by Harper West
He swallowed hard. “I’ll go to the press. I’ll tell them everything.”
I smirked. “You mean, how you tried to take advantage of women in a place of work while they were just trying to keep their noses to the grind? How you cornered them in their own bathrooms and tried to force yourself onto--.”
He pointed at me. “Wait, wait, wait, wait. I might have weird tactics for pursuing women, but I never forced myself onto anyone!”
I smacked his hand out of my fucking face. “Becca is mine, do you hear me?”
He blinked. “What!?”
I stood up and slowly backed him toward my office door. “Becca is mine, and no one else will ever lay a finger on her. I’ll be the one to own her. To care for her. To please her and lift her up to elevations she’s never dreamt of. And you? Well, you’ll be flipping burgers somewhere after I blacklist you for harassing women in my place of work, you pathetic little slug.”
His eyes widened. “She’d never go for the likes of you. She’s decent, and kind. Plus, I didn’t know you guys were a thing. If I’d have known--.”
I reached around him and opened up my office door, not bothering to correct him. “Then, you have nothing to worry about. Now, pack your shit and get out of my building. You have thirty minutes.”
I shoved him through the threshold and slammed the door directly into his face. I listened with pride as he screamed and cursed all the way down the hallway before getting onto the elevator and going back to his floor. I raked my hands through my hair as I turned around, trying to find something to throw against the fucking wall.
But instead, my mind raced back to what Tommy had said.
Plus, I didn’t know you guys were a thing.
No, we weren’t, but I loved how it sounded dripping from some pathetic loser’s lips. And, if I let that asshole know that I had a stake on her, he’d leave her alone. He wouldn’t dare attempt to take any of this shit to the media or to court because he knew in the back of his mind that I’d bury him and take everything he was worth before tossing his ass into the nearest homeless shelter.
And Becca’s safety was of the utmost importance.
A thing. Hell, no.
But, then again, the idea gave me pause.
As I walked back to my office chair and dropped down into it, I considered his implication. I considered how I really felt about Becca despite the bullshit that happened all of those years ago. I ground my teeth together as I thought about her selfish whore of a sister. Once a cheat, always a cheat, and that girl cheated on me with more boys than a prostitute on a discount weekend. And that only meant one thing.
Becca was probably a cheat as well.
“Revenge,” I murmured.
My father’s words echoed off the corners of my mind. If I wanted to level the playing field, then I needed to make her hurt the way I hurt. And the only way I could think of hurting Maggie was to do to Becca what she did to me. I’d seduce her, sleep with her, treat her like a fucking queen.
Then, discard her like trash so that Maggie saw exactly the kind of fallout she created in my world.
I have to see her.
I jumped up from my chair and ignored Lexie’s questions as I made my way for the stairs. I shoved myself through and headed down a flight of steps before stepping silently onto Becca’s floor. And as I made my way to her office, I peered at her through the parts of the glass that weren’t frosted.
Only to see her hard at work while munching on some carrots.
Despite her and her sister being so close in age, they looked nothing alike. Maggie had always kept herself tight and petite, picking at her lunches and stuffing her body full of rabbit food that no one else wanted to eat. And Becca? Well, she had a body ripe for the picking. Cushions for thighs and a soft, malleable stomach to perch my head upon while I rested after fucking her senseless. Her tits could spill over the top of any shirt, which is probably why she wore the hem of them so close to her neck. And as she typed away, her fingers flying a million miles a second, I felt my cock stiffening at the thought of all of that cushion bouncing against my body.
You’ll be mine, Becca. One night is all I’ll need to ruin you.
“Or, I could keep you,” I whispered to myself.
The second the words flew from my lips, her eyes raised to match my own. Shock rolled over her features and I moved away quickly from her office, rushing for the steps. I heard her office door just as the door to the stairs closed behind me and I took them two-by-two. But that didn’t stop her voice from following me as I charged onto my floor.
“Mr. Ryker? Is everything all right?”
With my back pressed against the door, I closed my eyes and drew in a deep, sobering breath. I took a few seconds, making sure Becca hadn’t followed me, and then I found Lexie staring at me as if I’d lost my mind.
“Get back to work,” I mumbled.
And her head dipped back into her work quickly as I made my way into my office.
I closed the door and locked it before stuffing my feelings down. All of them. All of the confusion and the anger and the frustration and the worry. I shoved it into the dark place in my soul I never dared to venture into any longer for fear of what it might spiral into, and as I trekked back to my desk my feet got heavier with every step.
I wouldn’t allow whatever confusing emotions I felt to deter me from my path. I wouldn’t allow them to knock me off a journey that had dropped into my lap. A journey that had the ability to not only level the playing field, but to relieve an ache so deep in my soul that no one could touch it.
Not even me on my worst days.
“I won’t allow us to become anything, because that would ruin everything,” I whispered to myself.
Are you sure?
I growled at the voice in my head. “Shut up.”
You wish.
