by Clover Hart
“Would they ever.”
Penny cuddles into the beanbag, her eyelids heavy. I imagine lying down next to her, pulling her to me, feeling her chest rise and fall as she breathes against me.
Not only do I desperately need sleep … I’ve got it bad, and that ain’t good.
She goes on, utterly clueless. “I’ll bet your parents probably hate that you date so much and can’t settle down.”
“Well, I avoid talking about that to them as much as I can. I’ve always kept my personal life to myself with them, even when I was a kid.”
She smiles at me. “I can just picture Young Barry. I’ll bet you were always the smartest in your class, taller than the rest of the boys, and cuter, too. The girls probably swarmed around you.”
She thinks I’m cute? I start to grin, then lose it quickly. We’re not supposed to be talking about cute, and when she sits up on the beanbag, I think she realizes it.
I laugh, just to cut the tension. “Thanks for presenting a more awesome version of my childhood, but you only nailed one part. I was always the smartest kid, at least until I went to college. Then I had a rude awakening when I met all the other brains at Stanford. It made me competitive and drove me to succeed.”
“And which part was I wrong about?”
The swarming girls. I take a swig of beer. She drinks from her cider. The wooden clock on my desk tells me that it’s time to shut up and go, but I don’t.
The beer burns my throat and warms my gut. “Would you be surprised to know that I was a skinny, brainy geek with thick glasses? And I wasn’t the least bit talented in the wardrobe arts. I got teased like hell throughout high school. I thought all I had going for me was my intellect, so I hid behind that like a motherfucker.”
Penny leans forward in the beanbag, listening intently with her cherry cider cradled in her hands. She’s not bored by any of this. She’s probably thinking, I get it now! Barry’s a succulent piece of work with all these walls around him because that’s his tried-and-true defense mechanism.
Might as well go on so she doesn’t think I’m unaware of that.
I shrug one shoulder. “When I got old enough to have laser eye surgery before college, life started to change for the better. I chose Stanford because I wanted to get outside the New York bubble. Everyone else I knew was deep in it, and I wanted to find a new beginning. And massive things were happening with tech on the West Coast, so I headed out there, wanting to be a part of it.”
“The lure of California girls probably didn’t hurt,” Penny says with a little smile.
Why does she keep going back to girls? I want to believe it’s because she likes me, too. Maybe, just for tonight, I can go with it … but only to a certain point.
“I had no idea what to do with a girl.” I tip my beer toward her, trying to keep this light. “Let me put it this way. High school — no prom, no sex, very few dates. All awkward. I had no game at all.”
“You?”
I shrug. “Stanford changed everything. It was more geek friendly there, and I learned how to function around girls. I dated, discovered the wonderful world of sex, and then went for my MBA.” That’s when I also discovered hair products, upscale restaurants, and fancy bars, and a Silicon Valley ultra-consumer, food snob, and clotheshorse was born. That’s also when I started making up for lost time with women, and I haven’t slowed down since.
Penny stays quiet, and I start to think that I shouldn’t have said so much. Why the hell am I so talky anyway? It has to be because I’m fatigued and my mouth is moving before my brain can stop it. Or maybe it’s because of the beers I’ve been drinking. Or maybe my defenses have fallen to crap because Penny is sitting there, so beautiful, so willing to hear me out, unlike the boring chicks I meet on those dating apps.
She’s watching me, and there’s something in her gaze that makes my stomach flip. Then she lets out a long breath, as if she’s been holding it for some reason. A jolt gets me right in the chest, then echoes in my belly. An urge is building. Fuck, all I want to do is kiss her and get rid of all this tension between us, but that’s the worst idea I’ve ever had. Even worse than spilling my damned guts to her.
“You can come off like such an asshole,” she finally says. “That’s why I treated you like one when we first met.”
I put down my beer. I still want to kiss her.
She sighs again. “See, I thought you were just another dick in my life, but you’re not really one of those, are you?”
Great. She probably thinks I’m some mope instead, and I feel something like cactus needles prickle over my skin. As she stands from the beanbag, those needles seem to bristle even more. I still want to kiss her, to show her that there’s no reason for her to feel sorry for me. I’ve got everything I’ve ever wanted, including dates and great clothes and a slick car and a killer house. I don’t need pity.
“Barry,” she says. “You know what I’m going to do?”
Oh, please be what I think it is.
“I’m going to keep your little secret,” she whispers. “You’re actually a decent guy.”
I go silent, then finally say, “Yeah, I’d appreciate your keeping that quiet. I do have a reputation to maintain.”
She pauses, as if she wants to say something else, or even do something else. Then she only smiles at me and leaves the office.
As I hear her gathering her things down the hallway, I stand up, turn my back to the door, and push back my hair. Thank fuck she’s gone, because I was either going to get that kiss out of the way or I was going to say something I’d regret even more than what I did say. Shit, why couldn’t I have shut my mouth tonight? I talked way too much, and even worse, I’m feeling things I wish I wasn’t feeling. I’m—
I hear something drop to the floor behind me, and when I turn back around, Penny is standing there with her workbag on the ground. She clearly sees what a disaster I am, but from the look on her face, she’s one, too. Her cheeks are flushed, and there’s something in her eyes that’s confused and restless.
