Chapter One and Two (Excerpts)

Offices were for two things: work, and discrete sex.

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t used the privacy of an office for a little fun in the past. But when I had, it had been with a boyfriend. An exclusive boyfriend. As in, we only had sex with each other.

A boyfriend like my current one, Brent. Or at least, if you had asked one minute ago, I would have said we were exclusive, and I wouldn’t have argued against some quick office sex.

Here I was, right now, in Brent’s office. And that definitely wasn’t me he had bent over the desk, moaning his name with her panties around her ankles and her skirt pushed up around her waist.

The door hadn’t made a sound when I opened it. I couldn’t either. All I could do was listen to slap slap slap and watch in disbelief.

Believe it.

“Brent, what the fuck.”

If I wasn’t so emotional that I couldn’t tell whether the tears that burned at my eyelids were angry ones or hurt ones, the scene would have been comical. Brent spun the girl over his desk around with his dick still inside her, as if hiding his nakedness with her tits would somehow retrieve this situation. “K-Kristen! It’s, uh… uh… I swear I didn’t… I just….”

“No.” I cut him off with utter remorselessness. “We’re through.”

“Kristen, wait!” An arm that had once made me feel safe snatched at my arm like the clinging, slimy touch of a monster. “I’m sorry, it’s just… you’re never around. You’re always staying late at the office, or going on a business trip, or taking a call, or busy with Emma—”

“Don’t you even say her name,” I snapped, wrenching my arm out of his grasp. “Don’t you dare come around my child or me ever again.”

I spun around on my stilettos—the ones I’d worn just for him, because I could have worn way more comfortable heels—and marched out of the office. “Hi, sorry?” I said sweetly, my entire body shaking as I poked my head over the front desk to find the receptionist, who was looking through a file folder while talking on the phone. “Brent Walker is having sex with his secretary in his office.”

Shock overtook the woman’s face. I managed to escape the office building before my own shock broke into sobs.

I leaned into the recessed door of a closed-down establishment, pulled the hood of my coat low over my face, and cried into the soft lining.

Why? Was it even possible to know someone? I thought I had known Brent. I thought he would never cheat on me.

And he had, less than half a day after telling me how much he loved me and that I was the only girl for him.

Tearfully, I rubbed the cold tip of my nose. Maybe I should have seen this coming… Brent had seemed a little off for a while, but I thought that was because I’d been so busy lately.

Well, it was because of that. Brent couldn’t accept that being recently hired as head of the marketing department at BeautyBee Cosmetics meant that I had to seize the initiative and prove myself. He couldn’t wait for me, so he’d spotted a chance to put his dick in his secretary’s vagina and taken it.

What an asshole.

So why did it hurt so much?

My brokenhearted sobs had subsided into sniffles that could be associated with the chilly late October weather, so I abandoned the doorway for the flow of pedestrians.

Maybe it hurt so much because it was so familiar. How many times had this happened to me?

Oh, not walking in on my boyfriend having sex with his secretary. That had only happened once. But the cheating, the trying to be there for someone but having them lose interest in me… that happened way too often. Every time I met someone new, in fact.

Passing an Martha’s Antique Shop, I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror in the window. Ugh… I’d have to run into the lobby bathroom when I got to the BeautyBee building. Tears had left my eyes puffy and sent dark lines of mascara streaking down my cheeks, and my usually immaculate, tight ponytail had slipped and let wisps of hair stick out every which way.

I looked like a mess, but my CEO would never know that I was anything but fully committed to marketing their holiday products when I walked into his office in half an hour. In the tough, competitive Chicago business environment, bosses didn’t care about your problems, and if you cared about moving up in life, you wouldn’t let them know you had any.

Get it together, Kristen, I ordered my reflection as soon as I stepped into the one-person bathroom and shut the door. You can lose it later. Not right now.

Look like a businesswoman, feel like a businesswoman. With my mascara back in place, my hair flawless, and my lips a tasteful pale pink, I felt ready to put aside my personal life and deal with this meeting.

So, when my knock on his office door was answered with a “come in”, I didn’t hesitate. I strode inside with all the confidence of my position in the company.

