Chapter 20
Brent
I was in a shitty mood. Something was irritating me, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. I trained hard at the gym, harder than ever before. I was sore all over, pushing myself past my limits all the time, trying to get rid of whatever I was feeling. It wasn’t helping. All it did was make my muscles ache, and that pissed me off more.
At work, I had my hands full with the investors, and we hadn’t gotten around to getting another secretary yet. My company was doing well. We were releasing new products every other week. Market surveys looked great, the feedback and reviews were positive, and our beta testers had come back with positive criticism. Nothing was wrong.
So there was no reason for me to feel the way I did.
I had a feeling it had to do with Rena, but I didn’t know what it could be about. Lately, we hadn’t been spending a lot of time together. Since we’d arrived back from Boston, we’d both been working ourselves to death and there hadn’t been time for even a short conversation, never mind something more.
Maybe I was sexually frustrated. That could be it. Maybe I needed a good fuck to get it out of my system.
I wanted it from Rena. I wasn’t going to go looking for someone else just because Rena and I were too busy to get around to each other. When I’d told her I expected to be exclusive, I had set that same rule for myself. I was a bit of a womanizer, I was willing to admit to that, but I wasn’t a dick.
I had to make a plan to get Rena alone again. Now that she wasn’t my secretary it was harder, but I knew where she lived and I could make things happen. I was Brent Hooper, for crying out loud. I could do whatever I wanted and get away with it.
With that little fact in mind, I started working. I pushed through, focusing on what needed to be done. When I felt I had been working for hours, I glanced at the clock. It had to be nearing lunchtime.
Only a half hour had passed. I groaned. What was going on with me today? I felt so fucking unfulfilled, and I had no idea how to fix it.
I got up and walked to the break room to make myself a cup of coffee, stretch my legs, and get away from my computer for a while. Maybe all I needed was a change of scenery. Maybe I had to get out of the office altogether. When I’d been in Boston, I had been able to concentrate so well. But Rena had been with me for most of the trip. Maybe it was what had kept me on track.
I groaned. I couldn’t get her off my mind, and I couldn’t help but think she was the reason things either went really well or really terribly. And it irritated me because it wasn’t who I was. I had never allowed someone to affect my mood so much before.
When I returned to my office with my coffee, my phone rang.
“I have a furniture delivery for you here, Mr. Hooper,” Margaret said, calling from the front desk.
“Right, I’m expecting them,” I said. “Send them up.”
I put down the phone and walked to Rena’s office. She sat at the small desk she had at her disposal, the whole thing covered with papers.
“Your new desk is here,” I said, knocking on her open door twice so that she looked up at me.
“Oh, great,” she said, jumping up. She started cleaning up her desk, neatly stacking the papers in piles before putting them in rows on the floors. This was why she had been such a good secretary. Rena was extremely organized. She’d been away from my office for a week now, and I had already drowned in pure chaos.
“Let me help,” I said. I stepped toward the desk, but I had no idea what to do with the papers. She had a system, and I didn’t want to mess with it. So I started packing ornaments and picture frames into a box that stood empty next to the desk.
I couldn’t help but glance at the photos as I packed them away. There were photos of her and some friends out on the town. She was the most attractive of the lot of them. She had photos of what I assumed to be her parents, too. She appeared to be a sentimental person. It made more sense to me now why learning she had a sister and having to meet her could be difficult. Rena struck me more and more as the kind of person that could allow herself to become very attached to someone.
I would be lucky to have someone like her feel so deeply for me.
What was I thinking? I berated myself for wandering down the road again and focused on what I was doing.
It didn’t take very long for us to clear the desk. We carried it out of the office together. We were a good team. Rena wasn’t scared of physical work, which was admirable.
When her office was cleared, ready for the new desk to arrive, Rena looked at the empty space with her hands on her hips.
“I think I need to rearrange a few things in here before they come so I can adjust the flow of the office.”
“Let me help you. We’ll do it in no time.”
She nodded, and together we moved filing cabinets and plants until Rena was happy. When she stood back and looked at the office again, she nodded, satisfied. “Much better,” she said. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I had no idea what the desk she’d ordered looked like, and I wasn’t the type of person to visualize things like offices when I was more goal driven and logical. I liked how we complemented each other.
