by Durand, Anna
"Chance," Raisa calls out. "I need to speak to you. Immediately."
I growl, too softly for Raisa to hear. Why hadn't I left five minutes earlier? She might not have noticed then.
"I'm knackered, Raisa," I say as I turn sideways to glance at her. "Whatever it is can wait until morning."
She disappears into her office for a few seconds, long enough that I almost believe she's given up. Then she emerges again, her purse slung over her shoulder, and shuts off the light. Only the ambient glow from outside the windows illuminates the space as she trots down the center aisle of the cubicle farm and straight to me.
"Let's have dinner in your hotel room," she says. "We can talk there."
"No. This is my relaxation time." And my time away from her. "I'm off the clock until morning."
She makes a noise that implies I'm an idiot. "Lawyers are never really off the clock."
"This one is."
"Don't be this way, Chance." She runs her hands up and down my lapels, inching closer and closer until her body almost touches mine. "After a long day of working, we both need to blow off some steam. And you have a nice big suite right across the street."
When I'd first met Raisa, she had been the sexiest woman on earth to me. These days, I can't look at her without remembering the things she did to drive me away. I don't want to speak to her, much less take her to my hotel room.
All I want is Elena.
"Forget it," I tell Raisa. "That ship sailed and sank a long time ago. The me who wanted you drowned in the wreck."
I might have stretched that metaphor a bit too far.
Raisa moves to kiss me.
"Leave off," I say, pushing her away. "Try to remember I'm doing you a favor by working here."
Her expression hardens, the way it always does when I deny her something she wants. "Who are you sleeping with, Chance? You must be doing someone."
"Even if I am, it's none of your concern." The fact that I frequently want to throw Elena over my desk and ravish her has no bearing on this conversation. "Good night, Raisa. I'll see you in the morning."
Thankfully, the elevator doors slide open.
I step into the car.
And thankfully, Raisa doesn't follow me.
Like a pathetic, divorced man, I spend the evening eating pizza and drinking beer, then drop onto the bed and fall asleep on top of the covers. I don't get drunk. That's not what a trustworthy lawyer does at night, not even when his ex-wife has tried to seduce him and the woman he wants in his bed has said no. Two beers is my maximum. I sleep on top of the covers strictly because I'm too exhausted to give a damn.
Naturally, I dream of Elena.
I wake up harder than usual in the morning and need a thirty-minute shower to get rid of my lust for the delectable paralegal. I rub one off three times before I feel ready to face the world.
And the woman whose voluptuous body caused the problem.
When I arrive at work, Raisa is the only one there. She's in her office with the door closed, and I do not bother saying good morning. After her actions last night, I have no desire to see or speak to her. I've just gotten my cuppa from the break room when Elena turns up. Some of the other employees got here a few minutes before her, though she's still early. The workday officially starts at nine, but she's here at eight.
Elena smiles brightly at her coworkers, laughing and talking with them while she makes her way to her cubicle while carrying a Starbucks cup in her hand. She's beautiful. Alive. Sexy. Elena Linwood burns like a brilliant flame, and I want to bask in the heat and light she gives off.
Apparently, I've turned into a bad poet as well as a smitten fool.
Locking myself in my office seems like the best course to avoid a sexual harassment charge. If I speak to Elena, I might not be able to stop myself from telling her how desirable she is.
Fuckable is a better description of her. Completely fuckable.
At lunchtime, I peek out of my office like the coward I've become.
Elena is still at her desk, poring over some sort of work. She lifts her head at the exact moment I look at her and smiles, waving her fingers at me.
I nod and retreat into my office.
She appears at my doorway a few seconds later. "I was going to order some lunch, Chinese delivery. Do you want some?"
Lunch with Elena. That sounds wonderful, but likely to get me disbarred.
"We're all having a working lunch," she says. "You can join the plebs in the conference room, if you want."
"Plebs? This isn't ancient Rome, and I'm not the emperor."
