Amber pressed her forehead into the palms of her hands to keep from saying something she’d regret.
“Tempting,” Kiki chirped, “and yet...we’ll have to decline.” She paid up and tugged at Amber’s arm. “Come on.”
“You didn’t finish your salad,” Amber protested.
“Fuck it. You ever notice that all the vegetables on those things taste exactly the same—what is with that? It’s the chicken nuggets of greens, all chopped up, mashed together and pressed into convincing shapes.”
Amber laughed. “God, I’m so depressed.”
“This is why we’re going for pizza. And a lot of wine.”
“You can’t get me drunk and feed me comfort food every time I have a meltdown.”
“Sure I can.” Kiki looped her arm through Amber’s. “The onus of the BFF. Also? Pizza and wine!”
* * *
On Monday, she went to work with renewed resolve to focus on her career.
Yet again.
No more mooning over Alec Knight. No more sex fantasies. You’ll meet the right guy when you’re supposed to.
She’d spent Sunday giving herself a series of pep talks—in between nursing a prodigious hangover, napping, eating leftover pizza and bingeing on chick flicks. As a result of falling asleep at the humiliatingly early hour of eight-thirty, she’d popped awake at five. Considering it an omen from the universe, she took the time to eat a healthy breakfast, iron her best suit with the pinstriped pencil skirt, and put her hair up in a hopefully chic and sophisticated French twist.
Settling into her cubby before seven and enjoying the quiet of the empty offices, she began by filtering Alec’s emails, so they’d be sorted by the time he arrived. Though Joe had returned, he’d been happy enough to leave the task to Amber. It might be a little creepy, but she liked doing it for Alec. It didn’t count as mooning. Never mind that it gave her a sense of closeness to him, to glimpse his daily correspondence, like catching a whiff of his aftershave when he passed her in the hall.
Like window shopping when you were broke. Didn’t hurt to browse.
Several documents needing his signature had come through over the weekend so she carried those in to leave on his desk, feeling briskly efficient and making it three steps into the room before she realized he was already sitting at his desk.
Startled by her abrupt entrance, he glanced up without that frosty barricade he’d erected between them, gaze intensifying as it swept over her, before he cooled it, transformed it into a generic smile, only slightly forced. “Good morning, Ms. Dolors. Aren’t you the early bird?”
“Delivering the fresh worms just for you, Mr. Knight.” She set the documents on his desk. Felt like fleeing immediately, but made herself stay. If he could handle it, so could she. They could talk to each other as normal people did. “Did you have a good weekend?”
“Fine, thank you. And yourself?”
Aren’t we so polite? “It pretty much sucked.”
A laugh burst out of him, along with a more genuine, sensual smile, as he sat back in his chair. “I admit I wasn’t keen on mine either. Thus the pair of us at it early on a Monday morning.” His expression dimmed slightly, as if he suddenly realized he shouldn’t have referred to them as a pair of anything. Or that he’d admitted to too much. She had no intention of letting him off this particular hook.
“Why wasn’t yours good?” She edged a hip on his desk, making it clear she planned to hold him to a civil conversation.
His gaze traveled to her mouth before he yanked it away. “Disappointing. On a number of levels. Such is the off-work fate of the foreign single man in your city.”
Disappointing. Amazing how completely that one word summed it up, especially with his particular cadence, that made it sound so spiked. “Well, this single-girl native shares your fate.”
He tapped a pen on the desk, glanced out at the empty hall and back to her with a wry smile. “I find that hard to believe. I’d think they’d be lining up to buy you drinks and so forth.”
“Back at you. Aren’t the women of New York falling over themselves for a shot at you? I could name half a dozen on this floor alone.”
“Please don’t.” He leaned his forearms on the desk, laced his fingers, checked the hall again. Seemed to gather himself and met her gaze. “Surely you know if I wouldn’t cross the line for you, I wouldn’t for anyone.”
Her heart tripped into a faster beat at his quiet confession. One that oddly made her feel better. Funny that they’d been so carefully formal with each other, not referring to that very frank conversation they’d had. Pretending it had never happened. But it had and he’d wanted her, too. He continued to watch her with that somber concern, waiting for her reply.
“I didn’t know that. So thank you for telling me.” And now she felt that she owed him something in return. “The thing is...see, yes, they want to buy me drinks and take me out and so forth.” She said it the way he did, deliberately teasing him with the imitation, enjoying their shared amusement over it. It helped steady her nerves, get her through what she needed to say. “But, I don’t want just anyone. I’m looking for something more specific, a particular kind of relationship. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“I do, yes.” A shadow crossed his face and he stared down at his laced fingers.
“The worst part of all this is, I think I could have had that with you.”
“Possibly.” His knuckles tightened and it hit her suddenly that he was concentrating on not touching her. But he hadn’t kicked her out of his office, or invoked that icy reserve to shut the conversation down.
“I could look for another job.” She threw it out there in a rush. “What if I—”
“No, Amber.” He looked up then and his face had filled with bitter regret. “I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself. I won’t pretend it’s not torture to be around you, to see you every day...but I’m getting a handle on that. This is too good an opportunity for you.”
