by Simply BWWM
“Well, if that’s what you want,” he said with a tone of reluctance and regret. “If that’s all you want.”
“That’s what we should both want,” she challenged him.
He sighed and looked away from her. “I guess that’s that.” He turned then, and without another word or another look at her, he reached for the door handle and turned it, letting himself out. He closed the door behind him firmly, and she felt as if her heart had been squeezed too hard.
Nicole’s eyes stung with tears, and her throat grew tight as she held her hand to her heart and walked back behind her desk. Reaching for her phone, she sent Jeffrey a quick text. ‘Need some love and light when I get home’. Then, she tucked her phone away and took every bit of strength and concentration to finish out the last few hours of her workday before driving home to Jeffrey.
When she pulled into the yard, Auntie waved at her and called out. She waved back and rushed to the house, aching to feel the comfort of her best friend’s arms around her, and she wasn’t inside for thirty seconds before she did feel just what she needed.
When he had hugged her tightly for a long time, he let her go and handed her a glass of red wine. “Here. There are lots of reserves, so drink up. Do you want to tell me what happened today?”
“Not really,” she said, walking outside to the deck where she sank into a deck chair beneath the umbrella and looked out over the sea. She took a long pull off of her wine and drained most of the glass. Jeffrey took the glass from her and filled it back up, and then gave it back to her.
“So, what was it?” he asked again, and she held her glass between her fingers and stared off into the blue where the sky met the sea and there was only a fine thin line between the two.
“You remember Alexander from last night at the party?” she asked miserably.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Was that his name?” he asked with a curious tone.
“Yes. He told me his name was Alexander,” she answered in a monotone.
“And?” Jeffrey pressed gently.
“His name is Dane Priestly, and he’s my new boss. He’s the other partner at the firm, the one I hadn’t met yet,” she said, barely believing the words that came out of her own mouth.
Jeffrey’s jaw fell open. “Oh my god.”
“Yeah. I hadn’t met him yet. I didn’t meet him until he walked into a meeting with Ed, the partner who hired me, and four other people who were there to meet with us today about expansion work. My work. That’s when Dane Priestly walked through the door, and I met him, except of course I called him Alexander when I saw him.” She narrowed her eyes bitterly.
“That must have been terribly awkward.” Jeffrey’s voice grew warm and compassionate. “I’m so sorry, darling. What did you do?”
She sighed heavily, and her gaze shifted from the blue horizon before her to the dark ruby red wine in the glass between her fingers. “We just ignored each other as much as we could without it being noticeable, and then the second the meeting was done I made a run for my office to go hide in there, but he followed me.”
“What did he do?” Jeffrey sat in the chair beside her and studied her face.
“He said he was confused and that he didn’t know what to do. I said that we needed to forget last night and just move forward with our business relationship. I think that’s all that we can do, isn’t it? Forget that amazing encounter last night, and move forward as employer and employee and forget it all.” She turned to look at Jeffrey then, and she saw the confused look on his face.
“Can you do that?” he asked her quizzically.
She frowned. “That’s just what Dane said, too.”
Jeffrey sighed. “Well, do what you think is right. Do what you think will work. If you think putting last night in the past and only looking forward is best, then do that.” He sounded as if he wasn’t sure that she could do it.
“I’m going to do my damndest to make sure that’s exactly what happens,” she vowed, taking another long drink of her wine.
Chapter5
Jeffrey let her finish her second glass of wine, and then he picked up the car keys and took her by the hand. “Come on. You said you need love and light. You’re coming with me,” he stated it simply, as if there was no discussion about it, and she followed obediently.
They waved to Auntie as Jeffrey set the map on the computer screen in the car and took off down the road out of Hawaii Kai.
“Where are we going?” Nicole asked, feeling light headed and slightly less miserable.
“We’re going to do just what Tia told us to do. I made notes. We’re heading up the windward side of the island, and we’re going to check out some of the places she told us that we should see.” He gave his best friend a smile, and Nicole found herself grinning.
She took his hand in hers and gave it a squeeze as she looked at him. “Have I told you yet today how blessed and lucky I am that you’re here with me? Because I am both blessed and lucky and unbelievably grateful to have you here. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“I’m glad that I’m here too,” he replied. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” He touched her cheek gently and then reached for the volume on the radio, turning up the sounds of the island music coming from the speakers.
The sun shone on their heads and shoulders, the wind danced in their hair, and the road beneath them wound side to side and up and down as they drove around the base of a volcanic crater and headed north up the coast.
