by Myra Scott
“See? You just make fun of me,” he said, almost pouting. But that spark of playfulness still burned in his dark eyes and suddenly I wished we were alone together. Just the two of us. Somewhere dark and candlelit where I could kiss and touch him however I pleased. Every little move he made, every word he said in that sexy Spanish accent turned me on.
“If it makes you feel any better, even though you can’t dance to save your life, you still look a thousand times sexier than anyone else on the dance floor,” I told him earnestly.
He grinned, that rush of color to his cheeks nearly making me hard. He was speechless again. Diego still wasn’t accustomed to the compliments I gave him, and he never quite knew how to respond. But I was determined to make him realize how much I adored him, how valuable and worthy he was in the world. My eyes flitted down to his sensuous lips, just slightly parted, like he wanted to say something but couldn’t quite summon the right words.
I decided to put him out of his misery and dove in to kiss him hard, my hand coming up to cup his cheek. My thumb traced along his strong jaw, the cut of his sharp cheekbone. He was impossibly hot, the sexy Spanish prince I never could have even conjured up in my wildest dreams. He moaned ever so softly as I kissed him, and that familiar jolt of pleasure rippled through my core, making my cock twitch with need.
When we broke apart, he gave me a playful smirk and murmured, “Later.”
I knew exactly what he meant. “As soon as the countdown is over, I’m taking you down to my office and I’m going to fuck you until you scream,” I promised him, whispering in his ear. I felt him shiver and I grinned, pleased with myself.
“That is exactly how I want to start out my new year,” he replied coyly. “I am very much looking forward to that.”
A moment later, Gage, Mick, and Bart came lumbering over, all of them in various degrees of drunkenness. An entourage of reporters, influencers, and celebrity guests were following loosely behind them. It was an amusing sight, seeing my usually low-key, casual business partners playing up their game for the cameras. Normally they would have all been a little put-off by the attention, but I had a feeling the shots and cocktails they’d all been downing for the past few hours had forced them to relax a little.
“Great party,” Mick admitted, a smile playing on his face. There was a blonde woman in a tight dress eyeing him up and down, and I felt a twinge of pity for her. She would figure out soon enough that he was not at all interested in the fairer sex.
“It’ll be midnight soon,” Bart commented gruffly. I almost laughed at the sight of him holding a dainty glass of champagne. He was generally more of a beer guy, and it was an odd juxtaposition, this bear-like man with a tiny flute of bubbly.
Gage had his arm around some complete stranger, a good-looking guy in a polo and designer jeans. I had a pretty strong inkling that Gage had scouted him out as the one he was going to kiss at midnight. Between the four of us, he was most likely to be superstitious, and I had a feeling he was not going to start out the new year alone.
“If I had known that a New Year’s Eve party in my very own brand-new nightclub was all it took to loosen you guys up, I would have done it years ago!” I joked. They all laughed.
“Hell, after the past few months we’ve had getting this project rolling, I think we all deserve a break,” Mick agreed. We all nodded in agreement. There was a shine of fondness in Diego’s eyes that melted my heart. He had warmed up to my friends pretty quickly—it was impossible not to get along with him. He was just that jovial and charming.
“I am so pleased to have met all of you. These last six months have been the happiest of my entire life,” Diego confessed. Bart clapped him on the shoulder as my friends all murmured similar words of camaraderie. It was a beautiful sight: the best friends and business partners I could have ever asked for, and the man of my dreams, all getting along.
I held up my champagne glass, raising an eyebrow expectantly. Diego smiled and held his glass up, as well. My friends followed suit. We clinked them together and I announced, “To us!”
“To our new nightclub, the bridge between two of Vegas’s most successful casinos!” Gage called out.
“To new friends and a new year that will be even more kickass than the last!” Mick added. Bart simply nodded, a rare grin on his face.
As we took sips of our champagne, there was a sudden rush of sound from the crowds surrounding us. I looked around, confused at first, until I realized that the countdown to midnight was beginning. “Here it comes!” Diego declared excitedly.
We all counted in unison with the energetic crowd.
“Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three! Two! One!”
As everyone called out, “Happy New Year!” amid ecstatic shouts and whoops, Diego grabbed me and kissed me passionately.
With my heart hammering away and a huge smile on my face, I told him proudly, “This is going to be the best year of my life because I’m spending it with you. Te amo, Diego.”
His face lit up. He loved to hear me speaking Spanish. Soon, I would be able to tell him everything I wanted to say, and I could say it in the language dear to his heart. There were tears of joy shining in his eyes. “I love you, too.”
THE END
Excerpt From The Perfectionist – Book Two
Mick’s Story
MICK
People told me I had a gaze like an iron vice.
Normally, I didn’t know if it was true, and I didn’t care. I shouldn’t need that to do my job. But as I watched my HR officer squirm under the glare I was giving him across the large, mahogany table, I was satisfied with my reputation.
