by Taryn Quinn
“Suit yourself. Watch me eat.” I put my hand on the small of her back and nudged her forward to speak to the maître d' when it was finally our turn. “I’ve already done that once today myself.”
“You weren’t watching me eat. You were just watching me.”
The sleek redheaded maître d' cocked a brow. “Mr. Shaw, how lovely to see you…and your companion.”
“My assistant, Tanya. I have a reservation. We’re regrettably late.”
“Egregiously.” Ryan tapped her nails on her huge green bag and flashed me a wholly insincere smile.
“Ah, yes. We reserved your table. In fact, I was about to phone you. You’re never late.” Tanya shot Ryan a look.
“He got the dregs from the temp pool.” Ryan smiled again. “But considering what he’s paying me, can’t really be too surprised.”
“You don’t even know what I’m paying you.” I gazed at the side of her stupidly beautiful face. “But I can still pay you less, so keep it up,” I added against her ear.
It required me not breathing in her sex scent, but I was devoted to the cause.
She stared straight ahead. “I don’t need your money, Fancy Pants.”
Tanya cleared her throat and grabbed a pair of menus. “Lee, can you see Mr. Shaw and his assistant to the free table near the fireplace?” Her lips curved. “Mr. Shaw always likes to sit near the fire.”
Lee stepped forward and aimed a devastating smile at me. “Mr. Shaw, this way, please.”
“Do I exist? Do I still have a corporeal form?” Ryan patted her sides and slapped at her arms as if she was fighting off a bug infestation.
I fought a grin as I nudged her forward on her unsteady heels. “Don’t worry, Miss Moon, I see you quite fine,” I said in an undertone.
The glare she sent my way made my grin widen.
Then I looked up, and the person I saw wasn’t Ryan. Wasn’t anyone I wanted to see, especially in that scenario.
My father was seated in a cozy booth on the other side of the fireplace. And he wasn’t alone. A gorgeous blond who looked young enough to be his daughter—young enough to be my sister—was feeding him shrimp. The smile he had for her was one he hadn’t given my mother in ages, if ever.
Wait.
Not just any blond.
She threw her head back with a throaty laugh. A very put on one that she never used in the office. My father’s administrative assistant, Courtney, was smoothing her fingers down the lapel of his suit in a far too familiar way.
Lee said something as she brought us to our table. I didn’t hear her. Didn’t hear Ryan though her lips moved as I unbuttoned my suit jacket and took the seat opposite her.
My head was full of white noise.
“Are you listening to me? Preston.” I glanced up as she leaned over to place her hand on my arm. “Are you all right?”
Same white-hot electric reaction as earlier, I noted dully.
I had to tell my mother.
She couldn’t live with a lie. I couldn’t be complicit in it.
“Preston,” Ryan said gently, curling her fingers around my rock-hard forearm. It felt as if all my muscles were locked for battle. “Look at me for a second.”
I looked. I didn’t know the source of the power she held over me, but the glow of it radiated from her jeweled eyes. Somehow she eased my stampeding heartbeat and cooled the sweat that had already pooled at the base of my spine.
All at once, I was steady. And back to idiotic.
“Did you put a sex hex on me? I didn’t finish Googling.”
For a long moment, she just stared back. Then the corners of her lips twitched.
“No. I don’t know what exactly that is, although it sounds intriguing.”
“I may have made it up. I just want you to know I don’t act like…this.”
I wasn’t the same as my father, coming on to my employees. I didn’t take advantage of my position.
I wouldn’t.
More twitching. “This?”
“I don’t banter. I don’t eat pastry out of strange women’s hands. And I normally wouldn’t try to pretend my father isn’t with a woman who is not my mother eating shrimp and probably figuring I can handle his divorce, because hey, that’s my specialty, right?” I let out a bitter laugh and spread my napkin over my lap as our server returned. I couldn’t seem to add the appalling bonus level slight of a clandestine workplace romance.
