by Erin Havoc
I roll my eyes but the grin on my face can’t fool her. She squeals before I can do anything else. “Stop! Stop,” I hiss, my face burning up.
“Damn, Jess, you got lucky as hell! What’s his name? Is he any good? How big is his—”
“Not work-related!” I squeal and hide my face in my hands. “Good God, I just can’t.” I plop down on my chair and lean forward to press my hands against the table.
“Oh, all right, all right,” Dana giggles, gripping my shoulders. “We’ll talk about it over lunch.”
“I can’t,” I answer between my fingers. “I’ll have lunch with him.”
Dana shimmies her hips in a celebratory dance, “Go, girl!”
“Is there anything work-related you can talk to me about?”
“Good call, your face is this shade of bright red I’ve never…”
“Dana!”
“All right, here.” She offers me a form, her signature already scribbled on the bottom of the page. “This is your entry form with the data of your recommendation. I need you to get this up to the CEO so he can, you know, know I’m the one who endorsed such a good employee.”
“Oh, sure,” I jump up, snatching the form out of her fingers and finding a pen. “Where do I sign?”
Dana offers me the clipboard and points to a couple of blank fields. “Here and here. Then take this up to the 23rd floor. Tell the receptionist Dana sent you. She’s already waiting.”
“Perfect,” I breathe in, trying to control the burn in my cheeks but it’s useless. I decide it’s for the best to turn and leave toward the elevator as fast as possible.
My phone, on my back pocket, buzzes with a message. A smile stretches my lips even before I pick it up. I know who it’s from.
Daniel: I can’t stop thinking about you, so to pretend that I’m doing something useful, I’m deciding where to take you for lunch.
Daniel: I want to impress you but not so much as to scare you or to look like I’m bragging.
Daniel: So I’m between Mexican and Japanese.
I snort, bringing the phone up so I can type an answer.
Jessica: Don’t you think they’re two extremes?
Jessica: There’s a good Italian restaurant two blocks down the street.
I realize we’re in the very same building at this moment but I do not know where he is. It’s an odd feeling. Starting a relationship knowing so much and so little about him at the same time. I don’t know in which department he works, though I’d guess business.
Damn, I can’t even imagine how good he must look in a suit. As in a real, tailored suit, not a hazmat suit.
Also even if I wanted to ask around about him, I couldn’t. I don’t know his last name. Which is ridiculous, since I know so much about his family and goals and fears.
Daniel: You’re into Italian? I can cook some pasta back at my place. We can do a Lady and the Tramp thing and then we’ll do it doggie style.
Jessica: lol perfect
This man. I just can’t get over how perfect he is.
The elevator door dings open and I take a step out of it and stop to survey my surroundings. The floor is wide, with windows from floor to ceiling. It’s as bright as Daniel’s living room and the memory makes me relax. I approach the receptionist’s desk.
She’s one of those types — tall, thin, blond and with an air of contempt on her face. She looks at me with a tilt to her lip as if I was some kind of bug that just flew in.
I hold the twinge of pain that kind of look gives me. I should have already learned to deal with them. To accept that not everyone was like Daniel.
“Can I help you?”
I approach her with a tight-lipped smile. “Hi. Dana sent me to—”
“Oh, yeah.” She cuts me in and picks up the receiver of the phone by her hand. “I’ll let him know. Just a moment.”
I take a step back. Damn, this one wasn’t cut to work with people. I hold on to my form, looking around the place and setting my gaze on the glass doors to a side. There’s a plaque there, and I squint to read it.
Daniel Allen. CEO
Oh, such a coincidence. The CEO is also called Daniel. But I guess it’s a common name.
“You can go in,” the receptionist says as she hangs the phone up, not looking up at me.
My phone buzz in my hand. I look at it as I walk to the glass doors.
Daniel: So Italian it is?
Through the mate glass, I watch the silhouette of a tall man approach the door to open it. I quickly type an answer.
