If you ignored things long enough, they just disappeared, didn’t they?
Yeah, that was how it worked.
Unless he said something and blew the lid off of our secret.
He wouldn’t do that, would he?
My mouth dried out as I went down the line of women.
“So, you’re her latest guinea pig,” Eddy said, laughing when I introduced them. “I know all about what it's like getting my fashion sense insulted by this one.”
“Has she ever made a mistake?” he asked.
“Oh, more than a few. I owe some of my worst looks from school to her,” she said, laughing. I rolled my eyes. Nobody had a good fashion sense at school. Fashion sense got better with time like wine.
“Don’t listen to her. I know what I’m doing, and she does too,” I said.
“Does he know about the teal dress?” she asked.
“What’s this about the teal dress?” he asked. Oh god.
“We were at college, wait, what’s that here? Eleventh grade? Well, we were in school and I wanted her help with an outfit. She put me in an awful teal dress with these balloon-like sleeves and had the gall to add a matching headband. I looked like a Teletubby.”
The two of them laughed. I laughed along, uncomfortably.
“That was so long ago, Eddy.”
“Okay, you want a more recent example?” she asked.
“You know what? I don’t need to stand here and have my character assassinated,” I said. “Want to dance, Maggie?”
She did. I linked arms with her and fled for the dancefloor. My face was burning. I never expected to see him tonight, much less for him and Eddy to hit it off like that. I danced with Maggie, paying attention to the music. Peering over at our section, I realized he was looking over at me. Talking to Eddy, his eyes kept cutting away in my direction. Satisfaction swelled in my chest.
If he wanted a show, I’d give him a show.
19
Easton
I wasn’t sure how I had gotten caught in the middle of the two women, but there I was. Missy had bailed, leaving me with, was it Brenna and Eddy? Wait a minute, one of them might have been Maggie, there was definitely a Maggie. I wasn’t so sure which one she had disappeared to the dance floor with. She hadn’t gotten very far away, she was still in my sights. Thank God she was wearing a bright pink dress.
The fact that she was visible from far away wasn’t the only reason that I was thankful for the dress. She looked stunning. It was skintight all the way down her voluptuous figure. I had never seen her in a color so right and eye-catching before, but I liked it. I knew she had a side of her that was fun and liked to party, but I had never met that woman before. I wasn’t really enjoying the limits of our work relationship at the moment. Not that it was typical in any way, but there were definitely things that I couldn’t say or do out here now that her friends knew we were working together.
She wasn’t on the clock right now though, was she? I mean, we were at a club. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw her. Why didn’t she say anything on the phone earlier? Not that anything would have happened, or, who knew? I didn’t know what to expect with her anymore. The only thing I knew I would definitely get when I was around her was a boner. She needed to add ‘dancer’ to her resume. Her tight pink dress made sure I never missed a single gyration of her body.
“Has she been very hard on you?” I heard someone ask. It was the British friend, their names were a little hard to get straight. I forced my attention away from Missy, back to her friends who had sat me down in their section and had been peppering me with questions.
“Sorry, what did you say?” I asked. I made sure to lean forward like I hadn’t heard her. It was a good thing the music was so loud in here, it was a convenient excuse for why I wasn’t paying attention.
“Sorry, I just asked whether Missy has been very hard on you? I know how she works since she has dressed me before, but since I’m her friend, I reckon it’s probably not the same as she is with her real clients, you know what I mean?”
That one, the British one with the red hair and the blue eyes, I was pretty sure that one was Eddy. She and Missy had grown up together in England. From what I gathered, she was also quite wealthy. She talked about going to boarding school and, that sounded pretty posh. She had also mentioned that her husband was Niall Bridges and I had heard of him. He was definitely loaded.
“I realize that she could probably be worse, but she’s mostly just reacting to my behavior,” I said.
“I really want to see her at work, she was made for this job. I can’t believe she waited so long to actually do it.”
“Did she wait long?” I asked, absentmindedly. I was staring at Missy again.
“Yeah. She should’ve started back in London, but I’m glad she’s begun now. She might be upset at me for telling you, but this is the first real job of her career. Can you imagine? She’s so talented, imagine if she had started earlier? She’d be a titan.” This wasn’t really news to me, but I acted like it was. All of the articles that I had read about Missy had called her a socialite and party girl, so this being her first real job was not surprising to me at all. She was definitely good at it, that part I agreed with. It was just hard to talk to Missy’s friends while trying to watch her on the dance floor at the same time.
Everything about her drove me to distraction. She looked incredible, but that was true every time I had seen her. It was everything else about her too. She was just so different from me and initially, I thought that those differences were insurmountable. That they put too much space between us, but now they just made me curious. I wanted to know more. She wasn’t exactly like me, and she didn’t have to be. Her being so different was new, it was exciting. I wanted to know everything.
And of course, the sex was mind-blowing. It was the one thing that bridged my lower-middle-class Southern American upbringing and her socialite existence across the pond. We were from completely different sides of the tracks, but when we were naked, we spoke exactly the same language.