“There are other jobs, other good companies.”
“As good as this? No,” he continued, answering his own question. “We both know it. You’ll stay here and we’ll be grown-ups about this. Now, if you’re uncomfortable around me, I—”
Her turn to interrupt. “I’m not. You seemed like you didn’t want to talk to me.”
With a sigh, he unlaced his fingers and sat back in the chair. “I was trying to give you some space. So you wouldn’t feel pressured. And so forth.”
She smiled at his emphasis. “It seems to me that part of the point of both of us observing the lines here is so that we can continue to work together. I want to be able to do that. Without it being weird.”
“We won’t let it be weird then.” He looked both sad and affectionate, gaze wandering over her face more freely, along with the teasing grin as he pronounced weird with an exaggerated American accent. “You’re absolutely right that the entire point is doing what’s proper for your career and for the company. Don’t ever be concerned that I’ll cross the line with you again. And if I do make you uncomfortable—” he held up a hand to stop her protest, “—if I ever do, by word or deed, say so immediately. Either to me or to Human Resources, or someone you trust here. I insist on it.”
“I would say it to you.” It seemed painful somehow, the idea that she’d go around him.
“I hope you would. I’d...I’d like to think that we could have enough of a friendship for that. If not friendly, then at least collegial.”
“I’d like that. I’m glad we had this conversation. I’m sorry that I got all emotional before. It’s not really my style to lose it.” Mostly.
He picked up the pen again, rolled it between his palms. “Understandable. It wasn’t easy for me either. I think you’ve been handling things with considerable poise. One of the many qualities I find admirable about you. As a co
lleague,” he added, with a meaningful tip of his head. “To reinforce that, and keep things on that level, I think it’s time to give you a bit more responsibility. And not only because Lily has been poking at me about it.”
“Poking at you?”
He shook his head ruefully. “She’s got this idea that I’m not giving you enough of a chance because you’re female, plus she has a hole in her team with Curlew’s abrupt departure. If you prefer to work with her, naturally I’ll agree. But it feels to me like...”
“A concession?”
“Exactly.” He cocked his head. “But one I’m willing to make, as I believe the fault here has been mine. Your decision.”
“Is there an early meeting I didn’t know about?” Jean stuck her head in the door. “You two are at it early today.”
Amber stood. “No, we were discussing our boring weekends. You?”
Jean rolled her eyes. “Lucky you two. I went to twenty-seven soccer games, fifteen dance recitals and listened to the Frozen soundtrack nine-hundred-three point five times.”
“Point five?” Alec asked, politely raising his brows.
Jean grimaced maniacally. “Halfway through showing nine-hundred and four, I killed my children. So if you need anything from me, ask for it now. The police will surely be here soon.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Yeah. Laugh.” She shook her head and rubbed her temple. “Both of you single, no kids. I’ll just bet you had boring weekends, probably partied and got laid. I don’t want to hear about it.” She picked up the documents Alec had signed and sighed.
Amber dared a glance at Alec, who returned it with amusement. And an underlying burn, again that shared understanding of what they couldn’t have. “Guess we all have our problems, huh?”
“Indeed we do, Ms. Dolors. Indeed we do. On that note—” Alec swiveled idly in his chair, “—and by way of lightening your load in case the authorities do catch up with you, I was contemplating giving Amber here the McCloskey account to manage. What are your thoughts?”
Jean looked her over, as if seeing her for the first time, and Amber had to resist the urge to stand straighter. “It would be a help,” Jean conceded, but sounded dubious. “Do you think you’re ready?”
Alec only returned her inquiring glance blandly, with a hint of challenge. Not going to bail her out. “You’ll be around so I can ask questions, right?” she asked Jean.
“Don’t quibble,” Alec interjected. “Either you think you can or you don’t.” Or you can take the out and go to Lily’s team. He didn’t need to say it out loud for her to hear the offer.
Fine then. “I’m ready. Sign me up.”
Jean reproduced her child-killing grin. “Come with me, my pretty.”
Chapter Eight
After the ladies left, Alec sat pretending to read his email, but images of Amber crowded out the orderly columns and viewing panes. She’d been right that he’d been doing more than giving her space. A weakness he could no longer indulge in. He’d begun to think about Doctor Faustus, of all things, the classic from his Oxford education coming back with fever-edged intensity. Odd, as he hadn’t thought about it in the decades since, with his head in business, not literature.
But the memory of the classroom discussion came back vividly, along with the scents of lemon-oiled wood, thermos-tea and old books. Faustus asking Mephistopheles how he’d escaped from hell and the devil answering, “Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.” Ten thousand hells, indeed, to have glimpsed everlasting bliss and deny himself. Learn thou of manly fortitude and scorn those joys thou never shalt possess.
He’d taken to repeating it to himself, as a kind of mantra. Not that it had helped yet.
He’d done a lot of thinking over the weekend. Particularly after the disastrous munch on Saturday. Calling it disappointing was understated even for a representative of a culture who made an art of understatement. He supposed Amber had the right of it, that he could have found someone there. The women there had been delighted enough to welcome him in—one inviting him to collar her immediately, to his acute chagrin—and several quite deflated that he declined to join the party that evening.