Jessica: Sure. I’m especially interested in the doggie style.
I hit “Send” with a smile on my lips. The door slides open.
A phone buzzes right in front of me. I look up to meet the man in the suit.
And I was right.
Daniel looks amazing in a suit.
My heart shatters. I’m sure he can hear the pieces cracking and hitting the floor. But he just smiles.
“Hey! I didn’t know Dana sent you!”
Heart slamming against my ribs, I gulp as I enter his office, my legs moving on their own accord. I don’t want to be here.
The worst possibility ever has just come true.
I could date a colleague. But not a superior. Never a boss.
He’s the boss of all bosses in here! He’s the freaking CEO of Allen Pharmaceuticals!
“We didn’t need to text then, we could only…”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” The words spill out, and tears sting the back of my eyes.
I clench my jaw. I’m not going to cry. I’m not doing that. I barely know the man!
“What? That I was the CEO?” He stands in front of me, perfect in that tailored suit, and stretches his arms to touch me. I take a step back, afraid of the jolt his touch will send through me. “What’s wrong, love?”
A tear streak down my cheek. This can’t be. I knew it was too good to be true.
I wipe the tear away furiously, “I didn’t know you were the boss.”
“So what?”
“I can’t date my boss!” I blurt out and immediately regret it. I don’t want to sound desperate and peg us for dating right off the bat.
“Why not?” Hurt crosses his face, and a twinge of regret stabs me.
“People are going to think I don’t work hard enough, Daniel,” I hiss, slamming the form down his desk. “They’re going to think I’m in this,” I motion between the two of us, “because I’m being a leech. Because I’m in for the money.”
He looks so intently at me I almost cry out. He reaches for me again and I step back once more. “You didn’t know I was the CEO. There’s no way you’re in this for the money.”
“Tell that to the others,” I shake my head. “To your receptionist that looked at me like I was a cockroach. We are a joke together, Daniel. This makes no sense.”
“It makes all the sense in the world, Jess,” he follows me as I stride to the door. “I just want you. I couldn’t care less about what other people think.”
I slide the door open and try to walk to the elevator as fast and as dignified as I can manage.
“Daniel?” The receptionist jumps up from her chair. “Is everything okay?”
“Mr. Allen, for the last time, Rita,” Daniel hisses behind me as I slam the elevator button. The door opens slowly.
I jump in. He enters with me. “Please, Daniel… Mr. Allen. I just came up to give you the form.”
“I have the form, but I also need to be sure I still have you, love.”
I look away as Rita, the receptionist, runs to the doors as they close. “Mr. Allen, what does this girl want?”
His hands are on my face the next moment and he tilts my face up so I’m forced to look at him. “Please, Jess. We’re so right together. Give us a chance.”
I press the number of my floor and try to look away from his face. “Mr. Allen, this is so wrong…”
“Don’t call me ‘Mr. Allen’,” he says, his voice covered in hurt. One of his brows
twitch. “Please, don’t call me that.”
“What am I supposed to call you then?” I bite my lower lip. “You’re my boss.”
“I don’t care for that,” he breathes against my face as the elevator stops at my floor.
“I can’t. Please.”
I escape his clutch and walk out of the elevator into our floor. Dana looks up from her desk as I walk in, and all my other colleagues are there. They look up at me striding to my desk with Daniel behind me.
“Jess?” Dana calls, pushing her chair so she can get up.
“It’s all right, Dana,” Daniel says behind me, his voice breaking. He stretches his arm and captures my hand in his, making me stop and twirl to face him. “Jess, please, listen to me.”
“Oh, my God,” Dana mutters. “Oh my God, it’s Mr. Allen.”
I snap my head at her, “You knew him?”
“In the dark, in a gas mask? I didn’t recognize him, Jess. So what?” She shrugs, “It’s not like you knew it too.”