Much to my shock, Ryan took a cursory look at the menu and ordered for both of us. Worse? The orange chicken she chose for me was my favorite dish here. And she did not order whitefish, but a medium rare steak.
The last thing she asked for was a bottle of Riesling from a local winery, Apothecary Wines. I would’ve protested that business lunches didn’t include alcohol, if I didn’t currently have bigger issues in my life.
Like my happy childhood going up in flames.
I refused to look past Ryan’s shoulder in their general direction. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, the faithless bastard.
“Stop looking prune-faced. I didn’t steal your balls and offer them up as garnish. I just ordered for us because you needed a minute. Don’t fret.” She patted the back of my hand. “You’re still the alpha cock, darling.”
Stuck between a laugh and a grimace, I pointed at her. “You’re never to say that word in my presence.”
She caught her tongue between her teeth. “Which?”
“You know which. Bad enough you said it on that podcast.”
“Oh, yeah? You listened to all of my golden cock reading?”
I glanced around then decided I didn’t give a shit if some of these upper crust-types heard us discussing dicks with our lunch. Apparently, my give a damn had busted upon seeing my sneaky father. “I listened. It said you were going to get lucky. Has that happened yet?”
“Not the lucky part yet, but I’m beginning to wonder,” she muttered. “Gotta say it doesn’t look the way I figured it would.”
The server returned with our Riesling and a couple of glasses. Once she’d poured and left again, I took a long sip and decided the sweet apple and pear finish was just what this meal needed. And quite possibly, my sanity. “I normally have one glass of bourbon a week.”
“Oh, no.” She smacked her cheek. “A rule broken in the big book of them?”
“I had a glass and a half this morning. Wonder why?”
She pressed her lips together. “Your perfect little world blown apart by a hex kitten?”
I shouldn’t laugh at her. It was only encouraging bad behavior. Problem was, I was cruising hard to be very bad indeed.
“I never had these problems with April.”
“No?” Ryan picked up her glass and peered at me over the rim. “Why do you think that is?”
Because I don’t have a visceral response to her words on a computer screen. And her voice. And her…everything.
I rubbed my temples as my headache warned of a reappearance. “She’s an altogether different sort of woman.”
“She definitely is,” Ryan said cheerfully. “She said you were staid.”
I wasn’t going to rise to her bait.
I simply was not.
“Trust me, some of the thoughts I’ve had today were the furthest thing from that.”
Ryan took a long sip and then set down her glass. Rather than touch me, she just placed her hand close to mine. “Tell me exactly what happened between the foyer and when we sat down. Keep in mind I don’t know any of the players.”
My first instinct was to deny, deny, deny. My second was to not lie, since I didn’t want to be like my father in any way.
I could have misconstrued what I saw. Maybe they were having a work lunch just like we were. Perhaps he was checking the shrimp for doneness. Maybe they were doing a taste test. Or he’d sprained all his fingers, and she was helping him.
Right.
“Seated behind you on the opposite side of the fireplace is a distinguished older man with salt and pepper hai
r and a young blond female. She was feeding him shrimp.”
His assistant.
When I berated myself for workplace impropriety, I had no clue that it was most assuredly something I would have to look into for the entire firm.
Like father like son?
My gut twisted into foul knots.
“Okay.”
“The older man is my father. In case you didn’t realize my age, the young blond is definitely not my mother.”
Ryan pursed her lips before immediately knocking her silverware to the floor. “Oops!” She bent over to retrieve it and spent a moment checking out the couple at the other table as she straightened. “He’s definitely hitting it to her.” She shook her head. “Watch them and tell me when she goes to the bathroom.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m going to have words with her.” She propped her chin on her fist. “Which do you think is better? ‘I’m curious if his STD results have come in’ or ‘how is he acclimating after that prison stint?’”
I didn’t expect to laugh. Then again, I’d been caught between annoyance, laughter, and lust since the first time her name appeared in my inbox. Had it only been a week?
