“We lost them.”

The thickly-accented voice on my phone had my blood boiling within seconds.

“What the hell do you mean you ‘lost them’?” I asked. “You guaranteed me the delivery would be completed tomorrow morning. You sold yourself on that one pivotal factor. That’s less than twenty-four hours from now.”

“Some things spiraled beyond our control, sir. It-… there’s this-.”

I felt myself growing angrier by the second.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked. “One-word answer, only.”

“Yes,” he said.

His voice was uncomfortable. Good. Maybe that meant he’d actually get something done. Deliver on the premise that sold me on his so-called ‘expertise’. There was no room or time for errors on this. Too much was on the line.

“Did you know who I was when you agreed to this work?” I asked. “Yes or no.”

“Yes.”

“Then you know what happens when people can’t deliver on their word. You either fix it, or I will.”

I hung up before he had a chance to fumble his words at me again. A man who couldn’t even speak under pressure were the worst kinds of men to work with. I’d have a bone to pick with my hiring department once I could get a phone call down there. Sighing, I slid my head down into my hands and tried to calm my heart rate. Whatever he was going to do—whatever the results of it were—I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it until the next morning.

Maybe this would be the one that finally ruined me.

Then, a small sound caught my attention. The smallest clearing of a throat. And when I pulled my face out of my hands, I caught Christie in my gaze. I’d moved her desk into my office, partitioned by a see-through glass wall within it. I didn’t want her out in the hallway like my last secretary. I wanted my eyes on her at all times. Not simply because I didn’t trust her, but because she had this innate calming effect on me. Whenever I looked at her, I felt my stress levels lower. I felt my heart rate settle out. And after phone calls like the one I’d just had, her presence was becoming a welcomed distraction.

She typed away on her computer not twenty feet away from me, and I wondered what she was working on. Her dark eyes fluttered quickly over the screen, and I could barely hear the tapping of her fingers as she hammered away at her keyboard with increasing speed. When she focused, her tongue stuck out just the slightest bit. Tipping itself way over her lower lip the further she delved into her work. I’d watch her sometimes. I’d watch her tongue completely capture her lip before she’d rip herself from her trance and release it.

Then she’d look around quickly, like she expected the entire world to be looking at her every movement.

Christie had been an incredible help the last couple weeks.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from her when I hired her. She was a wild card who I wanted to surprise me, but I didn’t expect much. However, she delivered on the surprise part and only got better from there. Within two weeks, she’d undone most of the chaos that not having a secretary had caused in the last year. She caught onto the intricate software I used to navigate my schedule and she quickly set herself up to field my calls, so I wasn’t always picking up and putting down a damn phone. My emails were cleared and organized. My voicemail wasn’t backed up with calls in the mornings. Hell, even the paperwork in my office had become more organized in my own damn desk.

Her presence and forethought during her job brought things to my attention I had otherwise been oblivious to.

Clients who had apparently been on the edge of leaving called my desk to tell me personally how much they appreciated her. Drop-in meetings that threw kinks into my days ceased to exist almost immediately. My files were arranged alphabetically by name before being sub-arranged by date, making navigating the massive terminal of information I worked with as simple as a child’s puzzle.

Christie had come in and effectively reorganized my professional world.

My eyes trailed from her computer-screen-blue-washed face down to her arms and out to her curves that weren’t being done justice in what she was wearing. Her clothing was incredibly loose. Hell, her clothes would’ve show more of her form if she’d worn a burlap fucking sack. There were days when Christie oozed confidence, then there were days like this one. Days when she came in wearing nothing but a glorified shower curtain and attempted to pass it off as fashionable by putting a damn belt around her waist.

My eyes trailed down her legs, where her soft calves could be seen coming poking out from the skirt of her dress.

That was the only possible thing that could be improved with her. Some sort of realization at how beautiful she was. At her own self-worth, so she’d stop dressing herself like she was bagging groceries at the local supermarket. To be fair, however, if she started dressing in a way that showed her body, I would get a lot less work done.

Maybe she knew that, and this was another way of her helping. But maybe she didn’t, and she simply needed a man to bathe her curves in kisses instead of contrite, disappointing statements.

Her eyes slipped away from her computer and over to me, and for a moment we held eye contact. Then she looked quickly away while a blush rose to touch her cheeks. I was jealous of that blush. How close it was to her skin. Nevertheless, I enjoyed those stolen moments. Simple seconds where the two of us were connected without ever speaking a word. Those were the most vulnerable moments with another human. When I could look into their eyes and get unveiled access to the inner workings of their mind. Words clouded things. Sentences muddled emotions. It was why I didn’t talk much and hated it when people stumbled over their words in an attempt to talk with me.

Body language spoke it all, and hers cried out for me.

