Her Secret

by Bloom, Penelope

  Lilith gave me a scrutinizing look. “Work trouble?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Penis related?”

  I looked down to Zoey, who was still breathing slow and heavy. If that didn’t make her stir, I knew we really were safe. “Sort of.”

  Lilith nodded wisely. “You’re twenty-eight. You’ve got an awesome daughter and a kick-ass new job. And for as long as I’ve known you, you’ve been so focused on providing for Zoey that I don’t think you ever stopped to wonder what you’d do once you made it. Well, guess what? You made it. Now it’s only natural that your mind goes straight to getting some stable, well-bred dick.”

  I smirked. “You had me for most of that, but you lost me somewhere near the end.”

  “Come on. What’s the point in lying to yourself? You told me this guy was a royal asshole. If you’re still obsessing over him so much, it’s pretty obvious to see what’s going on.”

  “Who says I’m still obsessing over him?”

  “Your raging libido does. I can practically smell it from here. You’re in heat, girl. And you want those bossy hands all over you.”

  I tried to discreetly sniff my armpit, even though I knew she had to be making up the part about the smell.

  “Look. I get it. Dawson screwed with your head. You don’t want to get hurt again. But I figure there are two ways you could go about this. One, you never date anyone again and end up with a crusty, cobweb-ridden vagina. And while I can’t speak from experience, I think that would hurt in its own way. Two, you realize that some swinging dick doesn’t get to decide if you’re happy or not. If it works? Great. If it doesn’t? Great. You’ve still got you and you’ve still got Zoey, so you move on and keep kicking ass.”

  “Hold on. I’m still trying to convince my brain it never heard the words ‘crusty’ and ‘vagina’ paired together in a sentence.”

  Lilith groaned. “Admit I’m right and stop changing the subject.”

  “You’re not entirely right. Just kind of. When I think back on the interactions I’ve had with him, it’s like hating him should be a no-brainer. He’s over-bearing. He’s cocky. He’s condescending. I don’t think I’ve even see him smile. It’s just…”

  Lilith’s eyes twinkled knowingly. “It’s just that you are drawn to his mysterious, manly musk?”

  I laughed. “Not the words I’d choose, but I’ll admit I’m curious. It’s like coming into a room and finding it completely trashed. There’s blood on the walls, the curtains are ripped, there’s a deer passed out in front of the fireplace.”

  “Sounds like when I leave Liam in charge of the house for the weekend.”

  I grinned. “I just mean if you went into a room like that, you wouldn’t exactly want to stay in it. You shouldn’t want to, at least. But wouldn’t part of you want to know what the hell happened?”

  “Hey, you don’t have to convince me of anything. You want your boss to jump your jimmies. If you have to pretend you’re Nancy Drew to justify it, more power to you.”

  I glared at her, but I couldn’t pretend she was entirely wrong. She was just almost entirely wrong.

  Peter came back to work Friday morning. Two Peter-free days had actually meant I was able to get some work done. I’d managed to get Derrick to share all the files I needed to start figuring out Peter’s schedule, and more importantly, getting my hands on all the files for his upcoming book. If I wanted to make effective ads for him, the first step was figuring out what the book was about, after all.

  Without Peter around to run interference, Derrick seemed to find any excuse he could to wind up beside my desk, even though Peter had made sure it was on the opposite end of the room from Derrick’s. It didn’t take long for Derrick’s initial front of being an easy-going, friendly guy to fade. He was just out for sex, and all the other young women in the office had their own stories about him and his ways.

  I was almost glad to have Peter back, because every time Derrick started sauntering over to my desk, Peter would burst out of his office and either send Derrick to complete some assinine task or summon me into his office. Between the way he kept Derrick away and how he’d seemed so desperate to keep me from even looking at his brother, Harry, I was beginning to think Peter was jealous. Yet at the same time, I was almost positive he hated me. He made no effort to speak to me, and on the few occasions I’d gone to his office to talk about an idea for his marketing, he’d only responded in grunts and nods.

