by Melissa West
Like always, I chose a different elevator from the one I took this morning, forever hoping to find some superfast elevator that traveled at near light speed. So far no luck. I drew a long breath and stepped into my choice, my eyes widening as the doors closed, and then I hummed “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” until the doors popped back open and my breathing returned to normal. I pushed out of the building toward the pub, drawing in the night air as soon as it hit my face. My shoulders were tight and my feet were sore and my brain felt like it already needed a day off.
The Irish pub was smaller than most bars we frequented, with ten or so tables and then the bar. The Giants were on the wide-screen, and besides me, there was only a handful of people there. I imagined within an hour it would be packed, but for now, it was nice.
Securing a table away from the door, I laid out my notes from the morning meeting and then the research I had found for Gayle. I’d emailed her my findings before I left for the day, but I’d also printed a copy for myself.
“Vodka tonic,” I said to the waitress, just as my phone buzzed with a text from Lauren saying she’d be late. I slid my phone back into my bag and dived into the notes. I was reading over Brody’s idea of colored water dripping like sweat off the top players in any given division, which had been done, when the door to the bar opened. My gaze lifted, curious if Grace had been able to join us after all, but it wasn’t Grace or Lauren.
It was Aidan.
I slumped down in my chair and raised my notes up to hide my face. Why didn’t I choose a bar away from the office? I peeked over my notes. He was at the bar in just a few steps, laughing with the bartender, and I thought of how freely he had laughed with me on Saturday night. It was a different look for him. Laughing. A good look.
He ordered something I couldn’t hear and turned around to watch the game, when his eyes locked on mine. I ducked back down, praying he hadn’t actually seen me, which was maybe my stupidest thought all day, and then I heard the screeching sound of the chair across from me being pulled away from the table.
“Is this seat taken?”
I closed my eyes and dropped my notes at the sound of his voice. “I suppose not. Is there something I can do for you?” My voice held a hint of agitation that I couldn’t push away. He might be my boss, but I was still annoyed at his I don’t date BS. As though I expected a date. As though I wanted a date. Like every woman he passed by longed to go out with him, which likely they did, but gah. People didn’t admit that crap out loud.
Instead of answering my question, he picked up my notes and turned them around so he could read them. “Hey,” I called, before I could stop myself. “Have you ever heard of asking?”
Fantastic, Cameron. Go ahead and get yourself fired on the first day.
But he only smirked as his gaze dropped to the notes, UT Guy reappearing before me. “Detailed. Good.” His eyes lifted, and the intensity in them made my heartbeat kick up. I knew the look had less to do with me and more to do with his passion for the job, but still, why did he have to be so hot? It’d be so much easier if Aidan were the sixty-year-old with back problems I’d envisioned.
Or if I hadn’t slept with him.
“Glad you picked up on the redundancy of the sweat idea. You’re right, it has been done.” He continued through my notes, each second growing more painful. I wondered what his expressions meant, why he nodded at times or his eyebrows threaded together at others. What did he see in my work? In me? I needed another drink to survive this. I needed fifty more drinks.
Finally, he returned my notebook to me and glanced up. “What I’m not seeing here are your ideas.”
I hesitated. “That’s because my ideas aren’t there. I keep them here.” I tapped my phone. “I want to be able to find them easily, make changes to them while I’m walking to work or in a cab or on the subway. It’s just easier.”
He waved to the waitress, who brought over his drink. “Anything else for you, Aidan?”
I did a double take at her using his first name. Clearly, he was a regular.
“No, thanks. Anything for you, Cameron?” I eyed my almost-empty drink and he grinned. “She’ll have another.”
“It’s okay. Really. I can—”
“She’ll have another,” he repeated to the waitress, who shrugged at me and went on back to the bar.