I knew it the second she took up shop in my office. I saw how she darted her eyes away from mine and blush. How she quickly glanced my way when she thought I wasn’t paying attention to her. I frequently caught her gaze in the windows of my office staring me down whenever I walked by her desk to leave our shared working space. But the first time I caught her licking her lower lip at my form, it took all my internal effort not to stride to her, sweep her up, and plant my lips to hers. In that moment, I had wanted to hold her. To tell her how gorgeously sexy she was. To punish her in all the best ways for taunting me with that little tongue of hers. To lift her onto my desk and—

I pushed the thought aside bitterly as I chewed on my lower lip.

I couldn’t date my fucking secretary. The idea of it left my stomach in knots I wouldn’t be able to untangle for hours. I took after my father in many ways. The business-savvy personality. The looks. Even the way he walked with that cocky swagger of his. But I would never do to anyone what he did to my family.

What he did to my mother.

That beautiful woman had been married to my father for seventeen years. They had a life together. A love together. And I thought they were the picture of a perfect marriage. My father would come home and sweep her up into his arms and kiss her deeply, making both my brother and myself gag at such young ages. He would make her breakfast in bed and she would shower him with praise. He’d bring home little gifts for her that reminded him of her smile throughout the day. I admired my parents’ marriage. Looked up to the love they had. I allowed it to set a standard in my life most boys didn’t have with their parents. I learned how to treat women with respect and devotion and care from how my father treated my mother.

At least, until I turned twelve.

My brother and I were just shy of thirteen years old when he left town for a business trip with his secretary and never came back. We woke up one morning to her crying at the kitchen table with a note in her hands. A fucking one-page letter after seventeen years of marriage. My mother had no heads up, no warning whatsoever. Just a one-page letter she received in the fucking mail after one of my father’s out-of-town trips stating it was time for him to move on. That he loved her, but their timing was no longer right.

But it had somehow been right with his fucking secretary.

He’d reached out a couple times after the divorce to get my brother and I to talk to him. To visit him. To meet the damn secretary he had married. But we knew what was right and wrong. We grew up at thirteen years old. Both of us. And we weren’t going to betray our mother in any way. We weren’t going to give our father any inclination that what he had done was going to even be remotely accepted by us.

My mother exudes a kindness brighter than any darkness in this world. And she loved that man with everything she had. She gave up her entire world to stay at home and raise two children while he built his own business empire, Twin Technologies. The company Sebastian eventually took over after he abandoned that as well to play house with a woman with fake tits, red lips, and thirty five years younger than himself.

Like he abandoned his family.

He tossed everything he built out the window for a hot piece of ass in his office. Left us to pick up after our mother’s broken heart. And after watching my mother cry copious amounts of tears throughout my teenage years, I promised myself she would live the type of luxury in her later years she had been accustomed to while being married to him. Between my brother and I, we carried her. Bought her any house in any part of the world she wanted. Paid her bills without a second though. We dumped money into her bank accounts so she could purchase whatever she wanted and fly wherever her heart desired to experience the world the way she should have with our father. Because after giving so much of herself to a man who cast her aside because she simply grew gray, she deserved unfettered access to the fountain of life around her.

But that woman deserved so much more than that. So much more than I could ever give her.

I didn’t have a family of my own to betray, but I sure as hell knew I wasn’t going to follow in my father’s footsteps in any way possible. I wasn’t going to do a damn thing that reminded me of him in any way. Every fucking time I looked in the mirror, I saw his eyes staring back at me. Those steely gray eyes that betrayed my mother and left her with nothing.

And I especially wasn’t going to make a move like that after Christie’s last boss.

I turned my face once she diverted her gaze, looking outside the window to keep my eyes off her body. I couldn’t do that to her. I didn’t want her to think that my lust for her was anything like that creep who owned that pathetic craft shop she once worked in. She was beautiful, but she was also smart. Independent. Strong-willed, when it counted. And I didn’t want her thinking I only wanted her for her body.

My phone rang out, breaking my line of thought. And I sighed with relief as my thoughts came to a standstill. Anything to distract me from Christie and those plump curves of hers was welcomed during moments like that.

“Your brother’s on the line,” she said.

I glanced up as I heard her voice. It dripped like honey over my ears. The silence that filled the office space left me wanting for more of it. More of her words. Any words she was willing to give me. I wondered what my name would sound like falling off those lips. What wanton moans sounded like in that beautiful voice of hers. I felt my cock throbbing in my pants, but I’d learned my lesson from the day I interviewed her. My pants were a little looser, allowing for a little more margin of error when it came to what her curves did to me.

Her voice left me wanting to hear her moan as I pressed her against the oversized windows of my office.

Fuck. I needed to practice self-control.

