by S. E. Lund
When I walked in with Ella beside me, all eyes turned to us and ranged over her hungrily. She walked a little bit behind me like she was shy, but stood up straighter when we got to the table.
"Hey, guys, this is Ella Carlson. She works in our building. " Then I turned to Ella. "Ella, this is the gang. She's the one who gave me the bloody knees yesterday."
The guys all sat up straighter, saying hello to her, shaking her hand and introducing themselves. They were a bunch of management types who ran the accounting side of the Chronicle for me.
"He's a crazy man on that bike," Monroe said. "Are you joining us?"
"Nope, sorry," I replied, wanting to keep her from them. "We're going to sit closer to the front away from the music."
"Enjoy," Monroe said and held up his beer.
I led Ella to the front of the bar, into a nice booth away from the staff and DJ. She slipped into the booth and I sat beside her.
"They're pretty well-dressed for bike couriers," she said.
I smiled to myself. I was debating whether to keep up the ruse about being a bike courier, and wasn't entirely sure I was going to tell her the truth.
I liked that she didn't know who I was. It freed me in a way. In a few days, depending on how fast Marcella worked, I'd be evaluated by a bunch of high-income, well-bred women with dynasty-building on their minds. It was nice to be just a bike courier who was being kind to a damsel in distress. But I didn't want to lie to her.
"They work in the company's accounting office," I replied and folded my arms on the tabletop. "They're suits. Look, Ella, " I said and leaned closer. "I have a confession to make."
She leaned forward. "Yes? I'm all ears."
I cleared my throat, feeling bad that I'd led her on so long. "I'm actually not a bicycle courier."
"You aren't?" she said and frowned, her pretty brows knitting. "What do you do for a living? Why were you riding your bike?"
"I'm a pretty serious cyclist. I do races and marathons. I trained a few years ago for an Iron Man. I run MBC. My name's Joshua Macintyre."
Her mouth dropped open. "What?"
I nodded, feeling like a total cad for letting her believe I was a bicycle courier for so long. "My father started MBC and I took over as CEO when he died."
She sat in silence for a moment. "That means…"
"It means what?"
"I work for Sharon Rogers at Dominion Publishing."
"Oh," I said, finally putting two and two together. "You're Sharon's new intern…"
"The very one."
We both sat there, saying nothing for a moment. Her cheeks were flushed bright red.
"This is awkward," she said finally. "You’re my boss."
"Technically, yes," I said.
The cocktail waitress took our food order and we turned and looked at each other. I smiled, hoping we could get past the whole boss-employee thing quickly. She was a pretty thing, with a sweet face.
"So, tell me about Ella."
"Is it legal for us to be having a drink together? I mean, fraternizing?"
"Well, I'm the CEO of MBS, but I have no real role in Dominion. I just pop by now and then to get a quarterly update and say hi. I'm not hands-on at all. I had to make a choice about what I could manage once it was clear that my father would pass. I had to let Dominion go so I could focus on the Chronicle."
"You bought the Chronicle," she said and smiled, glancing away for a moment like she was embarrassed. "I read about that a while back. I thought it was your father who bought it."
"No, we share the same name. But enough about me," I said. " My life has been pretty much an open book. Tell me about yourself. What are your aspirations? What makes you tick?"
"What makes me tick? Hmm. I thought I had my life all planned out. I was going to get married, start a family and I was going to be the wife of a Senator, and maybe the future President of the United States of America."
"Really? Your ex was a senator?"
"No, but he had aspirations," she replied. "I was going to be the good wife."
"The good wife, huh?" I said, surprised. "But he didn't turn out to be the good husband-to-be."
"Nope," she said and paused when the waitress brought our drinks. Ella took a sip of her bottle of black cherry vodka cooler, then turned back to me. "He turned out to be exactly the bad husband-to-be. I should have known, but I was naïve and starry-eyed at the whole get married and have a perfect life dream."
"And so when the dream died, you decided to come here," I said and sipped my beer. "Live life in the Big Apple."
"Exactly," she said with a laugh. "I'm going to start over. I'm just a slush and submissions reader, but some day, I hope to move up. I may go to Columbia next year, but right now, I'm keeping all my options open." She smiled. "I grew up watching Sex and the City and maybe I'll have my own ‘single girl in Manhattan’ adventures."
"Maybe meet your own Mr. Big," I replied, smiling inside because Christie had loved that series and used to talk about it to me.
"You know who Mr. Big is?" she asked, her eyes wide.
"I do. My ex was a big fan."
Ella nodded. She was probably embarrassed that I knew about the fantasy man who was the rich handsome guy who swept the heroine off her feet.
"What about you?" she asked. "Besides owning a huge media conglomerate?"
I took in a breath and considered what to tell her. "I aspire to make the Chronicle successful again one day."
"That's impressive," she said. "Did you study journalism?"
I shook my head. "Business."
She appeared impressed by that.
The waitress brought us our burgers and we both dug in. After several bites and exclamations about how great the fries were, it was my turn to ask another probing question.
"So, what do you want from life outside of living the life of a single girl in Manhattan?"
