by Alexis Gold
She felt her whole body tense. “If we’d had more time at the hotel, perhaps we could have gotten more work done. It’s a really important business deal that we are working on with Anthony.” She smiled and he stopped short and nodded slightly.
Leaning in a little closer, he lowered his voice. “I was thinking more along the lines of just you and I working on a few things, and none of them have to do with the business deal.”
Her stomach tightened, but before she could respond, she felt a solid wall of warmth and strength at her side, and she turned her head to look up and see Jonathon standing right next to her. His hand went to her waist and he pulled her toward his body slightly. Everything in her rushed wildly and she sucked in her breath silently and sharply at the feel of him against her. She tried to appear outwardly as if it was a familiarity between them that happened often, and not something that had affected her so deeply in the moment.
“I see you found my right hand lady!” Jonathon said with a smile and a hint of possession. “I couldn’t do anything without her. She’s absolutely vital to me in practically everything I do. I have no idea how I ever managed before she came along.”
Shane looked up at him and blinked in surprise, and then his eyes moved slowly from Jonathon to Naomi, and his gaze fell to Naomi’s waist where Jonathon’s hand was clamped. Realization came into his eyes and his face fell as he stepped backward a pace, and nodded.
“Yeah, she’s pretty great,” he agreed shallowly. He looked around them and then back up at Jonathon. “You haven’t seen Anthony, have you? I was hoping to talk with him about your business proposition.”
Jonathon’s eyes narrowed slightly for a moment and he turned one corner of his mouth up slightly. “Certainly. He’s over there talking to Phillip and Vincent. I’m sure he’ll be there a while.”
Shane nodded and then turned to look at Naomi and she saw desire flame up in his eyes. He leaned forward toward her and kissed her cheek softly as she stood there with Jonathon’s arm around her. She felt his hand tighten on her waist as Shane leaned back again.
“Call me soon, and we’ll go have dinner and finish what we started.” He gave her a wink and then turned and walked away from them. She let out a huge breath and turned to face Jonathon as she sighed.
“You have impeccable timing. Thank you.” She told him as she looked up through her dark lashes at him and gave him a smile.
He let his hand stay on her waist as she turned to him, and the feel of her body as it moved against his made him catch his breath as he gazed down at her. “I hope I didn’t overstep a boundary there. I know you went out on a date with him while we were at the hotel.”
She shook her head, her eyes locked on his as she lost herself slowly in their dark green depths. “No, it’s fine. He was coming on to me again and I didn’t want him to. I feel like I can’t tell him not to be like that with me because of the business deal that we’re working on with them, and it bothers me,” she admitted to him.
Jonathon was sure he felt his heart swell in him to nearly twice the size. He had never asked her about her date, but if she didn’t want to be close to Shane, then it couldn’t have gone far and it couldn’t have gone well, and that knowledge gave him immense relief.
“Well, let’s just say that I would prefer it if you two kept your relationship just business, and Naomi, no matter what we have going on with anyone at any time, if you feel uncomfortable, then say so. You do not ever need to compromise your dignity or comfort for the sake of business. If Shane or anyone else makes you uncomfortable, including me, then say something and stop it. You should never be made to feel that way.” His face and his voice were serious, and she was relieved and glad to hear him say it to her.
She shook her head slightly and let her gaze fall to his mouth for a moment as her breath caught in her chest and she tried to remember anything besides what it felt like to be so near him. She raised her eyes back up to meet his and spoke softly.
“You don’t make me uncomfortable at all,” she breathed. His eyes grew sharper and his lips parted slightly. He looked as if he might be about to lean closer to her, but just then a light airy voice filled the air around them and Jonathon was pulled from her abruptly.
Naomi blinked and drew in a breath as she looked around; the world suddenly rushing back in to her and waking her up to reality. There was a woman standing at Jonathon’s side, her arm linked through his, a look of ownership on her pale face.
She was extremely pale with long straight reddish orange hair that hung to her waist. She had big hazel eyes and thin lips. Her face was rounded and slightly chubby. Her small chin was pointed out, like the tip of her nose; both of them had a sharp look to them, while everything else about her was round, from her shoulders and elbows to her thick waist and short legs. Her eyes were even sharper than her nose and chin, and she had a look about her as if she was not more than a moment from snapping out at whoever might be around her.
At that moment, her eyes were locked on Naomi’s. She stood there with Jonathon in her clutches and her gaze dared Naomi to get close to him again. Naomi looked from the woman up to Jonathon and she blinked in surprise.
He sighed and his shoulders dropped slightly. Without really looking at either one of them, he introduced them quietly and Naomi heard a hint of regret in his voice. “Susan Grayson, this is Naomi Bradshaw. Naomi is my assistant. Susan is Vincent Grayson’s daughter.” He spoke quietly and the women shook hands, although Susan’s grip was tighter on Naomi’s hand than it needed to be.
“Good afternoon.” Naomi said with a slightly forced smile. She couldn’t say that it was nice to meet Susan. It didn’t feel nice to meet Susan. Susan nodded and repeated the greeting back to her.
