by Annie Kelly
“I’m talking about you fucking your boss, Rain. I didn’t think you’d jump on that bandwagon, but you seem to be striking that iron while it’s hot as hell, and, baby”—he waggles his eyebrows suggestively—“that iron is damn hot. If he weren’t wearing that heinous orange polo shirt, I may not be able to contain myself.”
I blink rapidly, staring at my friend.
“Remy,” I say quietly, “I’m not fucking anyone, let alone my boss.”
He snorts. “Fine. You’re pre-fucking.”
“Pre-fucking?”
“Mm-hmm.” He examines his nails. “It’s the act prior to the act—the flirting and foreplay and bullshit nonsense that happens before you get him in your bed or on your desk or in the backseat of your car.”
I open my mouth, then close it. There was that moment last week—the night in the parking lot where I imagined hooking up with Owen before we ended up going our very separate, very far-apart ways. Sniffing, I busy myself with grabbing my jacket from the back of my chair.
“I’m not saying he’s not attractive—I mean, I told you that the other night when you came to my apartment,” I say, trying to sound diplomatic and failing miserably.
“Honey, there ain’t nothing wrong with wanting to hook up with your superior—you should always aim high.”
I shake my head. “Remy—seriously, Owen and I aren’t hooking up.”
Which, of course, is true because I didn’t say we’ve never hooked up. Semantics are my friend.
“Well, if you aren’t going to join me in an afternoon delight . . .” Remy pouts. I huff a laugh.
“Not what you think it means, doll.”
He shrugs. “I got off for the rest of the day to come to this meeting, so I’m seizing the carpe and diem-ing it right down to the bar. Want to hit up The Factory? Wyatt and Carson swear by their burgers, don’t they?”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I say, smiling. “But, yes—get the sriracha burger. It’s amazing.”
He points at me and touches his nose at the same time.
“Great minds, baby.”
We hug once again and he sashays from the conference room to the lobby. I shake my head, laughing as he goes. Remy really does need his own reality show. It’s hard to believe he doesn’t already have one.
Which is when I notice that there’s a man standing in the lobby.
Not just a man. A cop.
His navy uniform is pressed and crisp. He’s wearing an expression that I automatically know means business. He’s alone, so it can’t be an emergency. He won’t be arresting anyone, anyway. Maybe he’s delivering parole documentation? It wouldn’t be the first time.
I clear my throat as I approach, plastering on my best customer-service smile. The officer turns to face me, his expression still solemn. Even stoic.
“Good afternoon, officer,” I say. “I’m the assistant manager, Rainey—can I help you?”
I look down at his name badge, but his arm blocks it as he reaches to remove his hat.
“I’m looking for my stepso—”
He stops and sniffs hard.
“I’m looking for Charlie.”
Which is when my blood, until then heated at the prospect of car sex with Owen, completely freezes within my veins.
I ask the question, despite the fact of already knowing the answer.
“May I ask what this is in reference to?” I say, hoping my tone isn’t quite as icy as I’m feeling.
The officer narrows his eyes and crosses his arms over his broad chest. As he does so, I get a glimpse of his name badge. I feel a surge of nausea, followed by unbridled fury.
This fucker has a lot of nerve coming here.
“That’s none of your business,” Jimmy Delauter finally says, his voice at least as cool as mine, if not far cooler. “And I’d like to speak to Charlie. Now.”
Chapter Ten
“Soooo. You’re spying?”
“Shhhh!”
I turn to glare at Owen, then press my ear back up against the door to his office. He snorts and shakes his head.
“I don’t know why you’re even in here. Can’t you hear better from the front desk?”
“I’m here,” I hiss, “because I promised to give them privacy.”
Owen crosses his arms, one brow raised.
“And that’s what you’re doing?”
I roll my eyes and turn to face him.
“Look, I’m not saying Charlie can’t handle herself. I’m saying I don’t trust her stepfather as far as I can throw him and I don’t want to see her hurt. Or more hurt than she’s already been.”
Owen sits back on the edge of his desk. He watches me in a way that makes me slightly uncomfortable. Maybe a little more than slightly. I look back at the door and try to forget the burning sensation creeping up my neck and into my face.
After another long minute, though, I give up. I hear voices, but they’re muffled. I don’t hear screaming and yelling, so I take that as a good sign. With a sigh, I flop down on the old leather wingback chair that’s stuck in the corner of Owen’s office. I can remember the day Remy found that chair. He adored it and would perch in it like a college professor, one finger to his lips as though he was coming up with a monumentally important idea. Usually, it was just what to order from takeout for dinner.
“I know you have good intentions,” Owen says. He walks closer to me, then sidesteps the chair to stand near the door. For a long moment, he listens to the muffled sound outside the door, then turns to look back at me. “In the end, though, this is family stuff and we have to allow for a certain amount of space between us and them.”
I blink at him. “Us and them?”
“Yeah, Rainey—between the parents of these kids and the people who just see them when they get out of school for a few hours a day.”
I examine my nails, forcing myself to bite my tongue. Like, literally, I’ve got my front teeth pressing down into the tip. I don’t want Jimmy Delauter to have any access to Charlie whatsoever and Owen knows it.
