Coldhearted Boss

by Grey, R. S.

  He kisses my mouth and cheek and hair while we catch our breath, but we’re only there for a moment before he scoops me up off the ground and carries me into the dark lake behind us.

  The cold water soothes my overly heated skin and he keeps me against him, carried like a child in his arms. My arms wrap around his neck and I bury my head in the groove just below his chin. His palm drags down my chest, rinsing me off, and I feel like I’m dreaming, barely able to keep my eyes open after a long day and longer night. None of this feels quite real, which is probably why I feel compelled to pour out my soul, letting him hear the truth I’ve been so careful to hide.

  “I once pushed my classmate Becky off the swings in the third grade because she told me my French braids looked stupid,” I say, my lips pressing against his skin with every syllable.

  He stills, obviously confused by my abrupt revelation.

  “I drank before I was twenty-one,” I continue, quickening my pace in the hopes he’ll let me finish. “I cheated on a geography test and never got caught. I used to wish I’d been born into a different family—a wealthy family—so I’d never have to live in a trailer park ever again.

  “One time, in the bathroom of a bar, I stole a man’s wallet. I was at the lowest point of my life. My mom relied on me to help bring in money for the family and I couldn’t ever seem to earn enough for us to make ends meet. The car needed repairs and my sister needed her prescription and we had bills and…well, I felt like I had no other choice. So, I took his wallet, but I didn’t take his money. I chickened out and gave it back to the bartender so that when the man came back looking for it, he’d just assume he’d accidentally dropped it.”

  “Taylor—”

  I shake my head against his chest. “I swear I didn’t take your money. I just confessed to you the bad things I’ve done in my life and I’m sure if you gave me time, I’d think of a dozen more. Like—oh! I just remembered I smeared the frosting on McKenna’s birthday cake when she was five because I was so jealous of the Barbie my mom gave her.”

  He laughs and then his hand comes up to cup my cheek. Our eyes meet and there’s such tender affection in his gaze, it gives me hope.

  “I’m not perfect, Ethan, but I’m not a bad person either. The truth is, I thought you were the most handsome man I’d ever seen before I thought of my harebrained idea. I wanted you, and not as some potential target. You have to know that. I don’t blame you if you never forgive me or if you never fully trust me, but at least now you’ve heard my side.”

  “I forgive you,” he says, his brows furrowed angrily. “Taylor, of course I forgive you.”

  “And you don’t think I took your money, right? You believe me about that as well?” I ask, knowing this is my chance to clear this up.

  “The money was gone when I got my wallet back.”

  I go rigid in his arms. “I didn’t take it! I swear to—”

  He silences me with a kiss.

  “I believe you. It was probably the bartender.”

  “Of course!” I say, slapping his chest with the realization.

  That jerk!

  “Take me back to shore and give me your keys. I have a bone to pick with that guy.”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” he says, wading back. “We’re going to sleep.”

  My eyes go wide. “Together?”

  “Together,” he confirms, carrying me up and out of the lake. “I have Isla’s tent. There’s even an air mattress.”

  “Sounds like the Four Seasons. What the hell are we waiting for?”

  Chapter 27

  Ethan

  Taylor and I race back to that tent with the blanket wrapped around us and her t-shirt and underwear clutched to her chest. We could have gotten dressed back at the lake, but I wouldn’t let us. I want her again, and as soon as that zipper hits the ground, I toss her back onto the air mattress and climb on top of her.

  She laughs and then immediately covers her mouth, realizing we’re surrounded by my friends on all sides.

  “Be as quiet as you can,” I taunt, yanking her t-shirt away and throwing it behind us. Her full breasts beg to be licked, so I lean down and take one in my mouth, stifling a groan.

  Her hands wrap around my neck and this time, in the tent, it’s rough and fast and I come in my swim trunks because I still don’t have a condom, but that doesn’t stop us. We sneak off to the bathroom to clean up as best we can, but we weren’t fooling anyone. Our whispered laughter is not whispered at all.

  “Will you two keep it down?! We’re trying to sleep!” Jace shouts sometime near dawn.

  It’s no surprise that Taylor tries to slink out of the tent as soon as the sun starts to rise.

  I catch her arm, my eyes still closed. “Where are you going?”

  “To the cabin, so I can pretend I was there all night.”

  “No.”

  “But I should be there before Isla wakes up, that way—”

  “No,” I say, dragging her back against me and snaking my hand up under her t-shirt. Fuck. She feels good. Her curves are ridiculous. Unending. Heavy in my palm. I’m hard again and it’s getting a little embarrassing at this point. I had more control as a horny fourteen-year-old than I do now around a bra-less Taylor.

  “Ethan,” she groans, but it’s halfhearted and tinged with lust.

  She’s putty in my hands, and it’s not shocking that we’re the last ones to breakfast in the mess hall.

  When we walk in after showering back at the cabin, everyone stares at us expectantly.

  “Where have y’all been!? We all went out on a hike this morning,” Isla says, frowning.

  “Oh, uh…” Taylor’s voice dwindles as she realizes she has no good excuse.

  “And Taylor,” Isla continues, sounding eerily similar to our mother, “I woke up in the middle of the night and you weren’t in the cabin—where’d you sleep?”

