Man in Charge, Book 1

by Laurelin Paige

  Really, though, was there a reason to deny it? I was more curious where he was taking this conversation, so I merely said, “And?”

  “And that, combined with your comment on my appearance, gave me a different impression of where this interaction might be going.” He prowled toward me. Literally. Prowled.

  It was ridiculous how sexy a man could look just taking a handful of steps.

  Even more ridiculous was how affected I was by it.

  And, oh my God, it had taken me a beat, but had he really just said that?

  “Please,” I said, groaning in irritation that was meant for me as much as it was for him. “Because I accidentally walked in on your little sexcapade, you think that means I must want a sexcapade of my own?”

  “No, of course not.” That nonchalant shrug again. “It’s the fact that you watched.”

  Another rush of blood to my cheeks. His back had been to me the entire time. Eden hadn’t even seen me, and she’d been the one facing me. Was I wrong? Was there something reflective I’d missed on that brick wall? I swiveled to study where he’d been standing. I looked back to where I’d been standing.

  Nope. No way. He hadn’t seen me. I turned back to him with a gloating smile. “You couldn’t know that.”

  Then it was his turn to gloat, because of course I’d just given away that I had indeed watched.

  “I was determining consent,” I said on impulse.

  “Looking out for your fellow woman.”

  “Exactly.” I felt noble about the lie. As though I’d really been a hero instead of a peeping Tom, only concerned with whether or not Eden was being raped.

  His smirk called bullshit, but he played along. “I hope you came to the conclusion that there was, in fact, consent.”

  “On her part anyway.” I might have thought it was a dig when I first said it, but after the fact, even I knew it sounded like I was flirting.

  Fuck. Maybe I was.

  His expression seemed equally unsure. “I wasn’t forced into anything. But yes, you’re right. She didn’t have my full attention. You, on the other hand, do.” Unsure or not, he was awfully brave.

  I had a thing for stupid-hot, brave players.

  And fooling around with one was definitely not on the night’s agenda. I had to step away. “Okay, that’s fine,” I said, my head all jumbled and dazed. “Yep. I’m just— thanks, but no thanks. I just came up here to make a call, and yeah. I’m going to go do that now.” I had the sense to leave then. Even more sense to call over my shoulder, “Please don’t follow me.”

  All right, maybe it wasn’t sense that had me taking that last peek in his direction. I wanted to know if he was watching me walk away.

  Call me an idiot because I was pleased to find he was.

  Two

  Teyana answered on the first ring. “Tell me everything.”

  My head was still caught back in the silos with the irritating and irritatingly hot stranger. I probably should have waited for my temperature to cool before making my call, but I’d been eager to get on the phone so I’d look like I was doing something if he did happen to follow after me.

  But he hadn’t followed, and now I was stuck having to try to word.

  I let out a sigh-groan. “Everything would be better if you were here,” I said, which was the truth, but not something I would have said with such whine if I’d had my senses about me. Immediately, I tried to smooth it over. “I mean, I know it wouldn’t be better for you, but it would be better for me, and I’m not trying to make you feel bad, I just like being with my friend.”

  Ugh, I was shitty. Worrying about my feelings and how sucky it was to have to be without her instead of focusing on the fact that she was actually physically suffering. I usually had a better grasp on the ways to be a good friend to someone with a chronic debilitating condition, but every now and then I failed big time.

  “I’m sorry,” I added, wishing I’d said that first.

  “Hey, don’t do that.” As she was often wont to do, Tey slipped into the role of comforter. “I am well aware that my flare-ups are not just inconvenient for me.”

  “But that’s the thing—they are only inconvenient for me. For you, they’re so much more.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “They’re craptastic. I really do wish I was there with you instead.”

  That had been the original plan, for both of us to come together. Actually, when I’d seen the invite in my boss’s mail, my plan had been to toss it in the trash and think no more about it, but Tey had grabbed it from my hands, her eyes bright with an idea.

  “The invitation is for Kendra,” I’d pointed out.

