“Hello, Mr. Knox.”

The twenty-something secretary flicks a thick braid of black hair over her shoulder when she sees me walking up to her desk.

Do we exclusively hire female secretaries? I think as I approach. What is this, 1950?

“Maria, I told you to call me Jordan. Mr. Knox is my father.”

Maria laughs loudly, leaning forwards as she does so that I can see the cleavage straining the neck of her beige top. I don’t think the gesture is unintentional. A second secretary is dropping off some papers behind the desk. She glances between Maria and I, and I swear I see her lip curl in disgust.

It’s been a week since I decided to embrace chauvinism and everything has basically gone to shit.

My intention was to keep the debauched comments within my finance team, but word travels fast around the Knox building, and it now feels like the entire company has pinned me down as a piggish playboy. The reactions I get can pretty much be divided into two categories: like Maria, some employees seem more interested in me than ever before, or like the second secretary who’s hurrying away as if an entire building isn’t enough distance to put between us, some think I should be thrown in a trash compacter.

My team is working even better than before, but as their productivity increases, so do their testosterone-fueled tales of recent conquests— and yes, I have heard them use the term ‘recent conquest.’ I’ve tried to cool things down, but my reputation has advanced to the point where any attempts to do that are just laughed away.

On top of everything, Hailey seems to be around almost every day now. I missed an entire meeting because I knew she’d be catering. I feel like I’m pumping more and more air into a balloon that’s about to pop, bracing myself for the moment it does.

“So, Mr. Knox,” continues Maria, stopping to affect a giggle. “Oops, I mean, Jordan, are you going to the Flirtini Friday night this week?”

Flirtini Friday is a monthly event held by the Knox Security social committee. Given the lifelessness of the company, it surprised me to find out we even had a social committee at all. I soon learned it’s mostly run by interns and the very small under-forty crowd here, looking for an excuse to drink away the monotony and, in the case of the finance department, find new ‘conquests.’

“I’m not sure, Maria. Still deciding,” I tell her, hoping to fend off any ‘Flirtini-ing’ she might try right now.

“You know,” she whispers, leaning forwards even farther and running a finger along the neck of her shirt, “some people call it Fuck-tini Friday.”

“That’s very clever of them,” I reply, averting my eyes from the cleavage that is, admittedly, very distracting. “I just wanted to see if the clients Ludo and I are supposed to meet with have arrived yet.”

“Oh,” she says coolly, hiking up her shirt. “Yes, they have. They’re in the suite 220 conference room with Ludo now.”

I head off in that direction after saying thanks. All I get is an uninterested “Mhmm” in response. She’s been after me since the rumors first started going around, and I wonder if my attempts to turn her down have finally made a lasting bruise on her ego.

God, I’m even starting to sound like an asshole in my own thoughts.

I spend the rest of the day going in and out of meetings until five o’clock finally comes around. I pack up my briefcase and glance out the window to where 19^th Street is being pelted with a cold November rain. Well, either that or it’s the tears of a thousand financial sector employees mourning the years of their lives spent wasted in this place.

Getting out of the elevator in the lobby, I pull out my umbrella and am about to brave the storm when I see an apron-clad figure standing next to a coffee cart, staring out at the rain streaking the glass of the lobby’s back exit.

I tell myself I’m imagining it, but there’s just something about her that seems out of place, something that never fails to draw my eye. Everyone who walks into this building fades into a grey as lifeless as the marble of the lobby walls, but Hailey is a Technicolor splash on the monochrome canvas. It’s like spotting Waldo’s striped shirt in a sea of anonymous trench coats

Except it’s an incredibly sexy woman version of Waldo, with a cart full of muffins.

I stop and wonder if she’s stranded without an umbrella. I try to force myself to review my reasons to stay away from her, but right now I can’t remember a single one.

“Need one of these?”

She looks over her shoulder at me as I approach, holding up my umbrella. The shock of how gorgeous she is surges through me all over again, a jolt that’s like being hit with a caffeine high.

“Yes, actually,” she answers. “I’m kind of stuck.”

“What was your plan?” I ask, opening up the door and undoing the strap on my umbrella. “Stand here until it stops?”

She takes hold of the cart and shrugs. “That, or work up the nerve to make a run for it.”

She pushes the cart outside and I walk besides her, holding the umbrella over us both.

“I haven’t seen you around,” she says after a few steps.

“Lots of hours locked up in my office,” I answer, my voice sounding more guarded than I intended.

