by Helen Cooper
“Does this have to do with what you told me about yesterday? The trouble he got himself into?”
Ella looked at her like she was crazy. “Huh? No.”
“Oh okay sorry.” Sophie’s breathing went back to normal and she felt the tension release from her body.
“It has to do with me Sophie and how my life will never be the same again.” Ella wailed.
Sophie paused and tried to compose herself. She had a feeling that whatever Ella was upset about had to do with a guy. She knew that Ella had been seeing someone before they left school but she had been very secretive about the guy. Sophie wondered if perhaps something hadn’t gone wrong with the relationship. “Well, if you want to talk about it. Just let me know.”
“Ok, thanks Soph.” Ella smiled weakly and Sophie studied her friend. Even though her face was red and splotchy she still looked beautiful. If only she could look so serene with frizzy hair.
“So can you tell me what happened with Maxwell now?” Sophie grinned at her friend, she knew that if there was ever a time to get information from her friend, it was in an emotional period.
“Sophie!” Ella frowned. “I told you I couldn’t tell you.”
“I know but I’m going to be Maxwell’s assistant next semester and I wanted to know what to look out for.” Sophie frowned; mad that this is how she had to tell Ella that she was taking the next semester off.
“What?” Ella shrieked. “Omg, you’re not coming back to Columbia with me next semester?”
“No.”
“I cannot believe this.” Ella’s voice was full of theatrics. “There is no way I’m going back without you.” She paused and smiled. “In fact, I think I’ll work for the family business next week as well.”
“What?” Sophie looked at her in shock.
“Maxwell is always saying I should take a greater interest in the business. And neither he nor my parents can say no, now that you are doing it too.” She grinned. “In fact, I think this will solve a lot of problems.”
“Uh ok.” Sophie studied her friend and frowned. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m positive.” Ella jumped up suddenly full of verve and vitality. “What should we do today?”
“What do you want to do?”
“Maybe we can convince Maxwell to take us out on the boat.” Ella grinned. “That would be awesome.”
“Yeah, that would be fun.” Sophie smiled. She’d love to spend the day with Max.
“And I can make sure he gives me a position that doesn’t require too much work.” Ella grinned and Sophie laughed. “Oh Sophie, thanks for making me feel better.” Ella gave her a hug.
“No problem El.” Sophie paused. “But do you think you could tell me something, anything about Maxwell?”
Ella sighed and stared at her friend. “Oh Sophie. Look I don’t really know exactly what happened but my parents had to get a lawyer and…” She paused to look around the room and lowered her voice. “I know that he went to jail for a bit.”
“Jail?” Sophie’s voice was shocked.
“Ssh.” Ella looked at her with concern. “Be quiet. No-one talks about it and I’m not sure exactly what happened but my parents sent Max to London for the next year to let everything die down.”
Sophie felt her heart ticking rapidly. “When did this happen Ella?”
“I can’t remember exactly. A long time ago.”
“When we were 14?”
“What? I guess, maybe.” Ella looked at her suspiciously. “Did you already know?”
“No.” Sophie looked at her friend thoughtfully. “I didn’t know but it explains a lot.”
“Huh?” Ella narrowed her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me Sophie?”
“Nothing. I just felt that Maxwell changed after that summer.” Her voice sounded wistful. Inside she was bubbling with curiosity. What had happened to Maxwell? What had he done? And did she really want to know.
“Yeah. He did.” Ella’s eyes glazed over. “I don’t know what it was but from that point on it seemed like the light had gone out of his eyes.” She sighed. “And now he’s soo busy running the company with Dad, it’s like he doesn’t have time for anything else.”
“But he still dates.” It was a statement of fact but Sophie really wanted to ask it as a question.
“I guess so. I wouldn’t call it dating so much as fucking.” Ella grinned. “You know men.”
“Yeah.” Sophie sighed.
“You’ll most probably meet some of them as his assistant.”
“Oh. You think so?” Sophie’s heart sunk.
“Yeah.” Ella laughed. “I’m sure he’ll have you send flowers and stuff. Just don’t sleep with him.”
“What?” Sophie gasped.
“I said just don’t sleep with him or you’ll lose your job.” Ella laughed again. “I heard dad telling him that he had to stop sleeping with his assistants because apparently one of them started leaking company information after he dumped her.”
“Oh.” Sophie remembered the confidentiality contract that Maxwell had asked her to review and sign. “Wow.”
“Yeah. It was crazy. Apparently, she tried to sell a story to a tabloid about him spanking her and handcuffing her.”
“Really? That doesn’t seem tabloid worthy.” Sophie tried no to picture him with someone else. The churning in her gut was making her feel nauseous and she felt a headache coming on.
