, but she found herself wanting to ignore good reason. “We…we have to pretend the past never happened.”
His brow inched upward. “Can you?” Matt paused a moment but not long enough for an answer. “Because I haven’t.”
Lauren looked down, trying to hide the emotion she knew would show in her face. She liked Matt so much. And it went beyond desire. They hardly knew each other, and yet, he felt like so much more than a stranger.
“I tried to find you,” he added when she didn’t immediately answer.
Her eyes instantly lifted. “You did?”
“Why does that surprise you?”
Mind racing, Lauren couldn’t find the words to respond. She didn’t know what to say. Shocked and more than a little confused, she couldn’t think straight. Desperate for space, for a way to get her head cleared, Lauren reached for her purse. And reality slid into her mind with a hard thud. “I can’t do this. Don’t you see? You have nothing to lose and I have everything. You are the boss. You have a career and a future. This industry is small when it comes to reputation. I can’t allow people to think I slept my way to the top.”
Pushing to her feet, Lauren intended to flee. Matt stood, facing her, and effectively blocked her with his big frame. “Wait.”
He paused. “Lauren.” He said her name and let it linger in the air as if he was trying to decide what to say. “Tell me you don’t feel anything for me and I’ll walk away.”
Why couldn’t he understand? Frustration made her respond quickly. “It’s not about that. Don’t you see? It’s about my future. About a mother I support and a career I have worked my butt off to achieve.”
His dark eyes studied her for long moments. “Let me be clear. You’re interested but not at the risk of damaging your career?”
She saw no reason to deny the truth because the final answer was the same. There could be nothing between them. “Exactly. You have nothing to lose. I, on the other hand, have everything.“
Matt didn’t say anything for a long moment. “I’ll walk you back to the office.”
“No!” Lauren felt the rise of panic. “People might think…”
“That we happened to bump into each other?” he asked, a hint of tightness to his voice.
“I’ll walk back on my own.” With that said, Lauren stepped around him and started for the door.
And as she stepped outside, her chest was tight, and her stomach in knots. It felt as if she’d just walked away from something much bigger than a chance meeting. Something about Matt really felt right. She liked him.
But it didn’t matter.
There was no hope for them.
* * * * *
Matt turned and watched Lauren walk from the restaurant. She did things to him. Made him feel alive. Made him smile and laugh. He couldn’t let her be hurt because of their shared attraction. She was right. The industry would punish her reputation if the wrong things evolved out of this. But what was he supposed to do when his gut said Lauren may just be “the one”? He’d always heard, when you met that person, you just knew but he hadn’t believed it. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Lauren felt special. Somehow, he had to come up with a way to protect her, and still find out what lie between them.
And then it hit him. A slow smile slid onto his mouth as an idea formed.
Chapter Eleven
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