Of course we complemented each other, I scolded myself again. I’d looked for someone who had been able to help me out with what I needed in the office, and I’d hired a woman who had those qualities. It had been Rena.
It hadn’t been love at first sight or anything like that; it had been a logical decision following an interview process.
I glanced at Rena, who stood patiently waiting for the desk to be brought upstairs. So much had happened since I’d hired her. Maybe it was more now than just logic.
“Here they are,” Rena said when the men finally rounded the corner with her desk. We watched as they wrestled the desk through the narrow office door, making something fit that should never have been able to go through. They worked their magic. I’d thought we should take the desk apart and reassemble it in the office when I’d seen it, but I’d been wrong.
“What do you think?” Rena asked as we watched the men struggle with the desk for a while.
“I think you chose well,” I said. I had to admit she had made a good choice. I would have liked for her to spend more of my money, but the desk she’d chosen was neat and sleek but sensible, too. And it wasn’t too large. Thank God for that.
Rena stood close to me while she watched them maneuver the desk around the office, and I felt the heat radiating off her skin. Desire hit me like a truck. I had missed Rena. It’d been a full week where we hadn’t been together the way we’d always been, working in adjacent offices. Having been so intimate in Boston, the divide seemed even worse than it would have been otherwise. Rena was still right here, in the office, doing what she needed to do and finding me to ask her questions, but it wasn’t the same. She was distant, and we were so far away from each other I felt it like a physical ache.
I looked her up and down again. She wore dress pants with a blouse and low heels. She looked professional and sexy. It didn’t matter what she wore, she would always look sexy. She was the kind of person that oozed sexuality, but it was subtle, and it made her magnetic in a way I hadn’t experienced before. I just couldn’t stay away from Rena.
I didn’t want to.
The guys finally had the desk in where it belonged. They walked to Rena with a clipboard, but she suggested they hand it to me, seeing as I was the one who’d paid. I took it and signed off on the desk while Rena checked that it hadn’t been damaged at all. When she was happy, the delivery men left, and it was just the two of us in the office.
The desk was clean and empty. I wanted to lay Rena out on it, undress her, and climb on top of her on the desk. I wanted to christen it. It took a hell of a lot of self-control not to do something drastic. Rena’s office had two glass walls, and it was located where the open offices could all see us. I would have to order blinds for her windows, in case she needed some privacy, I thought.
Even if the privacy was only for a meeting and not to fuck her boss.
Rena started putting her things back on the desk, arranging them neatly.
“Here, let me help,” I said.
We worked together in silence. I unpacked the box I had packed for her, putting her frames the way I had found them. Rena filed most of her documents away in order. When the box was empty, I tucked one hand in my pocket.
“Are you pleased?” I asked.
Rena turned around and looked surprised. “I am,” she said. “And it flows much better now, don’t you think?”
I had to agree. She had envisioned something, and it had come to life perfectly. I watched Rena as she moved around her office. She was beautiful. I wanted to see her again. I wanted to get her alone.
“I want to see you,” I said, lowering my voice a little. “Tonight.”
Rena glanced at me before carrying on with the files she had in her hand. “You know where I live.”
I blinked at her. What was that? Had she just dismissed me? I wanted to say something, but I was caught off guard and I couldn’t think of anything to say. I stood there searching for words. Finally, I turned around and left the office, going back to my own.
When Rena and I had started out with this whole sex thing, I had been in charge. I made the rules, and she had been the little secretary who had begged to be fucked. Somehow, the tables had turned. I didn’t know how it had happened, but she was in charge now and I was the one asking for attention, asking to see her. I couldn’t let this happen.
I was the boss, for God’s sake. She wouldn’t play this game with me. I decided when it was over. Maybe it was a good time to call it quits.
It was easier said than done. That night, after work, I headed home and dressed into something a little fancier even though I hoped it would end up on the floor. I couldn’t stay away from Rena, no matter how much I told myself it had to be over. I buzzed her apartment and waited for her to buzz me in.