I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes and tried my hardest to focus on work. But, every sound I heard outside made me think that Becca had finally found the guts to approach my office. I froze every time I heard a set of footsteps walk up to Lexie and my heart stopped in my chest every time I heard the elevator door ding. What the hell had this situation done to me? Why the hell was I acting this way?
“I need an early day,” I hissed.
So, I shut down my laptop and gathered my things.
“Lexie,” I barked as I walked out of my office.
She whipped her head up. “Yes, Mr. Ryker?”
I locked my office door. “Forward all of my calls to my cell phone if they’re urgent, I’m taking the rest of the day.”
“Of course, sir. Anything else?”
I turned around and looked at her. “Don’t call me unless this building’s burning down.”
She nodded. “Yes, Mr. Ryker.”
I needed to get out of Becca’s orbit for a while until tensions died down.
And until I got my emotions back in their rightful place.
12
Rebecca
“Knock, knock!”
Brit’s sing-song voice filtered through my office door and I smiled. “Come in!”
She whipped my office door open. “So, rumor has it that Tommy got fired.”
My eyes bulged. “What?”
She slipped inside and closed the door. “Yeah, and to make things juicier, Mr. Ryker has apparently left for the day. After firing Tommy.”
Oh, no. “What do you think happened?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “As weird as it feels to admit it, H.R. is saying that he had women file sexual harassment reports against him.”
I snickered. “Serves him well, then.”
“Did he ever do anything to you?”
My mind flew back to the garage that night. “Not really. I mean, I thought he was kind of creepy whenever we were alone, but I didn’t file anything against him.”
“Hmm. Well, what do you say we ditch work for the rest of the day?”
My jaw hit the floor. “What if Mr. Ryker find
s out?”
She waved her hand in the air. “How the hell is he going to know? He apparently left half an hour ago. And you know we can sign ourselves in and out via our work laptops.”
I dug through my purse. “What about our work cell phones?”
Brit pointed at me. “Now you’ve got the right idea. Let me go wrap up my day. Give me, like, thirty more minutes and I’ll meet you in the garage?”
I nodded. “But please tell me there are drinks involved.”
She barked with laughter. “No use in ditching work if you’re not going to get drunk because of it.”
“God, you’re my soulmate.”
She cackled with laughter as she left my office and I tanked through the last few things I needed to do. I sent off documents and projections to JoJo’s email before I shut my workstation down, but I gathered a few files to work on this evening after I sobered up.
I mean, if JoJo caught us, I wanted to make sure I had proof that I had still been working even though I hadn’t been in-office.
“Ready when you are!” Brit exclaimed as she charged back into my office.
I stuffed the files into my massive purse. “Ready!”
She sighed. “Are you seriously taking work home with you?”
I shrugged. “Consider it my way of throwing you under the bus if we get caught.”
She smiled. “Come on, asshole. I’ve got the perfect place for us to go.”
I locked up my office and we both made our way down to the garage where we were supposed to meet in the first place. But it didn’t matter. Not when we were ditching work three hours early. She talked me through where the bar was in case I lost her in the parking garage, then we piled into our respective cars and I followed her out.
Then, fifteen minutes later, we were across town at a bar called, “Lackluster.”
“The name doesn’t promise much,” I murmured to myself.
But the bar was anything but as we stepped through the doors.
“Wow,” I whispered.
“See?” Brit asked as she linked her arm within mine. “I told you this place was awesome.”
The name boasted of some boring ass place, but the inside was lit up with blacklights and neon signs and all sorts of colorful decorations. My jaw dropped as Brit tugged me right up to the bar where the chairs we sat on lit up from beneath whenever pressure eased it down. My light was yellow, and it gave my legs an ethereal, almost angelic sort of glow. And when the bartender came up to us, Brit ordered for us both.
“Can we get two of your fishbowl margaritas, an order of cheese dip and chips, and a plate of your finger foods to split.”
I raised my finger. “Also, a sugar rim for me instead of salt.”
Brit nodded. “Same, please.”
Then, I turned to face my friend. “This place is awesome.”
She giggled. “It’s my favorite place to come after work. It’s far enough away to where I feel free to speak my mind and not piss anyone off.”
I wiggled my eyebrows. “Is it work venting time? Because I could use some work venting time.”
She slapped her hand against the bar. “Thank fuck, you’re my friend, you know that? Okay, so—wait, can I go first?”
I nodded. “Oh, you can so totally go first.”
The bartender handed us our behemoth margaritas before she launched into her spiel and my eyes widened. Yes, it was an actual fishbowl, and there was something in the drink that glistened and twinkled beneath the blacklights.
“It’s edible glitter,” Brit said.
I snickered. “Huh. That’s kind of awesome.”
She pointed to the bottom. “Those are gummy fishes, too. They’ll melt as you drink, and then it gives your margarita a different flavor every time one of them melts.”
I grabbed the straw and took a long pull. “Oh, yeah. That’s the stuff.”
She snorted. “So, anyway, work has been kicking my ass lately. I don’t know about you, but Mr. Ryker has been giving me way too many late nights.”
My eyes bulged. “I know, right!? I swear, half of my nights are overtime at this point.”
