Perfect Partner

by Kate Stone

  “Oh, Owen. Yes, Owen! Yes!” I gripped his hands in mine and cried out his name as I came.

  A moment later, awash in blinding rapture, I felt his body move, vaguely felt him leaving me. Then, his warmth spilled onto my stomach. I felt each drop, each spurt as he emptied himself onto my skin. He grunted above me, somewhere in the light of the afternoon, somewhere beyond my closed eyes and panting breaths. I rubbed my breasts, lost in the satisfaction of feeling him inside me and now on me.

  The bed shook as he collapsed next to me. Then, a tissue was wiping him away, cleaning me. Even in the moments after climax, Owen Brooks was a gentleman. We lay in silence, coming down, together, side by side, finally breaking free of our work personas and just being Jesse and Owen.

  In the back of my mind, though, work waited. This was not compatible with our work relationship. And I knew – I already knew – the shit was about to hit the fan.

  CHAPTER FIVE - Owen

  “Shocking news this morning as social media giant Owen Brooks is accused of sexually inappropriate behavior with an employee.”

  The news was everywhere. Pictures of our dinner, our lunch, and of our visit to my house had leaked to the press. Luckily, I had curtains on the windows behind my bed, or else that would have leaked, too. The trap had been sprung, and I knew who had set it.

  “Owen, there’s a reporter on the line for you.” Jesse’s voice came cautiously through the phone on my desk.

  “Tell them I’m not taking any calls at the moment.” I rubbed my temples. “And come in here after you get them off the phone,” I added. We needed a plan.

  A moment later, the door to my office opened and closed slowly. Without looking up, I knew it was Jesse. In just a couple of weeks, I could already recognize her footfalls. She came and sat down across the desk from me. “Have you seen the statement Ivy released to the press this morning?” she asked quietly, calmly.

  My hand still shielded my face from the light, fingers still slowly rubbing at my temples to ease the aching pressure building in my head. I should have already dealt with Ivy. I had allowed myself to be preoccupied. Her plan to get me out of the way worked, maybe a little too well. I was sure she didn’t mean for me to develop an attraction to my new assistant, much less to develop feelings for her, but doing so only added to the success of her plan.

  “Ivy’s already on this?” I lowered my hand and looked up. I hadn’t seen anything from her yet, but what I saw in front of me was enough to calm the stress clawing its way through my head.

  Staring into Jesse’s face, I felt it would have been fine to let all this crumble around me as long as I had someone like her at my side. Of course, having Jesse at my side, I knew I had a partner who could help me keep it together. She’d been helping me run the company since she walked in the door, and the nature of her job probably made it seem like she was just shuffling paperwork and delivering messages.

  “You need to see this.” She took out her phone, pulled up a video, and held it where I could see.

  “We are currently conducting an investigation into the allegations against our founder, president, and CEO, Owen Brooks. Right now, it’s too early to say, but it appears there may be a pattern of behavior here. I’m hoping we can get past this as quickly as possible and reach a resolution in this matter.”

  “She’s not really saying anything,” I commented. “She’s got nothing, just a few pictures.”

  “There are pictures of us going back to your place,” Jesse added. “That’s pretty damning.” She blushed and lowered her eyes.

  “Listen, that was not me as your boss.” I lowered my voice and leaned over the desk, placing a finger under her chin to lift her gaze back to mine.

  “But you are my boss,” she argued.

  “I know.” But I want to be more, I wanted to say. She had me there, though. It was a sticky situation indeed.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Brooks.”

  Mr. Brooks?

  “I can’t do this.”

  Tears began streaming down her face as she got up from the chair. She wiped them away, tucked her phone back in her pocket, and turned towards the door before I could say anything. I couldn’t let her go. I rose to speak, to stop her before she walked through that door. I knew if I let her leave the office, she would leave my life.

  “Oh, this does not look good,” a cold, hard voice said at my door. Ivy stood with her arms crossed and a calculated expression on her face, like she’d caught us in some lewd act.

  “I hope you’re happy,” Jesse spat at her as she stormed out of the room.

  A moment later, I heard the door to the suite open and close. I hoped it wasn’t her, but I knew it Jesse leaving, maybe never to return. My shoulders sank, and I let out a long, heavy sigh. Then, I cut my eyes back to Ivy, standing there watching me, observing me. Every little thing I did at this point would be used against me in the court of public opinion. We didn’t have a board of directors. We didn’t have investors to answer to. The company was private. I’d built it myself. It grew directly out of its own success, because I didn’t need much for myself in order to maintain any grand lifestyle, which had allowed me to pour as much of our profits as possible back into the business.

  “So, what’s the game plan, Ivy? Are you hoping pressure from the public will convince me to retire?”

  She shook her head and took a slow step forward. She wore a severe gray suit jacket, no shirt underneath (she loved half-exposing herself to everyone), and a tight skirt that hugged her narrow hips and thin legs, stopping just above her knee to give anyone who wanted to see them a good view of her smooth, impeccable legs. Her skin had the same oven-roasted tan from the tips of her fingers to her thighs, her thin-skinned bony chest, neck, and face. Her platinum blond hair clashed in a way that made her look perfect for the set of some erotic sci-fi thriller. And somehow, she thought she was hot shit.

