Firefighter's Virgin

by Claire Adams

  “You’re probably right,” he said. “Maybe we should just tell everyone that we decided not to find out after all.”

  We almost had decided to forego finding out the gender at the 20-week ultrasound. There were so few true surprises left in the world, it seemed (the good kind, anyway), but I wanted to know ahead of time; I wanted to paint the nursery and get some baby clothes, and not just the gender-neutral kind.

  “I have been thinking about names,” I said.

  “Oh, have you? I’m sure my mother will come with a list of ones she hopes we use.”

  “My mom probably will, too. But... I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I think I know what I’d like to name the baby. If it’s okay with you.”

  “Okay,” he said. “What?”

  I paused. “Marissa.”

  I’d known from the beginning that if the baby turned out to be a girl, that I wanted to call her that. And after the big ultrasound and we found out the baby was indeed a girl, I’d taken to referring to her as Marissa when I’d talk to her in my head. Yet now as I stood there, having just told Cole, I felt a flare of uncertainty; was it wrong of me to suggest that? I had never met Marissa, after all, though by now I’d seen pictures of her, and Cole and his parents had told me stories about her, and she seemed like someone that I probably would have been friends with, if she were still alive.

  Cole’s expression was hard to read; his face didn’t immediately break out into a smile, though he wasn’t frowning, either. But just when I was about to say that we could think of something else if he wanted to, he pressed his lips together and nodded. His eyes had misted over.

  “I think that would be perfect,” he said softly. “I really do.”

  “Me too.”

  He put his arms around me and pulled me toward him. “I love you, Allie,” he said. “And our daughter.”

  “I love the both of you,” I said. He smiled, and I leaned in and kissed him. I felt baby Marissa kick inside me, as if she was saying I love you too.

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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 fetching 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 cleavag
e 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.”

  “But she kept Twitter?”

  The joke was lost on him. “Huh? I don’t think she has Twitter.”

  What Jonathan was probably bumming about was that he himself couldn’t lurk and drool over candid pictures of Daisy doing a yoga pose with the sun setting in the background, or the bowl or organic soba noodles with root vegetables Daisy was about to indulge in, or the way Daisy looked in a bathing suit, the ocean as the backdrop. Actually, she didn’t seem like the sort of person to post any of those pictures. Well, maybe the food one, but that was such a cliché.

  “Again—how is any of this my problem?” I asked. “I own a business, Jonathan. I don’t run a charity.”

  “You’d be employing her. It’s not charity. And we’re in the security industry—doesn’t stalking fall under that realm?”

  “She’s not a client.”

  “So we only help people who are giving us money.”

  “If you want to talk about charitable donations or underwriting a public radio station, we can do that at another time. I’ve already decided to go with Lynn.”

  “Lynn?” He made no attempt to hide his displeasure.

  “Yes, Lynn.” So what if she was overweight and had teeth that could rival any equines? I didn’t need another situation like the one I just had with Annie.

  “I looked at her resume,” Jonathan said. “She doesn’t have an iota more of experience than Daisy does. And Daisy’s a hell of a lot
better looking.”

  I made a tutting sound and gave Jonathan a look as though I was very disappointed in him. “This isn’t a beauty pageant. Look, Jay, I said I’d do you the favor by interviewing her; I never said that I’d give her the job. What’s it to you, anyway?”

  I knew what it was though—he liked her, though he wouldn’t admit it.

  “Well, let’s see. She’s just as—if not more—experienced with admin duties than Lynn is, she’s my friend, and she’s hot. Oh, she’s also a freak in bed.” He added this last part and then looked at me to see if I’d go for the bait.

  It was a risky gamble though, what he was doing. He was banking on the fact that I wouldn’t be able to resist the idea of hiring this freak between the sheets (yeah right) while at the same time hoping she would be far more beguiled by his charms than my own. Not impossible, but not likely. Although, if she were more into the boy-next-door-type then Jonathan certainly would be her man.

  Jonathan sat there, giving me what basically amounted to dog-begging-for-treat eyes. Christ, he was whipped. How had I not seen this before?

  “Okay,” I said finally. A grin broke out onto Jonathan’s face before I’d even started my next sentence. “I’ll hire her. I already called her and told her it was a no-go, but I’ll call her back and tell her I’ve reconsidered. Which is going to make me look like an indecisive asshole, of course, but I’m willing to do that for you.”

  “That’s awesome, man,” Jonathan said. If he had a tail, it would be wagging.

  “Just remember to send me an invite to the wedding,” I said.

  Chapter Two

  Daisy

  After I had gotten off the phone with Ian, I sat there at the kitchen table and stared at a water stain in the shape of a heart. How long had that been there? Why was I just noticing it now? I was asking myself these ridiculous questions because I was trying not to think about the fact that I hadn’t been hired, despite me foolishly thinking that the interview had gone pretty well.