by Hannah Ford
After returning home to shower and change, Ivy felt refreshed and determined.
I’m not going to let him beat me down.
That was her mantra. Cullen Sharpe would not win. He wouldn’t make her lose faith in herself, wouldn’t cause her to crumble up and blow away just because he’d rejected her when she’d finally allowed herself to open up to his advances.
She dressed in a formal beige pantsuit; blouse, pants and a blazer, with high heels. Looking at herself in the mirror before leaving the apartment, she thought her look today read as “no time for bullshit.”
And that suited her mood just fine.
If flashes of Cullen’s steely blue eyes happened to occasionally pass through her mind unbidden and unwanted, she tried her best to ignore such memories.
But sitting on the T, as it wound its snakelike way towards the station near Biomatrix, she found her thoughts drifting back to the brief moments they’d spent together in Cullen’s bedroom that morning.
The feel of his hand on her bare bottom.
The sting.
The sensation of excitement.
Her opening for him, his finger sliding so easily into her dripping wetness.
Cullen’s rock hard body lowering onto her, readying to penetrate her before those fateful words had left her mouth and changed everything instantaneously.
Ivy found it impossible to resist the memory of those powerfully charged moments. She couldn’t help the fact that it was the most intense sexual experience of her life, and Cullen Sharpe was responsible for it.
But Ivy reminded herself that even if Cullen had been the catalyst for the experience, that didn’t mean another person couldn’t bring her there again someday.
It could and would happen again.
It just wouldn’t be with Cullen Sharpe anymore. That was that. He’d made it quite clear he wanted no part of her virginal escapades.
Finally, she arrived at Biomatrix Pharma, and entered the building confidently, head held high. She had to assume he was already there, sitting in his expansive office, watching his monitors and doing whatever it was he did up there.
Maybe he was even watching her right now on his surveillance system. Knowing Cullen Sharpe’s interest in controlling every facet of his business, she thought it quite possible he was watching her as she came inside the lobby.
That being the case, she made a point to look happy and completely fine with everything.
Because screw him.
She was actually a few minutes early into the cube farm, and so she stopped by the break room to get a cup of coffee. The break room just so happened to be near Emma Marks’s office.
The blond, bitchy supervisor gave Ivy the hives, but it didn’t hurt to wander by and hope that Emma might notice Ivy had arrived early, ready to start her day.
As she strolled by Emma’s office, Ivy happened to see that Emma wasn’t actually in there. But someone else was.
Lucas was standing behind the desk, peering at Emma’s computer screen and appearing to be typing something on the supervisor’s unattended keyboard. He glanced up as Ivy passed by and instantly he stood straight and his cheeks went red, as if caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“Hey,” he said, waving. He came around the desk and quickly exited the office, walking in step with Ivy as she continued on to the break room.
“What’s going on, Lucas?” she asked, trying not to sound as suspicious as she felt.
“Not much,” he replied.
There was a brief, awkward silence.
“What were you doing in Emma’s office?” she asked, finally, unable to pretend she hadn’t seen what he was up to.
“Please don’t tell anyone you saw me in there,” he said, sounding pained. “Please, Ivy. They’ll fire me if you do.”
“I can’t promise that. What if they think I covered up for you?”
They were now inside break room together, and she put a plastic cup under the Keurig machine and prepared to make her coffee.
“There’s nothing for you to cover up,” Lucas said. “The whole thing is so stupid.”
“If you say so,” she replied, not believing him just yet.
“Yesterday, there were some emails circulating between the temps,” Lucas continued. “It was like, inside jokes about the job and stuff. Goofing on Emma and…you know…Cullen too.”
“I never got any emails,” Ivy said, watching him as her coffee started brewing.
Lucas nodded. “Yeah…” He looked slightly pained. “Well, the thing is—the other temps don’t really trust you.”