I press my lips together and look back up at Daniel. His hands roam my sides, his eyes bright with how much he feels. His gaze is so intent it drives me breathless.
“Jess,” he presses his forehead against mine. “Please. Give us a chance. No one’s ever made me feel like this,” his words make my face flush but I don’t stop him. My eyes sting with unshed tears. “I want you. I want you, the whole you, for every day of my life. I don’t know what this is and why. All I know is that… I have been missing you long before I met you.”
He smiles and I chuckle. My heart is melting all over again, that certainty about our future, the certainty about me and him…
“I don’t know,” I mouth against his face.
“Please,” he repeats, his face so close to mine. Everyone is staring at us and he doesn’t care.
He doesn’t care.
It hits me that this — us — is all I should worry about. How amazing we work together, how glorious sex is, how I want to spend every day of my life with this incredible, perfect man.
He brushes a rogue tear from my cheek. “I want you. You’re the one, you’ve always been the one, and I know we’ve been walking toward this our whole lives. Let’s not waste any more time. Please. Be mine.”
I bite my lower lip but there’s no doubt any longer. No. Everything is so right when I’m with him.
I nod slowly, “I’ll be yours, all yours… As long as you’re mine.”
With a grin, a large, perfect smile, he takes me in his arms and dips me. I laugh and he kisses me, one of those kisses that leaves me breathless and warm and cold all over. I hear the hoots and cheers, but I’m holding on to this man, this man that has broken down each and every one of my shields and has taken hold of my heart.
He cups the back of my head as he brings me up, smiling bright like the sun. “I love you,” he murmurs.
“I love you,” I grin, hugging him tightly, promising myself never to let him go.
EPILOGUE
* * *
ONE YEAR LATER
DANIEL
I am a little over-enthusiastic for Halloween this year.
Every time Jess catches me grinning like a fool and asks me what is that for, all I can answer is “Halloween is upon us, baby!”.
She twists her lips and sighs dramatically, usually completing her reaction with some observation like “I’m sure you hit your head when you were a baby,” this kind of romantic stuff we’re used to throwing at one another these days.
Life has been a ride, the sweetest ride I could ever have pictured for myself. I have found the part I had been missing. The piece of my heart I had been trying to fit other people in and it never worked out. No surprise at that. In the end, I had been waiting for her.
Halloween had brought me Jessica last year, dressed in a hazmat suit, clothed in beauty and her luscious perfect body. I had loved her body and her soul, and I had learned everything I could about her this past year.
I was ready to take the next step.
In truth, I would’ve taken it way earlier. But I felt like Halloween had acquired quite the meaning for us.
Putting the last touch-ups on my pumpkin over the sink, I straighten my back once I hear her bare feet skipping down from the bedroom. My heart thunders with her proximity and I feel like a teenager asking his crush for prom.
But it’s nothing like this. Oh, no, it’s so much bigger.
“Good morning, love,” she greets me, opening that large smile that brightens up every single one of my days since she moved in. Jess is dressed in short shorts and one of my dark t-shirts — that always look better on her than they do on me, stretched across her ample chest and dropping over her round hips. Jess’ dark hair is up in a ponytail, her tips now dyed pink. She lifts a pumpkin in her hands, the carved face turned away from me. “I have a gift for you.”
My brows rake up to my forehead. I had no idea she had carved a pumpkin. How did she conceal that from me?
I gesture to my own pumpkin, “I have one for you too, love.”
“Oh,” she smiles, pink painting her cheeks. She pauses her pumpkin next to mine. “Then maybe we should give them at the same time?”
I’m grinning like a fool to her once more. I just can’t get over this woman and how much I love every inch of her.
Which is exactly why I’m doing this whole thing.
“Sure, baby,” I murmur, and for how hard she smiles up at me, I can tell her heart is as full as mine.
We close our fingers around the sides of our pumpkins. I stretch my neck to peck her over her lips.
“Happy Halloween,” I breathe against her mouth.
