I Need to Get Over You (Over You Series Book 1)

by K. D. Black

  “More like unavoidable and dreaded plans,” I correct her. “Thanks. Can you finish up here?”

  “Sure. Have fun. Or good luck. Whichever is more applicable.”

  I leave the cats to Sam, grab my bag, and head to the bathroom to change. Do I really dread seeing Hayden? Or rather, do I dread calling on Hayden in his own home?

  The question occupies my mind for the entire length of time it takes the AutoVS car to drive me from NYAR to the apartment building Hayden apparently lives in. Of course, the place turns out to be probably home to the most luxurious accomodations available in Manhattan. Facilities that make me feel like I’ll damage them just by existing near them, supercars that might explode if I so much as glance at them, people who dress better than I can afford to exist—oh yeah, this place is a little above my paygrade as an administrative assistant.

  At the desk, I have to state who I am and who I’m here to see so the man can unlock the elevator and let me up to the correct floor. I don’t touch any buttons inside the elevator, but I’m half convinced that if I try to change floors, alarms will sound and an entire SWAT team will be waiting for me at whichever floor I try to enter unauthorized.

  Dreading. Definitely dreading, I decide finally when I’m faced with the actuality of needing to knock on Hayden’s door.

  This is just another thing I need to do for NYAR, that’s all, and I’ll do whatever it takes to save the rescue. I’m standing outside Hayden’s penthouse. What could be a more perfect opportunity to press him for something the board can use against him? A wall of employment and propriety still stands between us, but the more relaxed Hayden that I saw today—well, that man might be one I can flirt with, instead of one hidden behind business taboos and frigidity.

  Taking a deep breath, I raise my hand, knuckles clenched into a fist.

  The door swings open before I can knock.

  Chapter Ten: Hayden

  “Well, come in,” I tell Brooke. “The desk called me,” I explain, rightly guessing the cause of her flustered confusion.

  “Oh.” Her eyebrows unknit and she steps through the door as I hold it open, then close it behind her. “I have the form,” she informs me, taking a folded paper out of her purse. “It’ll probably only take five minutes or so to fill out.”

  I take the pen she proffers. Only when our fingers lightly brush do I realize what’s going on here.

  Brooke is in my penthouse. My alluring, beautiful assistant is actually standing in my house, in the evening, by herself.

  I draw a line between business and personal life. After years of working to make AutoVS one of the top companies, I’ve discovered that’s just the best way to get things done.

  Every day at work, Brooke’s stylish stilettos threaten to tap her no-nonsense attitude, soft face with its mesmerizing, lash-fringed eyes and framing of chestnut hair, and tantalizingly curvy body over the edges of my carefully constructed line.

  Whatever this is, whatever I’m feeling? It doesn’t matter, because I have responsibilities and plenty of opportunists and enemies who would use knowledge of such a romance to tear me to pieces.

  Not to mention, Brooke’s father is actually a director on the board. I shouldn’t forget that tiny little detail.

  I need to fill this form out quickly and send Brooke on her way before I do something I regret.

  And there might be a little hitch to that. “Do I need to write down my information or my sister’s?” I ask, eyeing the address, residence type, email, phone number, date of birth, and employer lines. Some of this information I know, but I’ve never had occasion to email Ava and she has a weird job where she works for multiple employers.

  “NYAR needs the information of the person the animal will be living with,” she informs me. Her shoulder just brushes mine as she glances at the fields on the application. “I’m sure Ashley already went over everything here with Ava and everything was suitable, so this is just for our records.”

  “Let me give my sister a call.” I tap to the call history page, touch Ava’s name, and wait. It rings once, twice, then finally eight times.

  “Hi, sorry, couldn’t—” I cut off my sister’s cheery, recorded apology. “She never lets her phone out of her sight for more than a few minutes, so I’ll just fill out what I know while I wait for her to call back.”

  I write down her number from the call I just hung up, record her birthday and residence type from memory, and manage to track down a letter that Riley wrote for a class and mailed me. “That’s all I know,” I admit.

