Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle (Play with Me, Snowfall, and After Midnight) (8 page)

We crossed lines
, I’d told him.
I’m man enough to fix it
, he’d said. He’s giving me what I asked for. Why does that bother me?

He drops my wrist, setting me free. “Good night, Kali.” And then he turns and walks down the hall. Holding my breath, my nails curled into my palms, I watch him go. I don’t move. When he’s at his door, he pauses, and I will him to turn and come back. He doesn’t. We both go into our rooms alone.

I lie in bed, aching to be with Damion and thinking of every instant before and after our being here in this room. I replay every touch, every comment, every look. But of all the things my mind could fixate on, it does not go to those delicious and wonderful erotic moments but to his generic claim that I’m running from something. I am not running. I am choosing to be happy. I have decided that moving away from a veil casting unhappiness is smart.

Unable to stop myself, I grab my cell from the nightstand and type:
I am not running from anything
.

And obviously you aren’t sleeping, either
.

I glance at the time on the digital clock by the bed—1:00
A.M
.
Sorry. Did I wake you?

No. I wasn’t asleep, either
.

Why?
I type before I can stop myself.

I have a lot on my mind
.

Me, too
.

Well, I hear your boss is a bear when he doesn’t sleep
.

I hear your new secretary is, too. Poor everyone else

Yes. Poor everyone else. Good night, Kali
.

Good night, Damion
.

I stare at my phone, thinking of how short our exchange was. He didn’t welcome conversation. He’s trying to do what is right. He’s trying get us back to where we started. Why am I wishing we were back where we stopped?
Because he’s gorgeous and you’re human
, I remind myself.
But you also are not stupid. You need this job, not another orgasm
.

* * *

I wake on my back to a beam of bright sunlight, my cell cradled to my chest, and trying to process why the eighties’ tune “Jesse’s Girl” is playing in my head. I blink and realize it’s the alarm and roll over to turn it off. I do not let myself cave to the temptation of reading the text exchange with Damion again. I can’t overanalyze it or I will make myself crazy. I keep my mind on the job and I get more excited by the minute. I am not just a secretary. I’m working directly with the CEO of a massive casino operation. There is no telling what I will learn and do in this role. If I end up in journalism later, I will be a better reporter for this, too. If I don’t, it’s because this job will lead me to better places.

I’m slipping on a pair of black strappy shoes to complement my pale-blue skirt and jacket when the room phone rings. Nerves flutter in my stomach at the certainty that it will be Damion—or, rather, “Mr. Ward”—and I grab the receiver with the hope that this call will usher us into a good day.

“Morning, Kali! This is Maggie.” Her perky-sounding voice fills me with disappointment.

“Morning.”

“Can you stop by my office before you start to work?”

Unease rolls through me, though she seems so pleasant I can’t believe anything is wrong. In fact, it’s logical that I need paperwork to stay here. “Oh, yes, sure.”

A few minutes later, I walk in to HR to have the receptionist greet me with a friendly smile instead of a cold shoulder. Apparently—and uncomfortably so—I’m now a member of the Mr. Ward victim club, without even joining. I don’t like the idea, and the more I think about Natalie, the more wrong her story feels, but I plan on asking about her.

When I enter Maggie’s office, I find her in an emerald dress that complements her flaming red hair. “Hi there.” She waves me to a seat. “Get comfy.”

I settle across from her and remember the question I don’t want to forget. “Natalie. Mr. Ward’s ex-secretary,” I say, and Maggie’s face transforms into hard lines and tension.

“What about her?” she asks tightly.

“She was insistent on getting some personal things from her desk. If I find them, can I bring them to you to give to her?”

She shifts in her chair. “Please tell me she didn’t contact you.”

“No. I talked to her yesterday here in the lobby.”

Her hand goes to her chest. “Good. If she does try to talk to you, please get in touch with Terrance or me immediately. Your work space should be clean of all her belongings, but anything you might stumble upon goes to Terrance first, then to myself if he deems it appropriate.”

“To Terrance? She said she’s just missing family photos.”