"No, that would be Raisa." Elena's cheeks dimple, which always makes me want to kiss her. "But I am your slave, remember?"
She speaks those words in a soft, sensual tone, clearly flirting with me.
I want to spend time in her presence, even if it's a group lunch. "All right. Count me in."
"Good." She smiles, the expression lighting up her face. "You'll like the gang. They're not uptight or anything."
Elena leaves me, and I wait a few minutes before heading to the conference room. I need those minutes to convince myself this isn't a rubbish idea. I should meet more of the staff and get to know them a bit, show them I'm not the empress's consort who does her bidding. I've always tried to be an approachable boss. Here's my chance to prove that to my new coworkers.
Yes, that's right. I'm being a good boss. This has nothing whatsoever to do with Elena and her perfect tits.
When I walk into the conference room, all heads swivel toward me.
And the conversation stops dead.
Elena gets up and lays a hand on my arm. "You all know Chance Dixon. He's taking over Lucas Miller's cases. I invited Chance to our little working lunch, so let's make him feel welcome."
I feel oddly uncomfortable, what with a dozen people staring at me, so I pat my stomach and say, "Where's the food? I'm ready to pass out from hunger."
"It'll be here any minute," Elena says.
My attempt to seem like an average person, not an evil lawyer, seems to have crashed and burned. Everyone is still staring at me.
I try a different tack. "Who wants to play pin the tail on the lawyer's arse?"
"Me," says a young man at the other end of the table, raising his hand.
Several more hands shoot up, and I'm beginning to wonder what I've let myself in for.
"Instead of shoving pins in Chance," Elena says, "why don't we tell him what we've all been working on? Jared, you can start. You've got the McNulty case, right?"
"Yeah," says the young man who'd been first to volunteer to shove a pin in my arse.
Elena urges me to sit beside her, and somehow, I manage to keep myself from sneaking a hand onto her thigh. The food arrives a few minutes later. For the next forty-five minutes, I eat the best Chinese food I've ever had while discussing the firm's cases with the paralegals who do most of the real work. Elena is the brightest by far, but the others have impressive legal acumen too. Elena jumps in to help her coworkers hash out research problems, or to mediate disagreements between them.
I can't help watching her. Admiring her. Wishing I could fuck her right here on the conference room table in front of all these people. It's not simple lust, though, not anymore. I'm coming to appreciate the clever mind behind the beautiful face and body.
After lunch, we all go back to our assigned desks.
Work keeps me occupied for the rest of the day, and I don't see Elena until it's nearly lunchtime the next day. She's been at the law library again, doing all the research I commanded her to do for me. Now, I wish I'd commanded her to take dictation in my office instead. Not seeing her, not hearing her voice out there in the cubicle farm, it makes me feel...anxious. Which is ridiculous. But here I am, chewing on the end of my very expensive gold pen while I wonder what Elena is doing right now.
Finally, I give up and go to her. She has a Starbucks cup on her desk, with her name scrawled on it.
>
"What are you drinking?" I ask.
She glances up at me, smiling in a distracted way. "Morning. I always have a butterscotch latte."
"That's not coffee."
"Maybe not for people who don't put sugar in their tea, but for the rest of humanity, it is."
Leaning against the cubicle wall, I study her. "It's not morning, Elena. It's lunchtime. You need to take a break."
"Oh, I brought a bag lunch today." She picks up a depressingly brown paper sack that's slumped on her desk and shakes it. "See? I'm all set. Have a good lunch, Chance."
I grab the extra chair that's shoved into the far corner of her tiny cubicle and set it down an arm's length from where she sits. My arse barely fits on the flimsy plastic-and-metal contraption. "It's lunch, Elena, not an invitation to an orgy. I want to confer with my paralegal over a meal."
Her lips tighten in a sexy little smile even while she types on her keyboard. "Sure, you want to confer with me."
Her tone implies something very, very wrong and very, very filthy.