She shrugged. "I'm keeping all my options open."
"No husband and children?"
She shook her head. "I'm pretty sour on the whole marriage thing."
I dipped a fry into ketchup and frowned. "How come? You're too young to be jaded."
She sighed. "I was supposed to have been married by now, in fact. Luckily, I found out several weeks before the wedding that my soon-to-be husband was boinking his 'sexretary.’"
She raised her eyebrows and made air-quotes when she said 'sex'.
I couldn't help but laugh out loud. "Boinking?"
She laughed as well, her eyes crinkling at the corners.
"Yep," she said, her smile fading. "In the office. On his desk, to be exact. I can laugh now, but believe me, three weeks before my wedding, I wasn't laughing."
"Crap. That's terrible. How did you find out?"
She shrugged. "He'd started working on Saturday mornings, telling me it was because he wanted to get ahead on his projects so we could go on a great honeymoon. One Saturday, I thought it would be nice to bring him some bagels and coffee to help cheer him up, seeing as he was working sixty-hour weeks. There they were, boinking away, her naked butt on the Johnston file."
She shoved a fry into her mouth and chewed hard. I could still see fire in her eyes, despite the year that passed between the 'boinking' event and now.
"So, as you can imagine, I'm not all that positive about the whole till-death-do-us-part-happily-ever-after thing."
I watched her take a long drink of her spritzer and realized that she was a lot like me.
"Me either," I said. "In fact, I'm pretty sour about it. My fiancée was boinking her boss, but it wasn't in the office. It was on the bed we shared in our apartment."
"Oh, crap," she said, her expression sympathetic. "That sucks."
"It does. We called off the wedding, needless to say."
She held out a fry. "To us: losers at love."
I picked up one of my fries and touched hers with it. "To us."
We both popped the fries into our mouths and chewed, each of us probably remembering our own shock
and hurt and discovering the deceit of the partners we had thought we were going to spend the rest of our lives with.
"Maybe we'll both be lucky in life," I said. "Even if we fail at love."
"Let's hope," she said. "Whatever I end up doing, I'm going to give it the old college try."
"Me, too. Turning around a failing newspaper is probably even less likely than success in love. Obviously, we're both fools." I held up my beer and she held up her spritzer and we clinked bottles.
We drank.
I had a feeling I was going to really like this woman.
One drink led to another and another. Soon the two of us were more than slightly tipsy, dancing on the tiny dance floor and going wild, like we were teenagers. We sat back down and I slid in close beside her – enjoying the moment, feeling like I'd be happy to carry on with much more than dancing. She seemed to feel the same.
"So, if you're not into marriage and happily-ever-after, what about dating? Do you favor promiscuity or are you going full celibate cat lady?" I asked, giving her a grin.
She took a drink, her eyes amused. "I'm definitely not a cat lady. If I'm going to live the single woman's dream life in Manhattan, I'm going to have to get some experience. I was with Mr. Boinking-My-Sexretary ever since my father had selected him as the perfect husband for me. The two of them were conspiring to unite their empires."
"You're shitting me," I said, frowning at the thought that her father had actually picked her husband. "You went along with it?"
"I had no idea. He was several years older than me and really handsome, ambitious, and wealthy. I was young, dumb, and under my father's thumb. I thought he actually liked me for me."
"How did you find out about the whole arranged-marriage thing?"
"I walked out of the office and he chased after me, tried to convince me that it was all just a moment of weakness, that he had panicked because of the lifetime commitment but that he loved me and only me. You know – the usual sob story of a cheater caught cheating."
"But you didn't take him back."
"Bunni with an 'i', the sexretary, texted me that he was only marrying me because of my father. I broke it off at that point."
"Her name was actually Bunni with an 'i'?"
"Swear to God. Apparently, he got her a Playboy bunny logo tattooed on her fake left boob as a birthday gift."
"That sucks," I said, thinking it was wrong to marry a person for political connections.
"Yeah. So I decided to get a revenge tattoo. A lock and key tattoo over my heart. Even if he'll never see it, it means something to me."
"You got a tattoo over your heart?" I asked, needing to see it now that I knew it existed. My dick throbbed just a bit at the thought.
She pulled her dress over to the side, just enough to display a bit of cleavage and the tiny lock and key tattoo in navy blue.
"Cool," I said – and of course, I couldn't help but gawk at her cleavage, given the chance.
She adjusted her dress and then checked her cell. I took a sip of beer and tried to rein myself in while she read. When she was done, she glanced up at me.
"I hate to ask," she said and bit her bottom lip in a very sexy way, "but is there any way I stay at the apartment tonight? My landlord hasn't replied yet so there's no way I can get into the Airbnb."
"Of course," I said, wondering if she might like me to stay with her. "I know the boss won't mind.," I said with a laugh, now that she knew that the boss was me. "You can stay there until your landlord is able to get you the keys."
"Thanks," she said. "It'll probably be tomorrow. I'm sure she'll get the message and be willing to give me another key."
"No rush. Use it as long as you need." I leaned even closer. "There's more vodka in the apartment if you'd like another drink in a more private venue. My specialty is vodka and tonic with lime."
