I dressed for work on Monday in one of my nicer suits, a lightweight plum wool with a fitted skirt and matching jacket. The jacket had a long, lean cut with an inverted collar. The style was modern and spare, but the skirt had a flare just above the knee that gave it a hint of the feminine.

After the disaster of my first position, I stuck with severe and professional as my style watchwords for work. But I didn’t want to be wearing a boxy black blazer the first time I saw Aiden after he’d given me the most spectacular orgasm of my life.

Silly, dressing for Aiden. There were so many reasons dressing for Aiden was a bad idea. He was my boss. Our whole relationship was based on a lie. My lie. I’d only met him because I was trying to uncover his secrets and force him to do what I wanted.

He was Aiden Winters. So far out of my league I needed a telescope to see him, and even if my dishonesty weren’t between us, he’d never get serious with me.

There were so many reasons I shouldn’t dress for him. Shouldn’t want to be alone with him. Shouldn’t hope for a repeat of Friday night.

I might have spent a little extra time on my hair and makeup, though I was probably the only one who’d notice. If I’d wanted Aiden’s attention, I was disappointed. I walked in Monday morning, fifteen minutes early, to find the executive floor in a state of complete upheaval. Phones rang and went unanswered. Marisela, Thomas, Peter, and Henry alternately barked on the phone, rushed around with stacks of paper, and pounded away at their keyboards.

Aiden’s door stood open, his office empty. I was greeted by a note on my desk in his sharp, bold handwriting listing urgent tasks. I gathered from my orders and what I heard from the conversations in the room, that a carefully negotiated deal was on the verge of falling through. Aiden and Gage had gained new information about the company they were acquiring, information that significantly changed the foundation of the agreements.

Bitterness flashed through me as I absorbed the tension, the excitement in the air. I remembered this from the days when Chase was negotiating the sale of CD4 Analytics. The adrenaline, the rush. And look how that had turned out.

Were Aiden and Gage preparing to screw someone else out of everything they had? Was the owner sitting in Gage’s office thinking his life was about to change when in reality he’d find himself shut out of the business he’d worked so hard to build?

Let it go, Violet.

I hadn’t been able to find a shred of proof that Aiden had been behind what happened to Chase.

Nothing.

I had to admit that it was possible I might have my facts wrong, that somehow Chase and I had misunderstood.

Which probably made me the biggest sucker in Atlanta. I couldn’t imagine how we could have misunderstood. Contracts were signed, money was transferred, and the next thing we knew Chase was locked out of his building. A few days later the building was sold and CD4 Analytics had been folded into Winters, Inc.

It happened that fast.

When Chase reviewed the contracts his lawyer discovered small, key points had been altered between his final review and his signing. Somehow he’d been distracted and the documents switched, but they were legal and he couldn’t prove he hadn’t known what he’d signed. In the end, Chase was shut out and Aiden had control of his company.

I wanted Aiden to be innocent.

I did.

Every time I looked at things from a different angle they always came out the same. Chase had been kicked out of his company and Aiden had taken his place.

The worst part was that they weren’t even using half of the technology they bought. Getting rid of Chase hadn’t made sense considering the most valuable part of the company wasn’t ready for end-users yet. Chase was still fine-tuning it and without him, they couldn’t make it work.

I’d been working in the department Winters, Inc. had created out of CD4, and I’d heard enough gossip to know the best parts of the company they’d stolen were dead in the water. It didn’t make sense.

The more I knew Aiden the less I would have expected him to make a mistake like that. It would have made far more sense to keep Chase on than it had to get rid of him. Aiden was too sharp, too practical for a mistake like that.

And there I was, making excuses for him again. It turned my stomach to work on another acquisition for Winters, Inc. I was tempted to toss my purse, my mug, my stapler, and my cactus in the box still beneath my desk and walk out forever.

Not yet.

I’d give myself until the end of the week to find something, I could use to get Chase’s company back. If I hadn’t found anything by the end of day on Friday, I was cutting my losses and leaving.

A little voice in my head asked if I was staying for Chase or staying to see Aiden just a little longer. I shut it down. My date with Aiden had been a moment out of time. A dream. Now it was over, and it was never going to happen again. Ever.

If I wanted to stay for the rest of the week, if I wanted a little more time to finish out this plan, I had to do my job. Ignoring my desperate need for coffee, I pulled my chair up to my desk and started with the first item on Aiden’s list.

Given that I was the most junior and least qualified of his executive assistants, my list was the most basic. Pulling data, assembling a few spreadsheets I guessed Aiden and Gage would use to negotiate a change in pricing.