As soon as she was gone, Aidan leaned in close, his hair falling a bit over his eyes in that impossibly sexy way, and I expected him to launch into a tirade, a lesson, something that would make me feel even worse, when he said, “About today…”
“Yes?” I prepared myself for his epic apology for the no-dating comment. A declaration that he wished he could date me, wished I would have given him my number. That he wouldn’t have been able to wait twenty-four hours to call. The whole You’ve Got Mail scene played out right here. It would be sweet, endearing, would make me wish we could date, so I could find out which version of him was the real Aidan.
But instead he said, “I’m sorry if I seemed a little rough in the meeting. It’s a sink-or-swim business, and they were about to rip you apart. That’s how it’s done. Which was why it had to come from me. I’ve made every person in that room feel like an amateur at some point.”
I blinked. “Wait, what?”
“The morning meeting? Did you think I was going to say something else?”
“No, I just…no.”
He tilted his head, waiting, his lips twitching in their effort to keep from forming a half grin. “I’m listening.”
“I said it was nothing.”
“Yet, still here waiting.”
“Fine. I thought you might apologize for the no-dating thing.”
His expression turned playful, and he pushed out of his chair. “Nothing to apologize for there. I don’t date.”
It didn’t matter if he dated. It was that he assumed I wanted a date. I opened my mouth to say as much, when Lauren rushed up to our table, preventing me from going off on him properly. She was rambling about a fashion emergency at work, but I wasn’t listening. I was trying to rein in my emotions, or else I’d be searching for a job tomorrow. How could he have been so charming and funny on Saturday night and now be such an ass? And why did I get the feeling the jerk-Aidan wasn’t the real him?
“Here, take my seat,” he said to Lauren. “I was just leaving.”
I wanted to ask him to stay, to see if UT Guy would reappear, see if that connection I’d felt with him would return, but I couldn’t. Regardless of the casual persona he took on at the bar, he was my boss.
Our eyes met one last time, and in his I saw a change, if only slight, but it was there. A battle, a feeling, something. But then his gaze dropped, the connection lost, and he disappeared out the door without a backward glance.
Chapter Seven
“Okay. Explain,” Lauren said, her face engulfed in one of those spill it, girl smiles. She settled into Aidan’s chair and waited for me to speak. Her pin-straight hair was fastened back with a bronze peacock clip. Some new thing they’d ordered for Bergdorf’s that they were hoping would take off, but likely wouldn’t. “So?”
I sighed heavily, stalling. “Geez, take a breath before you fall over.”
“Forget breathing, Cammie. UT Guy was just sitting at your table, all in your space. Don’t even try to tell me that you’re not freaking out right now. And holy wow, up close he’s even hotter than I remembered. He’s like a dream. God.” She glanced back at the door.
“A dream? What are you, fifteen? Did you have a round on the walk over here or something? He isn’t a dream. He’s—” I shook my head. Who was I kidding? He was totally a dream, but I refused to admit that out loud. “And you have no idea how jacked-up this all became today. UT Guy? Yeah, he’s my boss.”
Lauren choked on her drink—well, my drink, which she’d taken the liberty of stealing—and began sputtering. “No effing way. UT Guy is your boss? How is that possible? He’s like twenty-eight tops, right?”
I filled her in on
the full exchange from the morning. Even explaining the horrid situation made my cheeks flame. “It was beyond humiliating.”
“So, no banging in his office? I mean you’ve already gone there, so what’s the harm in a little more action?”
I smiled. Leave it to Lauren to make me laugh even after a day like this. “Yeah, no. Sorry to disappoint you. The company has a strict no-fraternizing policy, which according to our admin was created to keep Aidan away from innocent new hires like me.”
The wow look on her face told me this was the best piece of information I’d given her yet. “So he isn’t against it, then?”
“I don’t know, probably all rumors. He said he’d never dated anyone at the office. That he doesn’t date at all. Just as well. I’d get fired.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. “Right, and you’ve been dreaming about this job for four years.” We sat in silence for a second, then she smirked. “But I bet he’d totally be worth it.”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. So tell me about your first day at Bergdorf’s as a hot new buyer.”