She felt her jaw drop. “They don’t trust me? What did I ever do wrong to them?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong necessarily,” Lucas said, sounding increasingly nervous. He looked around as if fearful of being overheard. “But everyone’s noticed the way Cullen Sharpe treats you.”
Ivy paused as she went to retrieve her cup from the brewer. “How does he treat me?”
His hand on my ass—his finger, sliding deep into my wet pussy.
The head of his cock, preparing to push into me, to break me wide open…
Oh, Cullen. Fuck me, Cullen.
She snapped out of her reverie, as her co-worker seemed embarrassed to comment.
Lucas eventually gave an embarrassed half-shrug of his shoulders. “You know he treats you different from the others. Like how he picked you, out of everyone, to bring him coffee. Calling you at your desk—“
“Is everyone watching me? Eavesdropping on my phone calls?” she said, furious now. “Are all of your lives so lame that you need to focus on me and what I’m doing instead of minding your own business?”
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Lucas said. “I like you, Ivy. You know that. Would I tell you all of this otherwise?”
She sighed, grabbing her cup and putting cream and sugar into it, stirring it with a little plastic stirrer. “I guess that’s true,” she muttered.
“Everyone around here’s paranoid, Ivy. This place is crazy.”
She sipped her coffee and glanced at Lucas now. “None of that explains why you were messing around in Emma’s office.”
“I’m getting there,” he said, his voice lowering to a conspiratorial whisper. “We were all going back and forth with those joke emails, and they were getting more and more outrageous. And then I chose to send my worst joke yet directly to Emma Marks this morning. It was an accident, and it was truly stupid. I hadn’t woken up yet, I guess.”
Ivy rolled her eyes. “And that’s why you went into her office?”
Lucas looked again over his shoulder. “Look, I know it was a dumb thing to do. But her door was open and I thought…if I could just delete the email off her computer—“
“How did you get into her email? Everyone has password protection.”
“She didn’t,” he said. “I can’t explain it, but maybe she forgot to lock her computer when she left last night. So I just pulled up the email and deleted the message I’d sent her. That’s it.”
“That’s it, huh?” Ivy said, sighing as she continued sipping her coffee, still not sure how she felt about his confession.
“Ivy, please. Don’t rat me out. Emma Marks is a stone cold you-know-what, and she’ll fire my ass in a heartbeat for this.”
“Well, maybe you should be fired for that, Lucas. That was dumb.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” He hung his head. “Just give me a chance, Ivy. I’ll owe you one.”
She thought about it. Was it really her place to tell Emma or anyone else that Lucas had gone into her office and used her computer? If their security system was so great, they should’ve known he’d done so.
And besides, Ivy wasn’t feeling very charitable towards anything Cullen Sharpe had a stake in. As far as she was concerned, the controlling and manipulative CEO and his dumb company could both go to hell in a hand basket.
“You don’t owe me anything,” Ivy said, finally. “I won’t tell anybody.” She shook her head in
disbelief that somehow she’d been roped into this little conspiracy on top of everything else.
“You’re the best,” Lucas told her. He turned to leave and then seemed to think better of it, turning back. “Hey, we never even had a chance to talk about last night. Insane, wasn’t it?”
“Very,” she agreed, raising her eyebrows without going further.
“When that fight broke out, you disappeared. I was getting knocked around pretty good,” he chuckled.
“I’m sorry that happened to you. You were nice. You tried to step in and protect me.”
“Tried and did the opposite of succeed,” he said, giving her a wry smile. “They call me Sir Fails a Lot. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Lucas. Everything worked out in the end.”
“I figured,” Lucas said, nodding.
Ivy left the break room, her brow wrinkled with puzzlement.
Was it her imagination or had Lucas seen more last night than he was admitting to? Surely, Lucas or some of the other temps had been aware of Cullen Sharpe’s stepping into the fray and fighting those drunks, and then escorting Ivy from the bar.
But Lucas was acting like he had no idea about any of that. Maybe he really had been too busy fighting to notice anything else.