“Right!? I mean, we aren’t even working on a special project. It’s just a hell of a lot of shit that came out of nowhere.”
“Is this how he throws temper tantrums? He just passes his work off onto everyone else before he peaces out for the day?”
She cackled with delight. “God, grown men throwing tantrums is the biggest turn off.”
I snickered. “Right?”
She took a few sips of her drink. “All right, your turn. We can trade off.”
Our bartender sat the chips and cheese dip down and I had a few before I launched into my own shit. “Every day I take work home with me. Even if I work late, and even if I get everything on my list done, there’s always some dumbass email from JoJo--.”
She pointed at me. “See!? There it goes again!”
I rolled my eyes. “Can you just roll with it? It’s hard editing myself outside of work.”
She placed her hand on my knee. “Only if you promise to tell me everything about you guys’ history.”
I shrugged. “I mean, there’s nothing to tell. Me and my sister, Maggie, went to high school with him. Maggie and JoJo dated for a little while and she did some things she shouldn’t have.”
She gasped. “Did she cheat?”
I scoffed. “For starters.”
“Oh, my God! Do you think that’s why Mr. Ryker is such a dick?”
“Hmm?”
“You know, he’s an asshole. Everyone knows it. Do you think it’s because his first girlfriend stomped his heart into the ground?”
I blinked. “First of all, that’s my sister. And secondly, they only dated for, like, five months back in high school. That’s hardly a reason big enough to justify being an asshole to everyone all the time all of these years later.”
Her voice lowered. “You think he hired you just to make your life miserable since he can’t make hers miserable?”
I hadn’t even considered something like that, but suddenly some things started to make sense. “I honestly don’t know.”
She squeezed my knee. “Anyway, enough about that. Ready to hear about the long-ass email Mr. Ryker sent me a few days ago?”
I was much too distracted, though. “Sure, yeah. Go ahead.”
Brit continued to rattle off stupid shit I wanted to smack her for as I tried to make sense of my interactions with him since I’d been hired to the company. Is that really why he hired me? To try and get some sort of sick revenge against my sister? I mean, why deal with it? He and my sister happened so many years ago and all she did was suck off the high school quarterback. Hardly enough for him to justify making an adult woman’s life miserable for shit that happened when we were all nothing but horny-ass teenagers just trying to make it through the day.
And still, I wouldn’t have put it past him.
“He’s always been so fucking childish,” I murmured.
“What was that?” Brit asked.
I cleared my throat. “That email, it’s so damn childish, and he’s always been just a tad bit on the childish side.”
She scoffed. “A tad bit? The man wanted me to cancel my fucking honeymoon in order to jump in on a project he should’ve given me in the first place.”
I looked down at her left hand. “You don’t wear your ring?”
She pulled a chain necklace out from between her breasts, and it held a beautiful diamond ring. “I keep it around my neck, so I don’t lose it.”
I grinned. “You lose it a lot, don’t you?”
She rolled her eyes. “You sound like Mack.”
I smiled. “At least you have a life outside of work.”
“You know, I do notice that he’s giving you a hell of a lot more work starting out than he ever did with some of us. Is there some big shit going on with the board or something?”
I wasn’t sure if this was a conversation I needed to be having with her, but
what else did I have to do? Go back to work tipsy?
I took another long pull from my drink. “It’s kind of my fault, but I’ll live.”
“What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “I’m trying to get this promotion since I wasn’t hired to do the job I originally interviewed to do.”
She gasped. “What job did you interview for?”
I snickered. “His top accounting position. That’s what the job interview said, anyway. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the job I’m doing now is great. But I’m hoping that if I really prove myself, I’ll get that original position.”
She waved her hand in the air. “That’s all you. I certainly don’t want to work that close to Mr. Bulldog up there.”
I grinned. “He kind of looks like a bulldog when he wrinkles his nose.”
She sputtered. “Jesus fuck, he really does.”
We had a good laugh at that imagery before she swiveled her chair to face me.
“I don’t believe you, though.”
I paused. “Believe what?”
She worked her finger in the air. “I don’t believe that you’re doing all of this work to pull some sort of promotion.”
I shrugged. “Sounds like a personal problem, then.”
She leaned closer to me. “I think you and JoJo have some serious chemistry you’re hiding, and that’s why you kept turning down Tommy.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Ew, no. I turned Tommy down because he was a creep that kept telling me I owed him sex for missing our first scheduled date.”
“Wait, what? Ew! Seriously!? Why didn’t you tell me?”
I sighed. “And even if JoJo and I did have chemistry, that’s a massive no-no for me. He’s an asshole, and I don’t reward toddlers with treats.”
She barked with laughter. “God, I love you so much.”
I squeezed my thighs together, hoping that she didn’t see my cheeks flushing. The mere idea of JoJo having a thing for me sent me into such a frenzy that I needed to get home and have some personal time with my showerhead. I chugged the rest of my fishbowl and polished off a few chips before our finger foods touched down in front of us on a piping hot plate.