“Junior buyer, and even that seems like a fancy title for what I really do.” She launched into coffee runs and sorting files and clothes and doing any and everything other than buying. It’s funny how fabulous our jobs sounded to us before we’d actually started them. Now, reality had set in. We were at the bottom of the barrel, scraping away with a salary so low it should be against the law, all in hopes of moving up.
Right now, I planned to starve for lunch the next day to make up for our drinks. You spend four years in college, and never once did they tell you how hard it’d be once you left. How slow and painful the job hunt could be. How the salaries were a joke and the apartments cost a fortune. Sure, some new graduates, like Grace, had trust funds and families willing to support them while their careers took off. But Lauren and I were not part of that club. Lauren was raised on a farm out in Oklahoma, and my family…well, let’s just say I’d made it my mission at twelve when my dad died to get the hell out of there. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my mom and even my stepdad, Eric. I did. But I didn’t want to marry at twenty-two and have babies at twenty-five, my life set even before I’d begun living it.
I’d spent the better part of my four years at NYU learning to speak without an accent and begging my parents to come visit me here so they could see this part of my life. See why I loved it. But it always ended in an argument. So I would go home, listen to my aunts rave about my cousins and their husbands and children, all the while feeling less and less like my accomplishments mattered. I loved going home, the amazing food and comfort of our house, but for once, I wanted Mom to pipe up and brag about me. It never happened.
Sadness washed over me at the thought, and then a voice from over my shoulder said, “Can I buy you ladies another round?”
Lauren smiled. “Grace! I thought you couldn’t come?”
Grace settled into the third chair and for the rest of the evening I forgot about work and Aidan, glad to have my friends beside me.
Now, if only I could forget about UT Guy.
…
I left Lauren and Grace an hour later, eager to get back home so I could sort through my day in private.
As soon as I closed the door to my apartment and tossed my keys in the basket we kept on the kitchen counter, I went immediately to the shower. Showers were one of my least favorite things in the world—the aggravation of shaving and drying hair too much for me to stand—but my shoulders were still tight from the day, and I needed to unwind.
I hit the docking station I kept in my bathroom and surfed through until I found the song I craved—“Tuesday’s Gone.” My dad, my real dad, was a major classic rock fan, and my mom used to joke that when I’d scream as a baby, he’d play me Lynyrd Skynyrd and I’d quiet down every time. Now I played the band whenever I felt like I was losing myself, my focus, and needed to come back to center. After all, it was my dad who gave me my first set of wings. He was a pilot, and every time he’d return home he’d tell me he wanted me to go places, to see the world, to become the best possible version of myself. To me, he was telling me to leave Alabama and to never look back. And so I did. I just never realized that fulfilling my dad’s greatest wishes for me would break my mom’s heart so thoroughly.
The memory hit me like it’d happened yesterday. I’d gotten all my college acceptance letters and had finally made my choice. I still remembered the look on Mom’s face when I told her I’d chosen NYU. How she had at first said no, then that we couldn’t afford it, then the weather and the crime rate, and then before long, she was crying. I stared at her, lost as to how the happiest moment in my life could make her so miserable. She didn’t understand. I couldn’t breathe there. I couldn’t voice a single opinion without having someone look at me like I’d grown horns. My perfect cousins hated me, and the rest of my family treated me like I was a stranger. After all, I was a hard-core Democrat in a Republican state. A foreigner. My upbringing marked me a Southerner, but I’d never been Southern a day in my life.
I grabbed my navy pajamas from the darks side of my pajama drawer and lay back against my bed, my phone beside me. I had just tucked my legs under the covers and closed my eyes when my phone vibrated with a new email. I clicked the work folder, and then nearly dropped my phone as I read the name at the top.
Aidan Truitt.