As she went to her desk and sat down, preparing to get to work, Ivy’s mind wouldn’t stop spinning.
The other temps didn’t trust her because they’d seen the special treatment she was getting from the CEO. But Cullen wasn’t going to be giving her special treatment anymore. He was clearly done with her after her little revelation about being a virgin.
Forget about the other temps. Forget about Lucas. Forget all of them.
She shook it all off and got to work. Bottom line, this was just a job…a temporary job to pay the bills.
Nothing more and nothing less.
She wasn’t going to let the drama consume her. In fact, she was done with all of the drama and all of the bloodsucking leeches trying to feed on her. Whether it was her fellow temps, a bitchy supervisor, or the temperamental CEO himself, Ivy was through worrying about what everybody else thought about her.
She was in it for herself, and that was the end of it as far as she was concerned.
Slowly, her coworkers began filtering into the office and Ivy couldn’t help but notice the way they were all sneaking glances at her as she typed away on her computer. There were whispers too, she was certain of it.
Ivy tried not to care.
And when an email went out that said everyone from Biomatrix Pharma would be attending a luncheon at the upscale restaurant called The Observatory, located just a few blocks from work—she tried to not care about that either.
I don’t want to go, she thought. Cullen will be there. And I don’t want to see his smug, cold face ever again.
So I won’t go. Who will know the difference anyway?
She worked the next few hours without incident, and then noticed that her co-workers were all starting to filter out of the office in small groups.
Lucas stopped by her desk and tapped her shoulder.
Ivy had been listening to music, and now she pulled the ear buds out of her ears. “What’s up?” she asked.
“Everyone’s heading over to The Observatory for the luncheon,” Lucas said. “Want to go together?”
She thought about it for a moment. “I’m not sure if I’m going. I might just work through lunch today.”
“Really?” he said, his eyes squinting with disbelief. “The food there’s supposed to be amazing. And it’s free for us.”
“I don’t know,” she sighed. “My stomach’s not feeling so hot after last night.”
“Okay. Well…” he shoved his hands in his pants pockets. “Maybe I’ll see you there?”
“Maybe,” she said, nodding. “Thanks for asking.” She flashed him a smile to show she really did appreciate him trying to include her. And then she put her ear buds back in and started working again.
They wouldn’t miss her presence there. And she didn’t honestly have an appetite, nor did she feel like being surrounded by a bunch of other temps that didn’t like her.
Cullen Sharpe would be there, giving a speech, making the rounds. Just thinking about him made her heart race, and her stomach tighten unnaturally. She wasn’t nearly over what had happened between them this morning.
She lost herself in work for the next twenty or thirty minutes, and it felt good to just focus in and do a simple job. With data entry, everything was beautifully simple—you just entered the information, all there on the page in black and white.
If only all of life was that simple.
And then her desk phone started ringing. She hardly heard it over her music, but she saw the light flashing on the phone and faintly heard the insistent ring.
Shit. Who else could be calling right now but him?
Ivy pulled her headphones off and stared at the phone, wondering what to do. It kept ringing, and finally she answered it. “Hello,” she said, sounding much more relaxed than she felt.
“Where are you?” the familiar voice spoke into her ear. The intimacy of his baritone, the sexiness that was always present—she’d nearly forgotten the effect he had on her.
Instantly, her skin broke into gooseflesh. “I’m at work of course,” she answered.
“You’re supposed to be at the luncheon. It’s mandatory.”
She rolled her eyes, knowing he couldn’t see her. “I’m not hungry. I lost my appetite.”
“Ivy, this isn’t a request. It’s an order. Get over to The Observatory. Now.”
And then the phone clicked and he was gone.
She slammed the receiver down so hard that the ringer sounded briefly, as if the phone itself was protesting her violent aggression.
“Asshole,” she muttered.