“Kristen,” Grant greeted me. “Please, sit down.”

I had a great poker face—not that I used it for any card game. It was my shield, my guaranteed defense against the prying evaluation of people I didn’t want to know my thoughts.

Grant’s was better, and I knew that when he used it in his own office with his own head of marketing, something was up. “Grant,” I replied, wondering if I should disappear behind my own facade.

“Take a look at this.” Grant pushed a piece of paper across the desk.

My eyes flew through the document. The faster they moved, searching for the silver lining in this disaster, the lower my heart sank.

They closed down. ReNova, the digital media company I had pushed Grant to contract to shoot our commercials and audio ads for BeautyBee’s Holiday Collection, had closed its doors.

“They can’t do this.”

“They can, and they have, Kristen. Contracts don’t matter when there’s no company to sue for breaking them. We only lost what we paid up front, but now we’re down in our budget, and we don’t have a company lined up to handle this.” Grant leaned forward. “I don’t think I need to remind you that you pushed for this company. We turned down offers from other companies for that contract.”

“I know,” I managed. “And I’ll fix it.”

“Yes, you will.” Grant pushed a business card across the desk. “Now, there’s only one media company with the capacity to handle this within our budget that we haven’t already turned down. Cruise Media has agreed to a meeting.”

“When?” We were supposed to start planning for shoots this week, hiring next week, and getting these ads done over the next few weeks after that. There was no time to wait for the cogs of the gigantic corporation that was Cruise Media to turn.

“Today. They’re willing to work us in, even gave us a meeting with a representative—but it has to be today, which suits us anyway.” Grant’s eyes shot frosty bolts of steel into my heart. “We need this, Kristen. BeautyBee is struggling. We put everything we have into our Holiday Collection this year, and I still believe you’re the woman to pull the company through.”

I took this job knowing BeautyBee’s financial status. If I could pull the company out of financial difficulty… well, it would speak volumes about my competence.

This was a setback I hadn’t been expecting, and with what had happened with Brent just an hour ago…. I kind of just wanted to curl up and cry some more.

Wanted to. That would never actually happen in any place of business, of course.

“I know we need this. This is just a setback. When those holiday ads hit TVs and radios, we’ll make back everything we spent and hit our goals too.” I slipped the business card into my coat.

“We’d better. I expect a call this evening telling me how we have a new contract negotiated with Cruise Media.”

Or else? As I let myself out of his office, I realized that the “or else” he’d left hanging in the air had been clear enough. If I didn’t handle this situation, I would be out of a job—because BeautyBee, no matter how prosperous and well-known it had been in the past, would go under.

Taking my aspirations with it. I couldn’t let that happen.

Even if it meant collaborating with Cruise Media.

Cruise Media had been one of the candidates in the list of companies that I considered to create BeautyBee’s holiday ad campaign. I’d skipped past it—after all, there had been three other choices—for personal reasons, not professional ones.

And it was biting me in the ass. I should never have allowed my personal life or past relationships to affect my decision-making.

Besides, the odds that my college sweetheart would ever appear anywhere near any aspect of his family’s company was laughable. The workoutaholic, college football star hadn’t wanted anything to do with business years ago. Why would he now? He was probably on some NFL team—if he’d managed to get his life together and try hard enough to succeed at something.

I blinked away a fresh wave of hot tears. Xavier had his flaws, but he’d never cheated on me….

Yes. Hell yes.

Finally, it was here. Hardly glancing at the wooden steps that I took two at a time, log walls, or heavy carven door, I banged through the door without regard to the glass set into the paneling and threw myself into one of the plush chairs before the massive fireplace.

Excitement shook my fingers, but I opened the thick envelope with the utmost care.

After months of box seat tickets and cheering myself hoarse, I was about to watch the Chicago Cubs play on their home turf in the World Series. I could name more than a few of my friends at Club Chicago who would be more than a little jealous when I mentioned this baby tomorrow after working out.

Of course, I also had plenty of friends who had the same ticket. Watch and party—those were all the plans we’d made so far, but we didn’t need any more than that.

Something across the room caught my eye, a splash of bright pink against the beautiful authenticity of the browns, blacks, and grays of my log mountain cabin.