  Brooke doesn’t even hear me. “Did Riley draw this?” She gestures to a crayoned picture of a tiger that dropped out of the envelope.

  “Yeah.” The only way I manage to identify the animal as a tiger is by its black and orange stripes. “Ava bought her that tiger for her birthday.”

  “Riley’s really adorable.”

  Brooke’s lashes flutter low over her eyes, and all I can think of are highly inappropriate responses synonymous to “just like you”. Contrary to the boundless energy I see every day at work and also witnessed at the rescue event, Brooke now lounges idly with her elbows against the counter. Her attitude—her very posture, really—is so different when nothing requires her attention. It’s like another side of her has opened, one that still listens, but responds guiltlessly with what’s really on her mind.

  I’m wearing a simple pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, and Brooke is wearing jean shorts and a loose, flowy top. When I got home, my shower worked the gel out of my hair, and the soft skin of Brooke’s face shows tiny imperfections that she usually covers with makeup.

  Suddenly, I can’t control myself. I don’t even want to. All day, every day, I listen to so many people tell me what I can and can’t say. Maintenance workers, directors, reporters, other CEOs—to keep this job, I have to be multilingual in a sense because every single category of employee and every person who has anything to do with AutoVS speaks and must be spoken to in their own language. If I don’t make the effort and speak to them in a way society and business demands, I risk offending everyone around me.

  Right now, Brooke and I are just two people. For the first time, I don’t need to speak the language of a CEO to his assistant. I’m going to give a different language a try, and if there are consequences…. Well, I’ll deal with them as I’ve dealt with anything else that has stood in my way over the years. AutoVS happened because I went after something I wanted.

  I want Brooke, and I’m tired of fighting myself.

  “Do you want a drink while we wait for Ava to call back?” Brooke clearly expected me to ask such a question even less than I did. “She might not actually be home yet,” I explain, “but I’m sure she will be within a half-hour or so. I’ve made the trip to Syracuse before.”

  “Um—” For a brief second, I can read her answer on her face, but then her eyes widen slightly as if she just remembered something. “Sure. I’d like that,” she agrees to the idea.

  “What do you like? Name it and I probably have it.” I brush past her on my way to the bar, deliberately passing closer than I need to.

  “Uh… red wine would be nice?” Hesitancy and a question cloud her voice.

  “Are you sure?” I ask, kneeling to pick a bottle out of the holders.

  “I’m sure, I just don’t—well, I just don’t know what billionaires usually drink,” she admits.

  I laugh at that one. “Whatever everyone else drinks, just maybe a little more expensive. I don’t drink thousand dollar wine, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Okay.” Palpable relief laces her voice.

  I pour us each a glass, twisting the bottle gently at the end of the pour and wiping the rim of the bottle before returning it to the wine rack. Handing Brooke her glass, I lead the way into the living room, but hesitate with my glass lowered halfway to the table. “Would you like to sit outside? The view is decent and since the sun’s gone down, it won’t be too hot.”

  “Sure, that would be great
,” Brooke agrees enthusiastically, abandoning her pretense of interest in the room while not-so-covertly trying to decide whether to sit on the sofa beside me or the armchairs a fair distance from the glass table. I motion her to the balcony door, discreetly turning off my phone and shoving it into a pocket as I follow.

  The sun has just completed its descent below the horizon, leaving nothing but a smattering of reddish clouds and a soft blanket of gray half-light soon to fade to the blackness of night. But here, in the heart of Manhattan, the light never really vanishes. The man-made brilliance of the city holds the darkness at bay.

  “Wow,” Brooke breathes, passing the elegant glass table and comfortable chairs and opting instead to lean her elbows against the solid rails of the balcony. “You said a decent view.”

  I shrug, hiding how absurdly pleased her happiness makes me with the gesture. “I guess I’m just used to it.”

  “I can see everything from here.” Wonder colors her voice. “Sometimes I forget how beautiful the city is, you know?”

  “It’s New York,” I say, taking a sip of wine. “There are millions of people down there. It’s hard not to lose yourself.”

