5
THE REST OF THE MORNING seemed to pass by in a busy blur, and even though she concentrated hard on learning as much as she possibly could, every time that she had to put a call through to Dawson’s office she couldn’t quite help the goosebumps that tumbled over her skin. The first time that she’d had to call his office to put someone through, she’d been expecting Sheila to answer, but it quickly became apparent that he preferred to screen the majority of his calls himself.
Unbeknownst to her, the fact that Dawson was answering his own calls from the reception desk was something that he’d engineered specifically so he got the chance to hear her voice. He knew that it made her a little uncomfortable, but he’d seen the flicker of interest in her eyes that she’d tried desperately to hide, and he was going to play on it for all it was worth. There was something about the woman that intrigued him, and he was going to do his best to figure it – and her – out. Even if it meant he had to talk to a few people that he would have otherwise avoided.
Such as one of his best friends, Ashton, who’d called to try and set him up yet again with another bimbo. “I don’t want another self-centered female as a playmate, Ashton, so will you please stop trying to hook me up with your sister’s damn friends?” Dawson’s voice was as frustrated as he felt as he listened to his friend outlining the sexual credentials of some more women he thought would be suitable candidates for Dawson to hook up with.
He gave a loud sigh and then tried to get through to Ashton’s thick skull one last time. “Look, I’ve just about had it with women who just want to milk me for whatever they think they can get out of me and who are willing to sleep with me in order to achieve their gold-digging fantasies. In fact, I’ve had it with all women for now, but if I was on the lookout for one, it would be someone who actually gave a shit about me and not about my bank balance.” He hesitated as the familiar bitterness rose up and stuck in his throat. “And we both know that a woman like that just doesn’t exist.” Over the years, he’d actually been starting to hope that he might be wrong in his way of thinking, but as of yet, he hadn’t met anyone to prove it to him.
Ashton didn’t try and argue that point, which was just as well because Dawson would have called him out on it. They’d been friends for almost two decades, both of them being raised in the foster system, and both of them having an equally similar contempt for members of the opposite sex. That’s where the similarities between the two men ended though, because whereas Ashton wanted to be proven wrong and was almost desperate to find the woman who could provide that proof, Dawson, on the other hand, was convinced that no such proof could or would ever be found. He was sick of only ever finding women who couldn’t seem to show him otherwise.
He pushed back the mental picture of Alexa that popped into his head. He was damn sure that she would turn out to be exactly the same as the rest of them, so he needed to stop fantasizing about what she would be like outside of the working environment. There was just something about her that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, and for the first time in a long time, he felt curious, and more than a little hopeful that maybe she would be the woman who would prove all of his conceptions wrong.
Unbeknownst to him, while he was thinking about her, Alexa was busy trying not to think about him. She really wanted to do well in this job and was trying to take in and memorize everything she was being taught, but she couldn’t get the mental sound of his gruff voice out of her head. It was like liquid sex in her ears, and it was driving her crazy. She’d never been so drawn to a man before in her life, and even though she knew that nothing would or could ever come of it, the feelings were enough to make her almost wish that she had met him some place other than at work, and that he wasn’t her boss.
As lunchtime approached, she was more than a little grateful when one of the office girls came to the reception desk and invited her to lunch with a few of the other women who worked there. “We’re going to a small café just down the road. It’s only about a five-minute walk, so we go there a lot because we don’t have to rush. It’s way better than using the break room here, and you’ll get to meet a few more of us, too, which is always a good thing when you work in a place as big as this.”
Alexa didn’t usually like to mingle with people she didn’t know, but she actually enjoyed her lunch and learned quite a lot about the inner workings of the company at the same time. In particular, her attention was caught when the subject of the conversation turned to none other than their boss, Dawson James, and Alexa’s ears pricked up as she leaned in closer to take in what was being said.
She couldn’t quite hear everything that was being said because she was at the other end of the table with a handful of people between her and the few women who were talking. But phrases such as, ‘She said he’s the best lover she’s ever had,’ and ‘I’d happily commit adultery for just one night in his bed,’ let her know that she wasn’t the only one who had a bit of a crush on Dawson.
“Yeah, but he’s an arrogant bastard who’ll fuck you once and then totally ignore you afterwards. Just ask Donna from personnel and Rachael from finance, and they’ll both tell you the same thing.”
Her heart sank at that. It looks like you were right to be wary of him, Lexi, she thought.
“Yeah, he took Donna to a really expensive restaurant, wined and dined her, then took her back to his place where they had sex all night, and he hasn’t wanted anything to do with her since.”
The girls carried on talking with Alexa listening unashamedly. “I guess he thinks that spending money on her for their night out was all it would take for her to fall into bed with him.” There was a general nodding of heads around the table. “And, let’s be honest, he’s probably right.” There was a murmur of laughter that Alexa didn’t participate in. She couldn’t think of anything that she would ever let a man buy her body with, regardless of who he might be or how much he intrigued her.
The small group headed back to the office after lunch, and Alexa’s mind and stomach were both full. It felt as though a million and one things were clamoring through her brain all at the same time, and the majority of thoughts were to do with her boss. Was he really as bad as they’d said, or need she remind herself that there were two sides to every story and all anyone had heard were the opinions of the women he’d taken out. It could all be sour grapes because he hadn’t treated them the way they’d wanted to be treated for all she knew.
Yeah, and he could be the biggest user of all time and really did regard sex and women’s emotions as something he could buy off or toy with, she mused.
She got back to work and settled down with determination to finish off her first day on a positive note, and was grateful to find that Dawson James had left the office for the day to attend meetings and other business-related things that she had no idea about, nor did she care. She was just thankful that she wouldn’t have to see or talk to him again for the rest of the day. The afternoon went relatively quickly and she was surprised when she looked at the clock and realized that it was time to finish up for the day and go home.