by Mia Madison
I shrugged, and then said, “A girl’s got to pay her rent.” I smiled brightly.
“And if your father paid your rent?” he asked, leaving it an open-ended question.
“It would come with his top rate match making services for whoever he thought was the up-and-coming mover and shaker of the day.” I captured a piece of shrimp with my chopsticks and bit it in half.
“And what does Addilyn want?”
Besides you? The words almost left my mouth, but I held them captive on the tip of my tongue. I hesitated to tell the truth. Within the circles of the rich and powerful, I’d never had a truly positive response for my academic cravings. I decided to go for it. “Against my father’s wishes, I got a Master’s degree in Mathematical Engineering.” I watched his face closely before what I had to say next. “I want to help things fly, go to other planets and reach the stars. I want to work at NASA someday.”
Harris froze with a bit of kung pow chicken halfway to his lips. “Really?”
“Really,” I answered, still watching him closely while simultaneously steeling myself for the ridicule to come.
“I guess I can say that you’re reaching for the stars!” His face lit in a smile from ear to ear that made my heart skip a beat as he became not just a brilliant man but a man I could throw myself at. He was sexy as hell! How he’d managed to hide how gorgeous he became when he smiled, I had no idea, but his constantly stern exterior finally made perfect sense. Without it, he’d be having to press sexual harassment charges against half his female staff. As it was, I had to grip my chair to keep from throwing myself at him.
Could it be that the man sitting before me was beautiful both inside and out? Maybe the charity events were more than just an opportunity to network for him. Maybe he actually believed in the causes they stood for. Maybe Harris Worthington was nothing like my father at all. Maybe he was a man I wanted to know more... needed to know more.
Maybe... he was an actual good guy.
Maybe...
But he was close the kind of guy my father wanted me to marry.
Chapter Six
Harris
I passed Addilyn’s desk on the way to my office and was more than a little bit disappointed to find it empty. Without realizing it, saying good morning to her as I strolled past had become a morning ritual for me over the last several weeks, one that meant way more than it should.
Get a grip, old man. It was ridiculous of me to harbor feelings for a girl—a woman, I corrected myself—young enough to be my daughter... not that I had a daughter, or any children for that matter. No, sadly, Select Holdings, Inc., had become my one and only mistress somewhere along the line. My obsession to see the company thrive had been born of having my very first company fail. I still remembered the faces of all of those who had lost their livelihoods when its doors had closed. Over time I’d heard the stories, what had happened to those who had put their faith in me to create a company that could provide for their needs long-term. Most had been alright. They’d landed on their feet either going back to school to launch into new professions or had found other work in similar industries. But, there were the few whose fate had haunted me. One family lost everything due to their child’s illness coupled with a lack of healthcare. They’d lost their home, their savings, all of their belongings—but thankfully their child had lived. I hadn’t been in a position to help them at the time, but it was a lesson I’d taken to heart. It was why ensuring that Security Holdings, Inc. thrived was worth putting my own pursuits of happiness aside.
But, I was not blind to the fact that my company had grown up. It was stable, fruitful even, and it provided for everyone under its umbrella. It was time for me to take care of myself, and there was a certain blonde-haired, sapphire-eyed young woman that I hoped to make a part of that process. Even if I would never have her romantic affections, I would adore the chance to spend more time in her company. With that in mind, I sent her a note over email asking her to come see me when she got a chance. A tap on my door came fifteen minutes later.
“You wanted to see me?” Addilyn asked, stepping into my office and strolling comfortably to my desk. She had her hands clasped behind hips and she swayed as she walked. She no longer moved with the fast, studied gate of a subordinate around me. She moved with the ease of a colleague... or even a close friend.
I took a deep breath, wondering how best to ask her out for her personal company rather than an informal work lunch. Steeling my nerves, I launched into my pitch. “There’s a new restaurant nearby that I’ve been hearing good things about. If you don’t have any other plans, I was wondering if I could treat you to lunch.” There. That was it. Non-professional. Casual. And, most importantly, optional.
Addilyn’s brows lifted in what I could only assume was surprise, but the corners of her lips curled up as well. “Just you and me?” she asked, seeming to test the waters of the idea that this was a casual outing between friends. “Should I bring any reports for us to go over? Bring you up to date on any of the company projects? Talk about who you think might be embezzling from the company?”
“No,” I said hurriedly, and then with a determined calmness I said again, “No. Your company is more than enough for an afternoon away from the office.” To my leaping heart’s delight, her smile grew.
“It’s a date!” she declared, and then added, “Pick me up on the way out?” she asked with a twinkle in her eye that nearly had me fist-pumping the air.
****
It was a long, excruciating four hours later before she and I were finally seated across a small, intimate table with soft lighted and a placement that gave the illusion of privacy. Addilyn turned her knees to the side of the table, bringing them into my full view, before crossing her legs—slowly. Her challenging gaze stayed locked to me the entire time and the demure smile her lips wore never faltered.
“Harris,” she said after the waiter had come and gone with our orders. “Is this a date, as in a date-date?”
I was a deer in headlights, trapped under her request for the naked truth.