Perhaps he’d seemed to be a prude, but what on earth had happened to having dinner first?
To be fair, he’d been on their turf and Americans certainly went about things more openly, but he’d felt strangely similar to a trophy. Also somewhat revolted. Not by the potential partners, though none had been particularly appealing, either. Instead he’d begun to feel oddly panicked, as he had in those last weeks and months before he suggested to Tessa they open their marriage, so she could seek what she so craved. What he could not bring himself to give.
He didn’t quite understand his reaction, examining it over the long drive back and the lonely hours of the weekend after. Looking back on his life, reviewing his own emotional and sexual history for clues, he could see he’d never been much interested in the public play aspects. That had always been for Tessa. Though he found some of it exciting, largely because she did, he’d always been a quite monogamous soul. Even at university, when his mates had been going on about shagging as many girls as possible, he’d been with only two. Picky, they’d called him, and he’d countered with selective.
One of those girls, a lovely brunette named Sasha, had liked to be tied up—his first for such games—and he remembered those days with a piercing nostalgia. They’d spend weekends in her flat, experimenting and improvising. He’d discovered how deliciously she responded to being bound and commanded, about the sweet lines between pain and pleasure. How he, himself, loved the rush of it, the aesthetics and the long, slow build of tension.
They’d had fun with it. Playing, with no awareness of rules or a community that practiced such things as a lifestyle. Both undergraduates, they’d spent time on their studies more than anything, treating sex as a break, a stress-relieving recess from hard work.
They’d loved each other in a similar way, both intensely and exclusively to that place and time, parting ways amicably. It hadn’t even been an actual breakup, as they’d wanted different lives after graduation and neither of them cared deeply enough to sacrifice to stay together—or to ask the other to do so. And yet, that affair carried a lovely charge still, of a vital time in his life, shimmering with passion for learning of all kinds—of books and her body. No wonder parsing the puzzle of his sexuality led back to that era and the lines of classical literature, entwined in his psyche with thoughts of firelit rainy afternoons and rope.
It occurred to him that Amber was older now than he and Sasha were then, though it hardly seemed possible. What would he have done, had he not found that girl at that time, to explore his nature, understand his own needs? He wasn’t sure.
But he recognized that in Amber and sympathized with her.
I’m looking for something more specific, a particular kind of relationship. The worst part of all this is, I think I could have had that with you.
Her voice repeated those lines in his head, what she very carefully hadn’t said, but they’d both understood. It clawed at his heart—and, to be fair, his groin—how much he wanted to give her more than a tepid “possibly” as an answer. But he absolutely could not. Much as it trapped him, too.
The conclusion he’d come to over the endless Sunday was that, for better or worse, his particular bent seemed to trigger mostly off the person and not the kink itself. He didn’t crave to master just anyone—just certain someones. And whatever cruel twist of fate had decided to torment him thus, that part of himself had fixed on Amber.
He understood psychology well enough, too, to suspect her very unattainability had more than a little to do with it. Emerging from the dregs of a painful divorce and obsessing on the one woman you can’t have? A midlife wish to return to the tastes and textures of youth, of that first vivid love affair? Te
xtbook.
So, it was to be a test, then. Whether by an uncaring universe or his subconscious self, he’d been tasked with overcoming this weakness that made him crave this fresh, unspoiled girl who offered herself to him on a platter.
She would, if he asked her—worse, if he used that channel already formed between them to command her—look for another job. Likely she’d settle for anything, to create the opportunity to salve the craving he could nearly scent on her skin. The skin he’d had to lock his hands together to keep from touching.
And, as anything fresh and perfect, she’d be smudged irretrievably with the touching. All of her bright promise shadowed because he’d failed his personal test of will.
Thus he could not fail. Avoiding her had only added to the trial, as if he’d gone cold turkey from some instantly addicting drug. So he’d come to work after waking brutally early from sweat-drenched dreams of her, resolved to talk to her, to at least be near enough to wean himself away. He hadn’t expected the jolt to his system when she walked into his office, vital, very nearly elegant with her hair pulled up into a sleek coil and her sharp mind already busy with the day—and then the artless pause, the faint flush when she saw him and that flutter that never failed to make him want to order her to her knees, anticipating how she’d smile if he did.
Resolutely, he forced his mind away. The more they interacted as colleagues, the more he’d see her as that, and only that, rather than sexually. Having work to discuss and focus on would both occupy their energy and give them topics to discuss that did not lead to boggy territory. She would continue to grow and shine within the firm, rising through her own merit, justifying his mentorship.
After a time, with careful tending, their relationship would be purely professional.
He would pass this test if it killed him. Which it might.
Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
* * *
Ultimately, the conversation bolstered her. Surely you know if I wouldn’t cross the line for you, I wouldn’t for anyone. She hugged that admission to herself, even knowing that it shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did. Maybe it was a misery-loves-company thing, or a plain ego thing, but she liked knowing that he’d been thinking about her, too. That the zing between them hadn’t been her imagination.
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