“I see you’ve kept my Jonathon busy for a while with work. I think it’s high time that he and I spent some time relaxing a little.” She leaned up and kissed Jonathon’s cheek and Naomi saw his lips press together slightly into a thin line before he sighed in resignation.
Naomi wasn’t sure what was going on between Jonathon and Susan, but it was quite clear that they were more than familiar with each other. She wondered suddenly if he and Susan were seeing one another, and the realization gave her a hard jolt to the stomach.
“Well, actually we were working on a business deal that we were hoping to bring to a soft close here.” Naomi found herself wanting to take Jonathon back from the redheaded woman before her.
Susan raised one eyebrow slightly. “He can go back to it later. We have some things to take care of and talk about. Goodbye.” With that, she turned both herself and Jonathon around and took two steps with him before he looked over his shoulder at Naomi and stopped in midstep.
“No, Susan, she’s right. We are working on a very important deal that I want to get taken care of today,” he said sternly, his eyes reaching back to Naomi.
Susan lifted her sharp chin and glared at him with her wide eyes. “You and I have some things to discuss with our fathers. They are waiting for us. Now, you come with me and let’s not keep them old men waiting, shall we? If you want to work on your business deal, you can do it later. Come with me now,” she insisted.
He frowned and his brows furrowed as he sighed and nodded. “Naomi, I’ll be back.” Then Susan tugged on his arm and hauled him off toward Vincent and Phillip.
Naomi watched him go and as she saw Susan taking him; her arm locked in his, her grin beaming up at him as she looked to him and spoke while they walked, she realized that Susan must be his most serious relationship. It made sense. Their fathers were best friends. The couple reached the old men and both of them greeted Susan with a kiss on the cheek and Vincent reached his hand out to Jonathon’s shoulder.
Naomi saw that they were all four very close, and she saw Susan lean up on her toes and kiss Jonathon’s cheek again as she wrapped her arm around the back of his waist and held him close to her. It became very clear to Naomi then. Jonathon was with Susan. She had just never known it because he kept his
personal life out of their business life. Naomi’s cheeks felt flushed with the fires of humiliation and embarrassment.
She had let herself believe that his attentions were for her, that there was something strong and deep between them, but it had been her imagination all the while. He had never been anything more than a friend to her, and as Naomi saw his familiarity with Susan, she understood that he had never been that way with her, and that it was painfully obvious that she was the only one who felt anything other than their working bond friendship.
Her throat tightened and though she felt rooted to the spot, she somehow found the strength to turn away from the scene playing out before her. She walked swiftly to the house and was out of the front door with her driver in minutes. He tucked her into the back seat of the car and all the way back to her apartment, she felt as though her lungs were suffocating from the pain and sorrow that she could barely contain.
She was determined not to cry in front of the driver. Instead, she stared out of the window and acted as though she was looking at everything that they were driving past. The countryside raced past the windows, and then the city passed them by, and an eternity later, the car was at the front of her apartment building and she was out of it and riding up in the elevator to her front door.
Once the door closed behind her, she finally let herself gasp and all of the air that she had been holding in her lungs came out in a sob as she closed her eyes tightly and tried to hold back the wracking pain that gripped her. Somehow she made it to her bed, and falling into her pillows, she was finally able to let everything she was feeling come rushing out of her.
She sobbed hard, tears coursing down her cheeks until she had cried herself out, and she was left alone with her thoughts, thoughts and memories of every moment that had passed between them.
She tried to determine what all of it meant; the way that he was with her, the moments when she felt that he was just a second away from saying something he wanted to say to her, or getting closer to her than he ever had, or reaching out to touch her. She tried to find reason and explanation, but there was none. He had never done anything outwardly to her that had made it clear that he was anything more than a businessman and a friend.
She wondered if it had all been in her mind; if she had just wanted him so much that she had imagined everything that she thought she felt between them. Then she argued with herself and told herself that she couldn’t have imagined it because nothing had ever felt so real or so deep to her before with any other man.
Then visions of Susan came into her mind and she felt her heart ache miserably as she remembered the way that she was with Jonathon; she was demanding and insistent, and he fought it a little, but he had given in to her at the end, and that could only have happened if it had happened between them before and probably more than once.
She was someone that he owed some allegiance to, and Naomi was not. Naomi was just another administrative assistant in his long line of administrative assistants, and there was nothing about her that made her any different for him than any of the assistants before her, except that they hadn’t slept together.
He had never come on to her. She had believed when she first started that he would do just that; that his arrogant playboy reputation was real and that he would treat her as he had treated all of his other girls, and that he would look at her as if she was just next in line, but he didn’t. He had treated her with respect and dignity, and he had never made a move on her.
She had learned in all of their time together what a gentleman he was, and she had fallen for him; she had let feelings far beyond those of a friend take her over. As she laid there in her bed, she realized that her feelings had gone so deep and so far that it was much more serious than she had originally believed it to be.
