CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lori
I leave Cole’s office in a rush of heat and adrenaline, but somehow, I walk calmly through the workplace, and claim my desk in the middle of cubicle city, home to dozens of people that I haven’t even met beyond a passing formality. A big win for me right about now is that I manage to do all of this and sit down before my knees give out.
He affects me.
God, how Cole affects me like no other man—no, no other human being has ever affected me. He was right. I do still want him and what kind of fool wants a man who will likely be back in that bar where we met, finding someone else’s ass to smack this very night? I shove that thought aside. He’s my boss. This is a job. This is my future and I will not lay down for it, in any sense of the word. I will not want that man one more second.
Ever.
I ignore the computer on my desk, and avoiding a learning curve, pull my far more comfortable MacBook from my briefcase. Powering it up, I waste no time googling “Cole Brooks Houston” and not for personal information. It’s my duty. A long list of data pops up, including a number of pictures with him looking hot as hell, distracting me from my work mission, and fuck you, Cole Brooks for that and more, but not literally. I start to read and in a matter of minutes, I’ve finally homed in on my job and tuned out the personal junk, and it is junk. I’m absorbed in the legality of Cole’s work and quickly taking notes. Two hours later, I decide that Cole Brooks is not all talk, not in the bedroom, and not in the courtroom. He wins, and he wins when no one else would win. He’s good at his job, and I can learn from him.
I’m about to dive into the background of one of his earliest cases when murmurs spread through the room. Glancing up, my eyes land on Cole and Reese, in obvious deep conversation, as they stride down the pathway between the cubicles, headed my direction. I, like everyone else, find them a mesmerizing mix of power, confidence, and good looks. Of course, good looks and even confidence don’t mix to create winning attorneys, but it’s icing on the cakes of two men in their prime, on top of their game. Every step they take together seems to scream unstoppable.
They come nearer, and I force myself to turn away and focus on my computer, on the stories of the one man between the two of them that has consumed my world. I know the minute they’re aligned with me, about to pass me, the minute Cole is on this side of me. I feel him. He stops abruptly, and I instinctively rotate my chair, my gaze colliding with his, the impact a jolt I pray no one notices. Cole glances at Reese. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
Even before Reese replies Cole steps to the door of my cubicle, his big, perfect body consuming the entire tiny space. “This is where they put you permanently?” he demands.
“As far as I know, yes,” I say.
“This is unacceptable. Gather your things.”
I blanch. “What?”
“Gather your things,” he repeats, no shift in his tone. “You’re not staying here.”
I want to argue. I want to say that this is where I belong. All eyes will be on me because they are on him and those people will question why I’m being treated differently than them. People will assume I’m sleeping my way to the top, but I can do nothing to stop it. Not now. Not without making it worse. Accepting my circumstances, and therefore, his unbendable command, I slide my MacBook in my briefcase and stuff the files HR gave me inside with it. The minute I stand and slip my briefcase and purse on my shoulder, he says, “Come with me,” and doesn’t wait for my agreement. He starts walking.
I double step and quickly catch up. “Mr. Brooks—”
“Cole,” he corrects without looking at me.
“Mr. Brooks,” I say softly, reminding him that he’s my boss.
He stops walking and faces me, staring at me for two beats that feel like ten with an audience before he faces the general masses. “Can I get everyone’s attention?” he calls out.
The room silences in seconds and all of the two dozen eyes in the room are on him and now me. “Just a quick greeting to everyone. Call me Cole, just as you call Reese, Reese. I’m not here to intimidate anyone but our opposition. For those of you I might not have met, I look forward to remedying that. Beside me is Lori Havens, Merrick scholarship recipient, and third-year law student. I’m officially her mentor and she will be an extension of me. She will act and ask for things on my behalf. Consider any direction or request she gives you as coming from me. More soon.” He gives them a two-finger wave and turns to start walking, the obvious assumption that I’m to keep pace and I do.
He doesn’t speak and neither do I. There are people on either side of us the entire walk and more walking toward us. I don’t know if what he just did is normal, or if it helps me or hurts me. I only know that I don’t want to be the bimbo who slept her way to the top. That thought drives every step until we head down the hallway to the executive offices and I begin to contemplate that I might end up acting as his secretary. This is actually fine with me if it achieves my goals, but my assumption proves wrong when just shy of the entrance to the executive suite, he stops at an empty office, flips on the light and motions me inside. “Your new office. Make yourself comfortable.”
I turn to face him. “I don’t want special treatment.”
“I don’t give special treatment,” he says, without missing a beat. “I also don’t like my cases within the reach of masses of eyes and ears in their preparation where they might leak. My business is now your business. My cases are now your cases. You will guard them like Fort Knox. Therefore, this office is a resource to do your job. This is also the office I would give any other person I picked for your role. If you don’t want that role—”
“I do. Of course, I do. I just want to know I earned it. I really want to earn it, Cole.”
“And you will,” he says, his voice softening. “If I didn’t believe you would, you wouldn’t be here. No matter how good, bad, or perfectly you fucked me or I fucked you. And as for that conversation in my office—”
“Can we just not go there? Please.”
He opens his mouth to no doubt reject my request, when there is a shout of “Cole!” from the direction of the executive offices.