  “They aren’t going to ID people at the door. It says to bring the card for entry. This is all we need to get in.”

  “I wouldn’t have anything to wear.”

  “You’re house-sitting for a woman who has the largest selection of clothes outside Fifth Avenue. I bet some of her gowns still have the tags on them.”

  I’d considered it then. Kendra had loaned me and Teyana clothes a million times before, ever since the three of us met and became friends when we were pursuing our master’s at Georgetown. Though we weren’t quite as close as we’d been then—becoming her employee after graduation had changed the dynamics of our relationship—she would likely still have let me borrow something if she’d been in town.

  Of course, if she’d been in town, I wouldn’t have been perusing her mail and wouldn’t have known about the party in the first place.

  Tey must have realized my acquiescence was flickering. “Come on, Tess. When in our lives are we going to get to go to a party hosted by the Sebastians?”

  The Sebastians were American royalty. With their money divested in everything from steel and oil to media and tech, they practically owned the city. Their name was on as many buildings as the Rockefellers, including the Sebastian Center, the headquarters for most of their businesses in New York.

  A party hosted by the fabulously rich was definitely tempting.

  “Kendra wouldn’t take us if she was here,” Tey pressed on. “This is once in a lifetime!”

  And because she’d been right about that, and because I’d been feeling more than a little bitter toward Kendra as of late, I said yes.

  But then Teyana had a flare-up that had sent her to bed in the fetal position. I’d only agreed to still come so she could live vicariously through me. I’d been friends with her long enough to learn that sometimes the only thing I could do for her illness was live my own life to its fullest. In a lot of ways, Teyana being sick had pushed me further than I would have gone on my own.

  That fact only made me feel guiltier.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked now.

  “Dizzy, and it feels like someone is repeatedly stabbing a long serrated knife between my ribs, but mostly I’m bored. Please unbore me and tell me about the party.”

  “Well.” Honestly, I’d barely been at the party at all. I’d strolled from one side of the rooftop to the other, snagged a few exotic appetizers from trays as they passed by, and then snuck up the roped-off staircase to try to call her.

  But that rendition of my evening wasn’t going to un-bore her, so I tried to fluff it up. “Everyone’s dressed up, of course. Everything designer. I actually feel dressed down, and I’m wearing Dolce and Gabbana.”

  “I saw the pic you sent. You fit in, trust me.”

  I looked down at the pink skirt of tulle. “I look like a ballerina.”

  “You look prima and hot as fuck. End of subject. What else?”

  “The music is club style. I thought it was going to be all classics and Frank Sinatra, but they have a mean beat going. I saw a couple of gray-hairs cutting it up on the dance floor, and I was actually impressed.”

  “I’m snoring here, Tess. Were you cutting it up on the dance floor with them? That’s what I want to hear.”

  Of course I hadn’t been dancing. That was Teyana’s scene. I could have fun too, but I was more often the girl
with her hand raised at the front of the classroom. It was why we worked so well as friends, and why I liked parties better with her at my side. It really wasn’t fair that she was the one of us who was sick when she was so outgoing, and I was so not.

  I wasn’t going to go down the guilt-trip road again, though. What else could I tell her? The sex scene I’d witnessed, but I wasn’t going to give her the good stuff first thing. “I didn’t dance, but I ate! The food’s really good, too. And weird. I couldn’t name half of what I’ve put in my mouth.”

  “I’d appreciate that last sentence more if you weren’t talking about food,” she teased.

  Okay, maybe it was time to bring out the filth. “Oh, I did watch a woman get finger-banged by a hot player in a fitted tux.”

  I could practically hear Teyana sit up with excitement. “Hallelujah, that’s what I’m talking about. Please, please, please tell me there’s more to this story. I need every single detail.”

  I laughed. “There isn’t a lot to tell, unfortunately. I was looking for a quiet place to call you and came across them. Then, when I probably should have left them to it, I stayed for some reason.”

  “So you could tell me, obviously.”

