Chapter 7

Eva sat down at her desk the next morning, but she couldn’t concentrate. She sat up on her couch for hours after Matt dropped her off at her apartment door the night before. When she went to bed, her head still spun from the earth-shattering climaxes he gave her again and again, for hours. She rode him and his bike every way they could think of and neither ever got tired or ran out of steam.

When would he call her into his office again? What would she encounter there? Would he dominate her the way he did last night, or would he talk to her about her work and praise her for being the trustworthy and reliable EA he knew she would be when he hired her?

Nothing made sense anymore. She couldn’t work. She couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t function at all. She stared at her phone. What message would come to her through it next time? She ached for him to call her again, but she dreaded the same thing.

She turned on her computer and pulled up her matches for the foreign exchange research, but the screen blurred before her eyes. She couldn’t read any of the folders he gave her or the submissions for the newsletter.

She cradled her head in her hand. She was useless, to herself and to him. In the end, she brought up the birthday database. She could enter the September names and details without concentrating too hard.

Her own name popped up at the top of the list when she opened the file. One more day to go. Did Matt even know when her birthday was? Maybe this database wasn’t the sign of his caring and regard she thought it was.

Maybe it was really just a way to acknowledge his employee’s birthdays and contributions without actually having to be aware of them at all. The name would come up in the database, some lackey would mail out a card and issue the bonus, and everything would go on as before. Matt wouldn’t even have to interrupt his exercise routine.

Eva kicked herself. What was she doing, thinking that way? Matt came up with this idea of marking his employees’ birthdays when the company did nothing before. That at least showed he cared.

Did he really care about her, though? Did he really care about her personally—not just as his secret sex playmate? Why did she even have to ask that? He was a boss diddling his assistant. How could he care about her? She never expected him to care.

She didn’t really care about him, either, when she thought about it. He was nothing but a secret sex playmate to her, too—and a job, of course.

She shut off the computer. What was her world coming to? She couldn’t even enter mindless data into a spreadsheet without analyzing all the interpersonal implications of every entry.

She made up her mind to go home and work there. She would turn off her phone and forget about RipRoarer and everything else that happened in the last two days. She wouldn’t come back until she could focus on her work. That might mean breaking it off with Matt altogether. If that’s what she had to do, she would do it.

She packed up her folders and picked up her phone. She put her thumb on the power button to shut it off when a notification came through. Her heart froze in mid-beat. It was him. Could you please come into my office?

If she kept working here, she would grow to dread those words. She couldn’t work in an environment where she dreaded her own boss. No matter how much she wanted him, no matter how many times he made her scream in the dark of night, this was work. She refused to do work she didn’t love.

She gathered her courage and walked down the hall to his office. She rehearsed in her mind the right words to break it to him. She had to quit. She should never have come to work here in the first place after that disaster the very first morning when he picked her up on his Harley.

She found him standing at his desk. He didn’t look up when she walked in. “Have a seat.”

“Thanks. I prefer to stand.”

He still didn’t look up. “We have a problem with the building permits for the factory. How much have you studied our application?”

“I’ve studied it, but not the whole thing. Why? What’s up?” Every thought she had about quitting went right out of her head.

“The City Council sent back our application for changes to the draft plan. They say we have to get all the measurements redone or the application is denied. I’m sending it back to the design company, but I’m supposed to go to the basketball game in ten minutes. I put in calls to the site foreman and the surveyors to get the job done right away, but the site foreman is on an OSHA review and one of the riggers fell from a scaffolding and shattered his pelvis right in front of the OSHA inspectors. The whole site is in an uproar, and I’m waiting to hear back from everybody at the same time. I can’t leave. I need you to drop whatever you’re doing and shadow me while I handle this emergency so nothing gets forgotten or missed.”

“You hired me to cover you so you could exercise without distraction. You said that would be one of my most important jobs, so you could clear your head of stuff like this. You go to the basketball game and let me handle this.”

“I can’t do that. This is our biggest project spanning several years of investment. I can’t just turn my back on it and go play basketball.” He picked up his phone. His finger hovered over the screen.

Eva darted forward and took the phone out of his hand as gently as she dared. “You’ve been in control of everything for so long, you don’t know how to let go of the reins. Situations like this are exactly why you hired me. Leave your phone here, and go play basketball. I’ll handle it. That’s what I’m here for.”

He cocked his head. “Are you sure? You said you’re not all the way up to speed on the project.”

“I don’t need to be all the way up to speed on the project. I just need to field phone calls from the site manager, the OSHA inspectors, the designers, and the City Council.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “No problem. I can do that.”

He frowned down at her.

She returned his frown with a beatific smile. “I’ll tell you what. After you leave, I’ll sit right down here in your office and do nothing but study the project plans until you get back. I’ll come up to speed as fast as I can so I’ll be ready when the phone rings. Will that satisfy you?”

“I don’t like this.”

“What’s the point of having an EA answer your phone and emails if you don’t let me do my job? What did you hire me, if not for situations exactly like this?”

“You’ve only been here a few days. I thought you would ease into it. I thought we would start with simple tasks like making appointments and move up to the big emergencies.”

“Well, there’s no time like the present. Who knows? The basketball game might clear your head so you can handle the situation better. When you get back from the basketball game, you might be all the more ready to answer that phone.”

“I know it will. That’s why I hate to miss a game at a time like this.”

“Then off you go. Leave it to me.”

He glanced down at his phone in her hand. “Are you sure?”

She pushed him toward the door. “Stop saying that and get out of here. You’ve got two minutes to get down there.”

He stumbled out the door. He tried to turn back and say something, but she shut the door in his face. “See you later!”

She paused and listened. He didn’t come barging back in. He didn’t make a peep outside the door. He must be going.

She went back to his desk with his phone still in her hand. Well, now she’d really jumped in the deep end, and she made a promise to be ready. She hustled back to her office and came back with the building permit application folder.

True to her word, she sat down in Matt’s big cushy leather chair and started going over the application with a fine-toothed comb. She studied every sheet of paper he gave her until she understood every nuance of the application process.