Tempting the New Boss

by Angela Claire

  And undoubtedly make sure she wasn’t having a nervous breakdown. “Daddy, I am absolutely fine.”

  “I know, I know. Let your father worry about you a little, under the circumstances.”

  “Of course,” she said softly. “Why don’t I get dressed, and we’ll all go to dinner after all?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding? Your mother would be mad I came up here at all. I told her I was going down to the gift shop for some cigarettes.”

  “You don’t smoke.”

  “I think she was so grateful to get me out of the room, she didn’t question it.”

  Camilla went into his arms, and he patted her shoulder. “Ignore your anxious father.”

  “You know us, Dad,” Brandy said. “We’re just downloading. I’ll be back to the room in a little bit, and we can go to dinner and leave Cammy to sleep. I think she does need it. It sounds like the last day has been pretty, ah, strenuous.”

  Camilla didn’t even crack a smile.

  “Sounds good. Breakfast tomorrow morning?” her father asked her.

  “Absolutely,” Camilla answered.

  When he was gone, she noticed through the windows that the afternoon sun had mellowed into impending darkness, though it was still early. She turned on a few lamps, resulting in a soft muted lighting presumably meant to foster romance, and then she sat on the couch next to her sister.

  “So,” Brandy said. “Before I go do double-duty and calm our parents down again on your behalf—”

  “I’ll go to dinner!”

  “No, Cammy. You don’t need an Anderson production tonight. You can appear all refreshed tomorrow morning at breakfast and reassure Mom and Dad that you’re a big girl and everything is fine. Tonight you have to take for yourself. To think, or whatever,” she said ambiguously.

  Camilla shrugged. “Not much to think about in one sense. I can’t stay at a job where I’ve had sex with my boss, especially since he’s the CEO. It taints everything, my position, my legitimacy as an adviser.”

  “I’m not talking about your job, Cammy,” she said with a dismissive shake of her hair, which looked fabulous by the way.

  “Well, I am. That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “What you should be talking about is what you think of this Talbot guy, since you had sex with him, more than once, which is something to my knowledge you don’t do very often—or at all lately.” She hastened to add, “And if you and Carly have been holding back on me, you’re in trouble.”

  Camilla brought her knees up. “No, you’re right. I haven’t. Maybe that’s why I went combustible all the sudden. Like dry tinder with a spark of something. Mason was just the…lighter.”

  Her sister tilted her head. “Is that how it was? You didn’t, ah, simply like the guy.”

  She was silent, trying to figure out how to answer that. She ended up deciding on honesty. “I liked him a lot.”

  Brandy nodded. “So that’s what you should be thinking about now. The two of you.”

  “There is no two of us. You don’t understand, he’s… He’s never even had a girlfriend.”

  “My God! You popped your boss’s cherry?”

  “No,” she muttered. “Of course not.”

  “Good, because that wouldn’t have been normal for a guy that age. I’d be guessing gay.”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but he was very hot in bed.”

  “Of course it’s not my business. Tell me more.”

  Camilla flipped her head and toweled her hair. “He doesn’t have relationships.”

  “That’s what they all say. Believe me. Brad was saying that right up to the altar.”

  “No, he’s odd…different.”

  Brandy eyed her. “Different… So what’s wrong with that?”

  “He didn’t even know what to say to Mom and Dad.”

  “What boyfriend does the first time?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.” She rubbed her hair more vigorously. “You don’t understand.”

  “Do you like him or not, Cammy?” Brandy persisted.

  “Yes, I like him, but I don’t think it’s in the cards. It’s not just that he’s different, it’s that we’re too different, from each other.”

  Brandy took the comb she had brought out of the bathroom with her and tugged it gently through Camilla’s wet hair, a soothing motion that reminded her of childhood, one sister or another getting her ready for school, her mother the general overseeing the process, making lunches, calling out instructions.

  Had it really been so easy then? Probably not. A few years after she was born Joey came, and life wasn’t easy after that. Wonderful, but not easy.

  Which reminded her of the question Mason had asked. The only question. If that was her brother.

  “He’s so awkward with people sometimes. I wonder how he would really take Joey.”

  The comb paused. “Well, fuck him then.”

  And they both laughed. Once her hair was smooth, Brandy handed her back the comb and stood up. “Don’t you think you should give him a chance and you’ll see? He might surprise you.”

  She leaned over and kissed Camilla’s cheek. “Sounds like you need to talk, you two.”

  “What do I do about my job?”

  Brandy folded her arms across a chest that was heading slightly in their mother’s direction, perfectly comfortable with the ten extra pounds she had put on since her marriage. Like most of her sisters, Brandy was happy. What was wrong with Camilla that she was not, even with all the love surrounding her?

  “Get a new job. Or better yet, do something else. I hate to say this, Cammy, but you’ve never liked being a lawyer.”

  “Feel free to say it,” she muttered. “I say it all the time.”

  “Exactly. Even when we flew out to Reno—”

  “Oh, don’t bring that up again.” She flopped against the back of the couch. “I know, I know, I get flirty when I drink.”

