Executive - The Complete Series Box Set (A Single Dad Romance)

by Claire Adams

  “You’re still sleeping in your own tent. I don’t care how many times you save me.”

  “You’re such a stickler for the rules.”

  “Can you start a fire?” Sarah asked as we both finally made it to dry land.

  She wasn’t asking me to actually start the fire, but simply wondering if I had the skills necessary to start a fire. Oh, how I wished I could have surprised her and told her I knew exactly how to get a fire going from the middle of nowhere without a lighter. In that moment, I wanted those backwoods skills that would have totally impressed her, but alas, I didn’t have such skills.

  “Nope.”

  “Not surprising, for a city guy like you. Let me teach you.”

  It was getting tiring having Sarah always have to show me how to do things, but I was in her world and that was just how it was going to have to be. If she was ever to fly in one of my private jets, I’d be glad to show her how to fly one. I laughed under my breath at the thought. I was never going to be able to show Sarah my jets, I wouldn’t even be able to tell her who I really was. As soon as the trial came, I would go back to my world and never see Sarah, Sid or my friends at the ranch ever again. It was the sad truth of my situation.

  “Sorry, I’m not really the best ranch hand in the world, am I?” I laughed.

  “You know what, I don’t think knowing how to do everything makes someone good at working on the ranch. I think being willing to let others show you and humble enough to know when you need to learn is much more important,” her warm smile had my full attention but then she gently put her hand on my arm and my body also stood at attention for her.

  My blood pumped quickly to my throbbing member and I swiftly moved my arms to cover the evidence that I was aroused. Simply sitting and watching Sarah start a fire had my body throbbing. Well, actually it had likely been the look in her eyes and the touch of her hand, but I knew I couldn’t control how much she excited me. Or maybe it was that I hadn’t had sex in over three months. My body longed to feel the explosion of pleasure that a woman could bring.

  Sarah quickly had the fire going and then stood there looking at me. I looked back at her, wondering what it was she was waiting for. Did she see the excitement in my pants? Was she waiting for me to comment on why I was so damn excited by her?

  “Your pants,” she said firmly as she held out her hand. “We need to dry them.”

  Oh, shit.

  The thick fabric of my jeans was the only thing preventing my pulsing member from springing to attention and showing Sarah just how much I longed for her. I couldn’t exactly take them off and just stand there in my wet boxers; it would expose me too much.

  “I’ll set up the tents and then you can have them,” I offered.

  “No, just hand them to me now. They will need time to dry and it would be better for us to get that started right away.”

  Panic rushed through me at the thought of being exposed, being vulnerable. I looked at Sarah and then at her hand that was outstretched. She was so firm in her request. In the outside world, I would have simply said no and went about setting up the tents. But then again, in the outside world I wouldn’t have been jumping into a river and getting my pants wet in the first place. In the outside world, I wouldn’t have a hard on simply from a woman touching my hand. Nothing about my old life applied to that moment and I had to think of some other solution to avoid the embarrassment that was quickly becoming a reality.

  “How about I just set my tent up real quick?” I said as I grabbed the tent from the pile of our things and walked toward where I wanted to put it up.

  Sarah grabbed the tent from my hand and threw it onto the ground. She pulled me close to her and looked me in the eyes as her hands started to unbutton my jeans. I didn’t know what she was doing, but I knew I had to stay right there and see where this was leading.

  “I said to give me your wet pants,” she said with a grin.

  Chapter Eight

  Sarah

  His body was hard; I could tell as my hands started to unzip his pants. That was why he had been trying to avoid handing his wet jeans over to me. It was flattering, and I desperately wanted to let my hand run up and down his body. But I restrained myself. I still didn’t know enough about Garrett to be throwing myself at him, but in order to learn more, I was perfectly fine with teasing him a little bit.

  My hands purposely moved slow as I looked him in the eyes. It was more fun than I had ever had teasing a man. Garrett seemed shocked that I was standing there and even more shocked that my hands were pulling at the button and zipper to his pants.

  My normal demeanor around men didn’t let me flirt like I was at that moment. I had to pretend like I was full of confidence while I held his gaze and refused to look away. He was the one who had started this whole flirting thing and I wasn’t going to let him win our little battle of flirting.

  “I should put the tent up,” Garrett said quietly.

  I knew he didn’t believe what he was saying any more than I did. Plus, it was too late for him to be modest. I had his manhood only inches away from my fingers. He had been all masculine and in control when he wanted to kiss me, but now that I was standing there seemingly ready and waiting for him, Garrett was getting cold feet.

  “I’m a big girl, I can handle what’s going on here,” I said as I pressed his pants down.

  He reached around back and helped and soon his pants were on the ground. Slowly I leaned over to grab them, knowing very well that my mouth would be so close to his throbbing body that all he would be able to think about was what I would feel like wrapped around him. The moment was sensual as I looked up at him from my bent over position and he let out a barely audible grunt at the sight of me.

  “Sorry,” he said as I grabbed his pants and let my eyes gaze on his boxers.