I wanted her, in a way that scared me a little bit. I knew all the risks and all the limits, she had spelled it out for me, but I wasn’t convinced. I was making all the excuses I could.
She thought we were too different? Why would she want someone who was exactly like her? Variety was supposed to be the spice of life. If you are going to get with somebody, why wouldn’t you make it someone who had a completely different and exciting perspective than you did? As long as your core values aligned, wasn’t that enough?
If the excuse was that we were working together, we weren’t going to be working together forever. At some point, our professional relationship was going to come to an end and that left the door wide open for everything else. That professional relationship excuse wasn’t even a good one in my book. It only counted when there was a boss exploiting their power over one of their subordinates, but I wasn’t her boss, she didn’t work with me in that capacity. In this sense, we were pretty much evenly yoked.
What else could she possibly complain about? She couldn’t say that the attraction was not there, because that would be a bald-faced lie. I knew it was there. I had seen it, and she had all but admitted it. We were literally at the last step, all we had to do was commit, but she was still holding back. What did I do to make her see? I was at the point where I was ready to do anything. Having her really felt like a dream come true. I would wear suits all the time if that was the trade-off.
“Do you think you would recommend her to your friends or colleagues?” I heard, tearing my attention away from Missy. Her brunette friend was looking at me this time, Brenna was her name maybe, it might have been Maggie, I wasn’t sure. I cleared my throat, hoping that she didn’t notice what I was more interested in doing than talking to her.
“Sure, the ones that need help. I don’t know how many people that would be though,” I said, looking back over the dance floor. Missy wasn’t alone anymore. A man had come up to her and he was beh
ind her, grinding on her. I saw her turn around and say something to him. There was a short exchange of words, and she seemed to take a couple of steps forward. He followed, wrapping his arms around her. She turned around again and seemed to be talking to him. When I saw her put her hands on his chest and attempt to push him, I knew everything that I needed to know.
“Would you please give me a second ladies?” I didn’t actually wait for their answer before I stood up and left the VIP section, heading towards the dance floor. I headed straight for them. I felt my hands clenched into fists. He was behind her again, his arms wrapped around her so that she couldn’t turn around. She was obviously uncomfortable, I grabbed the drunk loser by his shoulders and spun him around.
I was ready. I was about to knock his lights out, but I stopped, recognizing the man I had had a meeting with earlier today. It was the Fed, Alex. I hadn’t noticed him leaving the VIP. He was noticeably intoxicated, but that didn’t feel like a good enough reason to harass a woman when she clearly wanted him to stop. I held myself back.
“Hey, Easton, there you are. I thought you had left already with one of those women you were talking to. Or all of them,” he added with a wink and a laugh. His behavior made my stomach turn.
“Is everything okay here?” I asked Missy and not him.
“Of course, we’re having a good time, aren’t we, babe?” He said, slinging an arm around Missy’s shoulders. Missy tried to get out of his grip. I forced myself to slow down because the consequences of this could and probably would get ugly if I lost my temper.
“Leave the woman alone,” I said to him.
“Oh, come on, you think just because you saw her first, she’s your property? Sorry, but you should have gotten to her sooner,” he said. He was talking about Missy like she was a bag of rice at the grocery store, the last one, and we were squabbling over who got to take it home. It was disgusting.
“Easton, it’s fine, really, I’ll handle this,” she said.
“Damn right, she’ll handle this,” Alex said laughing, cupping his cock and balls over his pants. That was it.
“Back off man, she’s off-limits,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Says who?”
“Pay attention, man. How many times did the woman gave signals that she’s not interested?” I said to him. He was one of those oafs that thought a woman physically pushing him away from her meant an invitation. I was ready to force the point home if he was dedicated to pretending he didn’t know what she meant.
“Easton, please.” I barely heard Missy.
“Listen. You get out of the way tonight and next week, you’re gonna have a contract waiting for you on your desk. If you go ahead and fuck it up now, it isn’t just you and me who are going to have a problem.” He turned his attention back to Missy, this time slapping her on the ass.
Everything went dark. I raised my fist and I punched Alex right in the jaw. He hit the ground, more so from the shock, I thought than from the force of the punch, but all that meant was that I needed to hit him harder. I made a grab for him when someone pulled me back. I spun around, ready to hit them too when I realized it was Toby.
“Are you out of your mind? What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
“He was just trying to help me. This guy wanted to dance, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer. Easton just got the point across,” Missy said, appearing next to me.
“Easton, do you realize who that man is? I swear to god if you mess this up.” He dropped to the ground helping Alex up. Some part of my mind registered that he was doing damage control because of me, and this was potentially very, very bad. There was a good chance that my actions had cost the company a lot of money, but it wasn’t as loud as the part that was satisfied that the man who was harassing Missy was going to have a sore jaw on top of a hangover in the morning.