  Ansley came to sit with me at my desk while I ate my lunch with one hand and worked with the other. There was a break room on the floor below us, but it seemed to be part of the office culture to eat while you worked around here, and I didn’t want to make waves. Besides, I had a lot to prove, which meant I had more work to do than I had time to do it.

  “Yum. What is that, pickles with a side of sandwich again?” Ansley asked.

  I looked at my sandwich and decided she wasn’t really wrong. I did love pickles, and I probably went through a jar of pickle chips every week just from the amount I put on my sandwiches every day. “I guess I like sour foods,” I laughed. “I never really thought about it.”

  “Does your preference for sour things include sour bosses?”

  I glanced toward Peter’s office out of habit. His blinds were always down, but I could never completely shake the feeling that he was watching me—which was mostly driven by the uncanny way he’d explode out of the door if I so much as looked at Derrick.

  "I'm going to go with a hard ‘no.'" I wasn't being entirely truthful, but I also wasn't about to unpack the messy ball of emotions I felt when I thought of Peter Barnidge. Sometimes, the thought of him made me want to learn kung fu just so I could punch a hole through a wall—or his crotch. Other times, my mind would wander to dark and dirty fantasies about how he’d probably like to pin my arms over my head and give me some of the most wild, crazy, and intense sex I’d ever had. Somehow, I didn’t think Ansley wanted that level of detail.

  “I kind of hated him at first, too,” Ansley said. “But he grows on you. It was almost like he went out of his way to piss me off at first. Like he wanted to make sure I didn’t get the wrong idea and think I could try to date him or something. You know?”

  “Well, if his idea is to push me away, he’s doing a great job. In fact, he could probably have quit after the first day without worrying. You lost me at Hell No,” I said with a grin.

  Ansley laughed. “To be honest, he has been a lot harder on you than any of the other pretty girls I’ve seen come through here.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I’d always been irritated by people who couldn’t take a compliment without challenging it, so I made a point of never disagreeing with someone who said something nice about me. I’d take the positivity where I could get it. “Does that mean he’s not an ass to women he doesn’t think are pretty?”

  “Kind of? I think it’s more like any woman he thinks might have some kind of idea about dating him.” Ansley stole a glance toward Peter’s office. She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “He had a really nasty breakup about two years ago. The woman had been working here for a few years, and she—”

  “Ansley.” Peter was standing outside his office with his arms folded. “If you’re finished with your lunch, you should be working.”

  “I swear, he must have this place bugged.” She shot me a what can you do kind of look before hopping off my desk and heading back to hers.

  I tried not to look up at Peter in hopes that he’d leave me alone.

  “Violet. My office,” he called.

  It annoyed me that he couldn’t just walk the twenty feet from his office to my desk and ask me personally. Instead, he had to announce it so I felt like I was back in high school and getting called to the principal’s office over the intercom. I saved my work and then did the walk of shame to his office, where he let me in and closed the door behind us.

  Peter gestured for me to sit across from his desk and took his own spot in his chair. “Are you ready f
or this weekend?”

  “You sent Ansley to her desk and called me in here to ask that?”

  His eyebrows drew together. “What are you implying?”

  The words that came to mind weren’t work appropriate, so I took my time forming a much less aggressive and offensive version of my thoughts. “I’m just wondering why you’re acting so strangely. You won’t let me talk to the one person in the office who should be my biggest resource. You’re asking me to go with you this weekend to a convention that has nothing to do with what I’m working on. I feel like I’m missing something.” And I’m wondering if a woman actually dated you when you’re this nasty, or if the breakup was what made you this way.

  “I don’t want to see how you would work with my existing marketing plan. I want to see why you are supposedly worth having on my staff when I’ve already got a competent marketing team. And the convention is marketing. Just because it doesn’t come with tracking analytics, that doesn’t mean it’s not getting my name and my books out there. But I would’ve expected a marketing expert to understand that.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  He held up his palm and leaned forward. “Okay? That’s all you have to say?”