And he knows why.
And he knows I’m right.
We’re both silent for a long minute. I listen to the noises coming from the building. The creaking of the ventilation system. The sound of basketballs hitting the nearby gym floor, sporadically punctuating the air. Someone laughs from the break room.
I can feel Owen’s eyes on me and I look up, meeting his gaze with something . . . defiant. Maybe it’s being in his office. Maybe it’s him being the boss and us being alone together again. I honestly don’t know what spurs my attitude, but I’m wearing it like a little black dress—confidently.
“So, are we ever going to talk about what happened in the pool?” I ask him. I jut my chin out and cross my arms over my chest. Owen looks like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights.
“Rainey,” he finally says, scrubbing a hand over his light hair, “I—um, maybe we can talk about this later?”
I shake my head.
“It’s been a week. More than a week. I don’t know what exactly you want from me—like, are we pretending it never happened at all? Or is this just some kind of weird abstaining-from-attraction thing?”
Owen’s eyes widen. He opens his mouth to speak, then shuts it again. I force myself to keep looking up at him, despite his obvious discomfort.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he says quietly. I almost groan at his cliché sentiment. Instead, I stand up and reach for the door.
“Forget it,” I say over my shoulder. “Clearly ignoring that it happened is your intended MO. Understood. I won’t mention it again.”
I’ve got one hand on the doorknob when I feel Owen’s strong grip on my shoulder. Before I can shake it off and head out of his office, he whirls me around and presses me up against the plywood door. We’re eye-to-eye and mouth-to-mouth
. I’m wearing heeled boots, so his height advantage has evened out. We’re almost completely parallel. Completely symmetrical.
And all I can think about doing at this very moment is dropping to my knees in front of him, unbuckling his jeans, and becoming anything but symmetrical. And then, hopefully becoming completely horizontal.
“Do you think I like ignoring what happened?” Owen says in a low voice. I can feel the gusts of his breath coast along my exposed skin and I want to shiver.
“Every day I’ve had to pretend like I don’t remember exactly how your mouth tastes. Or how your skin feels when it’s wet and pressed against mine. I’ve had to ignore you because I’m technically your boss, Rainey. What option did I have?”
Our gazes are locked on each other. I look deep into his toffee-toned irises, trying to read every expression—every nuance—as I reach behind me and lock the door. I can see his eyes widen the slightest bit. When the lock clicks into place, his focus shifts back and forth between my eyes. He’s trying to read my intentions. He’s trying to decide which move to make next.
So I don’t give him the option.
Before he can take a breath or protest, I’m pushing up on my toes and wrapping an arm around his neck. I bring his mouth closer to mine as I press my lips to his.
His reaction is startled at first and I have to do most of the work. I’m all right with that—I close my eyes and fall into the effort of making Owen Marshall see exactly how much I want him. How much I want him to want me.
Slowly, I can feel his arms rise from his sides and come around my waist. I take this as a good sign—an encouraging movement. I open my mouth gently, pulling his bottom lip into my mouth with the slightest bit of suction, and flick my tongue against it.
Owen groans and tightens his grip around my waist, pulling me even harder against him. I can feel him hardening against my leg, and, almost involuntarily, I grind against him.
“Fuck, Rainey—we can’t do this.”
I pull back to look at him.
“Why not, Owen? Lots of people end up hooking up at their jobs. What’s the problem here? Clearly there’s an attraction.”
He shakes his head. “Coworkers can hook up. I shouldn’t be a part of any of that . . . fraternization. If I can hire and fire you, I shouldn’t be . . .”
“Fucking me?” I ask, brow raised. Owen’s cheeks redden, but he doesn’t pull away.
“I don’t want either of us to lose our jobs.”
“You think I do?”
I’m the one to pull away then as I stare at him. He shakes his head.
“I’m just trying to make the responsible choice.”
I feel a cold stab of something I can’t identify right away. It takes a little while to recognize it as hurt. And disappointment.
“Well, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to create such a moral dilemma for you,” I say. It’s impossible to keep the bitterness out of my voice. Owen senses it immediately.
“Rainey, come on—I didn’t mean to make it sound like—”
There’s a knock at the door and we both jump as far apart as possible—because we’re startled and so we don’t look as though we’ve been thisclose to making out in Owen’s office.
I walk over and crack the door open; Charlie’s small face peeks through the space. I pull it open wider and she glances from me to Owen and back again.
“Were you guys fighting?” she asks, her eyes wide. Owen doesn’t look at me as he shakes his head and smiles at her.
“No, no, we were just talking . . . about the Safe Spaces program. We’re really excited about some of the things we’re going to do right away.”
I force a smile to look as though Owen and I were just having a jolly good ole time, then glance out the door to where Charlie’s stepfather is still standing in the open foyer.
“Charlie,” I say slowly. “Did everything work out with your stepdad or . . . ?”
She shrugs. “It’s my mom’s birthday. He wants me to go with them to Olive Garden for dinner.”
I make a face—I can’t help it. Olive Garden is the worst.
“I think I’m gonna go,” she says, tugging her purse further up on her shoulder.