Just as I was about to deliver everything he’d asked for, an email popped into my box with files attached and the note; Four copies, collated and stapled, marked for signing. NOW.

It was from Aiden’s email address. I pulled up the documents and saw they were revisions to the contracts being negotiated in Gage’s office. I sent them all to the printer and headed for the copy room so I could get started putting little yellow tabs next to all the lines that required a signature.

The copy room was empty and strangely quiet. It only took me a minute to realize the printer/copier was completely powered down. I’d never seen it turned off. Hopefully, I pressed the power button on the side. Nothing happened. It was plugged in, but it wasn’t getting any juice. A quick look around told me that the coffee maker was similarly dark. A blown fuse? This was the last thing I needed.

I poked my head out of the coffee room and caught Marisela’s eye. “How long has the copier been down?” I asked briskly.

She shrugged one shoulder and turned her eyes back to her monitor. “I didn’t know it was. Look, I have too much to do to babysit you. If you can’t get it working, call maintenance.”

I tried unplugging it and plugging it back in, flipping a switch on the wall, and poking at some of the buttons. Useless. I was good with computers, great with spreadsheets, and I was a half decent programmer. Nowhere near as good as Chase, not really good enough to pursue it as a job, but I was decent. However, I knew nothing about hardware. I expected to plug things in, press the power button, and have them turn on. When that didn’t happen, I was lost.

I picked up the phone in the break room and called down to maintenance, impressing upon the woman who answered that if the copier didn’t get fixed, Aiden and Gage were going to be very unhappy. She promised someone would be up in a matter of minutes.

I paced the tiny copy room, my nerves piling higher with every second that passed. I couldn’t forget Aiden’s ‘NOW’. He did not sound like he was in a patient mood.

All my confusion and bitterness aside, I didn’t want to mess up his negotiation. Maybe I should. Maybe I should be looking for ways to sabotage him, but I couldn’t, wouldn’t, cross that line. All I wanted was to find a way to force him to give Chase’s company back. I didn’t want to hurt him.

It really was only a few minutes until someone strolled into the copy room, took a quick look, and disappeared, saying something about a breaker. He’d barely turned the corner when the copier and coffee maker came to life. I heard him in the outer office saying something about a space heater in a long-suffering voice of complaint, and Henry answering that he had cold feet. Who has cold feet in June?

I didn’t care. Now that the printer was working I could resend my documents, get them ready for signing and hand them over to Aiden and Gage. One of the many benefits of working for a company like Winters, Inc. was the equipment. They spared no expense and the machine in the copy room printed, collated, and stapled four copies of the contracts in only a few minutes. It took me longer to go through and mark the locations for initials and signatures than it did for the machine to prepare the documents.

I knew these papers could only represent a small portion of the deal they were negotiating. There weren’t enough documents here for this to be the whole thing, but it must be an important part if they were making changes. I couldn’t bring myself to extend my curiosity.

Just being on the edges of an acquisition made me anxious. Again, I thought about throwing in the towel and cutting my losses early.

What was the point of staying until Friday? Did I really think I was going to find the smoking gun I was looking for?

I strode across the central hallway and around the corner to Gage’s section of the executive floor. His office doors were closed, his two assistants working furiously at their desks. The closest one looked up as I approached and said, “Oh, thank God. We’re having problems with our printer over here.”

“I’m sorry it took so long,” I said, holding out the documents to her. “We had a flipped breaker in our copy room and I had to call maintenance.”

She held up a finger instead of taking the documents. “You’re here now. Just knock on the door and hand them in.”

I rapped on the closed double doors to Gage’s office with a light knock. I could hear tense voices on the other side and the shuffle of someone standing and walking to the door. It swung open to reveal Gage, his blue eyes tense, his jaw set. I handed him the contracts and went to step away.

“Wait,” he said, tersely. His eyes scanned the top page, then the second, then the third, as he rapidly flipped through the contract. When he was done, he went back to the third page and ran his finger across the line holding a sequence of numbers.

His eyes rose from the papers, hot with rage. In a low, controlled voice he said, “I told Aiden you’d try something like this. He swore you wouldn’t.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, keeping my chin up and my voice cool. Gage was furious, but I refused to let him rattle me. I’d done exactly what Aiden had asked. No more and no less.

“Then what the fuck is this?” He demanded showing me the line of numbers in the contract. They didn’t mean anything to me.

“I have no idea. I didn’t review the contract, I only printed it up. If there’s an error, it’s not on my end.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Violet whoever you are. I saw the contract before Aiden sent it to you. I know you changed the numbers. This deal is on the edge as it is. Maybe you thought you could take advantage. Maybe you’re working for them. I don’t really give a fuck. You’re fired.”