  “Would you prefer I said, ‘that’s a plausible explanation but I don’t buy a word of it’? Or would you prefer if I asked why you decided to pay me way too much to get me to work here if you’re so skeptical? Because I kind of figured you’d rather I not ask.”

  For a few seconds, I thought he was going to shout, but he only let out a soft sigh. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he looked like he was fighting the urge to smirk. “I’ll see you this weekend, Browning.”

  I stood up to leave, but he stopped me just before I reached the door.

  “Violet.”

  I turned and watched as he seemed to struggle with what he was about to say. When he frowned, I thought it looked more like he was frowning at himself. He gave his head an almost imperceptible shake.

  “I’ll see you this weekend,” he said again, but with less confidence than before.

  We were flying first class out of JFK to Annapolis, Maryland. I triple checked my arrangements to have Zoey stay with my mom all day Saturday with a brief stop at Lilith and Liam’s Sunday morning, and then back with my mom until Monday. Thankfully, Zoey was excited about the idea. She loved visiting my mom, and she especially loved going to Lilith and Liam’s.

  I walked back to my apartment early Saturday morning after dropping off Zoey. The doctor had given me crutches, but I was already finding it easier to just walk with a slight limp and let the medical boot do its job. As long as I took my time, I didn’t feel any pain. I found Peter pacing outside my building. He looked pissed, even by Peter Barnidge standards. He was bundled against the cold in a thick coat, but he still managed to wear the layers in a way that made his physique impossible to miss. The cold weather also suited his relatively pale complexion and shocking features. He was in his element here, so much so that I could almost imagine he was the one causing the cold—as if his heart was devoid of enough humanity to suck the heat out of an entire city block. It had seemed to get colder when I turned the corner toward my building, or was that just in my head?

  He still hadn’t noticed me, and for the first time since I spotted him at the convention center, I had a moment to reflect on how insane it was that a man like Peter was actually my boss. He was the kind of good looking that boyfriends forgave their girlfriends for staring after. You could look at him for minutes and keep finding new details to appreciate—like every last line had been drafted and revised until it was a perfect fit for the overall picture. As much as I hated to admit it, if he hadn’t been so breathtaking, it would’ve been easier to hate him. He deserved to be hated, and yet I could only manage to mostly hate him. I knew part of me was still hoping he’d prove me wrong, if for no other reason than because he looked too good to be so toxic. I wanted to believe there was a reason, or better yet, a cure.

  I silently thanked God that I had dropped Zoey off already. Had he shown up half an hour earlier, he would’ve caught me in the middle of my lie. At first, it had felt like a white lie, but some white lies had a way of gaining momentum, like snowballs rolling downhill. Left unchecked for too long, a pebble could turn into a mountain, and I had a sinking suspicion that keeping my secret was a mistake. Still, today wasn’t the day to tell him, not before getting stuck with him for an entire weekend. Monday would be better. I’d be back home and he’d be glad to have me out of his hair, no doubt.

  He spotted me when I was just a few steps away. “Where were you?” he demanded.

  “Going for a walk,” I said. Injecting outrage into my words wasn’t hard. After all, I still had over an hour until I was supposed to leave for the airport. “What are you doing here, and how do you know where I live?”

  "Your address is in your employee file. And I'm here because plans changed. Harry checked into our flight status, and apparently, a snowstorm is grounding everything out of JFK until tonight. We're taking a bus to Annapolis."

  I squinted up at the sky. It was certainly cold enough for snow, but the clouds didn’t look particularly threatening. “Really?”

  “I don’t pretend to be a meteorologist. Do you?”

  I glared as I pulled out my phone. “No. But I have an app for the weather. I tapped into it and held up my screen for him to see. “Clear skies, apparently.”

  “We don’t have time to argue about it. Harry must’ve heard something, and I’ll trust my brother before I trust your app. We either leave soon, or we miss the bus.”

