I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to see Luke again. But I knew that even though it was an optional activity, I was expected to make an appearance. “For a little while,” I said reluctantly.
So at 5:00 sharp, Rachel and I headed down to The Bench. Luke was nowhere to be seen and I began to hope that he might not show up. After an hour passed, I finally began to relax. A few drinks and another hour later, I was actually enjoying myself. And then I saw him.
Luke was standing near the bar, talking to one of the female attorneys from my department. She was laughing at something he said, and her hand grazed his arm. I was over twenty feet away but I could still recognize the flirtation behind her touch. She was pretty, but Luke didn’t seem very interested. He was looking around the room, searching for someone. I had a pretty strong feeling that he was looking for me.
“Excuse me,” I said to the group around me. “I need to use the ladies’ room.”
I took a guess that the restrooms would be at the back of the bar, but I must’ve made a wrong turn. Somehow I ended up outside, on a small fire escape.
“Shit,” I said, hoping the door hadn’t locked behind me.
I reached for the handle, but it was jerked out from under my hand. Before I could react in any way, Luke stepped onto the fire escape and grabbed me.
“Luke-” I tried to protest but his lips stopped me. He pressed them against mine with longing desire. I gave into him, parting my lips. He tasted like scotch, and I wondered briefly if he was drunk.
“I’ve missed you,” he said, after pulling away slightly so that he could look into my eyes. “I called you for a month after that night and you never returned a single call.”
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” I said. My mouth was saying one thing, but my body was saying another. I wanted Luke. He knew it, and I knew it. With a very great effort, I pushed him away.
“Why didn’t you call me back? We had an amazing night together.” Luke sounded desperate and confused. I knew that I wasn’t handling things right. I needed to be firm.
“I told you back then that I wasn’t looking for a relationship,” I reminded him gently. “I moved away for two years. You wouldn’t have wanted to be in a long-distance thing.”
“How do you know that?” he challenged.
I shook my head. “I didn’t want that. I didn’t want any strings tying me back here.”
“Looks like you failed,” he said, eyes burning intently into mine. “We could start over. This could our second chance.”
“As long as I’m working for you, I can’t be with you,” I said, wishing that my voice would stop shaking.
Luke took my hand and threaded his fingers through mine. “I could fire you,” he said with a soft smile that let me know he was only kidding.
“You could.” I lifted our entwined hands and kissed his knuckles. “But that probably wouldn’t bode well for us having any kind of relationship afterward.”
“Probably not,” he admitted. “You could quit.”
“Do you want me to quit?” Not that I was willing to do so. I liked my new job a lot, and I wasn’t willing to quit a job simply because of a guy.
“No. Don’t quit.” He sighed in defeat. “I think we’re out of options.”
“Yeah.” Yet somehow my body was closing in on his again. “I should go back inside.”
“Just stay a few more minutes,” Luke said. He pulled me to him and put both arms around me. “We could be together just one more night, then put this behind us.”
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Luke.” We both knew that one more night was likely to lead to two, then three, and so forth. “I’m going back inside. You should wait a few minutes before following me so we don’t draw suspicion.”
Walking away from Luke was almost impossible, but somehow I managed. My legs shook as I walked back to the table where I had left my coat.
“Are you leaving already?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah. I’m not feeling so good.” I spotted Luke returning to the bar, but he didn’t look in my direction. “I’m going to make it an early night. I’ll see you on Monday.”
“Have a good weekend,” Rachel said. “Oh! Don’t forget the holiday party is next week. You should probably line up a date.”
I had completely forgotten about the holiday party. There was no way I could go to that if Luke would be there. We couldn’t be in the same room together with unlimited booze floating around. I had enough time staying in control around him when I was completely sober.
The whole situation was just too impossible. We had spent one night together almost two and half years ago, and now I had taken a job at his new company.
So much for leaving the past in the past.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I spent the following week at work trying to avoid Luke as much as possible. We had a few meetings together, but always with other people in the room. It wasn’t until Thursday that I found myself alone with him in my office. He had stopped by spontaneously to discuss a situation with one of Maverick’s newest clients.
“Legally, we aren’t allowed to do that,” I told him, after he sarcastically suggested we destroy evidence of a Congressman’s affair. “He was doing this using his government email.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Luke was leaned back in the chair across from my desk, looking a little too comfortable for my liking. It was already after seven, and I was pretty sure everyone else had gone home for the day.
“Surely this is something we can discuss in the morning,” I said, not being at all subtle.
Luke ignored the hint. He sat forward abruptly. “Why do you hate this guy so much?”
“Representative Thompkins? Oh, how about because he was having an affair with his intern for starters. Did you want me to continue?”
“He’s a creep, sure. But I think something else is bothering you.” Luke stood up and placed his hands on my desk, leaning forward. “What is it?”
I really didn’t want to go down this road with Luke. Not tonight. “You read his file. You should know exactly why I don’t like our client.”
“I know why I don’t like him. I want to know why you don’t like him.” Luke didn’t seem ready to back down anytime soon.
