Chapter Three
I skulked into the office the next day, fifteen minutes late, hoping that everyone would be in their morning meetings and I could get to my office without running into Parker. Or Cooper. I breathed a sigh of relief when I was in my office, the door shut tightly behind me. I sank into my soft chair, kicked on my computer, and leaned back, closing my eyes against the overhead lights while it booted up.
As soon as the computer came to life, it started chirping with new email messages.
The beeping perked my interest and I leaned over the keyboard and started to read through the messages. Most of them were inter-office memos that I was automatically included in, but actually had very little to do with my position. Cooper had placed me in the IT department for Brighton Enterprises, but technically, I was off on my own thing, under the Plush branch.
To say it was complicated would be an understatement.
The last email is the one that caught my attention and made me jolt upright in my chair. It was from Cooper, demanding that I be in his office, at eight-thirty for a briefing.
My eyes flicked to the corner of my computer screen, where a blaring digital clock showed it was eight twenty-three.
“Fuck!” I jumped up out of my chair and raced around the desk and back into the hallway. Cooper’s office was only one floor above, but it would take at least five minutes to get there, and that was if the elevators were cooperating with me.
I scuttled down the hallway, trying to hurry, but also keep my ankles from rolling in my ridiculous heels. I was so busy focusing on my mission that when Parker came into view, I barely registered his presence.
“Allison! Hey,” he said as I barreled down the hall.
“Sorry, can’t talk.”
He looked a little puzzled and I couldn’t help but wonder what he would think of me now. Our date had ended so abruptly and I’d acted like a complete nut case. A handshake? Really, Allie? I rolled my eyes at myself and continued down my path to the elevators.
I made it to Cooper’s receptionist from hell, Kimberly, with less than a minute to spare.
“Good morning,” she sneered. I didn’t know what her problem was, but she’d been a bitch to me since the very beginning. Secretly, I wondered if she either had slept with—or was trying to sleep with—Cooper and that was the reason for her overwhelming hostility.
“I have an appointment.”
“I will notify Mr. Brighton.” She pressed some buttons on her phone and I walked away. I was in no mood for her today, and knew that if she said anything rude, it would be very difficult for me to hold back.
Luckily, I wasn’t left alone with her for long. Cooper stepped out of his office to collect me. He was wearing a dark gray suit, and I almost melted at the sight of him. I took him in, but when I reached his eyes, the flutter of desire was quickly replaced with anxiety.
“Miss Rand,” he said.
Keep it together, Allie, I told myself.
I nodded and stepped past Kimberly’s desk and followed Cooper into his corner office.
Once inside, he shut the door behind me and crossed the room to sit behind his desk. He indicated that I should sit opposite him, in one of the two leather chairs sitting on the other side of his desk.
I struggled to keep from turning crimson as I stared at the edge of the desk, realizing that was where I’d been perched, with my legs wrapped around his hips the first time that he fucked me. It had been several weeks since, but the memory was surprisingly fresh as I stared at the polished oak. It was hard to push it all to the side and regain my focus. When I lifted my eyes, he was staring at me and I could feel the fire in my cheeks.
“Allison, sit,” he said.
I hadn’t realized I was still standing. I’d gotten lost in a rush of memories and lost track of myself. I smiled and lowered into the seat he indicated and waited.
“Did you go out with Parker last night?”
Something inside me told me that he already knew the answer, and that his question was entirely rhetorical. There was no point in lying to him. At the end of all this personal drama between the two of us, my place at Brighton Enterprises was a job. One that I desperately needed to keep in order to avoid going back to stripping—or worse—Kansas.
“Yes, I did. We went to dinner. Nothing happened.” I don’t know why I added the last part. It slipped out before I could stop it.
Cooper nodded and his eyes seemed to shift as he watched me squirm. My limbs were suddenly restless as I tried to figure out what he was thinking. The harder he stared at me, the more I wanted to jump up and run from his office.
“So, you lied to me?” he asked.
I let out my breath. I needed to be careful, but I was also getting incredibly close to the end of my patience with his controlling tendencies. “When you asked me about it, I hadn’t said yes or no to Parker’s invitation. So, no, technically, I did not lie to you.”
He scoffed and a flair of anger coursed through me at the sound.