  “That’s why you have people like Ava and Riley.” Brooke turns and joins me at the table. “They keep you who you are.”

  “Maybe. Ava and I were never on good terms until I moved out.” I twist the wine glass after I take another sip.

  “She seems really nice. Why not?”

  “She always wanted everything done her way and our parents were really busy, so it was like we spent all our time fighting each other for their attention. Or just plain fighting each other.” I trace a patch of fabric on my ribs. “She shoved me into a table once and gave me a pretty nasty cut.”

  “I’m an only child.” A reflective silence accompanies the statement. “I always wanted a sister, but maybe if I had one I’d wish I didn’t.”

  Since I can’t answer that question, I just shrug. “Plenty of siblings coexist just fine.”

  “We probably wouldn’t have had a chance to coexist.” Brooke’s voice is just a quiet murmur.

  “Why not?”

  “What? Oh.” Even in the dim light, I can see the rosy hue that tints Brooke’s cheeks. “My parents divorced when I was 12. Mom probably would have taken one sister and Dad would have kept the other. He wouldn’t have had time for two daughters with all his important business stuff anyway.”

  I had occasionally wondered about Darren. I knew he had a daughter years before I met Brooke, but he never spoke of her or even had so much as a picture of her for his phone background. Now I understand why he never seemed to be much of a family man. He’s one of those people who don’t know how to leave work behind when they leave the workplace. They’re a more common breed that people realize.

  “Doesn’t matter, though,” Brooke says brightly, dispelling the awkwardness of me having no clue what to say. “I don’t have a sister. Just me and my dad.”

  “And that guy at the event today, right?” I ask, casually taking another sip of wine.

  Brooke cocks her head at me. “Oh, Thomas? He’s not my boyfriend. He just wishes he was.”

  Well, that was a little more obvious than I hoped. Still, something has changed between us, sitting here on the darkening balcony. A hesitancy and a bit of caution lurks behind Brooke’s eyes, and when I look away from the city and back to her, I catch her staring.

  I want to do something, but I’m not sure what to do or how to do it. Hesitancy is out of character for me, but this is an extraordinary situation—I’m breaking so many self-enforced rules just for this conversation. The beautiful woman across from me leans forward against the table, her body shifting closer to mine.

  It would be so easy to reach out and grab her hand and pull her into a kiss. I would finally get to brush my fingers through her wavy locks, touch her soft skin, feel her slightly-parted, pale-pink lips against my own.

  My fingers twitch to reach for her, but luckily we’re both almost out of wine. “I’ll get us more wine.” Anticipating Brooke’s move to verbally stop me, I grab both glasses while standing up and make it to the door before she can speak.

  Inside, I rinse the glasses, repeat the process of pouring, then take a moment to lean against a section of counter out of sight from the balcony and gather my thoughts.

  Why am I trying so hard to stop myself from getting what I want? The mental war was supposed to be over, the hesitant side of my mind beaten into submission by desire for everything about Brooke.

  I did win that war, but now something else worries me. Something else scares me. I didn’t know anything could scare me like this, but the idea of driving Brooke away…. Somehow, the idea of walking into the office tomorrow and not finding Brooke there is completely unthinkable.

  My conflicted mind manages to consume a third of my glass before I return to Brooke. “Here,” I say, setting hers down on the table. If she so much as touches my fingers with hers right now, I won't be able to hold back.

  “Thank you.” She takes a long sip. “I was wondering a couple things, but I wasn’t sure when to ask them, so….”

  The cavity of my chest can't contain the sudden cataclysmic thumping of my heart. “Yes?”

  “Can I ask a couple questions about AutoVS?” When she notices my stillness, she adds quickly, “I’m a Business Administration major, so I was just curious about some of the company’s policies and business strategies.”

  What did I think she’d ask me about? My relationship status? My policy on dating my employees? If I wanted to fuck her? “Sure.” The word comes out short and abrupt, but at least I manage to speak it.