The weight of what happened in the boardroom last week hangs between us, and we walk the rest of the way to the cafe’s back exit in silence. I give Hailey the umbrella to hold and move to open the door.

It doesn’t budge.

“Um, do you have a key?” I ask.

“It’s locked?”

Hailey comes to stand beside me and tries the door herself.

“Shit,” she says. “It’s usually open. I’ll have to go around the front if no one answers.”

She bangs on the door a few times, but no one comes.

I’m about to offer to watch the cart for her, or go around the front myself, when she turns to me and says the words “I’m sorry” with such sincerity I’m taken aback.

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t lock the—” I start to say, but she cuts me off.

“No, not that. I’m sorry for what happened last week, in the boardroom.” She blushes, and I fight to stay focused as she continues. “Maybe I was out of line. Maybe I misread things. I know it got kind of...unprofessional, and I’m sorry if that’s made you feel weird. Everyone was complaining about you missing the meeting I catered, and you can call me paranoid, but I swear I saw you jump into the elevator yesterday when you noticed me coming down the hall. I don’t want you to feel like you have to avoid me. We can just pretend it never happened and go back to doing our jobs.”

She’s giving me the perfect opportunity to make a clean break. All I have to do is tell her she’s right, that we made a mistake and it would be best to move on.

“Hailey...”

I start to say exactly that, but the words die in my throat. Out here in the rain and the frigid air, standing so close that the clouds of our breath merge together each time we exhale, I don’t feel like a junior executive talking to a catering manager. I don’t feel like the spoiled son of a business tycoon holding an umbrella for a latte girl.

While I can count the number of conversations we’ve had on one hand, every second I’ve spent with her has made me feel like a different version of myself. With Hailey, I’m the kind of Jordan who can make a joke that isn’t depressing. I’m the kind of Jordan who can smile without feeling fake. I’m the kind of Jordan who can be crazy enough to kiss a girl in the boardroom.

Or the rain.

Suddenly everything that’s wrong about this is nothing compared to how close her mouth is and how right it would feel on mine.

In the next second we’re crushed together, the taste of her on my tongue enough to make me forget how to breathe. The umbrella hits the ground and cold rain drips onto our skin. Her hands dig into my shoulders and I press her up against the cafe wall, parting her thighs with one of my own.

I feel her moan as much as I hear it. She hooks her leg around my hip and I reach down to hold it in place. She rocks against me, moaning even more at the feeling of the friction between us. With my other hand, I tear one of her arms away from my shoulder and pin it against the wall, kissing her with a possessiveness, a hunger that rises from somewhere deep inside me like a growl.

I suck her bottom lip between my teeth until she cries out, and then move my mouth to the soft skin of her neck, licking up the trail of the raindrops that streak down it.

“Jordan,” I hear her gasp, as her hips buck against me. I press my thigh even harder between her legs.

Releasing her arm from above her head, I run a hand over her hip and up the curve of her waist before cupping one of her breasts. She presses her forehead to mine, and each gasp and shudder she makes sends a throb to my cock, which is hard enough to feel like torture.

“I want you, Hailey,” I say, my voice coming out low and hoarse. “I’ve wanted you since I met you.”

As an answer, she lifts up my chin and brings her lips to mine again. This kiss is slower, more sensuous. I feel her hands running up and down the length of my back. She opens her mouth and slips her tongue into mine, teasing a moan from me before breaking the kiss.

“You can have me,” she whispers, glancing up at me through downcast eyelashes.

But I shouldn’t.

Her invitation has me so hard all she’d have to do is reach down to touch me and I’d be hers, but the small part of my rational brain that’s still working has just realized how bad this all is.

I set her leg down and step away, noticing how cold the rain is when I’m not pressed against her. She stares at me, confusion setting into an expression still dazed with lust.

I stare back, rain pouring down both our faces, soaked hair plastered to our heads.

The sound of the cafe’s back door opening is a shock. A brown haired employee pokes her head out and addresses Hailey.

“Sorry! I was stuck on the cash when you knocked. I only just g—”

The girl freezes when she takes in the scene before her. The umbrella is lying open on the ground, and Hailey is still backed up against the wall, two feet of distance between us.

“Hailey, are you okay?” she asks, her voice edged with alarm.

“I’m fine.” Hailey doesn’t take her eyes off mine as she answers.

I swallow down whatever words are rising in my throat before ripping my gaze from hers, turning away and all but running back to Knox Security.