I cleared my throat to try and rid it of the knot that had formed after my long and agonizing session of taking in her languid beauty.

“Thank you, Christie. Send him through,” I said.

“Of course,” she said.

“Yes, Sebastian?”

“She sounds like she’s working out fine,” he said.

“I can hear your smile.”

“Good. Now, tell me what I want to hear. Come on. Set the big bad wolf aside and give me something to dwell on for a few minutes.”

I sank back into my chair before I turned it around to face the beautiful view I always had my back to.

It was my second-favorite view in the entire building.

“She’s been wonderful,” I said begrudgingly.

“And victory tastes so sweet,” Sebastian said. “You know what that means.”

I hated it when he was so proud of himself for being right. He had this nasty habit of being the smuggest little ass on the planet. Another trait gifted to one of us by our father.

“I was wondering when you were going to cash that in. It’s been two weeks. Did you lose yourself in all that paperwork you refuse to file away?”

“Ah, quips about my messy office. It’s your default when you have nothing else, though yours its much better. You simply conceal it with drawers and cabinets.”

“It took you over a year to find her, by the way. I wouldn’t stroke your ego as much as you are right now.”

“Trust me, my ego isn’t what’s been getting stroked lately,” he said.

I rolled my eyes as a chuckle fell from my brother’s lips.

“Ever the crass one,” I said.

“And you love it. But, since Christie has worked out so well, you know that means we all must get together. Now that I’m back in town and all,” he said.

“Fair enough. When?”

“How’s tomorrow sound? Around seven?”

“You already made reservations, didn’t you?”

“Caught red-handed,” he said. “Tomorrow at seven. Meet Scarlet and I at-.”

“Gramercy Tavern. I know. The two of you don’t go anywhere else.”

“See you then,” he said. “And don’t do anything Dad wouldn’t do.”

“Very funny. Why don’t you take your own advice?”

“Because Scarlet’s way too much fun.”

“You’re in over your head with her,” I said.

“In all the best ways. Until then, try to keep a lid on it. Unless you don’t want to. Then enjoy yourself.”

I rolled my eyes before spinning my chair back around, then hung up without bothering to say goodbye. The two of us had very different senses of humor. He was crass and boyish in his jokes, and mine was a more dry-witted humor. But mostly, I didn’t crack jokes at all. My work called for a stoic and heavy-handed tactic, which I carried with me into most of my personal relationship.

Which was probably why I didn’t have any.

I smoothed my hands over my shirt before I stood. Then, I made my way over to her desk. I wanted to ask her in person to get drinks with all of us. No need in sending an email when I could use this as an excuse to talk to her. Though the voice in the pit of my gut yelled at me to stop it before my own mixed signals became her mixed signals to decipher.

“Hello,” I said, leaning into the glass partition that separated our work spaces.

“Mr. Abbott,” she said.

In another time—in another world—I would have taken that moment to lean down and kiss her soft, glistening lips. I would have taken the chance to taste the flavored lip gloss that had her skin sparkling in the sunlight that poured into my office. I would’ve smoothed my hand through her hair while pressing my other hand into the small of her back, filling my body with her excess.

“Are you free tomorrow night?” I asked.

Watching her cheeks tint with that beautiful blush brought an air of playfulness and amusement into an office that dealt with things I could never expose her to. Would never dare to let her in on. I respected her more than that. Cherished her more than that after only two weeks of her working for me.

“I am. Are you needing me to do overtime?” she asked.

What a cute workaholic. I was glad I had enough willpower to not abuse giving her overtime for an excuse to be around her more.

“No. My brother—your friend’s boss—is inviting us out to dinner and drinks with them to celebrate your settling in here at Abbott Financial.”

“When is the occasion? I’d love to go,” she said.

“Email me your address and I’ll pick you up at six thirty tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to pick me up. Just let me know where to be and I’ll get there.”

“I’m picking you up,” I said.

My eyes hooked onto hers before she slowly nodded her head.

“I’ll send an email shortly,” Christie said.

I turned to go back to my desk, but the conflicting emotions that surged through me clouded my mind. Relief and excitement mingled in my chest, but frustration settled into my gut. I hadn’t expected her to turn down my picking her up. No woman ever did. It was odd. I wasn’t used to a woman turning down something I had to give. I sat back down in my chair and studied her profile, watching as she clicked around on the screen before typing away on her keyboard again. Then, my own computer screen began to blink. An email with the subject ‘Address’ popped up, holding the holy grail I had sought not seconds before. I navigated to it and clicked it, finding the simple artifact I had asked her to give me. But instead of Christie looking over at me and grinning, or blushing, or generally fawning over me like she had been these past two weeks, she simply went back to working.

Well, at least my interest for her had been properly hidden.