“He hits his wife.” I closed the file on my desk and stood up. “He’s a wife beater. And a cheater.”
Luke flinched, and straightened his posture abruptly. My words had rattled him. “There’s nothing in his file about him being abusive.”
“It’s not spelled out in his file. But that doesn’t make it any less true.” I explained to Luke that I had done my own research once we had agreed to take Representative Thompkins on as our client. The medical records for his wife had been plentiful, and completely consistent with having an abusive husband.
“You’re sure about this?” Luke’s jaw clenched and unclenched fitfully.
“I’m sure.”
“Why are you so sure?” Luke held up a hand to stop the bitter tirade I was about to unleash. “Look, I believe you. But if he is an abusive prick, there’s no way we are keeping him as a client. I won’t help someone like that. So when I tear up our agreement, I need to know we’re right about this.”
I took a deep breath, wondering if what I was about to confess to Luke would be better left unsaid. People looked at you differently when you told them you had been on the receiving end of a Representative Thompkins. “I know because I’ve made excuses for jerks like him.”
Luke stiffened, as if he could sense what I was about to say.
“A lot has changed in the last two years. I’m not the woman you remember.” It had taken me six months to be able to walk down the street without looking over my shoulder. I stepped around the desk and moved closer to Luke, wanting him to feel what I felt.
“Who? Who did that to you?” Luke looked like he was ready to hit someone.
“Neil. I date him for eight months. He seemed fine. Normal. Then one night, he didn’t like the way a barte
nder looked at me.” I felt no emotion as I recalled the event. It still didn’t feel real to me. “He hit me so hard he broke my jaw.”
“Shit,” Luke breathed through his clenched jaw.
“I was too weak and pathetic to stand up to him. At the hospital, I lied and said that I fell and smacked my face against a table. The police were never notified and when I was released from the hospital, I never spoke of the incident again. A few months later, I ran into him again at a restaurant near my apartment and decided that I had to leave D.C. That’s when I moved back to Chicago.
“For the last few weeks, I’ve been helping out at this shelter that’s helps women fleeing abuse, so I know what a battered wife looks like. I know how they act, and how they try to hide it. I’ve watched footage of the Representative’s wife and I’ve seen her medical files. He beats the shit out of her. And apparently he also cheats on her. So yeah, I hate him.”
I had never seen anger like I saw in Luke’s eyes right then. “I’ll kill him.”
“The Congressman?”
“Neil. If I ever see him, if he ever comes around you again, I will kill him.” Luke’s hands were clenched into tight fists.
I had promised myself I would stay away from Luke. We would work together, and that would be it. Nothing else. But we were both worked up now, and I didn’t want to see that anger in Luke’s eyes anymore. I let my hands rest on his fists until he relaxed them, and then I slipped my hands inside. “Don’t say that, Luke. Don’t be like him. You’re a better man than him.”
Luke pulled his hands away. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that. You barely know me, Kasey.”
“I know you well enough.” But the words rang false even to my ears. I had known Luke less than two weeks. I had known Neil for eight months and had still missed such a huge part of his character. Maybe Luke really wasn’t the man I thought he was. But some part of me just couldn’t believe that could be true. I wanted to believe in Luke because I needed to be able to trust someone again. That’s when I finally admitted to myself that I needed Luke.
“We can finish this in the morning,” Luke said. He opened the door to my office. “You should go home. It’s late.”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t move. I could barely speak. I had finally admitted to myself that I wanted to be with Luke, and he was finally letting me go.
“Will you be attending the holiday party tomorrow night?” Luke asked, very formally.
“I’ll be there.” The words came out strained.
“Good.” Luke nodded. “I will see you tomorrow.”
As hard as it was to sit in the same room with Luke the next day, it was even more impossible for me to imagine not seeing him at all. Luke Donovan had gotten under my skin.
He looked strong and confident when he told Representative Thompkins that, sadly, Maverick, Inc. would not be able to help him with his current situation. The other members of Maverick’s executive board were not happy with the decision and made their feelings known the minute the Representative was gone. In addition to paying well, Representative Thompkins’s name was likely to draw a lot of attention to the company. They didn’t care that Thompkins was a philanderer; it was par for the course in this line of work. Luke hadn’t told them what I had said the night before about the Representative’s wife. He was keeping that information between us.
“Ted, I get that you are mad. But this is my company. My decision is the final decision.” Luke didn’t raise his voice or pound his fists on the conference room table. He had a way of exerting the power of his position without making other people feel small. “You’ll just have to trust me on this one.”
“You brought me on board to help with this kind of thing. You really should listen to me.” Ted wasn’t ready to back down yet.
“I take these kind of clients for selfish reasons only, you know that.” Luke leaned forward, hands folded together on the table. “I take the rich clients so I have the capital to help the poor ones. But I don’t need that man’s money, and this company definitely doesn’t need him as a client.”
“This is a big mistake,” Ted Sanders, the CFO, said one last time. “But it’s your call.”