"That sounds wonderful," she said, a gleam in her eyes that sent a jolt of lust right to my dick, which jumped at the thought of her body. I couldn't help but imagine her naked and ready for me, that tattoo waiting to be inspected and licked, the cleavage nuzzled. "Shall we?"
I slid out of the booth and held out my hand, pleasantly surprised by this turn of events.
"If I'm going to live the life of a Manhattan single lady, I might as well start now," she said and took my hand. Together, we walked to the bar. I asked Lenny, the bartender, if I could have a couple of lime wedges. He laughed, tucked a few into a bar napkin, and gave them to me.
We left the bar and walked arm-in-arm down the street back to the building. My entry key worked 24/7, of course. We waved at the security guard and took the elevator up to the penthouse.
As soon as the doors closed and we were alone, I pushed her against the elevator wall. Her eyes widened, and I remembered her fear when the elevator jerked to a start earlier in the day. But she didn't push me away. Instead, she blinked rapidly when I took her hands in mine and confined them above her head. I leaned closer, my lips brushing over hers.
"Damn elevators," I murmured.
We kissed deeply, our bodies pressed together. All too soon, the elevator came to a stop and the doors behind us opened.
"Come in," I said and grabbed her hand, pulling her into the apartment.
"I can't believe this view," she said once we were inside. She went right to the window overlooking the cityscape. "It's amazing."
"It is," I said, and went to the refrigerator to remove a couple of iced glasses from the freezer. I poured us each some vodka and tonic, then squeezed some lime into them. I carried them to the balcony where Ella was standing, the breeze blowing her long hair.
"Here," I said and handed her one. We toasted and took a drink, standing side by side, watching the city. Down below, cars drove along the streets surrounding the building, their taillights glowing red in the distance.
"This is what I came for," she said. "The city. The sounds and sights. The energy."
She turned and smiled up at me. It seemed like the perfect time to finish my drink and move things forward into the bedroom.
So I did.
"To us," I said and held out my glass.
"To us," she said and clinked hers against it.
We both finished our drinks and I took her glass from her, then took her hand in mine.
I pulled her against me and slid my arms around her, bending down to kiss her. In response, she slipped her arms around my neck and kissed me back.
That was all the encouragement I needed.
Chapter Thirteen
Ella
When I decided to move to Manhattan, I had dreams of meeting a gorgeous man – ambitious, funny, and good in bed. Someone who would sweep me off my feet and make me forget the heartache I left behind in New Hampshire.
Josh fulfilled the order perfectly. He was ambitious, gorgeous and in fact, at that moment, he was definitely sweeping me off my feet. He picked me up, his arms under my butt, and in response, I wrapped my legs around his hips and felt his erection pressed against me. It wasn't like me to just hop into bed with a man I just met. In fact, it wasn't like me to do any of the things I had done since breaking up with Jerkface. Moving to Manhattan by myself. Getting a new job. Going home with a gorgeous man.
Jerkface had been my one and only serious relationship.
It wasn't like me at all, but that was my goal – to become someone I hadn't been before, no longer a doormat who let the powerful men around me try to control my fate.
Josh kissed me as he carried me through the apartment to the bedroom, where he laid me down on the side of the bed. I kept my legs wrapped around his waist as he leaned over me, kissing me intensely. His kiss was passionate from the start, his tongue exploring my mouth while his hands explored my body.
Finally, he pulled away and removed my sweater.
"I need you naked," he said in a husky voice. "Now."
I stood up and reached behind my back, trying to unzip my dress. He helped, then I let it slide off my body to puddle at my feet.
He eagerly attacked my bra, and it opened much more easily, my breasts spilling out of the cups, my nipples budding in the cold air.
While he was busy licking a trail from my chin to my left breast, I heard a faint noise and glanced at the bedroom door where a blonde woman stood, her mouth open and an expression of pure hatred in her eyes.
"Oh, my God," I said and pushed on Josh's shoulder.
"What?" He looked in my eyes and I gestured with my chin to the door. He turned to check and his body tensed.
He helped me cover up and then stood up, facing the door.
"What the fuck are you doing here?"
"I didn't know you had anyone here..." the woman said.
Was it another employee who had decided to use the apartment?
"Christie, get the hell out of here."
He strode to the door, taking the woman by the arm and trying to push her out of the bedroom. Before she left, she stared at me where I lay on the bed, pulling the sheet more tightly against me.
Was it his ex?
I quickly dressed, pulling on my bra and hastily throwing on my dress, struggling to zip it back up before he returned. While I pulled on my sweater, I listened to the heated words being exchanged between them – words I couldn't make out clearly but which included weeping on the woman's part.
It had to be the ex-fiancée.
Whatever mood had existed after our encounter was now decidedly dead.
Josh came back into the bedroom and shook his head.
"I'm so sorry, Ella, but I have to take her home. She's drunk."
"Who is she, if you don't mind me asking?"
"My ex."
I sighed. "I thought so. She had a key to this place?"
"She used to work with me."
I nodded. "I'm sorry. This is awkward."
He came over and stood at the side of the bed, taking my chin in his hand.