Executive Assistant

by 12 Author Anthology

  He worked hard, kept his head down, rarely dated, though not for lack of aggressively interested women. Too many of those sought to barge their way in, but for the wrong reasons. None of them knew him despite their willingness to dangle sex on demand in front of him, or sometimes even shove it in his face. They only knew what they saw, or thought they saw. Some only wanted to roll in his balance sheet and income statement. He didn't respect women like that. He respected brains and creativity and cleverness. Victoria embodied all those qualities.

  The blame for all that had happened lay squarely on his shoulders. Maybe his zeal for VC Knight, his groupie-like need to have her for his company—her talents, that is—somehow got hopelessly tangled with up with the flesh and blood woman.

  The urgent need to have her must have leeched into his primitive brain.

  God, what a jerk he was. The only solution was to stay away from her, keep his head down, and do all his communication through Rachel. Yes. That's how it would have to be, at least until ... no, he couldn't chance it. There was no "until."

  But he needed to at least apologize. Explain. Grovel. Beg her not to leave. Promise it wouldn't happen again.

  Rafe glanced around and realized he'd escaped all the way to his car in the underground parking garage. He squeezed his eyes shut, turned and retraced his steps to have that difficult conversation. Shoving his hands into his pockets for the walk of shame, he withdrew the damp cloth he found there: Victoria's panties.

  God, he sucked.

  ****

  Tory peeked into Rafe's office from his bathroom. She sighed with relief to find him gone and made her way back to the conference room table. The boxes of Indian food leftovers had toppled into a chair but thankfully hadn't spilled. Her training notebook had fallen on the floor, spine up, rings popped open from the impact and a few papers scattered in the vicinity. A tornado had hit the table, a tornado of lips and tongues and limbs and, well, other parts.

  She stooped to organize the binder materials while she waited for Rafe to return. Surely he would return.

  Even if he was finished with her, he was supposed to take her to the Human Resources department next. Tory had no idea where that was. And how would it look for her to go traipsing around solo?

  Actually, she still needed to find her panties. That would be all she needed to thoroughly hamstring her career, have her panties pop up at some inopportune time. Mortification wouldn't even come close to describing how she'd feel if she were linked to them.

  She walked all around the table looking. Nothing. Glancing over her shoulder toward his desk she pondered the unlikely. Had he flung them so hard they'd landed behind his desk? Surely not. Only one way to tell.

  He'd closed his office door behind him. The coast was clear. Normally, she would never go behind someone's desk without invitation—there were boundaries one didn't cross in the intellectual property business—but she had no choice.

  ****

  "What are you doing behind my desk?" The words flew from Rafe's mouth before he had a chance to temper them with the reason for his return.

  Tory spun, looking like a terrified prey with nowhere to run ... until something else replaced the fear. Her lips thinned for a second. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath through her nose, held it, slowly released it.

  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound so harsh," he said more gently.

  "Where is my underwear?" Her eyes stayed closed as she spoke. Even from where he stood, he could detect her trembling.

  Oh. The panties.

  The same panties crumpled up in his pocket. How would that look if he pulled them out now? Not so good. He wasn't sure why he'd stuffed them there in the heat of the moment, but he had. He neither wanted to admit his guilt nor give them back. He was already a douche. Would keeping her panties make him that much worse of one?

  Yeah, it kind of would.

  He withdrew the panties from his pocket and extended his fist, the pale pink lacy straps dangling beneath his fingers. "Here," he said, hoping the heat in his cheeks wasn't obvious.

  Tory flew from behind his desk and snatched the panties out of his hand. She kept walking toward the table. Surely she wasn't going to just calmly sit and resume her studying?

  She wasn't, because she opened her purse and stuffed them inside, gathered up her folder and notebook and faced him. "I believe I'm late for Human Resources." She didn't avoid his eyes but made steady, intense eye contact the entire time.

