Rodney
I had been shocked when Danielle called me a pussy. I’d never had a woman talk to me like that. I had always known she was a strong woman, outspoken and defiant, but she had never shown it before, not with me.
It had bruised my ego. There was no way it couldn’t have. She’d told me to my face that I wasn’t being a man. If I hadn’t been so offended, I would have admitted that it was hot as hell. There was something attractive about a woman that had the balls to stand up and say something like that. And to me of all people, when I was her boss and her superior in so many ways.
But that hadn’t been true for a while now, had it? She may have been working for me and she was half my age, but Danielle had been my equal in every way since we had fucked the first time. It was what I liked about her so much. It was what made this so hard. In the business world, Danielle wasn’t my equal, which meant that if any of this came out, the press would eat me alive.
I was in the media more and more now. I was in tech magazines, and I was being watched by the paparazzi. When I was on the verge of releasing new software, all eyes were on me. It was a rollercoaster of publicity. Some weeks, I was out of the public eye completely, and others, I was a hot topic of discussion.
Right now, they were all watching me, and I had to be careful of the moves I made.
It wasn’t just about that, though. I couldn’t act on my feelings for Danielle because of her father. Unlike my popularity in the media, which changed from month to month, my friendship with Mark never did. He was my best friend, and Danielle was his daughter.
Why could she not see why I was doing what I was doing?
By Wednesday, I was starting to see the how things were going to be between us from here on out. She had given me the cold shoulder for two days now. I had hoped it would blow over, but it hadn’t. I guessed it was wrong of me to assume she was fickle enough to forget about our little fallout in the elevator and fawn over me again in such a short amount of time, but a man could hope.
Which was also wrong of me. I wasn’t supposed to hope she would start drooling over me again when I’d been trying to get her to stop all this time. Except, I missed it. I missed her trying to mess with me and trying to get me worked up.
When I stepped into the elevator on Wednesday morning, Danielle was already in it. It was a surprise. I was usually there before her, and she slipped in behind me. She was busy on her phone. When I stepped in with her, she glanced up at me, but that was all. She turned her attention back to her phone without saying anything.
I stood next to her, and we rode in silence to the top floor. She wore a neat pair of high-waisted pants with heels that weren’t too high. Her blouse was sleeveless but buttoned up to her collarbone, and her hair was pulled back in a tight bun on top of her head. She looked beautifully professional, but her outfit was conservative and fit for the office.
She wasn’t inappropriately dressed. No extra skin showed that made me want to jump her bones. Which was exactly what I’d wanted, right? I had told her if she didn’t dress like this, I would write her up. Now, she gave me what I wanted, and I missed how she had dressed before. I missed the little game we had been playing. Danielle had added spice to my boring life, and that was gone now.
We got to work once we were in the office. Danielle focused on her duties without making things hard for me, and it irritated me to no end. When she had played hard to get, it had driven me crazy. Now that she wasn’t doing anything at all, it downright pissed me off.
I called her into my office at around ten. She had just returned from the coffee station and held out a cup to me when she stood before my desk. I took it from her.
“Thanks,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” she said politely.
I cleared my throat. “I want to talk about your attitude in the office,” I said.
“What did I do wrong?” Danielle asked. “I did what you asked me.”
I shook my head. “You’re treating me like you want nothing to do with me. People are going to start noticing and wonder what’s going on. They’ll be able to do the math, you know?”
“So, when I was playing along, being sexy and seductive–something you started when you came on to me that first night–it was wrong? Now that I’m not doing it at all, it’s wrong, too?”
“Danielle, don’t make this harder than it needs to be. Why are you acting like this?”
Her face changed, but I couldn’t tell what her expression meant. She lifted her hand, pressing it against her stomach, and took a deep breath.
“I’ll stop being like this if you start being a man.”
God, this again? Was she going to call me a pussy again? I prepared myself for it. Danielle looked like she wanted to say more, and I braced myself but she paled.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Danielle pressed her fingers to her lips, her eyes glazing over before she turned and ran out of my office. I got up and followed her. She ran toward the ladies’ room, drawing attention. Other employees saw her pass and got up to follow her, to check if she was okay. By the time I reached the ladies’ room, a handful of people joined me there. I heard Danielle throwing up in the bathroom.