  Garrett was definitely excited to be there with me. But it surprised me that he was so worked up after jumping in the water. That didn’t really seem like a sexy thing for him to be doing. I didn’t care though. I liked that Garrett was turned on by me. It was exhilarating to know that there were still good-looking men in the world that could find a strong woman attractive.

  In New York, there were two types of women; strong, business-minded women and waitresses who wanted to make it on Broadway. Of course, there were other types somewhere in the middle, but I could have sworn every bar my girlfriends and I went to was filled with the flirty bombshells. I didn’t have a thing against the flirty women, I just hated that all the strong men gravitated toward them. It was like they were afraid of strong women. It was fun to try and be that sexy flirty type of woman, even if it was only for a few moments.

  “I’m going to set these here to dry, now you can set the tent up if you’d like,” I teased him.

  “Oh, now that you have me half naked, you want to put me to work?”

  “Yep.”

  Garrett laughed and seemed to go with the flow rather easily. I gave him some space while he put his tent up and I put my own up. I tried not to look at him, but I couldn’t help but take a few quick glances at the rock-hard member he was sporting in his boxers. Garrett certainly was swinging with a big boy bat.

  “Let me at least save my manhood by making the dinner,” Garrett offered.

  “Oh, I didn’t know your manhood was lost.”

  “I think it’s somewhere up on that mountain,” he laughed.

  “Buckjoy and you did great. I bet even my father would be proud of you for making that ride happen without falling off the trail. It’s harder going down than going up, that’s for sure. And yes, you can make dinner. My mother packed a cooler with plenty of food; have a go at it and see what you’d like to cook.”

  Garrett lifted the cooler from under the tree and carried it over to the fire pit we had made. Unfortunately, I had the water plug open to drain some of the water out and it poured all over Garrett. His boxers were already wet, but then his shirt got soaked as well. It wouldn’t have been nearly as funny if Garrett was alrea
dy dry, but since he had already had such a wet evening, the moment was beyond funny to me.

  I couldn’t help laughing, but I stopped briefly when I saw the serious look on his face. Then without hesitating, Garrett pulled his shirt off and set it next to his jeans by the fire.

  “I’m not taking my boxers off,” he said matter-of-factly as he sat down and started to look through the cooler.

  Garrett had the body of a man I had always dreamed of being with. His chiseled chest and abs were something I had only fantasized about in a man I slept with. Normally the men I ended up with were nerdy businessmen who were slightly overweight with pasty white skin. But Garrett was none of those things. Garrett was tanned, toned, and ripped like a body builder. I couldn’t help but stare at him as he went to work on the dinner. Each muscle flexed and relaxed with his movements and my mind drifted to imagining what he would feel like hovering over me.

  “You sure you don’t want to take those wet boxers off? You don’t want to catch a cold.” I joked. “Didn’t you bring other clothes with you?”

  “Nope; I didn’t figure I’d need them.”

  “So what’s in your bag?”

  “A book and my journal.”

  I couldn’t have heard him correctly. Did Garrett really just tell me he had a journal? All I could think about were the frilly, pink journals I used to write in when I was a kid. I stopped writing in my journal when I was a teenager and I hadn’t ever met a man who kept a journal.

  “Journal?” I questioned with a raised eyebrow.

  “Don’t start judging me, young lady. I’m just writing down interesting things that happen along my journey so I can remember them. Maybe someday even write a book.”

  His response made me feel stupid for judging him. Of course, journals weren’t just for teenage girls. In fact, I was pretty impressed with his plans to write a book someday. It took a lot of hard work to write a book and Garrett had proved he was more than willing to work hard; I had seen it for myself on the farm over the last few months.

  I knew there was more to Garrett than met the eye. He was handsome and well spoken. He was kind and hard working. Garrett Reynolds seemed to be an almost perfect representation of a man and I needed to figure out his flaws. Certainly, he had some deep dark secret that he was running away from or he was hiding something that he didn’t want me to know.

  “I’m sorry, that’s really cool. I’ve thought about writing a non-fiction book for women in business, but I just never get around to it. I probably won’t ever do it. I think writing a book is a lot like dreaming of running my own business; I’ll never do either one of those things.”

  “What would it be about?”

  “I was thinking it would be something about how to manage the climb without losing yourself. I felt like I lost myself. It wasn’t fun for me when I finally got fired. It was actually a relief when they gave me a severance package and said my position was being downsized. I probably never would have left my job. I would have diligently worked there and climbed up the ladder and then moved onto the next ladder to climb; even though I wasn’t very happy at all.”

  “It’s good you left then. And why don’t you start writing your book tonight? What do you want your readers to feel when they read your book?” Garrett asked as he ripped a piece of paper out of his journal and started to write down what I was saying.

  At first I didn’t want to answer him. I was content to just move on with our conversation and wait for the dinner to be done. But the way he looked at me had me realizing that he wasn’t about to just let me move on with the conversation. Garrett was waiting for me to give him an answer and he looked like he would have waited for hours if I had made him.

