by Claire Adams
Parker started taking free lessons from Finn on his snowboard, and I finally let the two of them goad me into learning how to do it, too. I snuck away for an hour each afternoon for two months to figure out how to get really good at the sport. They figured I was looking at new patterns for the designs my father and I were working on. When we got our first full snow, I pulled out my tricks and memorized the shocked looks on their faces at seeing just how good I'd gotten.
Finn made love to me that night so passionately that I thought I might never recover from it. Where my wish list included a man who had a knack for fashion, I'm thinking his was finding a woman that could snowboard. I worked harder to get even better at it after that.
My father met someone at Clark and Milly's wedding that they all went to school with, and he'd been dating her for the last three weeks. She was sweet and reminded me a little too much of Mom, but I've kept my thoughts to myself on it.
The lodge that my father purchased for me to fix up is fully functional, the doors having opened in late October. Parker works in the ski shop, and I spend most of my days working on various designs for the clothing store that's nestled into the side of it. Finn's in love with the place and spends more time there than he does with me. I'm not jealous… Well, maybe a little.
It was Christmas once again, but unlike last year, this year, we were all healthy and happy. At Finn’s request, we invited everyone to the lodge for a big Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. We had to wait until after the seven o'clock church service, which his father dragged us all to, but afterward, we piled up in various vehicles and drove back to the lodge.
"Everyone around the table together? It's going to be great. I’m excited." I squeezed Finn’s thigh and pressed my lips against his arm.
"Me, too, baby." He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and tugged me in tighter.
We still had the old truck, namely because he wouldn't part with it. I think he enjoyed the fact that I could sit right against him and not more than one person could fit on the other side of me.
"I had the kitchen prepare a bunch of different stuff, just in case everyone had different traditions." I moved to my side of the truck as we pulled up to the lodge.
"It's going to be great, Chloe. Go on up there, and I'll meet you shortly. I want to see if anyone needs help with bags or anything."
I nodded and got out of the car, jogging up the stairs and letting the beauty of the Christmas lights against the large snowy mountains take my breath away. I'd learned to love Colorado—not the cold, but the serenity and beauty it offered. I had loads of jackets and various sweaters that I'd designed with functionality in mind, but not forgetting about fashion. They sold like crazy, but the best part was wearing them myself and enjoying a ride down the slopes with my man in them, too.
The smell of pumpkin pie and roasted meat filled my senses when I walked into the main hall, and I paused to look around. It was odd to see the place empty, but Finn was quite serious about not booking anyone for the days right around Christmas. He wanted it to be all about us. He promised that next year we could open it up to the public, but for this first year, he wanted just family and friends.
I agreed readily, and I was glad I did. Warmth enveloped me and strong emotions washed over me. My life was nothing like I'd expected and yet so much better than I could ever imagine.
"Chloe..." Finn called to me, and I turned as he walked through the large ornate doors I'd just come through. Everyone piled in behind him, and my heart skipped a beat.
"What, baby?" I stood in stony silence, feeling like something was upon me, but not knowing what.
"I wanted our family and friends to be here tonight for a special reason." He smiled and moved to stand in front of me, taking my hands and leaning down to brush his lips past mine.
"What reason is that?"
"When we first met, I was a different man. A man I didn't at all want to be, but I didn't know how to move past it. I had such big dreams, and yet I left them tucked behind a reality that tore me down and left me barren. When you showed up...the first day I met you..." he paused as his eyes filled with tears.
Mine did, too. "When I almost busted my head on the ski lift?"
He laughed with thick emotion in his throat. "Yes. You changed everything. You helped me find myself, making me want to be a better man, if nothing else, then for you. I owe you everything, Chloe. I want to build our house together and make it a home with babies that drive you nuts and rule the place. I want to hold you as we grow older and continue to make plans together that go as far out as we can see."
I pressed my hands to my mouth, pushing back the soft cry that beat against my teeth as he dropped to one knee in front of me and lifted a beautiful diamond ring up toward me.
"Will you be mine forever, baby? Will you marry me?"
"Of course, I will. Yes." I got on my knees with him and knocked him over with a hug that turned into a long kiss.
"Oh, God. Get a room!" Parker yelled, and everyone erupted in laughter, reminding me that life was so much bigger than we sometimes let it be. It was about friends and family, dreams and love.
It was about me and Finn.
The waves and the snow.
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BOSS’S VIRGIN
By Claire Adams
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 Claire Adams
Chapter One
Ian
This is what happens when you do favors for friends.