You could have heard a pin drop in the office where the four of us sat. My hands were folded in front of me, and I hadn’t fidgeted an inch since sitting down except to speak. To my left was my assistant, Luke. He mimicked almost every move I made. He was a fast learner. To my right was Devin, one of the casino’s blackjack dealers. Brown hair, blue eyes, and a frame that reminded me of myself more than I’d like. Unlike me and Luke, he was shifting uncomfortably every few seconds. He didn’t want to be here. I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t either.
The reason we had to be here, though, was the HR officer sitting across from us.
“I asked you a question, Marcus,” I said in an even, firm tone. From the day we hired him, it was always Marcus, never Mark. “Did Devin ask you to stop sending him those kinds of messages?”
He was silent. I could feel Devin glancing at me.
“Marcus.”
“Yes,” he finally said. His normally assertive voice was subdued, annoyed. Marcus was the kind of man who had gotten everything he ever wanted from the day he was born. Holding him accountable this afternoon was something he wasn’t used to, so it was natural that he was reacting to it like a child.
“Did you continue to send unsolicited messages by email, text, and other social media platforms after Devin explicitly requested that you stop? I want to remind you that I have Devin’s request across all these platforms in writing,” I added, turning the open folder in front of me toward him.
Marcus wasn’t meeting my gaze. “I was flirting.” The defense was barely a mumble.
“Flirting, Marcus,” I said, flipping over a few pages to take out a couple of papers held together with a paperclip, “is passing a compliment at the bar and making light conversation with someone who is on the same page as you.” I slid the papers toward Marcus. The top was a black cover sheet. The bottom was… “What you were doing was sending a coworker unsolicited pictures of your penis.”
Marcus lifted the cover sheet and winced at the images of his own shaft I’d collected as evidence. I had to admit, I was happy that Devin was willing to come forward to me with those images. It can’t have been easy on him, psychologically.
“I’m going to go over the timeline once more,” I said, “and-”
&
nbsp; “Mr. Mazur?” Luke interrupted me, and I felt my nerves plucked like a tight guitar string. My eyes shot over to him.
“Yes?”
“Urgent email from security just came in--four guests caught counting cards at the blackjack tables. Bart would like to see you after this.”
“Thank you, Luke,” I said tersely. I couldn’t reprimand him too harshly. He was just doing his job, and I needed to know about any and all urgent issues that came up.
“As I was saying,” I went on, facing Marcus again. “On the 5th, Devin says you made a pass at him while he was getting off work, and he rejected you.”
“I was not making a pass,” Marcus said, rolling his shoulders back and staring at the wall away from me.
“Then what were you doing?”
“I was just...talking,” he insisted.
“That’s interesting, because Devin’s statement here has you saying, quote, ‘I like how you run your table. I’d like to see how you deal when you’re bent over it.’ We have security footage of you leaning into Devin while supposedly making this statement and brushing his hand away when he tried to push you back.”
Marcus crossed his arms, still facing away from me.
“Mr. Mazur?”
I glanced over to Luke.
“Another email. A guest from one of the VIP suites is reporting a peeping Tom in the nightclub bathrooms. It looks like she’s naming one of our attorneys as the offender.”
A headache throbbed behind my eyes.
“Thank you, Luke,” I said. “Now, Marcus-”
“I’m sorry,” Luke went on, wincing, “but Mr. Anderson wants to know ASAP when you’ll be able to meet with him about it.”
“Before my 5:30,” I said quickly, not breaking eye contact with Marcus. Luke nodded, and I took a breath, not wanting to beat around the bush any longer. “Marcus, over two weeks, we have documented records of your continued contact with Devin leading up to the incident outside Devin’s car, where we have you on CCTV physically touching his crotch with your left hand and attempting to corner him against the driver’s side door of his sedan.”
Devin was looking down at his thumbs now, his face ashen. It was never easy reliving this kind of thing, especially not in a hearing like this. That was why I kept it as small as possible, despite Zane expressing a desire to be in here with us. It was all I could do for the victim.
“Marcus, do you have anything at all-”
“Mr. Mazur?”
I closed my eyes a moment.
“Can it wait, Luke?” I asked in a quiet, even tone, the same I always managed to maintain. It was my mask.
“Bart says he urgently needs the time you just promised Mr. Anderson.”
“Tell them I’ll call them immediately after this,” I said with finality, and Luke nodded.
“This is a witch hunt,” Marcus scoffed, finally looking at me and gesturing to Devin. “He decided he wasn’t interested in me, so suddenly ‘sexual harassment’ starts getting thrown around.”
“You are a human resources officer, Marcus,” I retorted, and the edge in my voice even made Marcus wince. “If there is anyone in the company who should know the definition of sexual harassment and the behavior of a harasser, it is you, plain and simple. If that weren’t enough, you’re the one person that employees should be able to come to about this kind of thing for help, not be seeking help from.”
“Exactly,” Marcus caught on, leaning forward. “That’s what makes me such an easy target for these accusations. One misunderstanding, and it’s easy to act out for attention to make up a case like this where I can’t even be the mediator.”
“Is that so?” I asked, nodding to Luke, who handed me another folder that I opened on the table. “Then why have four other employees come forward about incidents of harassment since word of this hearing got out?”
