by Maisey Yates
Perhaps because Socialite Addison was by far the most confident Addison.
And confidence would be required today. Since she seemed to lack any at night. She hated how afraid she’d become. All the time.
It was as Logan had said. Suddenly, life had consequences. Life had weight, where before it had been…
It had been a game in so many ways. Not now.
She cleared her throat and grabbed her purse off the nightstand, checking her email as she walked down the hall. Still nothing from Harlow. Which was strange.
She paused for a second and pulled up her friend’s phone number, deciding to go ahead and give her a call, even though she wasn’t entirely certain of what time it was in Europe.
The phone went straight to a standard message. A recorded, robotic female voice saying that the number she’d dialed was no longer in service.
Addison swallowed hard and lowered the phone, her hands shaking a little. Possible still, in part due to her dream. And possibly because of the message.
Because all of it seemed wrong. And right now everything felt random and uncertain. She didn’t trust life at all.
Addison let out a sharp breath and shook her head, closing her eyes briefly before walking on and to Logan’s office. It hit her then she wasn’t sure if they were staying here today or going out. That she wasn’t sure if he went out at all.
She had no way to predict her new boss’s eccentricities. He was an enigma, and that was the last thing she’d been expecting when Austin told her she was coming to work for Logan Black.
Yes, she’d seen the headlines. What’s wrong with Logan Black? But she still hadn’t known what to expect. She still didn’t.
She knocked on the office door and didn’t get an answer. She pushed it open and looked inside. Empty. Well, great. Where was she supposed to meet him? Had he gone to his corporate office? And had she been meant to guess that?
She let out an exasperated sigh and stood in the middle of the room for a moment, tapping her foot. Then she walked to the desk and dialed a zero to get the front desk. A chipper, professional woman answered.
“Hi,” Addison said. “This is Addison Treffen, Mr. Black’s new assistant.” She was an intern, but assistant sounded more authoritative. “I can’t seem to find him. Did he go out?”
“Oh,” the woman said. “No. I would assume he’s in his suite. He might be in his gym.”
“And where is that?” Addison asked.
“His floor. But no one is to disturb Mr. Black when he’s in his suite.”
Addison blinked. His floor. This one, not quite the top, which would of course be reserved for guests wanting penthouse suites, was Logan’s domain. She should have realized that. There wasn’t a bustle of employees or unfamiliar faces on this floor.
It was only him. And now…her.
The thought made her stomach tighten. She immediately visualized walking into a tiger’s cage unarmed.
“Right. Well. Thank you, for that. I will…carry on.” Addison hung up the phone and let out a long, slow breath.
So, no one was to disturb Mr. Black when he was in his room. Well, that had not been in her list of rules from yesterday. And while she hadn’t, in fact, written any of his rules down, she remembered well enough to know he hadn’t mentioned anything along those lines.
In spite of that, she was reluctant to disturb him. Dealing with Logan was unnerving. He lacked a carefully cultivated veneer that most everyone she was accustomed to interacting with seemed to possess. He was guarded, certainly, but this was not with the cloak of civility.
No, Logan seemed more animal than man in his movements. Not even his custom suits could make him look like a typical businessman. He was never still, always prowling through the office like a cat on the hunt.
It made her wonder what exactly he was hunting. Scratch that, she didn’t want to know. She was afraid she wouldn’t like the answer.
She crossed the office and headed to his desk, taking a seat in the large leather chair. She flattened her palms on the glossy surface, sliding her hands over the smooth desktop. One positive thing she could say about him was that he was neat. There wasn’t one bit of excess clutter in the entire room. No errant knickknacks, no decorative art. Nothing that signified a human man actually worked here all day, every day.
He wasn’t wrong about the number of phone calls he got. They came in a steady stream from nine o’clock on. Black Properties employees with important questions and various emergencies.
Hours rolled on and calls continued to roll in, but her boss remained notably absent. After lunch she was starting to get second and third calls from people who had called that morning, and who were getting increasingly desperate to speak to Mr. Black.
Addison was starting to care less and less that Mr. Black did not like to be disturbed when he was in his rooms. She had a feeling that had she elected to come into work hours late today, he would’ve stormed her room, thrown her over his shoulder and carried her down into the office by force.
Granted, he was the boss, but even so. She had a list people for him to call back, and she had a feeling that most of them were quite important. Which meant she had to decide whether or not she thought she would get into more trouble for interrupting Mr. Black in his hallowed suite, or for failing to deliver potentially essential messages.
Going back to the rules from earlier, she decided she’d take a chance on finding his suite.
Addison was rarely at a loss when it came to dealing with people. Keeping social wheels greased, making sure people were happy, reading their moods, was part and parcel to being Jason and Lenore Treffen’s daughter. To being a trophy-wife-in-training.
Logan made her feel as though she was at a loss.
She did not like the feeling. She was disturbed already without feeling she’d lost the sense of how to deal with social situations.