The view was stunning, and it seemed in some spots that the ocean might be ready to wave itself right up onto the road. Neither of them had ever seen anything like the beaches, the mountains, and the sea that could begin to rival the windward side of Oahu. It was beyond imagination, and it looked to them as if they were out driving in their own perfect postcard, or a dream that neither one of them could have come up with.
They passed several spots where Tia had told them to stop, because Jeffrey had only their destination in mind, though they did get out twice just to put their feet in the sand and feel the water on their skin, before they hopped back in the car and continued on their way north.
He didn’t pull the car off of the road until they got to Haleiwa on the very northern end of the north shore. “I looked it up today,” he told her proudly. “This is where all the big wave surfers come, and many of them grew up surfing these waves. They come in from all over the world from January through March for the biggest waves of the year, the winter waves. We’ll have to come to a surfing competition here and check it out. It seems like it’s a pretty big deal.”
“That sounds like fun,” Nicole agreed. They walked along the road that led through town for a short distance, and Jeffrey took her to a small country store with a line of people that went out the door. They moved to the end of the line, and she looked at him.
“What are we in line for?” she asked curiously.
He grinned at her. “Matsumoto shave ice,” he answered happily.
She laughed and nodded. “I forgot! Shave ice. Best on the island right here.” She looked at the line and gave her head a shake. “Looks like the locals definitely know that!”
They waited until it was their turn, and they bought their shave ice and then walked around the few shops that were there, going into one that she had heard about in San Francisco. “Oh, look! It’s the Clark Little gallery! My friend Megan told me about this guy. He lives here on the north shore somewhere, and he has some fancy underwater camera. He goes out all the time and gets inside the waves and shoots amazing photographs in the water. I guess he’s done a lot of sea life too. Turtles and sharks and things. I’m so curious to see what he’s got here in his gallery. Let’s go in!”
Her mood had lightened some, and she was grateful for it. She wasn’t thinking too much about Alexander or Dane or work, and she was enjoying herself, and at that moment on that day, not much more could be as precious to her as that.
They wandered through the small gallery and t
alked with the girl behind the counter who was minding the place, and they fell so much in love with Clark’s work that they bought two large fine art framed photographs, and was told that they would be delivered after Clark signed them.
Feeling downright happy, Nicole walked out with Jeffrey, and they went to a small restaurant for lunch.
When their food had been brought out for them, Jeffrey looked at her seriously. “Listen, I know we’re out having fun, but I do want to say this to you. The best thing that you can do about this situation at work is to avoid him. Just avoid him as much as you can unless you have to see him, and slowly let your professional relationship with him build over time on its own. It’s only intensely awkward right now because you have no history together, other than the night you two shared.
So, you have to build a business relationship. You have to build a new history together, and that’s going to take some time, but there’s no reason that you should be miserable while you’re building it. So, avoid him most of the time for now, and as time changes your relationship at work, you will build a new history, and there will be a cushion of time between last night and your present with him. Temporary avoidance will give you both the time and space you need to put that hot night of yours last night behind you both, and the more time there is between last night and your present with him, the easier it will be. Right?”
He looked at her with hopeful eyes, and she nodded. “You’re right. I know that you’re right. It’s just going to take some time. At least the worst is over, right? I mean, meeting each other in front of everyone, especially after what happened last night, that was the worst. Nothing else is going to be that bad. So, we just go forward. We each know now that the other one is there, and we can move on and make a business relationship. It will be okay. It’s like you said, it will just take some time. That’s all.”
“That’s the spirit!” Jeffrey gave her an encouraging smile. “Now, focus on your pizza and forget about it for the rest of tonight. You don’t have to deal with it until tomorrow, so don’t deal with it until you have to.”
She nodded and smiled and picked up a big piece of pizza. “I’m all over it.” She grinned at him.
Nicole told herself that she could do just what Jeffrey had advised, and when she went into work the next day, she managed to go the whole day without seeing Dane. She wondered if he was doing the same thing or if she had just gotten lucky. She hadn’t wandered too far from her office though, and she had to admit that that might have had something to do with it. Tia said nothing about Dane bursting into her office the afternoon before, and Nicole was glad for that too.
On her third day there, she was thinking less about Dane and more about her job and what she was doing there. She had drawn up some ideas and created a proposal, and with a little more lightness in her heart, she headed up to Ed’s office to show him.
Rose wasn’t at her desk when Nicole stepped off of the elevator, so she headed to Ed’s door and knocked.
“Come in!” he called out.
She opened the door with a big smile on her face and took two steps into the office before she stopped in her tracks and froze. Edward wasn’t in his office, but Dane was. Everything in her froze for a second, and then heated up as if her whole body had been set on fire. She did her best to hide her reaction to him, thought it was a struggle.