  “You know,” I started, taking a seat behind my desk, “I ought to thank you for hiring her, even though you just ran her off.”

  “Why’s that, Owen?” She slithered up to my desk and leaned over slightly, resting her weight on her hands. Her jacket fell forward from her chest; if I’d been interested, I could have seen whether or not she wore a bra and what her breasts looked like under there.

  See, I understood what Ivy’s problem was. She found herself irresistible and thought everyone else should as well. When she started working for me, there had been many times like this, times when she would subtly use her sexuality to try to entice me. That led to some not-so-subtle incidents eventually, but I thought we’d moved beyond her feelings of rejection. Yes, I turned her down. Contrary to the notion that Jesse was part of a pattern of behavior, as Ivy put it, I hadn’t made advances on any other employees. Work had been completely separate from – and devoid of – any kind of personal life I might have wanted to lead.

  “Jesse did what you wanted. She pulled me away from work. She made me more hands-off and freed up my time.”

  “Good. I’m glad. Did you have time to think about things, Owen?” Did she want me to say I had time to think about her? I did not.

  “I did. I had a lot of time, surprisingly, and I want to thank you for that, too.”

  “What’s my reward?” Her eyes pierced me. What she wanted from me was clearly spelled out in the way she stood, the way her body leaned. She oozed sex.

  “I guess this is your reward,” I told her, holding my hands out. “This whole show you’re putting on where you get to crucify your boss on TV and the internet, where you get to smear my face and my name in hopes of taking the company from me. Because that’s what’s supposed to happen, isn’t it? You’re going to put me in a position where I have to step down and turn things over to you. I mean, you are the first person beneath me, and within the company you’re essentially the heiress to this throne, right?”

  She stared at me, dumbfounded. The only reason she’d ever acted like she wanted me to make a move was so she could use it against me. It had
been so obvious, from day one, that it was disgusting. I saw straight through her, and now she saw that.

  “So, let me see if I’ve got this right. Pressure on social media influences clients to pull their business. The company falters. Sales go down. We go into a tailspin, and the only thing we can do to fix it is to get rid of the pervy boss taking advantage of the young women who work here, when all I’ve done is get tricked into a fake dinner meeting with a client who wasn’t even in the country at the time and take my new assistant to lunch. Then, we stopped by my place because I wanted to show her what this company has done for me.”

  Okay, I fibbed a little. Lunch and going by my place were so much more than that, but I couldn’t tell her I was falling for Jesse. Ivy wouldn’t have understood that. She probably didn’t even know what love was. There was no way she could have related to what I felt the moment I saw the real, genuine young woman sitting in our lobby. Hell, one of the reasons Ivy picked her was probably because she figured her plain look would have allowed her fly under the radar. Instead, it made her stand out even more. She didn’t have to try to be beautiful. True beauty radiated from every aspect of her, from her looks to who she was as a person.

  “Right. We both know what happened when you took her into your home. You were there for a good couple of hours. What could possibly take that long to show her in that plain, boring ass house?”

  “How do you know how long we were there, Ivy? Did you follow us? Did you take the pictures?”

  “Why would I do that when I had your company to run for you?”

  “Ouch.” I chuckled. “That really stings, you know. Oh!” I reached in the desk and pulled out a handful of sales reports Jesse had prepared for me. I dropped them down in front of Ivy. “Before I forget, since you started working without my direct supervision, our numbers have slumped across the board. It seems that instead of doing things the way we do here at OBM, instead of looking for the way to improve suffering markets, you did what Ivy wanted to do, and it’s costing us.”

  “Don’t change the subject,” she growled.

  “I’m not. We’re still talking about the trouble the company is in.” I grinned.

  “Do you know how it’s going to look if you let me go right now? You’re going to look so guilty.”

  “Am I?” I thought about Mr. Ogawa’s understanding of the problems OBM faced, and I knew if he saw it, other clients and potentials saw it, too. Sure, there would be some damage control to do after letting her go, but it wouldn’t take long to get back on track.

  “You can’t do this, Owen, not now.”

  I had to plan my next steps carefully if I wanted to maintain control after letting go the person who took all of this to the public. Firing her might not have been the best first step in cleaning up. I leaned back in my chair, drummed my fingers on the desk, and stared at my Operations Manager for a moment. If I let her stay, things would only get worse. If I fired her, I had to move quickly to prevent any further damage to my reputation or that of my business.

  CHAPTER SIX - Jesse

  “Hey, we need to talk. I’m really sorry about everything that’s happened. This is not how I’d planned on things going. I never meant for it to look like I was using you or taking advantage of you. You are the first person I’ve connected with in a long, long time, Jesse. Please call me back. I can get this cleaned up, but I need to know you’ll be at my side when I do it.”

  Owen had left several voicemails over the last few days. Everything had blown up in my face. I knew – from the moment I walked in, I knew – that I was walking into a volatile situation between those two. I didn’t know if she wanted him or his business, or maybe even both, but my heart didn’t have to be a casualty in their fight.