Addison stepped slowly out of the office and into the hall. As always, it was quiet on this floor. She looked both ways, then went back in the direction of her room, her eyes on the different doors. And she was suddenly unbearably curious about what might be behind each one. Were they all his? All entrances to his suite? How large was it?
Large enough for a gym, apparently.
This was his habitat, his lair—for lack of a better word. Dark, enclosed. Private and lush. Which fit with her earlier realization that he was more predator than human.
Thinking of it that way made her question her decision to confront him here, but she’d made up her mind. She was here to assist him and to make sure she facilitated his work, and right now, with him in hiding, she couldn’t do that.
She knocked on one door and tried the handle. Locked and no answer.
Then she went two doors down and paused. There was no card reader or code. Just an old-fashioned brass handle. She pushed it down and it gave.
She opened the door and slipped inside. The air inside the room was heavy. She’d been expecting a bedroom, a well-appointed sitting room or, you know, just a room with lights on.
But she was starting to realize that the only thing she could count on, as far as Logan went, was unpredictability.
A deep, masculine sound cut through the silence like a bass note. Addison stopped, her eyes going to the back of the room. Partly hidden in the darkness was a steel bar stretched between two poles, and there, suspended in the air, was Logan, holding a chin-up pose, his eyes closed, every muscle in his body tight. Hard and unmoving like stone. He lowered himself and she watched, shamelessly. Powerlessly, really. Riveted by the shift and ripple of every muscle in his bare torso as he moved with complete control, with a slow deliberation that spoke of discipline in a clear and silent way.
Then she watched as he pulled himself back up, the only sign of strain in the slight shiver of his pectoral muscles as he did.
She drew in a sharp, short breath and his eyes opened. He released his hold on the bar, dropping to his feet noiselessly, landing in a crouched position, down in the d
arkness.
She couldn’t read his expression from her position across the room, his face nothing more than dark shadow, his broad frame lined in gold from the hints of sunlight streaming in beneath the heavy drapes on the back wall.
He stood upright, moving his body into the light. He rolled his shoulders back, ab muscles shifting with the motion. Yesterday’s clothing had only hinted at his strength. Here, she could see it unveiled, no custom-made suit covering his body as a nod to civility. In this place she could see full evidence of the animal he was.
And he really was quite an impressive animal.
“What are you doing in here?”
“I was looking for you,” she said. “I’ve taken about twenty messages this morning, and people are starting to get restless. Rome seems to be burning, et cetera.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Is there literal fire?”
“Well, no. Not literal fire.”
“Then there is no excuse for you to be in here,” he said.
“Wait a second. You laid out all your rules yesterday, but you didn’t say anything about you showing up to work hours late, or not at all. And you did not say what I should do in the event that I was left to field things by myself.”
Logan grabbed a towel off the bar to his left and started rubbing it over his chest and back, the action much more interesting than it should have been, all things considered. The man was wiping sweat off himself, for heaven’s sake. There should be nothing interesting about that.
“Then consider this a formal notification and warning,” he said, his tone hard. “No one comes in here.”
“If you feel that strongly about it, you should probably consider locking the door.”
Addison knew the moment the words left her mouth that she’d made a mistake. She never made a mistake. She never said the wrong thing.
Until now. Until Logan.
Logan cast the towel onto the floor, stalking toward her, his blue eyes fixed on hers.
Reflexively, Addison took a step back, then another as he continued to advance on her. She didn’t stop until her shoulder blades butted up against the wall. Logan drew closer, all muscle and heat and angry man. And it all did something to her. Something that she didn’t understand, something she didn’t want.
She should be afraid of him, and really, she was. But the fear was mixed with something else, a low hum of excitement that started low in her belly and radiated outward, spread downward, pooled in places lower. Slick and sweet and wrong. So very, very wrong.
“Or perhaps,” he said, “you should have considered knocking. Even with my limited social skills, I understand that it’s customary.”
She drew in a shaking breath, tried to speak with a steady voice. “You make it sound like it’s a foreign custom to you.”
“I understand what people do. And I even understand why. For me, what civility has lost is its importance.” He placed a hand on the wall behind her leaning in, his breath fanning across her cheek. She looked up, into his eyes, and she could see exactly what he was trying to say. Because there was no spark of humanity there, no facade at all. It was like staring down into a bottomless well, and where she might’ve expected to find a soul, she saw nothing but darkness. “You can only cross so many lines before you’ve gone too far to come back.”
Her throat felt hot, dry and prickly, her skin too tight for her body. And yet again, she could feel words she shouldn’t say pressing against her lips. And yet again, they won. “You’ve crossed those lines?”
He lifted his hand, his palm hovering just above her cheek. She expected him to touch her, expected him to cup her cheek. Found herself anticipating it. But instead he lowered his hand and took a step back as though he’d been burned.
“You don’t want to know about me, Addison,” he said, his voice rough.
For some reason, she wanted to push. Wanted him to come back to her, and look at her with those dangerous eyes. She should want him to stay over there. She should want him to stay away from her. But she didn’t.