There was immediate tension between them, and his eyes took on that same look of unchecked hunger when he saw her, his gaze drifting over her curves and form before he made himself look away from her and draw in a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were here. I’ll come back later.” She turned to go, and just as she reached the door handle, he spoke and stopped her.
“What were you coming to see Ed about?” he asked with a level tone that defied the look in his eyes.
With her heart pounding in her chest, she turned and looked over her shoulder at him. “Oh… well, I have some initial drafts of new international territories that I think we should build and promote the business in,” she began, feeling that if her heart pounded any harder, it might pop out of her chest altogether.
He took a few steps toward her and stopped, his eyes steady on her. “I am one of the partners of this business. One of the co-owners,” he reminded her gently. “I’d like to see the work that you’re doing too.”
She swallowed and wished that her blood wasn’t racing through her at lightning speed, and that the heat that was growing in her would cool off and go away forever. “Of course,” she replied, realizing that she was in fact talking with one of her bosses. She remembered what Jeffrey had told her about building a business relationship with him, and while she wished that she didn’t have to, she knew that she was going to have to start doing it at some time, and that time was going to be right then.
With almost wooden steps, she forced herself to cross the room toward him, and she stopped at a round table there and laid the scroll of papers in her hands out on the table, flattening them smooth.
Standing over the papers, she moved her hand over the one on the top of the pile. It was a map, color coded and notated on, and she spoke to it, rather than lifting her head and speaking to the man who came to stand beside her.
“So, this is a map of the areas where we should be expanding. Here’s New Zealand, Australia, and a whole host of Pacific islands in between them and Hawaii.” She gazed down at the work that she had done in such a short time and felt proud of it. And then, he stood close to her, and thoughts of her work left her, dissipating like fog in the heat of the morning sun.
He was too close. There was an electric charge in the air between them, and she began to grow breathless.
“This is really good work. This is…” He paused as he reached his own hand out to the map, sliding his fingers over it, and she closed her eyes, willing herself to forget how those fingers felt on her skin and inside of her body. Beads of moisture grew in the dark hollow of the tender skin between her breasts. She swallowed hard.
“This is excellent. I’m very impressed,” he said quietly.
Blood was rushing in her ears, and she was doing her best to focus. She reminded herself that she was building professional history between them. “I have more detail here about Tonga, Samoa, and Fiji. Those islands are specific priority spots where we want to be concentrating our promotions.”
“Where are they?” he asked, leaning closer to her and the map.
She reached out a short way and touched a small area in the deep of the south Pacific Ocean. “They’re here,” she replied.
“Are there any…” He trailed off and grew silent, and she turned in place to look up at him. He was standing so close to her that they were almost touching. She drew in a sharp breath at the nearness of him and at the tremendous reaction she felt inside at his being so close.
He was staring into her eyes, his lips parted, and she grew lightheaded from the blood that was shooting through every part of her. “Any what?” she asked in a whisper, struggling with all of her might not to fall to any kind of temptation. She was bent on repairing the damage that already existed between them, and it took everything in her to remember that.
Dane looked as if he wasn’t breathing, as if he was rooted to the spot, and it took a long moment before he blinked and shook his head a little. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly as he stared at her. “It’s just… you were wearing that same perfume when we…” He hesitated. “On the night that we… met,” he finished slowly and carefully. “I apologize, I was distracted by it.” His chest was rising and falling rapidly, and his pupils were dilated and dark.
It was she who couldn’t breathe then, and she felt like she might fall over as he turned slowly on the spot and walked over to the other side of the table. Clearing his throat, he looked down at the map and made himself focus.
“So… are there any other places in this area that we want to add on to this part of the growth mission?” His voice sounded as if he was doing his best to make i
t sound more businesslike than it was.
She gave her head a small shake and looked back at the map as her pulse raced onward. “No, I’m going to include the Philippines in the Asian expansion.”
She bent over then and reached her finger to the northern part of the map, closer to where Dane was standing, and she showed him how much closer the Philippines were to Asia, and how much easier it would be for them to include it in a separate expansion.
“I believe that we could have this southern projected area on board with the company within two months,” she said, fighting to focus on her task. “As long as we follow the plan that I have outlined.”
She raised her eyes to him then and froze in place again. She hadn’t realized when she bent over her maps in front of him that her loose-fitting blouse had fallen open at the neck, directly toward his line of sight, and when her eyes lifted to see his face, she found his gaze set on the swells of her breasts, just down the front of her blouse.