I picked up the offending object carefully between my forefinger and thumb. Panties. Pink, lacy, and probably very expensive.

As I tossed them in the very modern touch-sense trash can under the polished slab countertops, I wondered who they belonged to. Maybe that girl from the club… but which one? There were so many rich women at the club….

Maybe that last one, the one who always had two or three men wrapped around her fingers. She’d thought I was one of those guys for a while. The little look-at-me fluttering thing she did with her eyelashes, the way she laughed at everything I said— everything had been carefully planned to get her closer to me. I had let her come home with me when she pushed, had sex with her, then told her I was done and didn’t want to see her outside of the club.

I’d met so many girls. Vain ones, nice ones, busty ones, gold-digging ones, sporty ones, classy ones… The circles I lived in had them all.

But I couldn’t go for any of them. Rather, I could go for them physically when they pursued me, thinking they could make me theirs.

It was my heart that couldn’t let them in. If I let any woman into my heart, I would be settling, because no woman would ever be as perfect as the one I had lost years ago.

I shook my head. No point in thinking about her. She’d been out of my life a long time now.

Anyway, I had this ticket and the World Series to think about now.

I set the ticket on the purposefully-rough-hewn coffee table and switched on the TV over the fireplace. As part of the hype for the World Series, some reruns of this season’s Cubs games were being played on the sports channel. Perfect. I could spend the morning and afternoon relaxing, then go to the club this evening to work out.

I listened to the announcer list out the lineup for the Cubs with half an ear. I knew the name of every man on the team, their positions, and their strengths and weaknesses—probably just as well as the manager. How amazing would it be to be the manager of the Cubs or the Bears? Or even the owner of the teams! I’d give all of my considerable wealth for a chance to own an MLB or NFL team…

The ringing of my phone disrupted my half-formed fantastical vision of me, the owner of the Cubs, giving a pump-up speech before a World Series game. Making sure my heavy sigh ended long before I answered the call, I said cordially enough, “Hi, Dad.”

“Hey, Xavier. Do you have time to come in to the office?”

I tapped a button on the remote so the time would pop up on the TV screen. 10:43. Traffic into Chicago wouldn’t be too bad right now, but coming back would be a nightmare. “Not really. Can I do it from home?” I asked when the silence on the other end grew a little ominous.

“You’ve only come to the office once this week, and this isn’t something you can handle from home. I expect you here in an hour.”

“I can’t even—” I was talking to no one. He actually hung up on me. “I can’t even get there in an hour,” I muttered to myself. Getting into one of my rarely worn suits that probably needed ironing, making my hair presentable, and driving to Cruise Media’s company building in Chicago through even normal traffic would take more than an hour.

Oh well. I’d get there whenever I got there, and Dad would just have to deal with it.

“You’re late.” He barely looked up from typing at his desktop when I finally walked in, half an hour after he had wanted me here.

“Yeah, well, I had to get dressed, and traffic sucked. What did you expect?”

Dad stood up so suddenly that the desk shook and the metal nameplate that read “Marcus Caruso” fell facedown. “I expected you to at least try to be on time, Xavier. I expected you to come into the office this week. I expected you to act like the man who will replace me as CEO one day.”

“That day isn’t coming anytime soon,” I countered, a little off balance. Dad being irritated at me for some reason or another was nothing new, but this disappointment… that was new. And it hurt, just a little bit.

“Thank God, because you’re nowhere ready for it. You don’t show up, you’re late when you do, you pass off all your responsibilities to the heads of departments. This isn’t how you run a business.”

I knew I hadn’t exactly put my heart into my family’s company, but I wasn’t as irresponsible as all that. “I know,” I began with forced patience, “but I don’t run the business. You do. I can handle my part from home, and the departments are better qualified to handle some of the tasks you’ve given me—”

“You have to learn. You can’t learn to do things by not doing them. I gave you each of those responsibilities for a reason.” Dad paced behind his desk, clean-shaven jaw furiously working as he massaged his temple. Abruptly, before I could respond, he came to a stop. “Do you want to become CEO of Cruise Media?”