  “Jesse, please. I’m sorry,” he said in his last voicemail. It was all he said, the defeat in his voice creeping through the phone.

  Then, there came a knock. Not at my front door, but at my back door. I knew who it was immediately. See, there were a couple of reporters watching my townhouse out front, so in order to get in without being seen, Owen had to come around back. But why was he there? As far as I was concerned, his problems had nothing to do with me, now that I had walked out on my job and my problems had everything to do with needing a new job.

  When I pulled back the curtain from the window in my backdoor, I saw him standing on the stoop. He wore a dark gray t-shirt and jeans, not a suit. He glanced at me through the glass with his disarming eyes, but his smile was gone. His messy hair hadn’t been styled like he did it for work. He could have used a good shave, but honestly, the stubble only added to his down-to-Earth look. Looking at him like that, I didn’t feel like I’d just walked out on my job. I felt like I’d walked out on the only man who’d ever seen me for who I was, the only man who appreciated everything I brought to the table.

  Get it together, I told myself, taking a deep, steadying breath. I’d only known the guy for a few weeks. Why did I already have feelings for him? Why had I allowed things to go as quickly as they had? Why did it hurt to see him stuck out there like that, sneaking around to the back of my house to talk to me?

  I believed that love wasn’t for me. I’d been used, taken advantage of, and forgotten by a number of men in my life. I had been overlooked and completely ignored by many more. I had never been admired or pursued by anyone like Owen, a man who could have his pick of supermodels, a man who could have anything he wanted, any powerful, wealthy woman, any beautiful face and sexy body. And if he’d had any damn sense at all, he wouldn’t have come for me with his company on the line.

  “Do you have any idea what you’re risking by coming here?” I asked when I opened the door.

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he took my face in his hands and kissed me. Every ounce of tension, every ounce of stress or worry or even anger melted from my body, and I leaned into him. I put my arms around him, grabbing his strong shoulders. He moved his hands down my back, his arms encircling me, protecting me, holding me close to him.

  “It’s worth it,” he said when our lips finally pulled apart.

  “You can’t risk your livelihood for me, Owen. That’s stupid,” I argued, but part of me needed to hear him say that he was doing just that, that I was worth it. No one else I’d ever dated would have done that.

  “Look,” he said with a sigh, “if we do this together, if I do this with you at my side, we will show everyone that we are more than this company. I feel like there could be something here between us that transcends OBM and our work relationship.” His grip tightened around my waist.

  “You think so?” I cocked an eyebrow, eyeing him with playful suspicion. If I’d been just another girl, like Ivy implied, he wouldn’t have come to my home. He wouldn’t have called me as many times as he had.

  “I know there is.” He kissed me again, deep and passionate, our bodies pressing against each other, our lips opening and tongues tasting each other. Even held tight in his arms, held against his chest, I felt like I was flying. I couldn’t feel the floor beneath my feet.

  “I can’t explain it,” I told him when he let me drift back down to the floor, when our lips parted and I was able to return to my kitchen, right by the back door, “but I’ve fallen so hard for you. I hoped you would come and tell me we could do this. I didn’t want it to stop.”

  “I didn’t either,” he confessed. “I couldn’t let you go.” He stared into my eyes while he spoke, his gaze reaching into my soul, taking my heart in a tender caress.

  “So, what do we do now?” I asked.

  “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” he replied.

  He backed away, slid his arms from around my waist, and I knew – I just knew – I’d messed up. I’d said the wrong thing by bringing him back to our real-world problems instead of indulging in the fantasy of us, the fantasy we both wanted to be true. But that was who I was, and I thought I was the person he wanted – the girl who wouldn’t let him get away with sweeping things under the rug, avoiding
pressing issues like Ivy. That was the person I tried to be at work and at home as well.

  “That’s part of why I came by,” he added after a moment’s silence. “I have some ideas.”

  “Good. Let’s talk.” I led him to my table. “Do you want anything to drink?” I asked before I sat down with him.

  “No, I’m fine. Let’s just talk this through.” He took me by my hand and pulled me into my chair across the table from him. “First, you’re still on payroll,” he started.

  “So, I’m getting paid even though I walked out?”

  “Well, you didn’t officially quit, and I wasn’t going to let you quit anyway.”

  “What are you saying? Is this all about work?” Was he simply trying to keep me so he’d have an assistant? Something didn’t make sense. We’d gone from talking about us – or I thought that was what we were talking about – to talking about work, like the two were the same.

  “Just listen. I have to make a statement addressing the big scandal and officially fire Ivy,” he continued. “Until that’s handled, maybe it’s best you stay home. Or do you think you should show up at work with me, show everyone that we’re a couple, a team? I mean, no matter what happens between us, I want to keep you on at the office. I feel like I can trust you to help me run it the way I want to.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll do whatever you think is best.” I imagined us walking in together, like some kind of tag team, like we both owned the place and came in to handle business.

  “Alright. Tomorrow then? We both return, I make a statement, and we fire Ivy together.”

  “I don’t have that kind of authority,” I reminded him.

  “At my side, you do.” He reached over and took my hand in both of his.

  “What are you asking? Do you want me to assume her position?”