“Well, “ Ella lowered her voice again. “Supposedly he did something extra.”
“What?” Sophie leaned in with her heart in her mouth.
“What’s going on girls?” Maxwell knocked on the door and the girls jumped apart guiltily and for the first time ever Sophie was disappointed to see Max.
“Nothing. I was just coming to see you actually.” Ella was smooth and ran up and gave her a brother a kiss on the cheek.
“Oh yeah?” He raised an eyebrow at her and looked over to Sophie whose cheeks were flushed.
“Yeah. We wanted to know if you’d take us on the boat today.” She grinned up at him. “Please.”
“I’m pretty busy today Ella.” He looked at Sophie as she spoke and she tried to maintain eye contact with him without looking too embarrassed.
“Please Max.” She pleaded with her brother batting her eyelids up at him.
“Well Joseph is meant to come over to go over a contract with me this afternoon.”
“Oh?” Ella looked surprised.
“You could invite him too.” Sophie added in her two cents. She liked Joseph, he was one of the Van Harkel’s lawyers and she had met him and his wife several times.
“I don’t know.” Max looked like he was debating it in his mind.
“I thought he was going to be in the City this weekend?” Ella interrupted.
“No, he got into Winterside with Lily last night.” Max spoke distractedly and didn’t notice the Ella flinch. But Sophie did. Though she wasn’t sure why Ella cared.
“I see.” Ella frowned. “Well I don’t think Joseph and Lily will want to come, let’s postpone it.”
Max looked at his sister’s sad face and sighed. “No, no. I’ll cancel with Joseph. The contract can wait to be reviewed until tomorrow. I haven’t gotten to spend an afternoon with my sister and her best friend in ages.”
Ella laughed. “You may as well just say your two sisters.”
Sophie frowned at Ella’s words and looked at Max’s face. There was an evil glint in his eye.
“I don’t know if that’s such a good thing to say.” He winked at Sophie and turned around. “Let me go and finish up some work and we can head out after lunch.”
“Yay.” Ella danced around and ran to her closet. “Okay, I need to choose an outfit. Want to help me Sophie?”
“No, I think I’ll go and see if Max needs any help.”
“What, he has you working already?”
“No, but I figure I may as well get started now before he changes his mind.”
“Oh Sophie. You are a workahol
“Won’t it be cold?”
“Don’t be a baby it’ll be fine.”
“Okay Ella. See you in a bit.” Sophie walked out of the room and smiled to herself. She was excited to spend the afternoon with Maxwell and she was hopeful that she could try and find out some more information about his past.
Chapter 7
Sophie stood outside of Max’s office and counted to three before she knocked. She didn’t want to seem too eager partially because she wasn’t sure how he would react and partially because her inner conscious was telling her to run away as quickly as she could.
“Come in?”
“Hey Max, I was wondering if you needed any help?” She looked at him cheerfully, unsure if he would be happy to see her or not.
“Really?” He looked at her in surprise.
“Yes. I know I don’t officially start until next week but I would love to help out now if I could.”
“Actually that would be great.” He beamed at her and she felt her heart flutter. “Joseph is still coming over this afternoon. He’s going to go on the boat with us and wants to talk business afterwards. So I need to make a couple of changes to the contract now before we leave.”
“Oh ok. How can I help?”
“I want to read the contract and I’ll tell you the changes to make in the open document ok? You can use this laptop.” He pointed to a second closed laptop on his desk.
“Okay, sure.” She sat down eagerly and reached over for the laptop to turn it on. “Oh what’s the password?” She asked him as she was stopped from going any further.
He frowned at her and reached for the laptop. “Oh, I can put it in.”
“Don’t you trust me?” She looked at him with a sad face. “I’m not going to steal any corporate secrets.”
“No, I know, it’s not that.” He sighed and let go of the laptop. “Sophie.”
“Yes?”
“That’s the password.” He sighed. “Sophie.”
“Sophie as in me?” She looked at him in surprise as her heart pounded away.
“Yes. But it wasn’t chosen because of you. I mean, Ella was talking about you the day I was setting it up and I thought it would make an easy password to remember. You know?”
“Yeah sure.” She smiled shyly at him and wondered what it meant. He had used her name as his laptop password, a laptop he had had for at least a couple of years.
“Open word and open the file called “Soundgarden Contract.”
“Okay.” Her fingers moved nimbly across the keyboard, she realized that she was not going to be getting any answers right now.
“Okay, we are starting at section A, I want to include a few more names as guarantors to the loan.”
“Okay.” She typed away and they worked in solidarity for the next two hours with their minds on nothing but work. Sophie was justifying a paragraph and frowning because Word didn’t want to cooperate with her when she heard Maxwell laughing.