“He was harassing her. He doesn’t deserve an apology.” Toby glared at me. I was going to get it in the morning, I knew that, but I wasn’t feeling sorry for what I had done. Alex was the man dangling half a billion in front of us, but he was also a man who couldn’t take no for an answer from a woman. He was one of the creeps who kept touching women even when she asked him to stop. What kind of loser did it make me if I didn’t do something about it? It was just his unlucky day that the woman he had targeted was Missy because now, I wasn’t even sorry.
“Easton? Easton. Come on, come with me. We need to go.” I heard her voice and her hand on my arm, tugging me away from the scene. That was probably the right move, but I wanted to stay. I wanted Alex to get up again so I could hit him on the other side of his face and even out the swelling.
“Easton? Easton, please.” I softened my body and let her pull me away with her. I stopped resisting. That was a mistake. I was going to be paying for that tomorrow, but right at that moment, I was just glad that Alex was getting to see me walk away with the woman he wanted.
20
Artemis
I knew my face was brighter than my dress, I was so embarrassed. I stared studiously at the ground walking out of the club so that I didn’t make eye contact with anybody. All they wanted was a night out and what they had gotten was a Friday night fight. It was bad enough that I had been in the middle of the scene. It was worse that Easton seemed to have a vendetta with the man who had tried it on with me.
I was a mess. I didn’t know whether I was grateful for him getting in the middle of what would have gotten ugly, or if I was upset at him for almost causing a fight. He was still the same person, it seemed, even after all the time and effort I had spent on his makeover. There was that hair-trigger temper that Toby had warned me about. I had seen him get angry, but I suppose there was a limit to how angry he could get with me versus how he would act towards another man, particularly another man who was in a way asking for it.
I didn’t like to blame the victim, but this was one of those rare cases where the victim wasn’t a victim but an antagonist. He was drunk, but he wasn’t deaf. He needed both me and Easton to tell him that I wasn’t interested until Easton had taken matters into his own hands, literally.
We finally got out of the club, walking out into the cool New York nighttime air. I rounded on Easton.
“Are you absolutely out of your mind?” I asked. Easton looked at me like I was the one who had just caused a scene and almost gotten us kicked out of the club.
“Are you out of your mind? That guy was sexually harassing you in the middle of the club. If that was how he was willing to act when he was surrounded by people, what if he managed to get you alone? What then?”
“Who was that man?” I asked him. He shook his head, beginning to pace a little bit. I held my hand out to try and hail a cab. We needed to get out of here. At first, I thought that alcohol might be behind his actions tonight, but he was clearly sober as a judge.
“A guy who’s gonna need to get his teeth checked to make sure I didn’t knock any of them out,” he said.
“No, Easton. I’m serious. Who was that man?” I asked him. The music was loud and everything had happened pretty fast, but I knew that I had heard part of their exchange. I heard them discussing a contract and he wouldn’t discuss a contract outside of the context of work. I had connected the dots in my head and I was afraid that my conclusion was correct. He had gone to dinner, and then to a club to entertain the client. The way Toby had swooped in to try and get in the middle of them, I was almost one hundred percent sure that the man who had come onto me at the club was the said client.
“I told you about him already. He’s a client from DC and he wanted Toby and me to take him out before he had to fly out tomorrow.” I closed my eyes. My worst fears were confirmed. Easton had just knocked out a potential client.
“Are you proud of yourself?” I asked him. A taxi finally started to slow down.
“If you’re asking whether I would do it again, the answer is yes.” The taxi stopped and I pushed Easton into it before jumping in myself. I took my phone out quickly to tell t
he girls that I had left early and that I was in a taxi, safe, and on my way home, before turning my attention back onto Easton.
“So, what do you have to say for yourself?” I asked.
“Nothing. I’m not sorry. I’m not gonna apologize to the guy when I see him again.”
“He was talking about a contract. How much is your company going to lose because you couldn’t keep a grip on your temper?” That got him angrier than he was already.
“Whatever the amount, it’s not worth it. I don’t want that fucking loser’s money anyway.”
“That’s not the way to run a business, Easton. I’ve only been working for a few months and even I know that.”
“You know, I don’t understand how you’re failing to see the point. That guy is a loser. He doesn’t respect women, and I’d put money on him having done something like that or even worse in the past to someone else.”
“You still shouldn’t have done that.”
“No, I didn’t do enough. What I should’ve done was drag him out of the club to the sidewalk and beat him to a pulp, so bad that he wouldn't be able to walk tomorrow.” He was fuming. I spared a thought for the poor cab driver who was hearing this whole exchange. I felt like this was my fault. I knew that it wasn’t, but I had dragged Easton away from the situation and effectively stopped him from taking out his frustrations on the guy who was dancing with me. Now he was angry, he was frothing at the mouth with all this pent-up anger and nowhere to direct it. I felt like I had to do something, so I did. I leaned across the seat, and I kissed him.
Admit You Want Me: An Enemies to Lovers Romance (Irresistible Billionaires Book 3) Page 13