Maggie purses her lips. “I can’t discuss details about Natalie with you, but she’s considered a security risk, and anything she might want to take out of the building must be cleared first.”

I remember Damion mentioning internal security threats, and the reporter in me looks for a question the HR person in Maggie will answer. I decide on a question that isn’t a question at all. “I can’t imagine getting angry enough over a job to lash out, no matter what the circumstances.”

She grimaces. “If that were the only problem. I feel bad because I hired her. Which is why my news for you is bittersweet: You, my dear, are being offered a full-time job in the PR department with benefits and a pay increase. I, in turn, have the pressure of finding Mr. Ward a truly stellar employee all over again.”

Feeling shell-shocked, I accept the letter and confirm the details. For a moment, I just stare at it. In the next, emotions ranging from anger to embarrassment to utter fury explode inside me and I push to my feet. “Can you excuse me for a few minutes? I need to take care of one small detail before I accept.”

“Oh, yes. Of course. How long—”

I turn, already exiting her office, my steps long and sure, my temper barely contained. The ride in the elevator is eternal, but I find plenty to fill the space. Damion doesn’t want to fix things for me. He wants to cover his butt and fix things for him. Well, he’s about to find out that I am not some puppy dog he can order under a table. He gave me a job. I’m not going to be one of who knows how many PR reps in a giant cubicle room. I could have had that in Texas.

By the time I exit the elevator onto the executive floor, I am two notches hotter and about to explode. Dana’s eyes light up when she sees me, but I don’t stop walking to greet her. “Is he in his office?”

“Yes,” she calls behind me.

Entering the lobby area, I find Damion’s door open and I charge right in. Terrance is
seated across from him and, twisting in his chair, takes one look at me and has the sense to stand up. He murmurs something to Damion I can’t hear and then moves toward me.

“Kali,” he says, with a nod at my approach.

“What happened to ‘Ms. Miller’?”

If I intend to throw him for a loop by referencing his formality the day before, it does not work. “Apparently,” he replies, “she hasn’t had her coffee,” and smartly keeps walking, pulling the door shut behind him.

Damion arches his brow. “Problem, Ms. Miller?”

“Yes,” I say, closing the distance between us and rounding the desk. He rolls his chair around to face me, and damn him for looking like sin itself in his black suit and a pale-green tie that matches his eyes. Eyes he has focused on me, not on the letter, as I smack it down on the desk and add, “This is the problem. My transfer with the condolence raise meant to make cubicle hell survivable.”

“You’re mad about a raise?”

“You made an employee a conquest, and you’re shoving me under a rug to try to cover your own ass.” And it hurts. I hate that it hurts. I hate all the old feelings it stirs and how I can almost hear my father’s voice in my head saying horrible things to me. “You shouldn’t have wasted my time to cover your own ass.” I try to move away.

He rolls farther torward me and cages me so that I’m against the desk, his hands on either side of me. “First, you are not a conquest. Not even close. I work seventy hours a week, and the last thing on my mind is a notch on my bedpost, and the last thing I do is mix business with pleasure. I take my work too seriously for that. Second, what happened between us happened after you quit. If I was trying to make what happened between us go away, I would have let you walk away.”

He’s right. He could have let me go. “Then why didn’t you?”

“I told you, my gut feelings are everything. And everything inside me told me to go after you, even though logic said I was treading on dangerous ground. I still want you, Kali. I want to lick you. I want to touch you. I want to set you on the desk, rip your panties off, and fuck you. But that can’t happen when you’re my employee. And that means you being in another department is a smart move for both of us.”

Heat spreads through me at his graphic words, burning me inside out, slicking my thighs,
but confusion and anger burn in me, too. He is sending confusing messages. He wants me. He can’t have me. I can’t have him. “So you are making a business decision.”

“Yes. I’m trying to give you a place where you feel your job has no relationship with me.”

“And you are not tempted to cross any more lines.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

It’s also exactly what I didn’t want to hear. “So because you still want me, I get a job, and you get to have the job you want.”

His hands go to my waist. “No. You aren’t running.”