“What’s so funny?” She looked up with him and brushed her hair out of her eyes.
“You.” He smiled at her with mirth in his eyes. “Who would have thought you’d turn out to be such a good assistant?”
“Aren’t you glad you hired me now?” She grinned at him.
“Yes. Yes I am.” His eyes took in her heaving bosom barely contained by her tank top and he licked his lips. “I think it was a very good decision.”
Sophie felt her skin starting to warm and her stomach started doing flip-flops. “I’m glad as well.”
“Why are you glad Sophie?”
“Because I get to work with you.” She licked her lips as she studied his face. He had a manly square face, his dark hair was still wet from his shower and his eyes bore into her, the brilliant blueness reminding her of the night sky. “You know your eyes are soo many different kinds of blue.” She mumbled to him.
“Really?” He stared into her eyes. “Did you know that you have enchanting eyes like a cat? They change from green to brown and back again but they never seem to be quite the same color.”
“Oh.” She gazed at him breathless.
“Your eyes remind me of sunny hills and the morning dew on the grass. They remind me of hot chocolate on a hot night. They remind me of magic.”
“Magic?” She was caught up in his words.
“The magic of another day. The magic of believing and of trust.” He leaned into her. “When I gaze into your eyes, I feel like another person.”
They stared into each other’s eyes for the next few minutes. Each hoping to see the answer to an unasked question; to see the salvation they both sought. Sophie felt like she was going to drown; her throat choked up and she felt overwhelmed with emotion staring into Maxwell’s eyes. She felt like she wanted to tell him secrets that no one else knew, that she hadn’t even addressed with herself.
“Kiss me beautiful.” He leaned within inches of her so that she could also taste his lips on her. She leaned forward and met his lips and returned his kiss. It was soft and sweet and full of passion. She urgently pushed her tongue into his mouth wanting to taste and feel more of him; wanting to be consumed and to consume.
He sucked on her tongue and pulled back from her. She looked up at him surprised and hurt but was delighted to see that he had just broken their kiss so that he could come around the table and grab her from her chair so that they could kiss properly. She put her arms around him and played with his slick hair. She felt him bring her in closer to him so that their bodies were meshed together; and they were essentially two halves of the same whole. She felt like this was their first kiss; so sweet and powerful were the emotions running through her.
“You are such a sweet sexy thing Sophie.” Maxwell groaned into her ear. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
Sophie wanted to ask him what his hesitation was but she didn’t want to ruin the mood so she just pushed herself into him harder and kissed him more passionately. She reached her hands down to the top of his jeans and unbuckled his belt. She smiled when she heard him groan but he didn’t try and stop her. She pulled his belt out of his jeans and undid the button and pulled his zipper down very carefully. He stared at her intently and she smiled up at him. She pulled his jeans and boxers down and was rewarded by an already penis waiting to greet her. She got down on her knees and sucked it for a few seconds before taking him in her hands. He gasped and grabbed her head as she gave him a hand job. She grinned as she looked at the desk and saw he had a glass of water with some ice cubes in it. She pushed him down to the couch that was at the side of the room and got up quickly.
“Where are you going?” He pouted at her.
“Hold on.” All of a sudden she felt very much in control and she loved it. She grabbed one of the ice cubes from the glass and put it in her mouth and sucked on it. She walked slowly back to him and saw him pleasuring himself.
“Oh no big boy, that’s my job.” She grinned at him and pushed his hand away. He sat back and grinned at her.
“I was hoping you would say that.”
She leaned forward to kiss him and transferred the remainder of the ice cube into his mouth. Then she bent down and took him in her mouth. He gasped from the intense coldness on him but as she continued bobbing up and down on his cock, she felt him relax and start groaning. She could feel him growing harder and harder in her mouth and she could taste his precum as she sucked on the tip of his cock.
“Oh fuck Sophie. You are killing me here.”
She looked up at him and she saw the desire she felt reflected in his eyes. She jumped up and pulled her shorts and panties off and lowered herself into him. She yelped as he took control and grabbed her ass pushing her down onto him hard. She leaned over to kiss him as she bounced up and down on his cock enjoying the feel of him, still slightly cold, inside of her. He squeezed her ass as she rode him and he pulled away from her so that he was staring into her eyes as they both came. She wanted to close her eyes as the orgasms ripped through her but the intensity of his gaze heightened her pleasure. She stilled and collapsed against him as he slid out of her and she rested her head on his shoulder.
“Now, that is one reason why mid-afternoon sex isn’t always good.” He grinned at her. “It makes you tired.”
“I’m not tired.” She yawned as she spoke and they both laughed as they relaxed on the couch.
“Really?” He smiled at her tenderly.
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