“Cooper, listen to me,” I began, tempering my voice to keep my tone steady while the rest of my started to tremble. “I am not your girlfriend. You don’t have any say over where I go, who I see, or if I go on dates. I don’t know why you think you can nose about in my personal life, but I’m sick of it. If I am going to work here for you, then I deserve to be treated just like any other employee.”
I steeled myself, waiting for his wrath to fall.
“Allison, why do you think I offered you the job here?” he asked.
It was an odd question and it caught me off guard. “Because you felt bad about me getting fired from Spotlight?” I ventured.
He shook his head. “I know that you’re new to all this, but I don’t make business decisions, like hiring and firing, based off of personal feelings.”
“Really?” I quirked an eyebrow at him, calling his bluff. “So hiring me has nothing to do with…well, with whatever is going on between us!”
He sighed. “No.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “I find it very hard to believe that you couldn’t afford to hire someone for this secret project thing you keep talking about. I mean, really? You’re the billionaire CEO of a huge company! You can afford whoever you want. So, why me? If it’s not just because you like staring at my ass?”
“Allison, lower your voice,” Cooper insisted.
I crossed my arms and waited.
“Are you really so insecure that you don’t think I could want you for anything other than your body? You doubt your skills that much?”
I was speechless. I wanted to scream at him, to yell and get loud so he would stop picking apart my walls of defense. But I couldn’t. Because he was right. Even if we hadn’t already slept together, and he was just offering me the job, I would still assume that he had ulterior motives hiding in his back pocket.
“I hired you because I need help obtaining the information we’ve already spoken about,” he continued. “I could have hired anyone, you’re right. I hired you because I know I can trust you to keep things confidential.”
“And how do you know that? Cooper, you don’t even know me.”
I didn’t know why I was arguing. He was right. I was trustworthy and wasn’t going to blab his secret project all over town—regardless of how infuriating he might become.
He stood and came around the desk and I automatically stood up, too, not wanting to be sitting with him standing over me. It felt a little too intimate.
“I do know you, Allison,” he said.
I sucked in a silent gasp as a wave of his cologne hit me. He always smelled so incredible. My knees weakened underneath me but I stayed planted, not daring to move an inch.
My eyes locked with his and my stomach twisted. He was standing so close that I could feel his body heat radiating off him, and I so desperately wanted to take one small step forward and have him wrap his strong arms around me and not let go. The last few weeks had been full of so much drama and stress and I was suddenly overcome by exhaustion. I needed a safe spot to land, and for some reason, in that moment—it seemed that my heart had decided that he was it.
I dropped my eyes back down to look at my hands as they nervously fidgeted with the edge of my blazer.
I was about to make some excuse to get me out of the room, away from the suffocating emotions that were threatening to overtake me, and far, far away from the smell and heat and sound of Cooper. Before I had a chance to say anything, he placed his fingertips under my chin and brought my face up to look at him again. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”
I nodded, hardly allowing myself to breathe for fear of falling completely apart.
His face was lowering to mine and I struggled to keep my eyes open. It was startling how much I wanted to let myself melt into one of his hot kisses. His fingers slid down my chin and traced a path down my neck, sending sparks exploding all over my skin, wherever his fingers touched. His lips pressed to mine and my legs nearly went out from underneath me. There was a little voice screaming in the back of my mind, reminding me about the actress, telling me that he wasn’t to be trusted, but the voice was drowned out completely as Cooper’s tongue entered my mouth and swirled around the tip of mine.
He wrapped his fingers around the back of my neck and held me possessively. I let him pull me closer until our bodies were pressed against each other. My breasts ached as I leaned into him, desperately wanting to feel his skin on mine. Scenes of our previous lovemaking flashed behind my eyelids and I was breathless, panting between each crash of his lips on mine.
Just as suddenly as it had started, Cooper stopped and backed away. He released me and my eyes popped open.
“I don’t want you around Parker,” he said, shattering the sexual tension between us.
His words sunk in, and my anger shot back to the surface again. Before I could rail against him, he pushed up his sleeve and checked his watch.
“I have to go. I’ll check in with your progress later,” he said. He swept past me and went to the door of his office.
I squared my shoulders, and strutted past him and through the door as he opened it.
I marched past Kimberly’s desk, not bothering to look back at her—or Cooper.