  “That wasn’t what I was going to say.” Her blue green eyes were serious. “I was going to say that there you were, just passed the bar, had a lucrative high-paying job on Wall Street and, honey, you were not happy. In fact, though you tried to hide it, you were desperately unhappy, and I’ve always thought that was because you felt like you were closing a door, not opening one.”

  “You don’t understand about all the student loans I had to take out.”

  Brandy headed to the door. “No, I guess I don’t. Because I care more about whether my little sister is happy than I do about whether she defaults on her student loans.”

  “They’re not dischargeable in bankruptcy,” she called to her departing form as Brandy gave one last wave and left.

  A minute or two later, there was another knock. “What did you forget to lecture me about?”

  She opened the door.

  “Hi,” Mason said.

  “Hi.” She leaned against the doorjamb. “I suppose the desk clerk gave you my room number.”

  “He gave me the room next door, too.” He nodded to it. “The one adjoining this one.”

  “Lawsuit thing scared him, I see.”

  “It did. The door’s locked.”

  “So you really did have to knock.”

  “Yes, but I chose to knock on the front door, not the adjoining one.”

  “That was very wise of you. You aren’t as slow on the uptake as you seem.”

  He smiled and a rush of unwise, extremely unwise, affection for him overtook her senses. “You’re teasing me again,” he said softly.

  “That or insulting you. I haven’t decided which.”

  “Will you come out and talk to me?”

  Again, another surprisingly wise move on his part, instead of asking to come in or asking her to come to his room. The cluelessness probably was all an act, despite what she had earnestly assured Brandy. He had been very good at the actual sex part.

  Remembering that fact was so not helping.

  Chapter Eight

  “No, come on i
n. We do have to talk, and we should do it privately.”

  He was pretty tentative about it and didn’t sit on the couch, as Brandy had, choosing a nearby chair instead. Probably Marcia had coached him on everything.

  At the thought, she said, “I know I seem like I’ve been a bitch since we got to the hotel, but the truth is, with my family around and everything, I’m realizing I didn’t feel like myself through that whole time with you. And I’m not sure I liked it.”

  “Neither did I. But I liked it very much.”

  She steeled herself. “I am going to quit. This doesn’t change that. In fact, do I really have to get on a plane and go to the UK? I’d rather not.”

  He shook his head. “No, that’s fine.”

  Immediately annoyed he was taking her definitive move to quit so easily, she taunted, “What? Did Marcia tell you I had to resign now, since I slept with you and everything?”

  “We didn’t talk about that.”

  “I bet. Getting good at lots of normal guy moves, aren’t you? If you ever weren’t, that is. Lying now. Great.” She defended him with her sister, but attacked him when they were alone? She was a bundle of contradictions with this guy.

  Sort of like him. So sweet and sexy when they were alone or making love and so aloof and awkward a lot of the rest of the time.

  “Marcia and I didn’t talk about you quitting. We talked about everything else.”

  “You told her I cried when we were crashing!” Okay, she was really pissed now. A matter of personal pride nobody but possibly another Anderson sister might understand.

  “What? No, of course not. Why would she care about that anyway? I almost cried myself.”

  “You did not. You were Mr. CEO himself, all calm and cool. I was jealous at how you kept your head. Made me look like a total wimp in comparison.” She added quickly, because she wasn’t much of a liar herself, “But it was very comforting. Don’t get me wrong.”

  “Marcia told me to tell you what I’d told her, but apparently, I got the timing wrong. It was supposed to be before you knew I wanted to share the Bridal Suite.” He looked around at the lavish sitting room, the picture window. “Which I can assure you is much nicer than the room next door.”

  “What happened on the plane in the first place was a mistake.”

  “Yes, clearly the weather information they premised the flight on was faulty. That storm was supposed to dissipate by the time it caught up to us. I assume we shouldn’t have taken off at all.”

  “The sex! The sex with you was a mistake.”

  He said nothing.

  “What, didn’t Marcia feed you some lines here?”

  She’d be pounding the pavement trying to explain this fiasco of a job on her resume, and he’d move on to some other blonde who was more accommodating to his biological urges.

  “Christ, there are all these rules, and I don’t understand half of what you or Marcia is telling me. I just know—”

  She waited for a long time for the end of that sentence as he got up and went over to the window with its view of early evening darkness, no moon even.

  She should show him out now. She’d said everything she meant to say. She was quitting. She didn’t want to go to the UK. She wasn’t a baby who cried at the drop of a hat…or the drop of a plane for that matter. Normally.

  Putting a palm to her stomach at the sick feeling engendered by the memory of the plane almost crashing, she wondered if he was thinking about that, too. About how they were lucky to be alive.

  Always, even if they only realized it in brief chunks of moments.

  And why was she going to show him out of the room again?

  “All I know is that I want to be with you, Camilla. And I’m not talking about sex,” he added, turning back to her. “Fuck the sex. Forget about sex. That’s not what I’m talking about. I don’t care what anybody wanted to be when they grow up.”

  His confessions were kind of getting to her. “There were unusual circumstances involved when you asked me that Mason.”

  “What unusual circumstances?”

  “We thought the plane was crashing. You were trying to help me get my mind off it. You didn’t really care.”