  "Look ... Victoria ... I'm sorry if—"

  She raised a hand. "Stop. I don't want to have this conversation. We got carried away. It happens. For better or worse, what we do about it now is all that matters." If he'd blinked he would have missed her rushing past him, careful to not brush even her clothing against his. "I'm ready to go when you are."

  Rafe rubbed his neck with his hand. He had no experience with this sort of situation. What was better or worse? Doing as she asked or doing what his conscience demanded he do?

  She stood at his door waiting, remarkably poised. However, he'd seen through the tiny cracks in her facade to the rattled woman beneath, a mirror image of how he felt.

  With a nod of his head, he opened the door and escorted her to Human Resources for the next phase of her training ... or for her to launch a formal complaint against him. What could he do if she did?

  Chapter Five

  Tory had no more interactions with Rafe. He watched her, but kept his distance. He was everywhere she was, but never in close enough proximity to speak to her or her to him. What did he want? What did she want?

  She replayed their banter and kisses in her head. The sex on the table? So wrong on so many levels, but so right at the same time. Crazy! The memory haunted her and filled her with a yearning for more, as ill advised as that was. Blaming him would have been easy, but a cop out to her conflicted desires. He watched her because he wanted her, even if he didn't want to want her. Wasn't that just the way it always was with her love life?

  Thankfully, she had Memorial Day weekend to escape and gain perspective. Three days to visit her parents in her girlhood home. She hadn't seen them in months and their telephone calls had been hurried and distracted.

  When her father told her he'd sold out to Gorman Designs, she'd flown into a rage. "How could you sell without even asking me?"

  "Because we knew you'd be upset and you wouldn't evaluate the offer with your head but with your heart."

  "And what's wrong with that?" she'd exclaimed through her tears. She had wondered then what they weren't telling her, why they had suddenly sold. Her measly ten percent of the company's stock made her "no" vote as ineffectual as a sugar cube in the sea.

  The non-compete clause was unconscionable, but she'd originally dismissed it, not realizing it applied to her until too late. She had thought it meant she and her parents were forbidden from running a competing company.

  Tory pulled into the gravel driveway of her family home. A white service van sat parked off to one side. Medical supply rentals proclaimed its business. What was going on?

  Tory rushed inside. "Mom? Dad?"

  Voices emerged from one of the bedrooms down the hallway. Rounding the corner into her parents' room, she caught her breath. There sat her mother in an adjustable hospital bed. A man in a navy uniform coiled up plastic tubing and hoisted an oxygen tank on his shoulder. He passed her on his way out with a polite nod.

  Her father stopped her from venturing farther. "Tory. Why are you here?" He took her arm and tugged her back out of the room.

  "I want to see Mom. I need to see Mom. What's going on? Why is she in a hospital bed? Is she sick?"

  He sat her down on the sofa and took the nearby chair. Shaking his head, he began. "She didn't want you to know, didn't want to worry you."

  Tory frowned. "Didn't want to worry me about what? What's wrong? Is she ... is she dying?"

  Her father forced a smile on his face, more brave than genuine, Tory guessed. "Your mother has been sick for a while, b
ut she's finally getting better. She didn't want anyone to know, not while there was still hope."

  "Sick? With what illness? What do you mean while there was still hope?" Her panic ratcheted up.

  "She's been battling a form of anemia for ... a while. The good news is her treatment worked, but it was experimental and the insurance didn't cover much. We had to sell a lot of our assets, Tory. The good news is she's recovering, a day at a time, but she's still very weak."

  Tory's mouth fell open. Of course he sold everything but the one thing that meant something to her mother—the lavender farm with its modest cabin in the center of the acreage under the big Oregon sky. While she thought they'd been reverting to their anti-establishment, hippie roots, by selling their elegant Victorian San Francisco home, all their cars but an old truck and a trusty Subaru, in reality they'd been fighting a hideous battle.

  "So that's why you sold the business?"

  He nodded. "I know how much it meant to you, but it was an offer I couldn't refuse."