  “With me,” I reply, knowing it’ll be easiest if we just get it all out in the open.

  Taylor’s cheeks are bright red as she nudges her elbow into my side. Then she rushes to add, “It’s just that Ethan was scared of sleeping alone in his tent, so he wanted me to stay with him. Something about monsters.”

  I shoot her a narrowed glare.

  “Don’t let Isla fool you—that was just a ploy to get you both to confess. She wasn’t in the cabin last night either,” Camille reveals with a proud smirk.

  Isla throws a half-peeled orange at her, but Camille ducks out of the way just in time.

  Tanner’s face is bright red as he glances down at his bowl of cereal. “Oh…uhh…”

  “Tanner was scared of monsters too,” Isla mutters, and now it seems everyone’s private business is out on the table.

  Brody and Jace find it all hilarious, and I’m pretty happy myself.

  “Want some eggs?” I ask, directing Taylor to the seat beside Isla.

  “Oh, um, yes please. And some toast if you can manage!”

  “You know what? I bet I can,” I say mockingly before I head for the kitchen.

  Just before I turn, I see Isla and Taylor smile at one another. Apparently, the tension from the beginning of the weekend is long gone now.

  * * *

  Sunday passes in a blink. We’re at the lake again, swimming and grilling just like yesterday, but this time Taylor is by my side, delivering lazy smiles, teasing me with her seductive beauty. I keep my hands on her whenever I can. We read beside each other and when she rolls over onto her back, I dip down and give in to the urge to give her a slow, unending, drugging kiss right up until someone shouts at us to stop. That red bathing suit is going to send me to an early grave, and all day I envision what it will look like when I finally peel it off her. That night, in the tent, I take my sweet time, savoring every moment before I lose myself inside her sensuous body. I keep expecting my desire for her to diminish, but it only grows hotter, more demanding.

  Monday morning, the tents are broken down, bags are packed, and the grill and coolers
are loaded back into cars.

  The crew is due back today and because we slept in so late and took our time with lunch, we don’t have much longer before they start to arrive.

  I can tell Taylor is nervous. At breakfast, she played with her food more than she ate it, and when I tried to pull her aside to talk after everyone left, she begged off, claiming she had work to do before the crew returned to camp.

  That work is apparently washing the linens from our cabin and remaking our beds.

  I find her in there in the late afternoon, sitting on my bunk, her gaze intently focused on the floor at her feet.

  “Taylor?”

  She looks up and smiles wistfully. The expression doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Waiting for you, actually.” She pushes off the bed. “Would it be okay if I used your phone? I haven’t talked to my family all weekend.”

  I hand it off and she goes outside to sit on the porch. I try not to listen, but her voice carries easily. The topics don’t sit well with me—car repair payment and overdue bills—especially considering what she revealed to me last night in the lake.

  Then her mom must ask how things are going here.

  “It’s good…fine. I really enjoy the work, actually.” There’s another pause, and then she continues, “I’m not sure. Hopefully a few months. I’m not exactly an essential part of the crew or anything.”

  My gut clenches, and I make myself busy so I don’t look so fucking guilty when she walks in a few minutes later.

  “Thanks,” she says, walking over to pass me my phone.

  Our fingers brush, her eyes sweep up to mine, and there are two conflicting emotions warring there: desire and reservation.

  “I heard your conversation.”

  She shrugs and looks away, brows furrowed. “I should have walked farther down the path, I guess.”

  “How much money do you need to get your mom’s car out of the shop?” I ask, apparently wanting to cut right to the chase.

  Color blooms across her neck. “No, Ethan.” She steps back. “No. We aren’t doing this, okay? You and I are—”

  “What? What are we? I’ve tried to talk to you about it all day and you’ve blown me off.”

  “We’re having sex.”

  “Obviously.”

  “And we care for each other.”

  She’s doing a good job talking in circles, but I like to be a little more direct.

  “We’re in a relationship,” I say definitively.

  Her eyes widen.

  “What? Do you expect me to say I’m fine with no strings? I’m not that guy, and I’d rather you not pretend that’s what you want.”

  Her smile is squashed down as best as possible.

  She wants to be in a relationship with me, even if she’s not quite ready to admit it.

  She turns away and shakes her head. “It’s a terrible idea. I need this job, and I need the guys on the crew to respect me. I don’t want them talking about us like that.”

  “I’ll fire anyone who so much as whispers about us.”

  She glances back with a smirk before rolling her eyes. “Very heroic of you, but it’s human nature to be curious. They’ll all talk and soon you’ll have no crew left at all.”

  I shrug. “So I’ll build the resort myself.”

  Her laugh is tinged with annoyance. “Can’t you be serious? This isn’t a joke to me.”

  I walk toward her, grip her hips, and turn her around so I can bring her right up against me. We’re a perfect fit.

  “Tell me what you need then.”

  “No favors.”

  “Define a favor,” I say, tone laced with desire.

  She groans. “Ethan.”

  “Fine. No favors.”

  “That means I get paid the same amount, on the same day as everyone else. No more talk about money. After everything we’ve been through, I don’t want that to be a part of our relationship.”