Sitting up and crossing my legs, my gaze zeroed in on the empty subject line. A thousand things began to run through my mind—was he writing to lecture me? To ask me to do something? To fire me? Why was I so afraid of being fired? Surely that didn’t happen on your first day. I didn’t know, but as I ran through scenarios, each possibility felt more probable than the last. Finally, I ordered myself to stop being a wuss and hit the damn email. Only seven words and a letter.
My office, 9 a.m. Bring your notes.
- A
Chapter Eight
Lauren was still in bed when I crept out of our apartment at seven thirty the following morning. I had no idea what Aidan wanted with me at nine, but I planned to get to the office before him so I could prepare.
I exited a different elevator from the two I’d taken yesterday—my favorite of the three—to a quiet floor, no Alexa, no Gayle, no one rushing down the halls and no sounds from the cubicles as I passed. I was just about to slide my gym bag under my desk when a deep voice asked, “Are you a before or after work kind of girl?”
My back straightened, and I spun around to see Aidan leaning against my cube. “Excuse me?” I asked.
“The bag. I’m assuming it’s for working out?”
“Oh, yeah.” So not what I thought he was asking. “I take kickboxing a few days a week at my gym. Keeps my mom happy. The whole self-defense thing.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Kickboxing, huh? That’s unexpected.”
I grinned. “Let me guess. You expected yoga?” I thought of Grace’s failed attempt to get me into yoga and laughed. I would try to talk and she’d shh me and then a few minutes would pass and I’d try again, only to receive another sharp look. She didn’t invite me back. “You don’t know me very well.”
He took a small step toward me, an inch, no more, but all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. “I know that you’re originally from Birmingham and likely moved to New York to prove a point to yourself as much as anyone else. I know you were in the top of your class. That you received three job offers, all from top agencies.” Another step. “And I know that the girl from Saturday night who told me all this? The one who relaxed, maybe for the first time in her life? You think that girl isn’t you, but she’s in there. It’s okay to let her out once in a while. To let go.” He held my gaze for a second longer, then cleared his throat and started down the hall, toward his office. “I’m ready when you are.”
I collapsed into my chair as soon as it was safe, sure that if I didn’t sit I would fall. What the hell just happened? His words replayed in my mind, the way his voice had dipped down, and suddenly, every
fiber in me longed to let my carefree side go—straight to Aidan’s office to see if we could pick up where we’d left off Saturday night. I’d never had such an immediate attraction to a man in my life. A man who just so happened to be my boss. I tried to remind myself of that fact every time these thoughts hit me, but so far the word “boss” was doing little more than making him even hotter.
I clenched my eyes shut, irritated that I was allowing myself to lose control. And in only two days. I needed to focus on the job, keep my emotions in check—remember how hard I’d worked to get this job.
My computer fired up, and I told myself I was checking my email to be responsible, but really it was to give my brain something productive to do. Something other than think about a certain boss. I couldn’t go in there now, the image of his body tangled in my sheets so fresh in my mind.
After a few minutes of stalling, I pushed out of my chair, grabbed my phone and my notes, and started toward his office, refusing to look up. Something told me I would see UT Guy watching me, not Aidan, and I couldn’t handle that version of him. Not now.
I knocked lightly on the glass door before slowly opening it. “Aidan?”
“Come in.” His voice was low, too low. The sort of voice that made your insides twist and curl and dream about things you had no right dreaming about. I gave him a fleeting look before closing the door and walking over to his desk. He was leaning back in his chair, his hair styled out of his eyes. He’d rolled his sleeves to his elbows, showing off the contours of his forearms. Forearms that had cradled me close just days before.
Ugh. Stop it.
“Deep thought?” The corner of his mouth quirked up just a touch, and instantly, my cheeks burst into flames. Damn skin. I needed medication or something. Like a green pill that would cancel out the red whenever my emotions spiked.
I forced my expression to remain even. “Just wondering why you wanted to see me this morning.”
Aidan leaned forward, his eyes locked on mine. “I thought that was obvious.”