Jonathan asked if I’d do him a solid and give his friend an interview since we needed to hire a new secretary. What were the words he’d used? Smokin’ hot AND intelligent? I looked over my steepled fingers at the girl sitting nervously on one of the two chairs on the other side of my desk. The chairs were maple, straight-backed, very fine craftsmanship but no cushions, so whoever was sitting there would have to perched upright, slightly uncomfortable. At attention, if you will. My own ass was luxuriating in an ergonomic leather executive chair—Tuscan leather, mahogany accents, ability to recline, retractable footrest. I was reclining now, as a matter of fact, wishing that I had not agreed to do this favor for Jonathan. I mean, this girl, Daisy, was attractive, sure, but she dressed in such a way that was trying to disguise it, with her black A-line skirt that went past her knees, her blouse buttoned all the way up, those black, school marm oxfords. This girl didn’t need a job; she needed a goddamn crash course in fashion.
But we’d just sat down, and if I didn’t at least go through the formalities, I’d have to endure Jonathan’s bitching, and I already heard enough of that as it was.
“So,” I said. “You’re friends with Jonathan?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. She cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said again, a little more loudly. “We met at the gym.”
“And you were previously employed at . . . where?” I leaned forward and rifled through some papers on the desk, though there was nothing there that would give me any clues about her previous work experience.
“Shear Genius.”
“The hair salon?”
“Yes. I was the administrative assistant there.”
“You were the secretary.”
She shifted. “The administrative assistant. I handled all the reception duties, scheduling, payroll, filing, and some light bookkeeping.”
I nodded. “Okay, right. So you were the secretary.” I hated shit like that; it was like calling a janitor a custodial engineer. She was answering phones and making appointments and doing reminder calls; therefore, she was a secretary. Maybe she wasn’t fet
ching coffee or transcribing things on a typewriter, but she was still a secretary. “That’s essentially what we’re looking for here,” I said. “Someone to answer the phones, manage the calendar, keep the office in order.”
I decided not to mention that the reason for the vacancy was because I’d slept with the last secretary, and then there’d been this little misunderstanding about the true meaning of “no strings attached.” I had explicitly stated that, whispered it in Annie’s ear, in fact, right before I fucked her across this very desk, and she’d been more than agreeable.
“I did all of that at Shear Genius,” she said. “I’m a very organized person, and I think the best way to ensure that a business runs smoothly is to keep things organized and maintained.” She continued to espouse on what she thought a business needed to run successfully. I tuned this out and watched her talk instead. Watching someone talk can often give you a whole lot more of information about who they are than the actual words that are coming out of their mouths.
This was often how I’d decide whether or not my company, Hard Tail Security, was going to take someone on as a client. I was in the Marines for ten years, signing up for recruit training the day I turned eighteen. It was hell, of course, but paled in comparison to all the shit my dickhead stepfather put me through. I left the Marines at twenty-eight, after three deployments. Jonathan and I ended up reconnecting; he’d gone to college after high school and had graduated with a degree in business, but had taken an interest in Japanese jujutsu. We’d gone out to get drinks, had a few more than we intended, and started shooting the shit about how great it would be to start a security firm. Perhaps not the most glamorous or enlightened origin story, but there you go.
We started small but grew every year—last year we provided security for the community event when the Dalai Lama came to speak; our services were also used regularly for Seamus McAllister, who ran a high-stakes underground poker club, but also when he threw his daughter’s sweet sixteen. (Besides the poker, Seamus was the biggest mover of illicit drugs in the city, renowned for his ability to always be able to escape being sentenced, though the cops and D.A. had certainly tried.) In other words: our clients ran the gamut from the holiest of holy to the morally deficient. We didn’t discriminate. Well, we did, but it wasn’t based on the criteria that some other companies might have used.
I continued to watch Daisy talk, still not really hearing what she was saying. She was earnest, honest. She was the sort of person you could trust not to slack off if you weren’t around to oversee what she was doing. All good qualities, but the drama with Annie was still fresh in my mind—the tears, the pleading, eventually, the threats. I didn’t do well with anyone threatening me, and I finally had to tell her, in no uncertain terms, that she needed to back the fuck off. I’d never hit a woman, of course, but in that case, it had been especially tempting. She couldn’t take no for an answer. When a guy can’t take no for an answer, he’s a misogynistic asshole; when it’s a girl, she’s just persistent, or, as Annie claimed, in love.
Not that Daisy was anything like Annie. Annie had put her goods on display from day one, favoring short, tight skirts, ultra-high heels, and blouses that her cleavage was just begging to be released from. Daisy didn’t have any of that on display, but my highly trained eye could tell that under all those prudish, dull clothing, she had a banging body.
Annie was still calling me, was the thing. She wasn’t calling from her number—I didn’t know whose phone she was using—but I kept getting these calls from random numbers I didn’t recognize. Sure, it could’ve been some scam or telemarketer, but I knew it was her. Daisy wasn’t like her in the least, I knew that, but I didn’t want the distraction.