I stalled. Clearing my throat, I crossed my ankle over my knee, looked her in the eye and gave her an honest answer. “This is whatever you would like it to be, an outing between friends, colleagues, or...” I wanted to finish the sentence but couldn’t bring myself to do it, and to my horror, Addilyn remained silent as her gaze fell to the table. “I’m sorry. I’ve overstepped. It was never my intent to make you feel uncomfortable.” I started to stand. “I’ll arrange to pay for the check and leave you to eat in peace.”
“Sit.” It was one word, a single command, and I obeyed it without conscious thought. “I like the ‘or’ part. Tell me more?” Her smile was back, filling her face with a light all its own.
It was my turn to smile. “You’re the sexiest damn woman I know, and every day, every time I realize how stunningly smart you are, you become even more beautiful to me.” I was holding nothing back. It was time to put all my cards on the table.
“Smart? You don’t think I’m too brainy?” I shook my head no, and her gaze fell before lifting to meet my eyes again. “I’ve been told to ‘dumb it down’ by my father when talking to men.”
“He what?” Just as I’d done when I’d sat back down, I spoke the words without conscious thought. They came out deep and challenging in a voice much louder than the delicate sensibilities that the restaurant encouraged from its patrons through its atmosphere. “He asked you to dumb yourself down around men?” I was outraged, and my ears were burning.
Addilyn shrugged as if what her father had asked her to do didn’t bother her. She answered as she slipped the cloth napkin off the table and laid it over her lap. “He said that an intelligent woman tended to intimidate men, and that if I wanted a man who would adore me rather than see me as a challenge to conquer that I should learn how to make a man feel more intelligent than me.”
I won’t lie, I wanted to punch her father. “You are a challenge, Addilyn... in all the right ways, in
every way that is wonderful, and your father—forgive me for saying—is a fool. No, an idiot.”
“An idiotic fool,” Addilyn corrected for me, her smile as brilliant as the sun.
I wanted to reach across the table to her. I wanted to touch her, but I didn’t dare. It was crossing a line that I was not yet convinced that she wanted crossed. “I’m more than happy to be the winner of your company by default.”
Chapter Seven
Addilyn
“I can’t believe I’m here past eight again,” I murmured to myself before extending my arms up over my head and arching my back in a thorough stretch. I blew out a big breath when I released the pose and then leaned forward and craned my neck in the direction of Harris’s office. He was still in there, working hard just like me.
Printing out my updated documents, I loaded them into the report folder and headed down the short hallway to Harris’s closed door. I gave it a tap with my knuckles and then opened it without waiting for a call from within welcoming me to do so. With no light to fill the office through the wall of windows at Harris’s back, his office was dim but his desk glowed from a single banker’s lamp positioned over Harris’s work.
He looked up, and I had to squelch a sigh. He was wearing himself out. “You look awful.” The words were out of my mouth before I even thought about them. Dressed in long slacks, high heels and a form fitting, burgundy sweater that I knew did amazing things to highlight my golden hair, I took my time walking the distance to Harris’s desk. His eyes were on me, and I wanted him to see every move I made. So far, the flirtations had mostly come from me, and they were mild and obscure. They were moments like these when I knew I had his undivided attention that I did my best to bring a spark of heat to Harris’s eyes, but tonight Harris’s eyes were mostly just bloodshot.
I plopped down into the chair beside Harris’s desk and crossed my legs. I said it again. “You look awful.” To my surprise, Harris smiled. Then, to my utter dismay, he laughed. The deep, resonate sound that came out of him washed over me, dancing on the tip of every nerve ending to leave me heady and feeling high.
“I heard you the first time,” he said, still grinning. He leaned back in his chair, his fatigue evident in his heavy shoulders. His eyes traced my lines from the top of my head to the tips of my toes and back up again. When his gaze finally returned to my face, I greeted him with a warm, welcoming smile. I handed over the new, updated report.
“Have you figured out who the embezzler is?” I asked.
Harris nodded. “Frank Druthers in Accounting.”
My brows arched. I had only ever had contact with Frank through company gatherings, social events designed to create interoffice connections and open communication. I couldn’t remember much about him other than the impression he’d made on me, which was that he was a nice guy. Easy going, not flashy, not out to prove anything to anyone. He was fast with a handshake and a smile and liked to listen as much as he liked to talk. I tried to remember anything that he might have done or said to ever make me think that he was someone not trustworthy and came up with nothing. “Frank?”
“Mhm,” Harris confirmed with a head nod.
“When will you talk to him?”
“I’ve got a meeting called with the board to reveal the evidence that we’ve put together, and I’ll talk to Frank when I pull him into that meeting.”
“Wait. What?” I leaned forward in my chair, putting both feet flat on the ground. “You’re not going to talk to him first? Find out if... I don’t know, if it could have been a mistake? A misunderstanding?”
Harris laughed again, but this time instead of dancing over my nerve endings, leaving me with tingles of delight, his laughter raked over me, derisively.
“Don’t be so naive,” Harris chided, rankling me further.
“Naive?” I stood, towering over Harris while he remained in his seated position. “I call for open communication rather than an ambush and you say that that’s naive of me?”