Before I can figure her out, she surges toward me, then reaches up and pulls me down until my lips are on hers. My sight explodes into blackness, then contracts with a hard pulse that reverberates through me like a sonic wave. All I can feel is her mouth, warm and soft, and I want to pick her up and plow her onto my desk, stripping off her clothes so that I can have her fast and easy. I don’t care about consequences. I don’t care about anything but what she’s doing to me.
But then she pushes me back from her, her breathing tight as she smiles dizzily. She lets out another long breath and, without a word, turns around and leaves.
I hear her rush out of the building, slamming the front door on her way.
“I am so fucked,” I mutter.
Chapter 18
Penny
I don’t know why I did it.
The kiss. That kiss. One minute I was leaving Barry’s office after our strangely quiet and honest conversation, and the next I was on him. I think it all started when he stunned me by opening up about his family and also about being a gawky kid who didn’t get laid until college. I saw something in him that I’d only seen flashes of before: an actual person under Barry’s prickly skin. He takes such pains to hide that side of him, but there he was last night, letting me see it.
Me, the last person he should be opening up to. Why me?
By the time I went back to my own office to grab my workbag and finally go home after a long, long day, my head was a mess, and not only because I was tired. I’d seen the way Barry kept looking at me while we were working together. I’d felt the tension in the air every time he would glance away as if hoping I hadn’t noticed. No guy has ever held back with me like that. I’m not used to gentlemanly restraint or even what might be construed as manners. And, out of all the jerks in this world, Barry Aaronson seems to have both of those.
At that point, an odd emotion had welled up within me, and I can’t really say that I knew what it was or what I was doing w
hen I went back to his office. But when I saw him with his back to the door, combing his fingers through his hair in agitation as if I’d confused him as much as he’d confused me, something inside of me broke. It made me drop my workbag and go to him, doing what I’ve been wanting to do for weeks now.
I kissed him, and my common sense got me the hell out of there before either of us could do anything about it. I think I might’ve even been smiling like a fool before I hightailed it home, regretting that kiss ever since.
But there’s always a morning after, and here it is, with me walking through the lobby and nodding to our new receptionist, a recent graduate from Cherry Valley Community College named Kayla. She’s got cocoa skin, curly dark hair that she’s wearing back from her face, and a smile that takes her features from normal-pretty-girl to damn.
“Good morning, Penny,” she says as I walk by.
“Morning.” Dammit, my stomach is tossing and turning as I move down the hallway to my office. Everything is too quiet: the coders are taking the morning off and I can see that Zach is already at the end of the hall in the conference room, no doubt preparing for the investors’ conference call he and Barry will have.
Oh, man, Barry’s office door is open. Would it be a good idea to act like nothing happened last night? Yeah, that might be my best option. Barry would want that, because he’s such a pro, and he’s already bent over backward to be that way with me and—
I see his long shadow appear in the doorway, and I almost scuttle into my office so I can avoid him, but what the hell? I’m a big girl, and I did a big girl thing last night, so I’m going to ride this out.
He sees me standing like a statue in front of my door, and he freezes, too. He’s wearing a shirt under his sport coat that says And Your Crybaby Whiny Opinion Would Be …?
“Morning, Barry.” I am really perky about it.
“Hey, Penny.”
His carefully careless black hair is sticking up a little on one side, and paired with the tense way he’s facing me, I can see that the cactus is strong with him this morning. But there’s something in his dark blue eyes that shakes me up. Holy crap — is he glad to see me?
Right. Talk about wishful thinking. Or maybe I shouldn’t wish it.
Maybe I should just get the hell away from him so I don’t wish anything at all.
I don’t know how I do it, but I nod to him, then smoothly walk into my office and shut the door behind me. This can’t happen. This … thing. Barry and I work together, and we both have a lot to lose, career-wise. Hell, I don’t want to be the girl who screws the boss any more than he wants to be the guy who screws his female mentee.
Dear God, I’m in need of some support.
I listen at the door until I’m pretty sure Barry is gone, then I open it, and without looking at the conference room, I head for the back door to the small, presently empty brick courtyard where the few smokers at FCT take breaks. I get my phone out of my workbag, then toss the carryall onto a bench. I dial Mandy, who has the day off work at the coffeehouse before her classes start today. As I wait for her to pick up, I shuffle around in my coat and boots, fighting the morning chill in the air.
She answers with what sounds like a mouthful of breakfast. “Hey, Pen.”
“Talk me out of it.”
“What? Another guy?” She swallows. “I’m familiar with this routine, but isn’t it a little early in the day for this? Or are you at some creep’s place because you stayed the night and you have the terrible urge to embark upon another ill-advised ‘relationship’ with him?”
“I’m at work.”
“Oh, thank goodness. Good for you! I knew you could keep that new leaf turned over.”
How do I put this without giving Barry and myself away? “I’m calling because I need to do a preemptive strike on a guy.”
“This is an improvement from how you usually handle jerks. Go on.”