“You sure?” Owen asks, lowering his voice an octave. She nods.
“It’s, like, an olive branch or whatever. I’ll be fine.”
She smiles at us both, then walks out of the office, her head held high as she approaches her stepfather. We both watch her—Owen and I—until she’s out the door and down the cement stairs, disappearing around the corner of the building.
I don’t look at Owen. I don’t say a word. I just walk out of his office and back to my own. When I get inside, I lock the door and lean back against it, breathing heavy.
Owen is making me forget why I’m here. Not on purpose, of course, but his presence is distracting me from my goals. From what I’m trying to do at BYC. Safe Spaces and anything else—that has to be my focus. Not Owen’s mouth or Owen’s hands or any other part of Owen’s body.
The truth is that Owen might be the worst thing that’s happened to me since this job started. And since I’ve made a huge fucking deal about keeping it—to my parents, my friends, and myself—I need to figure out a way to make Owen a non-influential factor.
I need to figure out how to grow the fuck up.
***
And I succeed. I do.
Until midnight.
I’d spent the rest of the afternoon away from BYC—I’d hit up a couple of office supply stores and picked up lockboxes and a bunch of other supplies. I’d waffled about using the county credit card—Remy had always made me swear I’d only use it for essential purchases. Still, if there’s ever been an essential purchase, it was this one. We didn’t even spend our entire budget for the last fiscal year, mostly for fear of not having enough. But I honestly can’t think of a better cause or better investment than setting up the “Safe Spaces Project: A BYC Initiative”—or, at least, that’s what I’m calling it in my head.
Of the year I’ve been at BYC, I’ve seen the conference room used less than five times. Today was one of them, but the other four? They were staff parties and impromptu meetings that were just too big to hold anywhere else. Hell, even the “big announcement” of Remy leaving was a gym event. The conference room needed to be repurposed. So, when I get back to BYC that afternoon, I hunker down with my new purchases and my laptop and start creating Safe Spaces.
Sure, I’m probably getting ahead of myself. I mean, I haven’t even sent out our grant applications yet—but, honestly, I can’t imagine anyone rejecting this plan. And, really, even if they do? This is all stuff I can do within budget—it really won’t change anything, save take away a room that was really never used from a bunch of people who probably forgot it was there most of the time anyway.
So, by the time I’ve glanced at my phone and realized it’s close to midnight, I’m feeling like I’ve actually managed to pull together a prototype of what this room should look like. I stand up and survey my surroundings. On the longest wall, I’ve lined up several folding tables with bins of earbuds, pens, notebooks, and other school supplies. Beneath the tables are the safes—I managed to get a deal for a dozen small metal boxes with key locks. I created a place to put names on labels to distinguish which safe belongs to which person. They aren’t huge—just a little larger than a shoebox—but they fit the bill.
On the walls, I hung up a bunch of cheesy motivational posters that I’d been stashing in my office. I’d rescued them one day from someone’s trash, and, aside from being slightly torn at some edges and clearly twenty years old, it did give the space a little more warmth. I’d dug some curtains out of the storage closet and hung them up on the small window, then unearthed an old coffeemaker and a lifetime supply of Styrofoam cups. Tomorrow, I’ll pick up some different teas and hot cocoa, along with a slightly higher-e
nd French roast that will please even the snottiest of teen coffee drinkers.
So, it isn’t fancy. It’s nothing like what I envision—more of a cyber café–meets–Zen therapy garden. We definitely need some plants in here. Some more comfortable furniture, too. But it’s something for now. Tomorrow, when Charlie comes here, she’ll see that we’re trying to give her what she needs—and hopefully other teens will see the same goals. If they feel safe here, I know I’ll feel like I’ve accomplished something—grant or no grant.
I’m in a cloud of something like self-satisfaction, something pleasing and warm that makes me forget all about Owen and his back-ass-wards confusing approach to me and whatever is happening between us. I’m checking my texts as I lock up the building and walk toward my car. At first, I don’t see the figure in the darkness.
When I do? Well, then I scream like a fucking banshee.
“Holy shit!”
I scramble for the pepper spray in my purse and start backing up. The figure holds up both hands and moves closer toward me.
“Rainey—it’s okay, it’s me.”
I peer at the stranger—who isn’t a stranger at all.
It’s Owen. Of course it’s Owen. I huff out a frustrated breath.
“Jesus, what the hell are you doing?” I yank my purse back up on my shoulder. “I was about to blind you or choke you or something.”
In the glow of the closest streetlight, I see Owen raise an eyebrow.
“Somehow, I think I would have survived.”
“Whatever—I’ve got to go home and get some sleep.”
I spin on my heel and hurry toward my car. As I get closer, though, I realize there’s a motorcycle parked next to it. I stop in my tracks, only to realize Owen is still a few paces behind me.
I turn to ask him, “Is that yours?”
He nods, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I don’t usually bring it to work, but I forgot my phone and decided to ride it back over.”
I gaze at the motorcycle—a Triumph Speedmaster. I can’t help myself. I move closer and reach out to touch it. Realizing what I’m doing, I turn to look at Owen.