“That’s enough,” I said to everyone around me, hoping to save Danielle some embarrassment. “Get back to work.”
Reluctantly, they filtered away. I stopped the last lady–Monica, I think her name was–and asked her to fetch a glass of water. She nodded and walked toward the coffee station where there was a water cooler.
“Danielle?” I asked, knocking on the door.
“I’m fine,” Danielle said in a strained voice. She was anything but fine. I heard the water run, the toilet flush, and a moment later, Danielle stepped out. She still looked pale. I wanted to hug her or do something that would make her feel better. I hated that she wasn’t feeling well, and there was nothing I could do to make it better, not if I wanted to maintain our professional appearance in front of the other employees.
“I think you need to go home,” I offered. It was the best I could do.
Monica returned with a glass of water and handed it to Danielle.
“I think so, too,” Danielle said, taking the water from Monica and taking a couple of sips. “I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve been feeling sick the last couple of days. I don’t know if it might be food poisoning or something.”
“Are you sure?” Monica asked. “You don’t think it might be morning sickness?”
Danielle look at Monica, and a strange expression crossed her face. “No,” she said. “It’s not.”
Monica shrugged. “It looks like morning sickness to me. But if you’re sure, honey, maybe you need to have it checked out.”
“Maybe I will,” Danielle said tightly. She was clearly uncomfortable. I watched Monica nod and excuse herself, walking away to get back to work. I looked at Danielle again. Her reaction had been very strange.
“You should get your things,” I said.
Danielle nodded and turned toward the office. She collected her phone and her bag, and I walked her to the elevator. I wanted to step into the elevator with her when it arrived, but she turned to me, blocking my way.
“I’ll be fine, Rodney. Thank you.”
I had wanted to walk her all the way to her car to be sure she was all right, but Danielle didn’t want me to look after her. Maybe that was my fault for pushing her away. I didn’t like it.
“Let me know how you are doing later today,” I said. “And we’ll talk about you coming in tomorrow.”
Danielle nodded. “I’ll let you know,” she said.
She stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the lobby. She stood alone in the elevator as the doors slid closed, and she was gone. I stared at the closed doors for a moment before turning and walking back to my office.
Everything was a mess right now. Things between Danielle and me were off, she wasn’t feeling well, and I didn’t have the liberty or the right to take care of her, not after I had pushed her away.
She was distant from me now, switched off. I should have been happy about it—I had wanted her to stop trying to seduce me after all—but I hadn’t wanted her to be so distant from me. I had wanted things to go back to the way they used to be between us before we had slept together.
That would be impossible. I knew that now. I should have known this would happen. There was no going back to the way things were. If I hadn’t been drunk that night when I had come home to her looking so damn sexy on my couch, I might have handled it differently. I had fantasized about her many times before we had done the deed, but I had never acted on it because I had known Danielle was off limits.
She should have stayed off limits. I should have practiced better self-control. I should have stopped after the first time and tried to do damage control. We ended up sleeping together not once, but three times.
If anyone was the idiot in this equation, it was me.
But there was nothing I could do to change the way things were. I had made my choices–albeit stupid ones–and I couldn’t undo the past.
Maybe I could have ignored what had happened and moved on if I hadn’t developed feelings for Danielle. That was the damn problem. My emotions had influenced the choices I made when I’d asked her to stop being the way she was and when I had threatened her with HR. I cared for her now, and seeing her this distant hurt me on a different level than just a sexual rejection would have.
I sighed, swiveling my chair toward the windows that looked out over Manhattan and wondered how the hell I had gotten here. I knew the answer to that. I had followed my dick, and my heart had gotten involved. That was what had happened with Chrissy as well, although it hadn’t been as complicated with her. But I had lost her, even when I had done everything right.
Now, I was going through the same thing again, even when the circumstances were completely different.
Love was always a fucker, wasn’t it?