She was in love with him. She blinked silently as the truth dawned on her like a bright morning. She was in love with Jonathon Cross. She moaned miserably as tears filled her eyes and she shut them tight. She couldn’t be… she argued with herself, but then she knew she could no longer deny the truth and the truth cut her right to her soul. She was in love with him and there was nothing that she could do about it.
She was in love with a man who did not want her back, and worse than that, one who already had a woman who seemed to have control over him. She had fallen in love with her boss, and that was going to jeopardize her ability to do her job. Everything that she had worked so hard for all of her life had led her to the place where she was. It had led her to her life in Manhattan; her graduation from college, her apartment, and the dream job she had tried so hard to get and excel at.
Her ambition had given her everything that she had ever wanted, but she had not counted on ever wanting a man in all of that, and certainly not her boss. His face hovered in her mind; the feel of his hand on her back at the party, and the heat that had gone through her like a huge wave when he had stood so near her.
She felt like the biggest fool in the world having let herself feel so much for someone who didn’t want it back. She felt like love’s biggest fool, believing that she felt so much so deeply, and believing that there was such a strong connection between them when there was nothing on his end of it, and he did not feel anything for her that she felt for him.
She wondered how in the world she ever could have let her dreams and goals slip away from her, replacing them one by one like strands of illusion with thoughts and dreams of him, letting him into her heart, letting him into places where she had never let any man go. All the while she had let go of her hearts dearest ambitions one by one, and with each one, she had let herself and her parents down bit by bit, and she had never even realized it until that moment.
Naomi felt as if something in her had been betrayed right to the core, and it was she who had done the betraying. It was she who herself down more than anyone in her life ever had. She had been the epic failure of her own lifetime, and that was the single worst feeling she had ever known.
Her parents were let down, her dreams had been set aside for no real reason; there was no reciprocal love, there was no great shining justifiable reason for her to have sacrificed herself and her life goals. There was nothing except the truth that she had thrown everything away for the fantasy of a man who did not want her or need her; a man who was her employer and nothing else, except perhaps a work friend.
It was unbearable to her that she ever could have been so foolish and stupid, and she wept more angry regretful tears than she knew she had in her, until she was cried out and there was nothing left but a hollow silence in her.
She knew that she had to refocus herself so that every thought and feeling was realigned with her dreams and goals. She had to let go of her desires for Jonathon, and let go of the feelings she had for him. She had to concentrate on her work and never let herself down so far again; never give up on what it was she truly wanted ever again, and never let herself feel anything for any man who did not want to give all of that powerful love back to her.
***
Monday morning found her resolved, steeled, her heart broken and cold, and her mind focused with laser beam intensity on the only thing that mattered to her: her work. She was never going to let herself down again.
She was sitting at her desk working when Jonathon came in. He went straight to her, but she barely glanced up at him. “Your messages are on your desk,” she said shortly as she kept her eyes on her monitor.
He was quiet a moment, watching her, surprised at her coolness and the wall that she seemed to have up between them. “I… I wanted to thank you for coming to the event on Saturday. I wish I could have seen you before you left.” His eyes were searching her face for some kind of answer to why she had left early and why she was barely acknowledging him then.
“You’re welcome.” She reached for her phone and began to dial the phone number of one of the other staff members.
He understood that she was busy and that she wasn’t going to take time to talk with him that morning. He nodded and left
and when she heard his office door click shut, she closed her eyes and bit her lip, hoping to stem the sting of tears against her eyelids.
She knew it was going to take some time before she was fully able to control her emotions around him, before she could convince herself that she felt nothing for him, but she was determined to make it happen. She was not going to fail herself or her parents again. She was going to reach every dream and goal she had, and the only way to do that was to let go of him entirely.
A few minutes later she saw an email from him. Her heart caught in her throat and she opened it up. The message was short. ‘No Ivy League coffee this morning?’ it read. Since the first morning she had left the coffee and the note on his desk, she had continued to do him the favor of leaving coffee for him as he had once requested.
It was her way of showing him that she cared about him, because he knew full well that someone with her Ivy League education wasn’t about to get coffee for her boss like a secretary. She made the humble change, giving him her friendship instead, and that morning she had stopped herself from doing it.
That morning had been the sea change in her in which she refocused everything in her to stay in tune with her goals. Getting coffee for him that morning would have been an acceptance of what could not be between them; what wasn’t between them, and she wasn’t about to be his fool any longer, whether he knew she was his fool or not.
She was going to be completely businesslike with him, and nothing was going to change that. She was his employee, and nothing more.
She deleted the email and did not respond to it. Instead, she worked on several files and busied herself with advancing projects that she had been working on. Thoughts of him crept into her mind and each time one came to her, she pushed it aside and made herself think only of her work. Her heart ached with the loss and the change, but she would not let herself feel warmth for him again.
Jonathon tried to read through the pages in the file on his desk, but he read the first page more than four times before he realized that he had no idea what was one it. His mind was completely distracted with Naomi, sitting outside of his office door in her office, ignoring him and working on the things she was working on.