“Happy Halloween, baby,” she breathes back and turns her pumpkin. I turn mine along.
Her gaze drops to read what I poorly have written on my pumpkin. Carving pumpkins is nasty, hard work, but I think I managed just fine because Jess squeals and hops up and down.
I have written “Will you marry me?” on mine, and from the corner of my eye I’m watching her jumping and crying and I know she has taken me for her future husband.
But I can’t take my eyes from her pumpkin.
Jess’ work is infinitely better than mine. She has carved the form of a baby. Above it, she’s written “You’re” and under it, “a dad!”.
My heart is beating so fast inside my chest I’m sure it’ll explode. Tears run down my face before I can stop myself and I turn to her to find her eyes welling up.
“Really?” I hug her and breathe against her hair.
She nods several times, “Yeah! Remember I have stopped taking the pill a couple of months ago?”
“I do! But I thought it would take longer!” I take a step back and cup her cheeks in my hands. I kiss the face I love, the face of the woman of my life, and hold her against me once more.
“I’ve known it for a week, but I wanted to save it for Halloween. It’s become a favorite Holiday of mine.”
And I so can relate. Best Holiday ever.
ANOTHER EPILOGUE
* * *
FIVE YEARS LATER
JESSICA
There’s something hot about a rich man doing trick-or-treat with his kid when he could buy a whole candy store for them.
“Baby,” Daniel calls me from a couple of steps ahead in the sidewalk. It was quite the sight: a hot Darth Vader holding Annie, our daughter, by her hand. Our little girl is dressed as Rey, from Star Wars, so we saw the need for dressing up along. Daniel is Darth, of course, and I’m Leia. Yes, yes, we are still finding it highly improper for Darth Vader to be married to Leia, but Daniel just didn’t want to be Han Solo, so I had no choice. “How are you hanging?”
I am six-months pregnant, but it’s all right. I am not that heavy yet. Also, I have a large bag of candy hanging from the crook of each elbow and I’m not sorry for using the excuse of being pregnant to eat them nonstop.
As if to make a point, I stick a lollipop in my mouth and swirl my tongue around it. “I’m good, baby,” I pull the lol
lipop out in an erotic way, letting it pop from between my lips.
Daniel’s eyes almost pop from his head.
Pregnancy makes me horny. That’s a universal truth.
Luckily, Daniel never has enough of me.
“In the name of Palpatine, woman,” he growls over his shoulder at me. “Are you trying to ruin your daughter’s night? We promised her we’d bring her to trick-or-treat.”
“And we are,” I bat my lashes at him. “I don’t see how I’m trying to ruin it.”
“You’re forcing me to take you home,” he cocks a brow and juts a finger out at me, in an accusatory manner. I lick the corner of my lip before I suck on the lollipop again. “Stop.”
“Mama,” Annie calls, not looking back. Her arm stretches and she points across the street. “Let’s go to that house! It’s big and scary!”
I hasten my pace to walk beside her and lean forward to capture her hand in mine. “But if Mama gets scared, will you hold Mama’s hand?”
Annie nods, “Of course, Mama!” She drops Daniel’s hand to pick her lightsaber up from her belt. “I’m a Jedi! I’ll protect you!”
Oh, no. Another universal truth about me being pregnant? I cry a lot.
“Thank you, my love,” I get up and use my free hand to wipe at the tears running down my face.
Daniel adjusts us so he can hug me around the waist and kiss me over a temple. “Are you happy your daughter has become a Jedi to protect you from this Dark Lord?”
I snort, pressing my face against his chest. “I’m so happy, baby. This is everything I could have wished for,” my hand drops to my swollen belly, where my second son develops.
Life has grown to be a dream. The man of my dreams, and we’re building our little family. I’ve finished college and have gotten a Master’s degree. Both Daniel and I work part-time now — we don’t exactly need the money — so we have time with our little girl.