Yale…

When I unlocked my door, the first thing I realized was that the alarm panel didn’t make so much as a sound. The second was that it smelled fantastic in here. Ally’s bag sat beneath the panel – which was unusual. She was never here when I came home.

“Ms. Blaylock?” I called out softly, and went to my dining room table. A plate of cookies rested on the corner I usually left her money on. I set my briefcase in the chair and plucked the white card off the table where it sat beside the plate of cookies.

Thanks, all lower-case letters in silver foil emblazoned on its front, decorative scrollwork above and below it, classy, simple, elegant… drawing attention to the one word. I opened it to equally-beautiful and delicate cursive writing done in blue pen.

Mr. Parnell,

I wanted to thank you for sending your friends to help me move. I know it was you, and we don’t have to talk about it. I just wanted you to know that I know and that I am grateful. I am also grateful that you took a chance in helping me, in giving me this job. There aren’t enough words, really, and ‘thank you’ doesn’t really seem to be enough… so I baked you these cookies. They’re peanut blossoms, my grandmother and I make them every Christmas. They’re special in our family.

Yours,

Ally Kay

Shit. I rolled my lips together and set the card down.

“Ally?” I called out a little stronger and made my way down the hall, towards my room, to investigate her whereabouts. I heard the shower running, music playing from my bathroom, and pushed open the door.

The shower was running; the glass steamed giving a blurred glimpse of Ally’s lean figure. I felt my body immediately respond and I scowled hard. She was rinsing the shower wall, and I let my annoyance, my irritation, and, I admit it, my desire for more, carry me across the tile floor. I jerked open the shower door and she shrieked, dropping the wand and putting up both arms, one of her elegant feet coming up completely off the shower floor.

I liked the fear response. Loved as the panic and unknown welled in her brilliant, too-wide, green eyes.

I couldn’t let myself go down this road!

I snatched the towel off the bar as she let herself relax in shock. She didn’t hide her body from me when she did that, and I couldn’t let myself look. I threw the towel at her and she caught it, holding it against her chest, those beautiful, perky tits of hers – the reality was so much better than my imagination.

“Get dressed,” I growled. “Meet me in the living room.”

It was an effort of will after that to turn away, and stride back the way I came. I wanted to stand there and drink her in with my gaze, go over every fine detail, every freckle, every hair; every soft curve. I wanted to admire her like a fine piece of art‒ but I couldn’t. I was her boss.

I went past the kitchen, between it and the dining room table, to the bar along the window. I plucked a rocks glass from where it rested upside down on its silver, circular platter and set it on its base. I poured a generous measure of whiskey into that glass and downed it in a bid to fortify myself; then I poured at least two fingers more.

Capping the decanter, I moved past her offering of thanks and cookies, pausing slightly, the knife of indecision twisting in my chest. I swallowed hard, and went over to my favorite chair, lowering myself into it to wait.

I heard her before I saw her, my back to the room as it was, the tall wing-backed chair I sat in hiding her from view. I sighed with impatience when I heard her stop and said, “Come here.”

Her sneakers tapped lightly across the hardwood and she edged cautiously into view. Her eyes were too wide, her chest rising and falling in rapid breaths beneath her light gray, loose and flowy tank top. The armholes of her top, gaping to her hips, revealed that she wore a black sports bra beneath it. Her legs, encased in black leggings, didn’t want to seem to work for her, and she trembled. I glanced over her black low-top Chuck Taylor knock-offs. She was too poor to be able to afford the real thing, and I let out a frustrated breath.

I met her green eyes which were welling up, just short of spilling over. I let no sympathy play over my features. Instead, I moved my gaze from hers to the end of the coffee table directly in front of me. A silent order to sit. I wanted to see if she would follow non-verbal cues as well as she seemed to follow both my written and verbal commands.

She swallowed hard and moved quickly to sit. Her hands gripped the end of the table, knuckles mottling white; her eyes on me; her knee bouncing as she tapped her heel against the floor with sheer nerves.

“Stop that,” I said shortly, though I kept my voice even and controlled. I didn’t yell, but I did keep my tone stern. She immediately ceased the nervous movement, and it was everything in me to quell the rising erection in my slacks.

“Please, don’t fire me,” she said quickly, and the tears did spill then, her eyes growing luminous. She went from gorgeous to achingly beautiful then, and I couldn’t tell you what that did to me.

I took a fortifying sip of my whiskey and betrayed no emotion. Instead, I plucked my handkerchief out of my suit’s breast pocket, shook it out and leaned forward, offering it to her.

“On the contrary,” I stated, a decision made – once again against my better judgment. “I have a proposition for you. A rather indecent proposal…”