  Tory's anger seethed through her, recruiting every cell in her body into an army of indignation, but not for herself. That son-of-a-bitch had taken advantage of her father's desperation. Damn him! An offer Dad couldn't refuse. Of course he couldn't refuse it if he needed the money. She crossed her arms. "I won't work for him. I won't go back. Not another day or another hour."

  Her father grimaced. "No! You can't. I mean ... you have to. You have to." Tears welled up in his eyes.

  "No, I don't. He bought the company, and he can keep me from working for his competitors, but he can't force me to work for him."

  "Gorman paid triple what the company was worth, Tory."

  "What? Why would he? If he knew about Mom, he'd—"

  "He knew nothing about Mom, nothing about why I wanted to sell. I may be a silly old man when it comes to your mother, but I do know how to negotiate a deal." Her father stood and sat on the sofa next to her. "You want to know what he paid the most for in the deal?"

  Tory shrugged. "The licenses to the superhero collections?"

  He chuckled softly. "Not even close. He attributed the entire premium to the non-compete clause and to all your in-process designs, which pretty much forced you to work for him because he and I both knew you'd never walk away from any half-finished project. He wanted you, Tory."

  "But he'd never even met me!"

  "He knew your work. Actually, I led him to believe I was VC Knight." A laugh bubbled up. "How did he take the news when you showed up?"

  He fed me then screwed me on his conference room table and tried to keep my panties as a souvenir. How about that for a fuck you to the old man who tricked him!

  The words were on her tongue, but she couldn't say them, not even a sanitized version. Her father was happy with the deal; he did the best he could for his wife and daughter. Who was she to trample his happiness with boots made from her own mistakes?

  "I-I don't think it fazed him one bit, Dad, if he ever believed it to begin with. These big corporations do their homework. Besides, he probably would have paid you quadruple if he'd truly believed I was a man."

  "Nonsense." He stood and drew her up with him. "Go see your mother now. But don't tire her out. I won't allow it."

  She believed him too. Growing up, she always knew she was second in both her mother's and father's hearts, that she got the nooks and crannies they hadn't given to each other. In her youth, she sometimes resented them for it. In her maturity, she accepted and embraced the hope of one day finding that kind of love for herself.

  Chapter Six

  Sometimes a man got an itch no amount of scratching could soothe. That was when he had to concede the itch to be under his skin and not superficial.

  Victoria was that kind of itch.

  Day by day her designs came in to him for review, as he had requested. Brilliant and inspired were adjectives too feeble to do her ... them ... justice. He marveled at the unexpected challenges she wove into her games and the quirky personality traits she imbued in her characters. No one created like VC Knight. No one.

  But he was also tired of living with his regrets over how he had forced her into indentured servitude and then run away after they made love. Both she and his guilt had burrowed in so deeply, he had no hope of curing the itch until he could talk to her. Bottom line. He wanted her—all of her—in his bed, in his business, in his life.

  So that was why a grown man of his importance and stature was staking out an employee's apartment on a Sunday night. Weeks of lurking in the shadows for a glimpse of her or a snatch of her laughter were not the actions of a rational man.

  The nonsense would end. One way or another, tonight his conscience would be cleansed.

  He snatched up the paperwork and got out of his car. Buzzing her apartment from the lobby was risky, but his covert days were over. That sort of behavior was beneath him.

  The buzzer sounded and a few seconds later, Victoria's voice came over the intercom. "Rafe. What are you doing here?"

  Shit! She could see him? He scanned for a camera and groaned when he spotted it.

  "I have a business matter to discuss with you," he said into the microphone.

  "Really?" The disbelief in her tone was to be expected.

  "If you'd prefer, we can find a semi-public place to talk." Safer for both of them, he thought.

  Silence.

  Had she hung up on him?

  "Victoria?"

  The door buzzed. She was letting him in. His chest tightened and his heart raced. Oh, calm the fuck down!