Marcus’s face went cherry-red as he looked at the anonymous email reports that I’d been receiving all weekend. It really was a domino effect--when one person was brave enough to come out about a serial harasser, the rest would follow.
Marcus was one of the relatively new hires we’d taken on since opening the nightclub and nearly doubling the foot traffic in the Sentry Casino and Hotel. We were practically rolling in money since Zane sealed the deal with Diego Castillo, but the side of things that only we operations managers saw was the tripled workload that came as a result. And as head of operations, I was the mouth of the river that literally everything flowed out of, sooner or later.
And all these new hires came with their own sets of problems.
Usually, growing the staff took place over time, so we could sort through new employees that obviously weren’t going to work out. We’d have time to train everyone properly and screen ones that caused trouble. Right now, though, we were overflowing with problems, and there was no end in sight.
“I don’t have to defend myself against this nonsense,” Marcus said simply. I sat back, raising an eyebrow at his audacity. He’d come with high praise from the last firm he worked for. I wondered how many harassment cases he’d left in his wake there. People like Marcus never stopped at just one.
“Marcus, what we’re looking at is a textbook case of serial harassment that amounts to nothing less than a gross abuse of authority,” I said.
“Oh, so you’re pretending to be a lawyer, now?” Marcus scoffed. “Do you get off on that little power trip?”
“Your employment here at the Sentry is terminated, Marcus, effective immediately,” I said, shutting the folders in front of me and giving him a hard glare. “Pack your desk and leave the premises before I have security escort you out.”
“What?” he blurted, suddenly startled. “You can’t just-”
“I can and just did,” I said simply. My tone rarely wavered. The even finality of it carried all the weight it needed to. “You’re dismissed.”
Marcus stared at me for a few moments before shaking his head and muttering a stream of foul language as he got up and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
The three of us were alone, in silence for a few moments except for the sound of me closing my folders before I turned to Devin.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, but thank you for coming forward. You’ve made the workplace a much safer environment.”
Devin cracked a smile and nodded after a moment. “I appreciate being taken seriously.”
“We might be pressured to hire too many people too quickly,” I admitted, “but this is one issue I will always set aside time for.”
“Mr. Mazur,” Luke said. Still holding eye contact with Devin, I cracked a smile, and we shared a knowing look. “Two of the new security guards have been dismissed for pickpocketing some of the drunk guests after taking them to their rooms. We’re going to need to start reviewing the backlog of job applications today. The college Spring Break crowd is going to be rolling in soon, and we need as many people as we can handle.”
“Thank you, Luke,” I said patiently, despite the fact that my headache was blooming into a migraine fast.
The paperwork for firing a higher-up HR official like Marcus was just another drop in the overflowing bucket of tasks I had to finish. It was already past noon, and my daily workload was beyond what most people could handle in a week.
“As I was saying,” I continued to Devin, “I want to make sure you never feel ashamed about bringing this kind of thing to our attention. Yes, it makes the Sentry look bad, but it looks worse to have people like Marcus prowling around without getting checked.”
“I understand completely,” Devin said, but he still looked crestfallen and weary from the whole ordeal. “Thanks, Mr. Mazur. Do you mind if I wait in here for a few minutes? I’d...rather not run into Marcus while he’s on his way out.”
“Of course, you can,” I said before glancing to Luke. “But just
in case, Luke, let’s get a member of security to keep Marcus company and make sure he doesn’t drag his feet.”
That was code for making sure he didn’t steal or vandalize company property or lash out against anyone on his way out the door.
“Of course, sir,” Luke said. “But while I’ve got your attention, one of the new IT workers seems to have made an oversight in the backdoor coding and reported a possible compromise.”
“And why is the IT manager not already handling it?” I asked, furrowing my eyebrows.
“He walked out this morning,” Luke said, apparently just getting the news himself, judging by the look on his face as he scanned his emails. “No reason given.”
“Right. That makes sense,” I said, feeling like I was about an inch away from snapping. “Thank you, Luke. Come on, let’s get to the next meeting.”
I stood up with Luke and shook Devin’s hand one last time before handing him my card in case he needed anything further from me. I made my way out the door and down the hall with Luke at my side, and between there and the elevators, no less than three more urgent messages needing my immediate attention popped into my assistant’s inbox.
“Mr. Mazur,” Luke said as the elevator doors closed us into the little box, and we began our descent. I took a deep breath.
“You know, Luke,” I started, “I cannot express how good of a PA you are, but part of the reason I never take the stairs is that elevators are supposed to be dead zones where urgent emails can’t reach you.”
“It’s not that--but thank you,” he said with a nervous laugh. “I just...I’ve worked for executives before, but I’ve never seen anyone taking on as much as you do. I hate to keep bringing up these fires for you to put out, but there should be three people doing your job, at least.”
I turned to Luke with both eyebrows raised.
“I’m a perfectionist, Luke,” I said simply. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in Vegas, it’s that if you want something done right, you do it yourself.”