  “Obviously. But when she was done, he dismissed her like she was nothing. And then—get this, Tey. Then, he had the nerve to hit on me.” I was still blown away by his gall. And a bit flattered, which was fucked up because he probably hit on women all the time. Probably, he’d already forgotten me.

  “So you’re meeting up with him after you hang up with me, right?”

  “Uh, hardly.”

  She made an exasperated sound that was so heavy I felt it halfway across the city.

  I couldn’t believe her. “You want me to go hook up with some sleazy rando who got it on with another woman already tonight?”

  “It doesn’t have to be him,” she said. “But someone. For God’s sake, you haven’t been with anyone since Alejandro—”

  I cut her off. “Not true. There was that guy at the Halloween party last year. Bob. Or Bobby. Whatever his name was.”

  “Which was almost a year ago, please, baby. You need to get laid. For me. Do it. Go find a mega-rich asswipe, and don’t call me again until you’re the one who’s getting finger-banged.”

  It wasn’t that easy for me. I knew sex was just sex, but I was a feely type of girl, which made for lots of tears considering the guys I seemed to fall for. It would be better if I was more like Tey. She could jump into bed with a guy she just met and never think about him again, no problem. In order to protect myself, I’d learned to hold out for the more romantic approach which meant at least three dates, and he damn well better call me after.

  On the other hand, I’d had a couple of one-nighters that had ended just fine. When I’d gone in knowing what it was going to be, like with Bobby, I was able to walk away with no expectations and my heart intact. And it had been fun, too.

  So maybe Tey was right. Six straight months of Match.com had led to nothing but a string of dates I’d rather leave forgotten. I had such a bad taste, romance wasn’t even on my radar at the moment. Letting loose for one night might be a good way to reset.

  With promises to do just that, I hung up. One thing was certain—if I was going to have the kind of fun Teyana hoped I’d have, I was going to need to hit the bar.

  An hour and a half later, I was feeling the effects of three Mai Tais and the two shots that had preceded them. Conversation had definitely gotten easier. Though I’d sat myself at the main bar, I’d had several engaging interactions.

  Currently, I was hitting on a hottie with green eyes and a wicked dimple. Or he was hitting on me. Whichever, it was promising.

  “There she is again,” Green Eyes said, ducking his head. “I swear she’s not going to stop until she finds me.”

  I casually looked in the direction he’d nodded toward. He’d told me he was hiding from a woman when he’d first sat down next to me, but I hadn’t quite decided if that was the truth or a line. I scanned for a woman who appeared to be looking for someone. “The blonde?”

  He peeked up. “The woman next to her.”

  “Oh. The one old enough to be your grandma.” I frowned. “Is she trying to get into your pants?” Green Eyes looked to be about my age, which was closer to thirty than I would have liked, even though it was still three years away.

  “No, no, no.” He paused as if imagining it. “God, no. Not anything against Adrienne Thorne, just…”

  “It is rather a large age difference.”

  “More than thirty years, I think.”

  I laughed. “So if she’s not after your manhood, why are you hiding?”

  “It’s stupid, really,” he said with a blush. It was adorable how he could be so male and also vulnerable. He might not have the same effect on me that the asshole playboy had earlier, but if Green Eyes invited me home, I wouldn’t be mad about it.

  He wouldn’t have to know I was thinking about someone else.

  “I know stupid,” I assured him. “Your stupidity is welcome here.”

  He smiled, letting his dimple fully shine. “I appreciate that, thank you. Adrienne is after me because she heard my company’s looking to back a nonprofit. PR and philanthropy and all that. We’ve put it in our budget but haven’t yet found the organization we want to sponsor. Anyway, she believes her charity would be the quote unquote perfect fit. It’s not. I’d prefer to let her down in an office setting rather than ruin her evening.”

  My ears perked as though I were Pavlov’s dog and a bell had rung. “Now would probably be a bad time to tell you that I match businesses with nonprofit sponsorships.”