Can she read my mind?
"Just lunch," I say. "Think of it as a business meeting."
"Right, business." She throws me a sly sideways glance. "You're all business whenever we're alone, aren't you?"
"We won't be alone. I'll take you to my favorite bistro, where there will be plenty of other people and plenty of light. No dark corners, I swear. We can sit by the window, if you like."
I want dark corners and a smoky atmosphere, with sensual music playing in the background. I want to do filthy things to her anytime, anywhere. But I promised myself I would not make any advances.
Today. Tomorrow is another story.
She still seems reluctant, though I sense she might be wavering.
"Relax," I say. "I'm British, remember? We say cheerio, and we love tea and crumpets. How much trouble could I possibly get you into?"
"Playing on American stereotypes of Brits? That's cute, but not convincing." She folds her arms under her breasts, which makes me notice them even more. Leaning in, she whispers, "You are the man who seduced me in an elevator."
"Guilty as charged. Let me make it up to you."
She chews on her bottom lip while scrutinizing me.
I squirm in my horrid little chair while seconds tick by.
Elena sighs and dumps her brown bag into the trash bin under her desk. "All right. I'm yours for lunch."
My mind conjures up several different ways I could mold that statement into a come-on, but I resist the impulse. Instead, I remain calm and professional while we board the elevator.
As soon as the doors close, I say, "You really should take a chance more often."
She raises her delicate brows at me. "Is that a dopey pun about your name?"
"It was unintentional, I swear. I can't help that my name is also a commonly used word." I lean in so close I can see the darker rims around her caramel irises. "But for the record, this Chance loves to be taken."
Elena laughs and shakes her head.
Chapter Six
Elena
Chance takes me to a quaint little bistro ten blocks away from the office, one he swears nobody at the office knows about---except Raisa, and she only ever came here with him. She doesn't like the place, he says, so she'll never come back here. We sit by the picture windows, where we have a beautiful view of the skyline across the river, and he insists I sit beside him instead of across the table from him. When Chance examines the menu, he sighs and looks disappointed.
"What's wrong?" I ask. "Thought this was your favorite restaurant."
"It is, but I always lament their lack of British foods. I'd kill for some bangers and mash."
"Okay," I say like I have no idea what he's talking about, because I don't. "I'm guessing that's not some weird sex slang."
"No, it's weird food slang for sausage and mashed potatoes." He goes back to perusing the menu while he tells me, "I haven't had bangers and mash in ages."
"Why don't you cook that for yourself?"
He glances up at me, moving only his eyes. "My cooking skills begin and end with heating water for tea, and I do that in the microwave."
"Maybe I can figure out how to make bangers and mash for you." I say the words before I realize what I'm suggesting. I want to cook for him? Yeah, I kind of do. Huh. "Is it some special kind of thoroughly disgusting British sausage?"
"It can be any type of sausage." He fake-frowns at the menu. "What, no bubble and squeak? I may have to reconsider this as my favorite bistro."
"Bubble and squeak? You just made that up, didn't you?"
He smirks at me over the top of his menu. "No, I did not. My mother makes that the day after she cooks up a traditional roast dinner. She uses the leftovers to make bubble and squeak."
I give him a teasing smile. "Otherwise known as dumpster diving?"
"Very funny, but we don't dig through the rubbish bin for leftovers." He sneaks a hand under the table to grasp my knee. "Careful. If you keep harassing me, I might have to do something completely inappropriate."
We order our food, and I pretend to be disappointed when he orders a hamburger with French onion soup. It's not British, as I point out, but he puts his hand on my knee again to let me know he's about ready to get inappropriate with the snarky American sitting next to him. I order the same thing, earning a sarcastic comment from him about what a copycat I am.