  Her attention is on my chest as if she doesn’t quite have the courage to meet my eyes. She obviously still feels guilty about the incident in the bar.

  “Fair enough. Next.”

  “I don’t want the crew to know we’re dating.”

  I drag in a deep breath, trying to cool my urge to argue with her. That’s going to be a problem, but for now, I’m willing to concede that point if she thinks it’s for the best.

  “Fine. Anything else?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, her attention sliding up to my mouth. “I could probably come up with another fifty things but I’d really like to kiss you right now, and would you please stop doing that?”

  She’s talking about how my hands are working up the bottom of her shirt so I can slide my palms up around her waist.

  “I listened to your demands,” I taunt, leaning down so my lips barely hover over hers. “Now I think you should listen to mine.”

  * * *

  “So you probably saw what happened last week when I asked Taylor out to dinner.”

  I’m at my desk, trying to catch up on work. I have a million emails to read and respond to and I’m supposed to have a conference call with my partners in fifteen minutes.

  “Hudson, I have work to do.”

  “I know, I was just wondering, since you talked to Taylor right after I left…do you think she’s interested in me but just doesn’t want to make things complicated at work?”

  Jesus Christ. If Taylor didn’t want to make things complicated at work, she’d let me tell everyone she’s off the market.

  “You know what? I think you’re better off just focusing on the project. How’s that?”

  He groans and turns back to his computer, temporarily silenced.

  A few minutes later, Taylor comes in with my coffee and aims a warm smile at Hudson. “Hey Hudson! Did you have a good weekend?”

  His eyes widen as he takes her in. She’s wearing jeans and her work boots. Her t-shirt shouldn’t be all that sexy, but it is. She has her hair pulled up in a wavy ponytail, making her feminine features shine. The guy has L-O-V-E written across his forehead in fat Sharpie.

  “It was good. Yeah. Okay…well, honestly not all that exciting. Did you have a good weekend?”

  A sweet little blush creeps up as her gaze sweeps over to me. “Yeah, it was really great.”

  I arch a brow and accept my coffee, more than happy to listen to her describe her weekend to Hudson.

  “Why don’t you tell him your favorite part?” I goad.

  Sure, I have shit to do, but this beats the hell out of checking emails.

  “Oh, well, I really liked swimming,” she says with a shy smile.

  “Swimming?”

  “Yes, swimming at night,” she continues, eyes on me.

  “That’s dangerous,” Hudson says with a frown.

  “I was careful,” she teases.

  “Probably not careful enough,” I respond.

  Jesus, my voice is husky, and I’m seconds away from sweeping everything off my desk and dragging her down onto it.

  Hudson is completely oblivious. “Ethan’s right. I hope you don’t do that often. Truly, it’s much safer to swim during the day.”

  After assuring Hudson she’ll be much more careful in the future, she turns to leave without any more private smiles in my direction. I’m left…wanting.

  It gets worse at lunch, when I walk into the mess hall with Robert and find her sitting at a table with some of the crew. Her little puppy Max is in the seat beside her.

  I remember what Hudson said about them—that they used to date way back when—and it has me tempted to make a fool of myself. I’ve never been a jealous monster, but then I’ve also never had to keep a secret like this. The fact is when the crew left on Friday, Taylor was fair game. Now, she’s not, and I’d prefer they all know that.

  I feel her gaze on me as I walk across the cafeteria, but I keep my attention on Robert and the story he’s telling. If Taylor wants me to hide our relationship, it
’s probably better I keep a safe distance in a room with so many spectators.

  In the afternoon, she comes into the trailer to do some work. I’m on the phone with our client, discussing the progress of the project.

  “The concrete pour went well. Did you get the photos we sent?”

  Taylor finds the papers I left for her on Hudson’s desk and starts flipping through them. I move my gaze down her slowly as the client asks about the next steps.

  “We’ll begin framing this week, so you’ll be able to see the progress during your site visit in two weeks. Soon after, we’ll install the air barriers.”

  Taylor frowns at a piece of paper and then carries it over, mouthing her question.

  “Does this need to be filed?”

  I nod and she turns to leave, but I catch her wrist, keeping her there beside me. My thumb brushes her pulse point and I lean back in my chair, looking up at her, appreciating this quiet moment after a hectic morning.

  The client asks more about the site check and I confirm that my partners will be here as well. “Steven will walk you through the framed building so you and your team can confirm everything has been placed in accordance with the blueprints, even if it’s still in progress.”

  Taylor smiles down at me and I tug her closer, bringing her down onto my lap.

  She protests, but I shake my head, knowing she’ll do as I say while I’m on the phone. She’s nothing if not a dutiful employee.

  I wrap my arm around her waist. She sits perfectly quiet with her head against my chest. A sudden warmth takes hold of me and I realize I’d want her to stay here like this all day if it were possible.

  “While I’ve got you here, I got a call from our interiors coordinator in Austin and she mentioned that your team was still wavering on window selections for the patio on the west elevation. We’ll need to put in that order soon if you don’t want delays.”

  The client assures me they’ll confer with the Austin office and make their decision soon, and then the call ends.