  Well, I didn’t. Kendra did. She built the company herself—her idea, her vision, her family’s money as the seed. Me, I was more or less a glorified assistant. Not what I’d set out to achieve when I’d accepted my scholarship to Georgetown, but it was a good paycheck, I didn’t have to move back home, and in this day and age, wasn’t that all a person could hope for?

  Point was, I was involved enough in the ins and outs of the business that I knew how to sell it, and even though I’d been turned down by Kendra on several occasions when I’d asked to let me do just that, I was confident that I could do the job.

  The dimple disappeared from Green Eyes’ face.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, realizing my faux pas. “Here you are trying to enjoy your night, and I’m turning it into business.”

  “That’s not what I was thinking at all. I’m actually interested. Like I said, we’re after a sponsorship. In fact, we’re behind our deadline at selecting one. I just thought maybe it was too presumptuous of me to try to pursue that at a party.”

  Oh, I liked this guy. Willing to turn pleasure into business at the drop of a good opportunity—that was my kind of man.

  On the other hand—I looked down at my empty glass—I had consumed quite a bit of alcohol. And Teyana would kill me if I walked out of this with a deal rather than a fuck.

  Besides, I couldn’t do shit without Kendra. Not only was she out of town for who knew how long “finding herself,” but there was also no way I was admitting to her that I’d stolen her invite.

  “Tell you what,” Green Eyes said, apparently sensing my hesitation. “I don’t have a business card on me. Give me your phone.”

  Without questioning him, I unlocked my cell and handed it to him.

  He tapped away on my device. “I’m adding Julie Sanchez to your contacts. That’s my assistant. Call her next week and schedule an appointment. What was the name of your organization? I’ll give her a heads-up.”

  It wasn’t enough time for me to think up a lie, so I told the truth. “Conscience Connect.” Maybe I could pass the info on to Kendra without telling her how I got it. It was part of my job to find leads for her after all.

  “Fantastic. I look forward to discussing more.” He gave me back my phone, his eyes focused somewhere behind me. “Meanwhile, I’ve been spotted. I have to get out of here. Ho
pefully we’ll see each other again later.”

  His last words were full of all the heat I’d been looking for earlier in the conversation. Too bad there wouldn’t be a later. Now that I’d given him Conscience Connect, a hookup was out of the question. It would be too easy for him to figure out who I was—or rather who I wasn’t—and friend or not, I wasn’t about to risk my position with Kendra.

  But maybe if I hooked up her company with his...

  “Wait,” I said, realizing I’d neglected to get some crucial information. I skimmed the crowd. “I don’t even know your name.” I was talking to myself, though, because he’d disappeared.

  “I’m pretty sure you can just refer to him as Mr. Sebastian when you call his secretary,” the bartender said. “Can I get you a refill?”

  I ignored the question and the fact that he’d been eavesdropping because I was currently freaking out. “He was a Sebastian?” My face felt hot, and it had nothing to do with the alcohol I’d been drinking. I’d been talking to a celebrity. A Sebastian in the flesh. Thank goodness I hadn’t known before. I would have definitely said something stupid.

  It was possible I’d said something stupid anyway. I scanned back through our conversation, looking for anything cringeworthy. Everything I could recall was pretty banal.

  This definitely meant I couldn’t pass the info on to Kendra, though. I’d already tried to suggest approaching the Sebastians on several occasions, and she’d instantly nixed it every time. Something about their family being too close to hers, wasn’t appropriate, blah blah blah. I wasn’t a rich girl. I didn’t understand all the rules of society.

  Too bad because Mr. Sebastian and I had had a connection. I was pretty sure I could have sold him. What a deal that would have been.

  “Oh my God, he was a Sebastian,” I repeated to myself.

  “There are several of them around here,” a voice said at my side. An annoyingly delicious and familiar voice. “Dime a dozen.”

  I turned to find myself face-to-face with the stupid-hot player, and damn if he wasn’t even hotter close up. “You,” I said, a bit scornfully because I was feeling contemptuous about the way he lit every nerve in my body on fire.