“But if you don’t tell me your story, how will you frighten me away?”
A cold smile curved his lips upward. “I’m sure I’ll find a way,” he said, bending over and picking up a T-shirt from the floor, tugging it over his head. She held the sound of disappointment in as he concealed all that gorgeous skin.
What was wrong with her? She didn’t do this. She didn’t…ogle men. Most especially men who seemed to have something essential missing from their makeup. Hadn’t she had enough of men with no conscience?
He has a conscience. He’s not like Jason.
She was not going to listen to her inner voice. Her inner voice had proven to be a very poor judge of character.
Even knowing that, it didn’t change the fact that looking at Logan made her feel slightly breathless and a little light-headed. The simple fact was, she had no experience with men like him. She had no experience with men at all.
All the boys at school were just that—boys. A category Eddie most certainly fell into.
Logan Black was not a boy. Not even close. Logan Black was a man. In every sense of the word.
She wasn’t fortified against the kind of magnetism he possessed, against that caliber of body. Wasn’t fortified against…whatever the feelings were that she was having. Feelings that seemed to have materialized as heat and localized in her face, her stomach and her…oh Lord. It was really hot in here.
She took a moment to look away from him, and regain her sanity, while taking in the rest of the room. It wasn’t a gym in any way she recognized it. There was…scaffolding everywhere. A thick rope suspended from the ceiling. A punching bag. No treadmills or ellipticals. No fancy equipment of any kind. A lot of it looked as though it might have been homemade. It was crude and simple. And looked well beyond her fitness routine, which consisted in a walk down the street to get a bagel and a latte.
Not that walking on the sidewalk was any mean feat. Especially considering these days it meant dodging paparazzi.
“What time is it?” he asked.
His words brought her attention back to him. And she tried to keep her focus on his face, and not his impossibly broad chest and narrow waist, which had now had the veil torn from them, so to speak.
Of course, his face was just as distracting, and now that she’d really noticed his body, it was even more so. And she didn’t even want to know why that was.
“It’s nearly one o’clock.”
He frowned and reached above his head, gripping the bar. “I lost track of time.” He lifted himself, with one damn arm, thank you very much, and curved his legs over the bar, hanging upside down. Then he curled upward, his chest meeting his knees. The world’s most extreme sit-up.
“Oh well.” She tried very hard to look anywhere but at him. “Do you often lose track of time?”
“Does it really matter to you, Addison? After all, you’re just hiding out from the press, aren’t you?”
For some reason, his words caused a rash of annoyance to rock through her body. Maybe that was the underlying reason for being here, but for some reason now she felt driven to do her job. And to do it well. Maybe because the recent events made her feel that she had no direction, no purpose. No father to please. No love interest for whom to transform herself into the perfect society bride.
It all made her feel that she needed to do something for herself. Even if, for now, that just meant doing well at this internship.
Succeeding in this was better than drifting. Anything was better than that.
“Maybe,” she said, “but I’m here. So it seems like I should try to do a little more than just coast through this. Anyway, as interesting as your workout routine is, I feel like we should discuss the job.”
“I guess your brother didn’t warn you about me,” he said, moving back to his hanging position.
“He did. But more about your former playboy ways, not so much about…this.”
“Could be because he didn’t really know. I’
ve always liked Austin,” he said. “He knows when to keep his distance.”
Logan gripped the bar with his hands and flipped himself over it, landing on his feet again. “You don’t seem to have inherited his perception,” he said.
It was a funny thing for him to say, all things considered. Perception was essential to her. Had been an essential part of how she’d been raised, how she’d been molded.
But he challenged it. Changed it. Seemed to change her.
“No,” she said. “I’m not anything like him, I’m afraid. He was born with our father’s approval, and I had to work to make myself acceptable. I’m used to working for approval.”
He looked as though he was trying to decide what to say. As if he was searching for the proper way to respond.
“Don’t bother with sympathy. I think I came out better for not having to deal with my father. Being that he was selling college girls in exchange for payment of their student loans all while he pretended to be an advocate for women. He was sick. Who knows what might have happened if I had met his standards? If he’d spent more time with me his colleagues might have seen too much of me.”
“Best not to think of that,” he said, his tone hard.
“Probably. But I can’t help it,” she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts, trying to protect herself. She felt too open suddenly. Too exposed. She wasn’t usually honest like this. No, she was never honest like this.
Honesty was too uncomfortable.
“The what-ifs will drive you crazy in the end,” he said, his voice rough, the moment unexpectedly genuine.
She regarded him closely, trying to read his shuttered eyes. “You say that like you know.”
“I do,” he said.
“You think you’re crazy?” she asked, her stomach tightening.
“Does it matter?” he asked. “What matters is what people think.”
A lesson she’d been taught from the cradle. But she was starting to question it. “And what is it you want people to think?” A man who didn’t wear shoes in the office, who didn’t show up when he was expected and who thought nothing of invading an employee’s personal space, could hardly be aiming to show the public he was sane.