But as angry as she was, didn’t part of her feel relieved, even pleased that he’d taken an interest? That he still cared enough to notice where she was or wasn’t?
As she got up and grabbed her purse off her desk, slung it over her shoulder, Ivy considered the situation.
No, she decided. It wasn’t a relief to know that the CEO cared, because the fact was he cared about all sorts of dumb little details.
Just look at the kind of trouble he makes about his damn coffee. I’m just another detail he’s keeping track of, like his coffee or his cufflinks.
He cares about you in a different way.
But Ivy wasn’t buying it. Whatever Cullen Sharpe was doing, she was finished giving him the time of day. She would go to the damn restaurant because he was the boss and she didn’t want to get fired.
That was it. There was nothing else between them, no matter what Cullen himself might assume.
She got in a cab to travel the short distance, because she didn’t want to walk in late and make a fool of herself.
The cab pulled up in front of The Observatory, and she got out, rushing as she checked the time on her phone and realized that the luncheon was due to officially start in the next few minutes.
As she was crossing the street, she wasn’t paying attention and a horn honked right nearby, making her jump out of the way as another taxi flew past, horn blaring again.
“You have to be careful,” a man said from the sidewalk. “That was almost another New York horror story.”
Ivy glanced at him as she reached the sidewalk safe and sound. “I figured I’d end up a statistic one way or another, with my luck.”
“It’s that bad, eh?” the man said, laughing. He was smoking a cigar and wearing a flashy pin striped blue suit with a gold tie.
“That bad,” she agreed.
“A girl as beautiful as you shouldn’t ever feel like just a statistic,” he said. He was actually quite handsome, although he didn’t have that instant sex appeal that Cullen Sharpe naturally possessed. The stranger had an open, rounded face, and he had short blond hair and green eyes. He was fit, but clearly not in the same le
ague as Cullen in that department either.
So what, you have to compare every man to Cullen now? She reprimanded herself, feeling annoyed at the way her obsession with the CEO knew no bounds.
“Thanks, that’s sweet of you to say,” she told the stranger.
He flicked the end of his cigar into the gutter and blew a plume of smoke out of his mouth, but away from her as he offered his hand. “Xavier Montrose,” he said.
“Ivy Spellman,” she replied, feeling like she should curtsey or something. Instead, she just gave him her hand.
He smiled and inclined his head slightly. His green eyes were very humorous, as if he saw the world as one big joke. “Ivy,” he said, nodding. “Are you meeting your boyfriend for lunch?”
She felt her cheeks flush. “No, I’m here for an…event…” she finished. “I’m actually running late, so although I’d love to chat—“
“Such a shame,” Xavier said, as he watched her hand slip out of his grasp. “I feel like I was only just getting started with you.”
Ivy looked down, feeling heat rise to her cheeks. The man certainly had confidence and a way with words.
“Just getting started with what exactly?” came the voice of Cullen Sharpe, from just a few feet away.
She froze in place, feeling absurdly guilty, even though she’d done nothing wrong.
Xavier made eye contact with Cullen and grinned. “I had no idea you two knew one another,” he said, his grin spreading.
Cullen continued approaching. As he got to Ivy, his hand went to her lower back, possessively claiming her in some way. “She works with me. And she’s late,” he said, his cool tone belying his disappointment.
“She’s probably like ten seconds late, knowing you, Cullen.” Xavier flashed his humorous eyes at Ivy and she wanted to smile in return.
“Have another cigar,” Cullen told Xavier. “Blowing smoke is what you’re best at.”
“Some people blow smoke and some are just full of hot air,” the blond man retorted easily. He seemed ready to break into laughter.
Meanwhile, Cullen’s hand stayed firmly on Ivy’s back.
Ivy bit her lip to keep from laughing with him, as Cullen glanced over to read her expression before looking back at Xavier. “I’d really love to stand here all day and listen to your amazingly profound views about human nature, but I have a luncheon to attend,” Cullen said.