The blond walked away from her booth. Had she overheard us talking about bathroom breaks?
Ryan popped up from her seat.
“No. Don’t. Ryan.” I lurched over the table and grabbed her hip when she started to take a step.
My fingers tingled as I upped the pressure. Heat flashed up my wrist. At this point, I wasn’t even surprised.
Touching Ryan was an electrical event every damn time.
She gazed down at me through her darkly lashed eyes. “If you wanted to touch, you just had to ask.”
I didn’t let go. If anything, I gripped that soft handful of flesh harder. Possibly leaving marks she’d remember later. Maybe even burns.
Surely I couldn’t be the only one who felt that incredible warmth every time we touched? I didn’t dare ask, but from the way she trembled faintly in my hold, she had to be feeling something.
Her throat moved and she slicked her tongue over her lips. “Don’t like the STD question? I could pretend to be an ex of his and slap her and call her nasty names. That’d probably work too.”
“Sit. Please.”
“You going to unhand me first?”
I did, reluctantly. I took my seat again as she sat in hers, and then let out a long breath. “I appreciate the gesture. Truly. But he’s your boss too.”
“Temporarily. And if he’s a sea cretin, maybe I don’t want to work for him. That ever occur to you?”
“No, because I didn’t know you had an aversion to sea cretins.”
“I do. They give me hives.” She shuddered. “Easy enough to tell someone you’re not feeling it anymore and you need to go.”
I picked up the napkin that had fallen off my lap and spread it over my trousers. “Yes, when there isn’t a million-dollar fortune at risk. That makes it harder.”
She didn’t even blink. “Are you excusing what he’s doing? You didn’t look like you were cool with it when you sat down. Or is that the bro code kicking in?”
“Bro code? He’s my father. The woman he’s hurting is my mother.”
“Then?” She snapped out her napkin over her lap.
“He’s a divorce lawyer. I’m not going to say we become immune to endings, but we definitely see how transient relationships can be.” I jerked a shoulder. “People aren’t forever, but money lasts a good long while.”
“Nothing is forever. Especially not money. You can’t take it with you. Unless someone forgot to tell you that.”
“No, but you can’t take supposed love with you either.”
“Supposed, huh?” She shook her head, but not as if she disapproved of what I was saying. More like she was disappointed in me.
Hot on the heels of my father’s deception, that stung.
“Let’s just say I’m not a believer in Valentine’s Day. This is not helping my outlook.”
“You sound jaded as hell.”
I had been privy to far too many broken relationships, many of which ended due to tawdry extramarital affairs, frequently with staff. No wonder I took work boundaries so seriously.
I smoothed my hand over my napkin. “Yeah, well, do my job for as long as I have and see how you feel.”
“So don’t do it anymore. If it doesn’t feed your soul, let it go.”
The laugh that cracked out of my chest was loud enough to make the couple beside us look our way. For all I knew, my father had heard me too.
I didn’t care. I wasn’t the one who should be hiding, even if I’d traveled to the other side of Crescent Cove in case anyone saw me lunching with my brand new assistant and assumed things they shouldn’t.
Guess the joke was on me.
“If you’re able to construct your life that way, you’re lucky. I’m not. A role was waiting for me when I was born, and I stepped into it.”
The compassion that softened her expression made my shoulder blades itch. “Your brother must have too. But he enjoys his work.”
“Oh, you know that much about him already, hmm?”
She gave a dainty shrug, and her spaghetti straps slipped a fraction lower on her shoulders. “We chatted for a few minutes.”
“Before he asked you out.”
“Actually, you asked me out before he did.” She smiled serenely as our server rolled a covered cart to our table. “To lunch,” she added while I stared at her.
I waited to speak until the server set down our lunches and left. “This isn’t a date. It’s a working lunch.”
“Right.”
“It is,” I insisted.