Harris blinked. Then he blinked again, and I realized what I’d just done. I had just put my boss in his place, but I didn’t care. He could take his dismissive, egotistical naive comment and shove it where the sun didn’t shine.
“You’re right,” Harris said, and it was my turn to blink. His tone was even, on the verge of placating even. If Harris was anything, he was not a man blinded by his own ego like my father was. I sat back down, once more crossing my legs. And I waited, wanting to hear more of the thoughts from a powerful man who was night and day different from being the man I grew up with. His eyes traced me up and down again, but with a more appraising look, the kind you would give an equal rather than the look you’d give someone when wondering what they look like naked. “Not enough people do that,” he said, leaving me at a loss for what he meant.
“Do what?”
“Tell me when I’m wrong.”
I just barely managed to stop the gasp that wanted to escape my lungs at his confession.
“And what’s more... I like it,” he added, smiling, and every inch of my body warmed.
It was my turn to imagine him naked.
Chapter Eight
Harris
What the hell am I doing? That was the thought that bounced around the inside of my brain while I looked over the woman across from me—an employee young enough to be my daughter. But... she wasn’t my daughter, and thank God for that. For all I cared, she might as well have been a creature from another planet. Mystical and magnificent. I wanted her. God help me, I wanted her a lot.
“Why do you have to be like that?” I asked, overcome with my desire for her.
“Like what?” She cocked her head to the side, letting the loose strands of her blonde hair travel over the most glorious shoulder I’d ever seen. She had the grace of a dancer even when sitting still.
“So damned sexy.” There. I’d said it. The words were out, and now they hung between us, widening the gap between her and me the same way that our twenty some years of age difference did. The first time I’d discovered what it felt like to be inside of a woman, she wasn’t even born yet. In fact, I was already out of college by the time she took her first breath. When I was thirty, she was barely more than a toddler.
I was a monster, a dirty, inappropriate old man with a hunger to take advantage of an employee, an underling. The power I had over her life was too large to ever make courting her okay. But, she didn’t seem to see any of those truths. Instead, she was smiling at me and looking at me like she wanted to wrap herself around me and eat me whole.
I stood. “Addilyn, go home.”
“No.” Addilyn uncrossed her legs and then crossed them again with the other leg on top, slowly, alluringly. ‘
“What do you mean, ‘No’?”
“Just no... I’m not going to go home when what I want is right here.” Her gaze was unwavering on me, challenging, making my blood heat to a boil.
“I’m your boss, Addilyn, and I’ve crossed a line.”
“You haven’t crossed the line yet, but I’m hoping you will.”
“Addilyn, get out of my office.” I closed my eyes and took a calming breath, willing myself to stay strong, but the only thing I managed to do was breathe in the barely perceptible sweet musky scent of her perfume. When I opened my eyes again, it was to find her standing right in front of me. In her heels, she was almost as tall, and it took only the stretch of her neck for her to caress my lips with hers.
I couldn’t stop my hands. They moved on their own, finding her waist to hold her as I took over to deepen the kiss. Then, like pulling a thorn that had lodged in my heart, I jerked away. “Addilyn, go home,” I said, pleading as much as I was demanding, but as it turned out, she had demands of her own.
She kissed me again, and then said, “Go lock the door.”
It was my turn to say, “No.”
“I’m not a little girl,” she said as her eyes narrowed with seeming disapproval of my refusal to give in.
I swallowed... hard.
“You are all woman. I get that, but that’s why you’ve got to go.”
The palm of her hand traveled up my front until it reached my ear. There, she squeezed and pulled my earlobe the way a mother might do an errant child. Stretching up to me again but halting with her sweet lips close enough to mine that I could feel her heat, she ordered again, “Go lock the door.”
I’m only a man. I’m not a God, and this time when she bid me to lock the door, I did as I was told, knowing that what was to follow would mean sacrificing a piece of myself that I had managed to keep intact for as long as I had been in a position of authority. I had never taken advantage of a subordinate. I had never been romantically involved with anyone who was depended on my largess and good will, but that was about to change and I knew it. I couldn’t feel good about it, but if she wanted me, I was not a man strong enough to tell her no. Not any longer. Not when she looked at me with those jewel-like blue eyes of hers.
I crossed the floor to my office door, tempted it to open it and keep on going instead of locking it, but when my hand fell upon the handle, my fingers did the work of turning the knob that sealed us both inside and kept the rest of the world out. And maybe that was all I needed. If the secret was ours and ours alone, if I never behaved wrongly toward her, maybe it was okay. Maybe what I was doing wasn’t wrong.
I shook my head, recognizing a self-deception when I heard it. I turned around, my hand still on the door knob, prepared to open it and once and for all demand that she leave, but the sight that greeted me when I turned back to her was her in her burgundy high heel pumps, a lacy bra and panties, and nothing else.
My hand slipped free of the door handle, and I no longer gave a damn about propriety, largess, or anything approaching an ethical argument of any kind. I covered the distance between us with long, sure strides until I had my hands on her hips and her body pulled hard against me.