Now she was looking back at me, the tip of her tongue coming out of her mouth to wet her bottom lip. She had stopped talking and was waiting for me to say something, maybe to respond to whatever it was that she’d just been saying, though I hadn’t heard a word of it. I laced my fingers together and stretched them, bending my fingers back, arms extended. This was a tactic I often used when caught in the situation of being expected to answer a question I hadn’t been listening to. Let a few seconds go by and then do something physical—it didn’t have to be anything big, it could be something as simple as smothering a yawn—and then respond however you felt. Your response didn’t even need to have anything to do with what the person had just asked.
“We’ve had a lot of interest in the position,” I said, relaxing my forearms. I leaned my head to one side, then the other, and felt a vertebrate in my neck crack. Ah. That was better. “I don’t know if Jonathan mentioned that to you or not.”
“No,” she said, looking down at her lap. “He didn’t.”
“I’m only telling you this because we’ve had a number of qualified applicants. So it’s not going to be an easy decision to make.”
“I completely understand.”
We sat there for a minute, neither of us saying anything. I leaned back in my chair. She was waiting for me to speak, but I was enjoying watching her squirm in the silence. Awkward silences can tell you a lot about a person. Some people will immediately try to fill them with chatter; others will shut down, and others will start fiddling with the nearest thing they can get their hands on. Daisy, while she looked a bit uncomfortable, folded her hands in her lap, looked me in the eye for a second, and then looked over my shoulder, toward the window, as though something very captivating had just caught her eye.
“Well,” I said finally. “Thank you for coming in and talking with me.”
“Absolutely. Thank you so much for taking the time to interview me. I look forward to hearing from you.”
She still looked nervous as all hell, though. “Jonathan or I will be in touch,” I said, not bothering to get up when she did. Instead, I watched her stand and smooth down her skirt.
“Okay,” she said. Cue two point five seconds of awkward silence. “Well, um. Bye.”
I steepled my fingers in front of my mouth again to hide my smile. “Have a good one, Daisy.”
She turned and left as though she couldn’t get out of my office fast enough, which at least gave me a fleeting view of her ass before she disappeared around the corner.
I wasn’t going to hire her. I’d hire the girl I interviewed yesterday, Lynn. I’d already decided I was going to do that anyway, though Jonathan hadn’t been privy to that information. I returned some emails and a few phone calls before I found her resume with her phone number.
“Hello?” she said after the second ring, though the way she said it, I could tell she already knew who it was. There was a hopeful note in her voice that she was trying to keep under wraps.
“Daisy,” I said. “It’s Ian Roubideaux.”
“Hi, Ian.”
“Hey. Listen. I just wanted to call and let you know that I’ve decided to go with someone else for the position.”
There was a pause. “Oh,” she said finally. “Okay. Well . . . thank you for letting me know so quickly.” There was another pause. “Was I . . . was I just not qualified? I know I can do everything you said you were looking for.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “Based on your resume and what Jonathan’s said about you, you certainly seem qualified. But you’re not the only applicant in the pool, and I actually had many qualified people apply for the position. I’ll keep your resume on file though, okay? And if something opens up in the future, I’ll give you a shout.”
“Sure,” she said. “I appreciate it. Thank you. And thanks again for calling so promptly to let me know.”
“You got it,” I said.
I hung up. She had a nice phone voice.
I dicked around at my desk for a little while after I got off the phone because I knew Jonathan was out there lurking, wanting to know how it had gone, when she would start. When I finally stepped out of my office, he jumped up from his own desk and hurried over, an inquisitive look on his face.
“So how’d it go?” he asked. “Isn’t she
great? When does she start?”
“Uh . . . she’s not, man, sorry,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Really? What—did she totally bomb the interview or something? She can get a little nervous, but trust me, Ian, you’d be a fool not to hire her. Besides, she just got fired from her other job, and she’s really hoping to be able to move soon.”
“And all of this is my problem, why?”
“She’s got this stalker. This guy from the gym. He seemed cool at first, but then he just got real crazy, real fast. Totally outta left field; no one was expecting it. She used to work at that hair salon, Shear Genius. I’m sure she told you that.”
“Aren’t people who are employed at hair salons generally somewhat fashionable?”
“Come on, bro, give her a chance. She deserves it. She’s gone through so much shit lately.”
Jonathan and I have been friends since middle school; all these years later, he was still a sucker for a sob story. You could say my own miserable childhood had been a sob story—maybe that’s why we had maintained our friendship all these years later. He just couldn’t help himself.
I sure as shit wasn’t a sob story now, though I suppose one could wonder where I’d be if it hadn’t been for Jonathan and his family all but adopting me and providing the sort of stable family life that my mother and stepfather, Pete, could not.
“I’m not exaggerating when I say she has a stalker,” Jonathan said. “Straight up bonafide psycho. She deleted all her social media accounts because of him.”
I widened my eyes. “Oh geez, not that.”
Jonathan gave me an earnest look. “That actually is saying something, getting rid of your Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat just because someone is stalking you.”