  “That’s right. I never care, but I did then. And I do. I do right now. I feel bad you wanted to be a pilot.”

  “Believe me, I’m over it. Especially after yesterday.”

  “Or that you don’t like being a lawyer.”

  “Everybody hates their job,” she said with the automatic consolation she used to justify the stupidity of taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars of loans to become something it turned out she hated. “I’m just on the far end of that spectrum.”

  “No, everybody doesn’t hate their job. Well, actually, I don’t know that. I know I don’t hate my job.”

  The billionaire exception again.

  “And I don’t know if anybody else does, because sincerely I have never given a fuck. Really.”

  She laughed. “I believe you.”

  “But I do with you. That’s what I’m trying to say. I do. I don’t know why.”

  “Maybe because we went through a plane crash together,” she offered, “or almost, I mean. It’s a post-traumatic stress thing.”

  “No, I cared before. You said you hated your job before that, and I wondered why you didn’t do something else.”

  “The crushing debt load,” she said.

  “I know. I know. But the point is I even wondered. And I’d like to talk to your brother Joey. See? My God, I even remembered his name.” He was laughing and shaking his head.

  She didn’t quite know what to say. She tried to remember this was the guy who casually commented that he wouldn’t mind marrying her so he could have a steady stream of sex with someone to whom he was attracted. He wasn’t really the sexy, sweet guy he’d been before they screeched to a halt on the runway or as they trekked along side by side on the muddy trail. He was a nutty, introverted billionaire who wouldn’t be giving her the time of day if his biological urges hadn’t been primed just right.

  Time to bring that guy back to the conversation.

  “Joey’s the youngest, and my mom was older when she had him. He had a loss of oxygen when he was in the womb,” she said, making it sound as callous as she could. “I don’t know his actual IQ, but let’s just say I don’t see you having a lot in common with him.”

  “I don’t have a lot in common with anybody,” Mason said right away, not pausing a beat. “And I’m sorry about the oxygen thing, but normal’s not all it’s cracked up to be anyway. And, see the thing is, if you think he’s great, I think he must be then. You see, that’s it! That’s the thing!”

  If Mason Talbot wasn’t understanding her or Marcia, she had to admit she wasn’t quite understanding him here, either. He was saying, “that’s the thing” and “that’s it” and giving it the enthusiasm of a “Eureka!”

  “I can’t believe anyone would be perpetually disappointed in you, Camilla. That’s what I’m saying.”

  She had forgotten she had even said that to him about her parents. It wasn’t true. They were never disappointed in her, in any of them, even Joey. Especially not Joey. “I was being a bitch there. My parents aren’t disappointed in me. If anything, I’m disappointed in myself for the choices I’ve made. I valued trying to look like I was smart and making money over what I really wanted to do.”

  She shouldn’t have disclosed that last part.

  “What did you want to do?” he asked. “It wasn’t become a pilot?”

  She wished she had managed to limit the confessions here to him. But what the hell? She should give him something.

  “I wanted to be a writer,” she admitted. “Pathetic, huh? Me and twenty million other English majors.”

  “I doubt twenty million people major in English.”

  “It’s a turn of phrase.” She shook her head and held a hand up to the throbbing temple to ease the pounding headache she felt coming on.

  “And it’s no
where near pathetic.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  And then he ruined it all.

  “I’m trying to say I want to have sex with you again…”

  Yep, there he was. She really had to get to showing him the door. “Thanks for bringing me back to reality.”

  But he added, “And I am trying to say that. I am. But it’s the fact that I want to. I don’t know why and maybe it’s biology or chemistry or whatever, but I don’t feel like myself at all when I’m with you, and I hate it and I like it and I want it. I want you. Not to be my lawyer, and that’s not because you slept with me. It’s because you hate it, and I don’t want you to hate it. I just want you to be with me. Whatever it takes.”

  “Hmmm. Is Marcia going to be calling my cell now, offering me a million dollars if I stay with you?” she joked. “At least that would take care of my student loans, and it’d be just chump change for you.”

  “Is that an option?”

  “No!” She threw up her arms in exasperation.

  “I was just asking.” He smiled when he said it.

  “What does Marcia say about all this?” she asked, feeling defensive that he had discussed her with his uber-assistant.

  He scoffed, looking out the window again. “I don’t believe everything Marcia tells me.”

  “What? What does she tell you? I’m a gold digger?”

  He looked back at her, his big, blue eyes so beautiful. “She says I’m in love with you.”

  He hurried on. “But of course that’s ridiculous because I don’t believe in love. And especially not love at first sight. Not that it would have been first sight with you because I barely noticed you then. Not in the office, not really, although you were doing that thing with the pearls that was incredibly hot.”

  She’d have to work with him on that ruining thing.

  “That’s okay. I don’t believe in it, either,” she lied. She did. Of course she did. What child of two people happily married for fifty years didn’t believe in love?

  One of them wasn’t like, well, like Mason was. Or even, like, well, like she was.

  And she and Mason weren’t in love.

  He took her chin in his strong, warm hand and kissed her, long and tenderly, his other hand sifting through her wet hair, undoing Brandy’s efforts. It was tingly and nice and special.