“Cheer up, Ted,” Luke said. “I’ll buy you a drink tonight at the party.”
Ted smiled reluctantly. “You’ll be buying all the drinks tonight, Donovan.”
As the others left the room, I hung back. “Luke?”
He looked up at me with tired eyes. His decision today had been more taxing than he let on. “Yeah, Kasey?”
“Last night you said I barely know you. That I couldn’t know you were a better man than Neil.” I looked directly into his eyes. “You were wrong. What you did today, turning down Thompkins, that’s my proof. The non-profits that you help for little or no cost and the way you treat your employees, that’s my proof, too. You’re a good man, Luke Donovan. Accept it.”
He smiled sadly. “Thank you, Kasey.”
“Anytime.” I turned to leave but Luke stopped me.
“About tonight…” He thought twice about what he was about to say. “See you at the party?”
“Absolutely.”
Changing into my party dress in the bathroom stall was a bigger challenge than I anticipated. Keeping my feet from touching the sketchy floor was a lot of work and I nearly stepped into the toilet bowl two separate times. So it was surprising that I somehow managed to look presentable when I surveyed the results in the mirror.
“Good enough,” I said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.
“Downright gorgeous, I’d say,” Rachel disagreed. She wagged a finger at me. “You are so getting laid tonight.”
“What? I don’t even have a date tonight.” In typical fashion, I had forgotten to set up a fake date for the night.
“I’m sure that won’t be a problem.” Rachel nudged me with her elbow. “You could always go after Donovan.”
I choked out a laugh and walked away before she could see the flush spreading across my cheeks.
One thing about Luke couldn’t be denied- the man knew how to throw a party. He had rented out an entire floor of a club for the company holiday party. Rachel and I checked our coats at the door and headed directly to the first bar we could find. I was still new enough that I didn’t know at least 70% of the people at the party. After I lost Rachel in the crowd and was on my own, I began to feel out of place. With a few hours of drinking under their belts, many people were already drunk, and many of them were bordering on inappropriateness.
I was relieved when I found the stairs leading to the second floor. The music started playing just as I began to ascend the stairs. I had a feeling I was leaving at the perfect time. The second floor was much quieter, and only a few people lingered about. I headed for the back, where I would be able to watch what was happening on the floor below.
“Hiding?”
I jumped as someone stepped out of the shadows. “Shit, Luke. You scared the crap out of me.”
“Sorry,” he said, but I was close enough to him now that I could see his smile.
“This is your party. Shouldn’t you be downstairs mingling with the minions?” I hadn’t meant to sound judgmental, but it came out that way. I stepped closer to the railing so that I could observe what was happening below us.
Luke shrugged and moved next to me. “In my experience, people tend to have more fun when their boss isn’t listening into their drunken conversations.”
I knew that he was probably right. Luke was likely the best boss most of these people had ever had, but he was still their boss and that meant they would act differently around him. “This isn’t such a bad place to be,” I commented, pointing out the great overhead view we had.
“I would have to concur,” Luke said, but he wasn’t looking at the view. “In fact, if it was up to me, this is exactly how I would spend the entire evening.”
“Hiding in the shadows?” I teased, nudging his arm.
“No. Alone with you.”
Very slowly, Luke r
eached over and took my hand. The shadows upstairs were dark enough that no one would be able to see unless they were within a few feet of us. I squeezed his hand and leaned into him slightly.
“I wanted to call you back, Luke,” I said, betraying my feelings for him for the first time. “I thought about you for weeks afterward. I missed you.”
“I’m here now, Kasey. You found your way back to me.”
It did seem strange how in many ways he was still the Luke that I remembered, yet in other ways he felt like a complete stranger. “It’s starting to feel like the universe wants us to be together.”
“It does feel that way,” he agreed. “Nothing has changed, though. I’m still your boss.”
“I know.”
“That was never my issue. You are the one that said you couldn’t look past it.”
“I know.”
Luke’s thumb traced a slow circle over my hand. “I want you, Kasey. I’ve never tried to hide that from you.”
“I want you, too, Luke. I think,” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I think I need you, as well.”
“Does this mean you’re going to give me a second chance?” he asked hopefully.
“I don’t want to get hurt again,” I said, so quietly that I barely heard myself over the loud music below. “I don’t think I could survive.”
Luke sucked in a sharp breath. “I would never hurt you, Kasey. Never.”
“Okay,” I nodded even though I still wasn’t sure I could believe him. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Where do you want to go?” he asked with a surprised look on his face.
“Anywhere.” I grabbed his hand and squeezed it.
Now it was Luke’s turn to let out a deep breath. “Are you sure about this?”
“No. But let’s do it anyway.” I smiled up at Luke, and saw his perfect lips curl up into the familiar playful smile.
“There’s something I need to take care of first,” he said. “Will you follow me?”
“To the ends of the Earth,” I quipped. Luke squeezed my hand one last time and then let go. I followed him downstairs and to the edge of the stage. He jumped smoothly onto the stage and grabbed the microphone from the D.J.
About that Night Page 5