Cole clamps down on whatever he was going to say and looks right. “Yes, Maria?”
“You have the Houston office manager on the line and it’s urgent.”
“On my way,” he says, returning his attention to me. “We aren’t done with this conversation. As I said to the team, more soon, but sooner for you.” He leaves and it’s as if all the energy in the room is sucked out with him. That’s how powerful his presence is, that’s how much he affects me.
Cole Brooks told me that he would own me, and if I’m not careful, he will.
***
An hour after Cole leaves me in my new office, I happen to glance up as he passes my door. Happen to look up, I ask myself, or just so hyperaware of the man that I know his every move? I glance at my computer with a news article about one of his cases on the screen. I have an excuse for the hyper-focus. It’s my duty to be obsessed, and I think I really am.
And so, I obsess for a good two hours until Maria appears in my doorway. “Hola, honey. You now have a complete file of every case Cole has ever taken to trial in your new company email.”
“That’s helpful,” I say. “Thank you.”
“He’s making you study, huh?”
“Yes,” I say. “But that’s good. I need to understand his formula for success and what he needs from me.”
She gives me a sly little smile, says nothing, and disappears. I straighten and grimace. I’m not sure what that little smile means, and I’m not sure I want to know. Cole and I have an energy about us that I am not sure is easily missed by someone sharp and smart enough to work directly with Reese Summer.
As if I’ve called upon magic in that moment, Reese steps inside my doorway. “I’m headed to court and wanted to check in before I leave,” he says, perching on the arm of a chair. “How are things?”
“Good,” I say. “Already busy and I like that.”
“How’s the chemistry between you and Cole?”
I don’t blink with his choice of wording that tells me he knows more than I want him to, but it’s not easy. “He’s tough but seems to be fair. That works for me.”
“How do you know him?” he asks.
I don’t play dumb. Reese has been good to me. I won’t disrespect him that way. “That’s his story to tell,” I say, praying he doesn’t tell it at all.
“He said it was yours to tell.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I counter. “Really.”
He considers my reply for several beats. “Come to me if ‘nothing’ becomes a problem.”
“It won’t.”
He gives me a nod and stands before disappearing into the hallway, but this topic of me and Cole hasn’t gone away. Cat will question me and she’s dogmatic about what she wants. She will push me and hard for a story I don’t plan to tell. That Cole didn’t tell, matters to me. It’s respect for my privacy that I appreciate, and in light of our workplace relationship, I owe him the same.
“I won’t let this become a problem,” I whisper, and quickly key up my new email. I need to work. I need to focus. I stand up. I need to walk. I need coffee. Actually, I never had lunch. The coffee and some pastry will be my lunch and then I’ll power through work the rest of the afternoon. I will know these cases like I know my own history, sometimes too well. I hurry down the hallway and exit the lobby through the heavy wooden door that leads to the elevator banks.
Cole is walking in my direction, and I have no choice but to walk directly to him. “I’m going to get coffee,” I explain. “Do you want me to get you some?” It could seem like an offer a secretary makes, but with him, with us, it feels like more, like an intimate offer with a more intimate meaning.
“I want a lot of things,” he says, his eyes flicking to my mouth and lifting. “Coffee isn’t one of them,” he pauses for effect, and that effect turns out to be the clenching of my sex, “But,” he adds, “I’ll ride down with you. I have off-site meetings the rest of the day. We’ll go through my cases tomorrow.” He punches the elevator call button.
I am wet. My God, I am wet from a conversation about coffee with a man who makes a lot of woman wet and then moves on to the next. I’m losing my dignity here. “I’m just going to take the stairs,” I reply quickly, inspired by the stairwell sign directly to my left. “It helps me think.” Which is true. I walk and run when I’m thinking, but right now, I can’t think. He’s in front of me. He’s consuming me. He’s a womanizer and my boss. I cut left and open the door. I’m barely inside the stairwell when Cole is with me.
I whirl around to face him as the door shuts behind him, sealing us inside. He advances on me and I back up, hitting the wall. “What are you doing?”
His hands press on the wall on either side of me, his arms caging me in. “Finishing our conversation from my office,” he says, and he’s not touching me, but I feel him all over and it’s pissing me off.
To hell with him being my boss. I fight back. “The one where I told you I knew you were a player?” I demand, my fingers curled into my palms at my sides.
“I went to that bar trying to find you and that woman sat down with me,” he says. “Had you stayed around, you would have seen that I stayed all of sixty seconds and then left…alone. I didn’t fuck that woman because I was too busy thinking about you. Which is the definition of insanity since I didn’t even know your last name.” His gaze lowers to my mouth, lingering and lifting. “I just knew how good you tasted—everywhere.”
He leans in close, his breath a warm tickle on my neck as he says, “I just knew I wanted more.” He pulls back to look at me. “And I still do.”
He looked for me and he wasn’t with that woman. All my good sense escapes me. I forget that he’s my boss, that I might well lose my scholarship for crossing ethical lines with this man. There is only how deliciously spicy he smells, and how impossibly perfect I remember he felt that night. I want to feel him now. I want him to kiss me. I want him to fuck me right here in this stairwell, but he doesn’t. He pushes off the wall and leaves.