Throughout lunch, we talk. About anything, everything, whatever pops into our heads. I learn that he comes from a middle-class family that owns a beautiful, historic home in the English countryside, but when he asks about my family, I avoid answering. It would spoil the mood, and I love this mood we've got going here in the cutest bistro I've never seen before. He lets me get away with not opening up, at least for a while. We make each other laugh, a lot, and commiserate about working with Raisa.
Five minutes before we have to go back to the office, Chance finally pushes me for an answer to a question he asked me the first day we worked together. "Why didn't you go to law school?"
"What?" I'm acting dumb to avoid answering, obviously.
"You heard the question." He turns his chair slightly toward me. "You're very clever, hard-working, and write the most perfect legal summaries I've ever read. If I asked you to write an argument, I'm sure that would be perfect too. You should be an attorney, not a paralegal. I know you were accepted to law school, so why didn't you go?"
I slump in my chair, absently stirring the teeny puddle in my soup bowl, all that's left of my lunch. I can't look at him when I explain, "My dad ran out on us when I was six. I barely remember him. Mom worked two jobs to support me and my brother, Kyle. Six years ago, she got sick. Cancer. For eleven months, she fought so hard to beat it, but she couldn't. She died a week before I found out I'd been accepted to law school."
Chance settles his hand on my knee again, but he's not copping a feel this time. "I'm so sorry, Elena."
I shrug one shoulder. "I'd already gone into debt to pay for my bachelor's degree. Mom had life insurance, but not a lot of it. Racking up even more debt to pay for law school seemed like a huge extravagance, and besides, I had to take care of Kyle. He was fifteen at the time. So, I gave up on law school, got a crappy job as a legal secretary, and signed up for a paralegal certification course. Took me eighteen months to finish it. Working for Raisa is the second paralegal position I've had." I laugh a little, with no humor whatsoever. "It was my dream job."
"You excel at your job. Don't let Raisa ruin it for you. She'll calm down once she gets over the divorce and accepts that I am never going to be with her again."
I wince, unable to disguise my discomfort. How can I not tell him what Raisa ordered me to do? He deserves to know, but I can't tell him. Raisa ordered me to keep it secret. I don't know how long she'll wait for me to bring him to her on a silver platter.
How on earth does she expect me to do that, anyway? Even if I wanted to, which I abs
olutely do not, I have no clue where to start.
"What's wrong?" Chance asks.
"Can't tell you. Raisa swore me to secrecy."
He drums his fingers on the tabletop. "Does this secret have something to do with me? Is that the real reason you've been reluctant to get involved with me?"
"I can't say."
Chance scoots his chair a little closer to mine. "Look at me."
"Please let this go. I could lose my job."
"If this involves me, then I have a right to know. Raisa won't fire you, because I won't tell her I know the secret. All right?"
Chewing my lip, I think about what I should do. Not telling him has been eating a hole in my stomach, but telling him might make things worse. I like Chance, a lot. He's such a nice man, and he's been so sweet to me. But he's my boss's ex-husband, and she wants him back.
I groan miserably. "Raisa ordered me to help her win you back."
"She what?" he says sharply, his gaze narrowing. "What exactly did she tell you to do?"
"Whatever it takes to find out if you're sleeping with someone, and if so, who it is. I'm also supposed to say stuff about how wonderful she is and how you two belong together."
He grunts with what sounds like disgust, leaning back in his chair. "The woman's gone off her rocker. I'm sorry, Elena, you should never have been put in the middle of this."
"Not your fault my dream job turned into pimping for my boss."
His lips flatten. "I'll have a talk with Raisa. Your pimping days are over."
"No, you can't," I say too quickly, with too much panic in my voice. "I mean, she'll fire me. I need this job."
I clasp my hands on my lap, my fingers twitching restlessly.
"All right," he says. "I won't let on that I know about her ridiculous plot, but I will make sure she understands I will never go back to her. I've told her before, but this time I will leave no doubts about my feelings for her." He lays a hand over mine, stilling my restless fingers. "At least now I understand why you've been so anxious about getting involved with me."