  “I’ll go get my bags. They’re mostly packed, but I just had a few things I still needed to grab.”

  “Bags? Plural? We’re going to be gone for two days. How much do you need?”

  I decided to ignore him, even though he was shouldering a massive duffel bag that was technically one bag but could’ve fit the two I planned to bring with ease. Besides, as usual, speaking my mind would likely mean losing my job. I turned to go, but Peter stopped me at the door.

  “Where are your crutches?” he asked.

  “I don’t need them anymore.”

  “Is there an elevator in your building?”

  “Stairs. Why?”

  He shook his head. “Come on. I’m not letting you go up the stairs with a sprained ankle and no crutches.”

  “How do you think I got back home last night? Or outside this morning?”

  “Stupidly, apparently. Give me your keys and tell me what you need. I’ll go get it.”

  “It was just a minor sprain. The doctor said I could walk on the boot as long as I took breaks and didn’t get it wet.”

  “Keys,” Peter said again.

  I laughed. “No way. Believe it or not, I’d rather not have my boss rooting through my underwear drawer or seeing my messy apartment.”

  I wasn’t sure if I imagined it, but I thought he looked a little more tense. “Then let me help you up the stairs, at least.”

  “Since when are you considerate?”

  He scoffed. “I’m considerate of the fact that if you fall and get hurt, you’d probably find some way to sue me.”

  I rolled my eyes. “For a second, I thought there might be a heart inside that empty cavity you call a chest.” Distantly, I wondered if that was why he tried so hard to keep Derrick away from my desk. Maybe it wasn’t jealousy, after all. Peter Barnidge may have just been the type of guy who obsesses over the possibility of getting sued. For some reason, that possibility felt a little disappointing.

  “Come on.” He took my arm and pulled it around his waist because his shoulder was too high for me to reach without stretching.

  His body was as hard as a rock, and I could feel his muscles flexing and rippling, even under his coat. I wasn’t sure if it was just the cold outside, but his body felt unnaturally warm, especially where his bare hand was on my arm. “Why are you so warm? Jesus. It’s like you’ve got a high fever.”

  He didn’t a
nswer immediately, instead focusing on getting us through the door and helping me up the first few steps.

  "When I take my temperature, it's always more like ninety-six or ninety-five. Ninety-eight is a fever for me. I've never found a doctor who could really tell me why, but it apparently makes my skin warm, even when I'm perfectly healthy."

  “Shouldn’t that make your skin colder?”

  He shrugged. “You would think. But everyone always says I feel like I’m on fire.”

  I spent the rest of the climb up the stairs wondering how many people Peter Barnidge had touched in his life. All I’d seen of him was a man who pushed everyone away so violently that he must’ve hoped they’d never come back.

  We reached the landing outside my apartment, and Peter let me go so I could dig for my keys. “Ansley mentioned a bad breakup,” I said suddenly. “Is that why—”

  “Ansley should know better than to gossip about her boss. Hurry up and get your things. We’re already pushing it for time.”

  I purposely picked the least sexy underwear I owned and shoved them into my suitcase. Granny panties. The pair with the slightly worn-out elastic. The pair of beige ones I never remembered buying, but seemed to keep coming back no matter how many times I thought I’d thrown them away. I always packed twice as much as I thought I’d need, so I grabbed four outfits and shoved them in the bag as well. Once I’d gathered the rest of my last minute supplies, I paused again at my dresser. I impulsively grabbed a lacy red thong and matching bra, not because I even remotely expected Peter would ever see them, but because I prided myself on being prepared for anything. Who knew when the man of your dreams would show up and sweep you off your feet in a strange city, right?

  Less than half an hour later, Peter and I were the last people on a Greyhound bus headed for Annapolis. To my dismay, it was packed, and the only open seats were together. I shuffled in behind Peter, who had insisted on at least holding my arm the whole way to the bus stop to make sure I didn’t fall or put too much weight on my foot.