“Silly me. Here I thought you were staking your claim, in deed if not words. You know, pissing on my tree before your brother could.”
I didn’t know what part of that to unpack first. “Absolutely not. Fraternization is vigorously frowned upon at Shaw, Shaw, and Shaw, Attorneys at Law.”
Hypocrite. The voice in my head was even louder than the drowning waves of lust this unusual woman inspired in me.
“It’s frowned upon in marriages too, I believe, and I know of one Shaw who likes to bend the rules there.”
“One too many rules. The blond in question is also his admin.”
Her exotically arched eyebrow spiked higher. “Not only did he go for another cookie jar, but he has doubly sticky fingers. And you thought you were a bad boy.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I hadn’t done anything as out of character as my behavior today since college, and look where that had gotten me?
She took a bite of her steak and let out an orgasmic moan.
“Good?” I asked in a strangled voice.
It went well with my equally strangled cock being imprinted by the angry teeth of my fly. My ardor should have cooled thanks to this ugly situation I’d found myself in, and yet…no. Nothing had cooled at all.
“Delicious.” She batted her ridiculously gorgeous eyes at me. “When does the work start?”
Instead of digging into my lunch, I withdrew a long sheaf of folded papers from the inside pocket of my suit jacket. Wordlessly, I passed them across the table.
Her eyebrow did that artful arch again as she began paging through the hefty document.
Granted, only the first page or so consisted of genuine tasks I expected her to complete this week. The last two pages had been borrowed from a free legal resource I’d found online with tips to make your law office work smarter, not harder. One suggestion was to use a white board and Post-It notes to visually shift tasks from the to do column to the done column as things were completed. That seemed like something she’d like.
Especially since they recommended including notes with inspirational woo-woo phrases among the work ones. Pithy quotes such as, “when life gets tough, turn your lemons into lemonade and add a garnish.”
How terribly helpful. But we were all just trying to set our souls free. Or some such bul
lshit.
“I’m only your assistant for a week.”
“I know and there are so many issues of Cosmopolitan to read. And all ten toes with nails to repaint.” I took a bite of my orange chicken and nearly let out a moan of my own before going back for more.
“You’re the one who flounced this morning before giving me actual work to do. Although it took some time to craft this, didn’t it?” She shook her head. “Make sure the water carafe in the waiting lounge is replenished twice daily? Seriously? I thought you’d mention something about that godawful filing system. I don’t know how you find anything in that records room. Dusty boxes of old client information going back to when, 1975? Those people could be dead.”
“My father started the firm in 1992. And those files are confidential. Did you sign an NDA?”
“Did you give me one?”
I could answer that in the negative. Upon first sight of her, my system had gone into lockdown.
Potential lust override. Abort!
“You’ll be signing one as soon as we get back.” I started plowing through my baby peas, since my chicken was now merely a puddle of orange glaze.
If I’d been alone, I just might have licked the plate. Since I couldn’t lick her and still face myself in the morning, why not?
“Oh, goody. My excitement is palpable. Can you tell?” She pushed aside the sheaf of documents and went back to her steak, eating with a gusto I had to appreciate.
I less appreciated how she downed two glasses of wine in short order, but perhaps her soul felt trapped. I didn’t see how since her dress was so…airy, but I was determined not to notice.
Even if I caught quite a few men checking her out. I may or may not have incinerated them with the power of my mind as they ambled past our table.
“Do you have a suggestion about improving the filing system?”
I didn’t think she’d have an answer. Or that she’d be so animated in sharing it that the sparkling crystals on her many necklaces would move with her body, catching and refracting little bursts of light. I was mesmerized by those shifting hues against the warmth of her skin.
Couldn’t help imagining wrapping her wrists in thin, fragile chains laced with those stones and pulling on them as I drove into her from behind.
“Are you staring at my tits?” she demanded, breaking the spell. “I’m not saying I mind, but if we’ve reached dessert, I’d appreciate more eye candy than your red tie.”