“Like you said, I’ve been doing so well with my new leaf, weaning myself off guys who aren’t good for me—”
“Here’s what you do now, Pen. Avoid temptation. That includes any texts, voicemails, and tawdry advances he sends your way. Ignore him if he asks you to meet him in the nearest place where he wants to use you as a fuck toy. Resist mightily, then boom, he’s out of your hair. You can do this.”
I take what I need from her response. Don’t act on your rutting instincts, no matter how many times you see Barry today. Press delete. Ignore. Whatever works.
Mandy goes on. “You’d make a crappy pair with whoever he is, and you know it.”
“That is so true.” Barry and I would make a crappy pair. We’d probably fight constantly, for one thing. For another, he’s a really successful man who no doubt wants some woman who’s on his level. I’m nowhere near that, even if I am improving.
“And, Pen,” she says, “I’m assuming you still want to get out of Cherry Valley.”
“Yes.”
“So why do you want to start something up with a guy who’s here?”
Bullseye. Little sister has once again pulled through for me. “Mandy, thank you a million times over. You don’t know how much this helped.”
“Anytime. Hey, I like this new preemptive thing you’ve got going. Now forget about this guy and go get ‘em at work, Pen!”
Ugh. If only she knew that the ‘em my libido wants to get is here at work.
I say goodbye and another heartfelt thank you to her, then make a beeline back inside, straight to my office. On the way there, I catch a glimpse of Barry in the conference room, talking to Zach. He gives me that look again — the one I still don’t really understand — then clenches his jaw and shuts that look down.
A gentleman, I think. And the fact that he isn’t already out of the room and on me like the hound dog I thought he was makes me like him even more.
Damn him.
Chapter 19
Barry
As Zach and I run through the investors’ status report that Penny and I worked on yesterday, I see her sneak back into her office down the hall. She’s still bundled up in her winter coat and those suede boots. Thank God, they’re not high heels. At least she’s spared me that.
“Barry.” Zach has looked away from his computer to stare at me with a frown. “Is everything okay?”
Uh-oh. I slump in my seat and shrug. “Some asshole made me stay up late last night to get a report done, and I’m sleep deprived. Wait — that asshole is me.”
I am such an asshole. I know I was cold to Penny this morning, but it’s the only way I’m going to keep my head on straight. Now I just have to stop thinking about how she’s less than fifty feet away and probably slipping off her coat in her office, then shaking out her red hair. In my mind’s eye, I see her look over her shoulder with those big blue-green eyes, then wink like a vixen from a vintage hair band music video.
I blow out a breath and push back my hair. “Let’s get started on this.”
“Hold up a sec.” Zach nudges his glasses up and gives me an amused grin. “I’d prefer to talk about you. What the hell’s bells is going on?”
“Hell’s bells,” I mutter. “You sound real country, Hamilton. Save yourself while you can.”
“Oh, I’m quite happy where I’m at, Bozo. Sometimes I think you’re beginning to get there, too.”
I bark out a laugh.
“No, really.” Zach puts down his cup of black coffee from Screaming Beans. He used to be a fancy coffee kind of guy, but not since Mandy fucked the city out of him. “I’ve been noticing something about you, Barry. You’ve been less brusque with the employees, and people in general.”
“That’s because I’m working so hard that I barely have the energy to be rude.”
“And you’ve been more supportive with the employees, too. Even the action team doesn’t mind having you on the work campus poking around anymore. They used to snap to attention every time you appeared, but they’re more relaxed around you now. This tells me that someone might be starting to like it here
in Cherry Valley.”
The horror.
Could it be that I’m losing my edge? If I am, it’s Penny’s fault. As I sit there and stew under Zach’s measuring gaze, I realize that, without my edge, I’m just some skinny Jewish kid who got pounded on a few times too many while growing up. Now, I can fight back, not so much with my fists, but with my intellect and business savvy. I can’t have some country girl peeling those away, no matter how amazing I’m starting to think she might be.
Damn her.
Zach is tapping that mighty pen of his on the table. “I would even say Cherry Valley has mellowed you out somewhat. But then again, here you are this morning, kind of tense and weird.”
“I told you. I’m tired. Can we get on with this?”
Zach holds up his hands in defense, and I think my edge is back. I’ll be damned if it’s going anywhere.
Penny and I manage to coexist with each other for the next couple of days. We’re all business when we have to be, and she seems to work around me as much as I’m doing with her. There’re times I want to snap at her for something or another — stop walking by my office and leaving that trail of coconut, stop looking as good as you do in those nice dresses, stop breathing, for fuck’s sake — but I can’t. I make myself feel nothing, knowing that whatever is happening with me is going to pass, and the sooner the better.
Today, as I walk by her office, that little shit Deepak is in front of her desk, smiling and preening and trying to get in her panties once a-fucking-gain. An unreasonable surge of anger pulls me inside. They’re talking about some online business classes Penny has enrolled in, and anger gives way to a territorial urge. I suggested those classes to Penny.
I linger in the doorway, and when Deepak notices my scathing look, he jumps.
“Sorry, boss,” he says as he wings past me into the hallway.
For a second, Penny and I just stare at each other. My skin feels prickly. My edge is definitely back.