  “I want them to feel more confident in their skin. Maybe inspired to lead the way they want to lead, instead of feeling like they have to lead the same way men do.”

  “This is good stuff. What will your first chapter be about?” Garrett asked enthusiastically.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.”

  “Well, we are thinking about it right now. What do you want the first words your readers see of yours to be about?”

  “Um, maybe about job interviews. I think many women believe you have to dress like a man or dress like a slut and there is so much more to what to wear. And there’s so much more to what to say and do when you’re in the interview. Did you know that most women don’t ask questions of their prospective employer? How do you really know if you want to work at a company without asking them questions?”

  Garrett diligently wrote down what I was saying and I felt motivated to keep talking about my book idea. It was so nice to have someone sitting with me who was listening to me and my ideas. Not only was Garrett listening, but he was literally taking notes and encouraging me. Even my own friends from New York seemed to be so wrapped up in their own lives that they hardly ever took the time to have a real conversation with me. It was nice to have an encouraging conversation about some of my goals.

  “What about once they get hired? What should women know then?” Garrett asked.

  “They need to know how to make friends without seeming like a push over, or someone who doesn’t work very hard. They need to know which type of friends to gravitate toward and which ones to stay away from.”

  “Explain that more,” Garrett asked as he continued to take notes.

  “What I mean is that many women are afraid to have friends in the office when they start getting important jobs. Although the male co-workers all have friends in the office, as a woman I felt like I was being judged every time I stopped to talk to one of my female co-workers. But also, there are women you should avoid in a workplace setting. The ones who cause drama and sleep around aren’t the ones a woman should befriend.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah. Men would see a couple women talking and make comments that we were gossiping or something else like that. It never occurred to them that we might actually be having a conversation, just like normal friends do. They also assumed any woman who was friends with a woman who slept around was also that sort of woman.”

  “This stuff is really good Sarah. You need to write a book for sure,” he said and handed me the piece of paper he had taken notes on for me. “Women in business need a book like this.”

  Garrett was sweet, but what did he really know about business or women in the workplace? Of course, I wasn’t going to say anything to him; but Garrett was a ranch hand, he clearly didn’t understand what women dealt with in a corporate working environment. I doubted anyone would even buy such a book, if I ever took the trouble to write it.

  “Thank you and thanks for humoring me for a little bit. It was fun.”

  “By the way, I saw you in a pretty manly suit in that photo at your parent’s house; was that when you first started working?”

  “Yes, that was when I got my first office. Obviously, I needed some fashion help. That’s certainly something I’d want to talk with women about. They should dress as fashionably as they want in their careers and not worry about it. Men wear the suits they want to wear and they don’t think twice if the women in the office with be offended by their outfits. Yet as a woman, we have to worry if our skirt is long enough, our breasts are hidden enough, and if the men will be able to concentrate on their work with me around.”

  “Write it down,” Garrett said with a smile as he handed me his pen. “If you don’t write it down when you think of it, your ideas tend to lose their passion.”

  Garrett spoke with such authority on the subject of writing that I almost wanted to believe him. But he had a way about him in most everything he did and it always seemed to show him in a good light. Even when he had talked about being bitten by a pig, he ended up coming out of the story even more irresistible than he had been before I heard it.

  “You seem knowledgeable about writing; have you written anything before?”

  He hesitated and seemed to look up into the night air for an answer befo
re he responded. It was odd that he had to think so hard on if he had written anything before, but I waited patiently for him to answer me.

  “Just when I was younger. But I really loved it and I thought this trip would be a good time to get back into it.”

  “You know, I hardly know anything about you. Tell me more about Wyoming.”

  “Wyoming?” Garrett said with a puzzled look on his face.

  My gut clenched at his response. He had clearly told me before that he was from Wyoming, yet he didn’t seem to recognize the state at all as I asked him. I tried not to let all the alarms in my mind get set off; he could have simply forgot that he had told me about that part of his life. But something did seem off about the way he didn’t recognize the state.

  “Yes, isn’t that where you said you were from?”

  “Oh, oh, yes, Wyoming. I’m sorry; I didn’t hear you right the first time. It’s very beautiful in Wyoming. A really peaceful place to grow up.”

  “Did you live in the city?”

  “Um, well, yeah, it was pretty much the city. Not a big city though, but we didn’t live on a ranch like this.”

  “Are your parents still alive?” I asked him.

  Again, Garrett paused for an extended period of time before he answered me. My gut was screaming at me by that point. I knew he was lying to me. Obviously, I had no idea why he was lying or what exactly it was that he was hiding, but I knew enough to not be happy.

  What had started as a fun evening of flirting and excitement was turning into a huge disappointment for me. I couldn’t flirt with or sleep with a man who was so obviously lying right to my face. I wanted to believe there was another reason for his awkwardness though. I kept pushing forward in hopes that something about our conversation would reveal who Garrett truly was and why I felt like he was keeping things from me.