  By the time the elevator deposited him on the third floor, an eerie floaty sensation had taken lodgings in his head. His heart had sped up. Adrenaline coursed through his veins. Fight or flight.

  Fuck this shit!

  Was he a man or a coward? A man owned up to his mistakes. A coward pretended they didn't exist. A coward lied to himself about shit like power imbalances and seduction. A coward hid behind his money, believing anything could be bought and sold.

  It couldn't, not without a two-ton pallet of guilt strapped to it.

  Apartment 3E. He knocked and before he could even rap a second time, the door flew open. There she stood. She wore no makeup, not that she needed any. Her hair was a mess though, and he couldn't help but smile at the slightly discombobulated aura it added.

  "Come in," she said stepping aside.

  A very large dog charged him with its teeth bared.

  "Kody!" she snapped. The dog stopped in its tracks, dropped its ears and lowered its hackles. It leaned against her leg with a whimper and peered up at him through shifty eyebrows. "She won't bite," Victoria said. "Let her sniff your hand, and she'll trot back off to her chew toy."

  Rafe did as he was told, giving the dog a scratch behind the ears that seemed to earn him at least a temporary spot in the Kody Circle of Trust. If only her master were so easily won.

  "Please." She motioned toward a red and white striped loveseat. She sat upon the red leather ottoman in front.

  "Victoria, I wanted to apologize," he began.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. "No. Don't. I'd really rather neither one of us mention what happened in your office. I wasn't myself then. Either one of us could have stopped it. Neither one of us did."

  "I'm not apologizing for making love to you," he said, because dammit, that was the one thing he absolutely was not sorry for. He wanted to put that whole scene on endless loop.

  Her eyes flew open. Deep grooves etched themselves in her forehead. "You're not?"

  "No. I'm sorry for running away afterward and I'm sorry for forcing you to work for me as my employee. Here." Rafe handed her the folder he carried.

  "What's this?" she asked, opening it and withdrawing the twenty-five page legal agreement inside.

  "It's an offer to sell Knight Gaming Systems and any unexploited licenses and intangible assets. To you."

  Victoria's head dipped down as she flipped the pages. He knew what she was looking for and knew when she'd found it. "I don't u
nderstand," she began. "You came here, after weeks of no contact, because you want to sell me back my father's company for five dollars?"

  "Plus interest," he said, raising a single finger in the air.

  "Interest on what?"

  Here it was. The moment his pounding heart had been winding up for. "Mine in you."

  "What?"

  Well, shit. She didn't get his play on words. His cleverness ego deflated a smidge. He explained. "I'm selling you back seventy percent interest in your company, retaining a thirty percent interest and right of first refusal to market any of your in-process designs as of today. After that, you're free to do as you choose, though my interest would increase to forty-nine percent for sales to a competitor."

  Victoria's mouth hung open. "But—"

  "You would no longer work for Gorman, of course."

  She crossed her arms. "You'd fire me?"

  "Yes, though it would look better for us both if you quit."

  She launched herself up from the ottoman. "You have some nerve."

  He stood too. "It would be a conflict of interest!" he sputtered. How had he screwed even this up?

  Her hands found perches on her hips, and she appeared to search for her next words, taking a breath only to release it before trying again.

  Time for Plan B. He snatched her to him. She didn't resist but braced both hands against his chest. However, her back remained rigid. "My interest in you is not just business-related. That's the conflict. I want all of you—brains and body—only there's a large obstacle to overcome."

  She relaxed a little. Her hips met his. "Oh?"

  His hold on her tightened, and damn if she didn't mold herself to him. A roar of triumph climbed into his throat begging to be voiced. His "obstacle" asserted itself and spoke on his behalf.

  "Ohhh...."

  ****

  Tory's walls tumbled to her feet. She rested her forehead against his chest, comforted by the rapid beating of his heart. "I didn't fully understand the why of my father's sale to you until recently."