  She starts asking questions, and I try to answer them cordially. By the fifth or sixth question, my chest starts to fill with a sort of frustrated heaviness and my replies get shorter and shorter.

  Brooke notices the change this new topic brings to the conversation, asks one more question, then glances at my silent phone on the table. “I guess your sister probably isn't going to get back to you tonight. Could you bring the completed form to work tomorrow?”

  Don’t let her leave. My mind freezes, stuck on that single command but unable to think of how to execute it.

  “I really need to be leaving.” When I don’t reply, Brooke stands up.

  Then, suddenly, everything is clear as the starry sky far above. I want Brooke. That’s all there is to this.

  I stand and reach for Brooke’s hand so fast that she just goes limp with surprise when I pull her into my chest. “Stay,” I whisper hoarsely into her ear, then I abandon all caution and do what I’ve wanted to do since a beautiful, clever, business woman walked into my office for an interview.

  I kiss Brooke.

  For a brief moment, it’s like kissing a mannequin. Then, her shocked inactivity vanishes utterly and she presses into me, meeting my ravishing lips with completely unexpected passion that stirs something within me—and more than stirs a particular physical part of me.

  Through my lips, I feel the exact second Brooke goes stiff against me as realization sets in. She puts her hands against my chest and tries to push me away, breaking the kiss and staring up at me with wide eyes. “Mr. Nicholson—”

  “Hayden,” I growl, the sound of my own last name suddenly enough to make me feel physically sick. “Don’t call me that.”

  The soft mounds of her breasts press against my chest as she stops struggling. “What are you doing?” she asks, her voice so even and calm it’s almost frightening.

  “Something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.” Maybe it’s the darkness, or maybe it’s the jackhammer in my chest, but I can’t analyze her expression.

  Chestnut hair brushes my collarbone, chocolate eyes stare up at me, and Brooke’s lips move almost imperceptibly as she whispers, “Is that all you wanted to do?”

  Suddenly, my loose, comfortable sweatpants feel neither loose nor comfortable. “No.” Need and desire deepen my voice, and my breath stirs her hair.


  “Then—” She wraps her arms around my neck, forcing my head down. “—show me what you else you want to do, Hayden.”

  My name sounds so fucking good coming from Brooke’s lips. I manage to contain myself just long enough to sweep her into my arms, give her a few, somewhat chaste kisses as I carry her to my bedroom, and lay her on the king-sized bed.

  Any gentlemanly behavior I possessed vanishes at the sight of Brooke lying on my bed, flushed and needy with a sliver of smooth skin visible below the rumpled hem of her T-shirt. Before I even realize it, I’m on top of her, pinning her down and crashing my lips into hers.

  She gasps as my hands abandon hers and slip under her shirt. Seizing my chance, I dart my tongue between her lips, silencing the sound. I’m surprised when she’s not surprised and immediately reciprocates, locking our mouths together further as we undulate against each other.

  Brooke’s nails scrape my chest as she works my shirt upward. I break the kiss just long enough for her to pull it over my head and toss it aside. Instead of finding her mouth, my lips feel the wild beating of her heart through the pulse in her neck. I suck on one spot of tender skin just long enough to make her jolt beneath me, then trail light and soft kisses down her neck.

  My jaw brushes her shirt and I sit up, pulling Brooke with me. We have the same idea and my hands guide hers as we pull her shirt off together. My hands gently lower her back to the bed, working at the clasps on the back of her lacy black bra while I kiss up and down between her breasts.

  The last obstruction of clothing comes off, slipping down to reveal Brooke’s alert rosy nipples. My head turns slightly to glance around Brooke’s side when her bra catches on something, but her fingers, already wrapped in my hair, tighten around their black handholds and pull me into her chest.

  Getting the point, I ignore the bra and take the closest hard little nub into my mouth. “Y-yes,” Brooke murmurs, and I can feel the gentle vibration of her chest and sudden intake of breath through the hand I left resting on her other breast. Five sharp edges of nails press into the back of my neck, and somehow it thrills me half wild to know that those nails will punish me if I try to pull away from her.