“I am not running. Stop saying that. You don’t even know me.”

“That’s the point. I want to know you, Kali. We need to talk this through. I
sincerely thought
you’d be happier in the press department.”

“No, I will not be happier. You would have found that out had you asked me.”

He sighs. “You couldn’t even say the word ‘secretary’ yesterday.”

“Because I was in shock after losing my dream job. I’m over it. I’m ready to work, but I risked everything when I left Texas to get away from a bullpen-style room filled with eager reporters. I’m not going back to that. If I can’t do what I envisioned I could do, I want to be where there is opportunity and I can build a future. Where I feel like I have an identity and my skills can make a difference.”

“And you think working with me will do that?”

“Don’t you?”

His fingers flex on my hips, and for a moment his thumbs stroke back and forth. “Okay, Kali.
Ms. Miller
.” He rolls his chair back and his hands fall away from me. “You’re staying with me.”

With him. Relief washes over me. “Thank you.”

“See if you still feel that way in a few days from now. I’ll let Maggie know about the changes.”

“Why is she Maggie and I’m Ms. Miller?”

“Because she’s expressed a dislike for formality, and she and I are not you and me. If we are going to work this closely together, we have to go back to formality and stay there.”

“Translation,” I say. “No …”

“Licking, touching, or fucking,” he supplies. “Nor will we talk about it again. You have my word. Everything from this point forward is about the job.”

A pang of disappointment fills me and I shove it aside. “Thank you, Mr. Ward, for the clarification.” And the promise of many thigh-squeezing, miserable moments. But I will prevail. My gut tells me this is where I belong.

“Just making sure we both know the rules,” he replies.

“I guess now we’re clear.”

“I guess we are,” he murmurs softly, and there is an undercurrent to his words, a heat to his eyes that holds me captive. The air is suddenly crackling with the possibilities we never explored. With the desire we still share for each other. I want to press myself to him and beg him to fuck me and get it out of our systems.

Abruptly, it seems, his phone rings, a magnified sound that nearly makes me jump. Damion shakes his head, running a hand over his face. “That’s our time-out buzzer. Let’s hope we don’t need it often.” He rolls to the desk and his shoulder brushes my leg, and it is like an electric shock wave shooting straight to my sex.

His gaze lifts to mine, barely banked passion in its depths. “Correction,” he says softly. “We most definitely are going to need a lot of time-outs.” He answers the call.

I start to leave, but he motions me to stay.

“Yes, I have a new assistant handling the coordination,” Damion replies to something his caller has said. “We’re getting things together. I’ll have my new assistant, Ms. Miller, call you back with the confirmation.” He hangs up the phone and reaches for the offer letter and a pen, scribbling something on it. “This will make things easy.” He turns the paper around for me to see. “Sign it and initial by my changes. Call Maggie and tell her you need her to pick it up and get you online officially this time.”

I glance at the paperwork and see that the title has changed but nothing else. “My pay—”

“You can keep the raise.”

“No, I—”

“Yes. Don’t argue. I’m the boss. Remember?”

“Yes, but—”

“Boss, Ms. Miller,” he says, tapping the pen to his chest. “That’s me. You do what I say. And I have a feeling I’m going to have to remind you often.” He glances at the silver watch on
his wrist. “I have a Skype call in five minutes. Text me your business email when you get it live.” He opens a drawer and pulls out a folder, offering it to me. “This is the information on my pet project, a charity poker tournament here at the casino the weekend after next, benefiting a local shelter. Supposedly it’s completely in order. At this point, I do not want to trust that anything that was supposed to be done is really done. When you have your email, I’ll get you the spreadsheet to go with the file.”

His phone rings again and he reaches for it. Our conversation is over, but I don’t feel dismissed. I feel as if I’ve just arrived, and I’m not sure if it’s about the job or the man, or both. I have a feeling I’ll be finding out sooner rather than later.

Maggie shows up at my desk as I hang up with my cell provider, and I take the opportunity to give her my new local number for the files. After jotting it down in a file she’s holding, she gives me a keen inspection. “So you’re staying in this job?”