by Emelia Blair
I’m taken aback by how much Raymond cares for her. I thought he loved her like a niece but he seems more like a—
“He’s like a doting father.” Halley grins, affectionately. “He’s always been scared of when I’ll decide to date, so when I told him I simply don’t have the time, he was so relieved.”
She’s never dated before?
Why does the thought please me so much?
“I started freelancing when I was out of high school or around that time, so Mia and Cameron would take me out to clubs when they went, but aside from that, I was always working. I would usually shop online if I felt like it.”
How can she be an introvert and an extrovert at the same time?
She’s on her second slice of pizza.
I pick up my third. “So, now, you’ll dress more officially when coming to the office?”
Halley nods. “I’ve always admired how classy Lana looks and how chic Kendall looks.”
“Caleb does all of her clothes shopping,” I inform her. “My sister has the fashion sense of a rock.”
“Lucky her.” After a brief pause, she asks, “Want to see what I got?”
I’m starting to feel like she’s treating me more and more like a platonic girlfriend than a boss or even a potential lover. So, maybe, the last part is just for my own gratification but I do dislike how she’s looking at me as if I was nothing more than…“No,” my answer is abrupt.
She gives me a surprised look. “What’s with you?”
“Nothing,” I mutter, trying to sort out these complicated feelings. “Not a damn thing.”
She gives me an odd look before falling silent. When I look up at her, her expression is brooding.
After a few minutes, she speaks up, her voice oddly subdued, “I’m going to call Uncle Raymond when I go home. I don’t know what to say to him. How do I tell him that Mom might be alive or that it might be my father?”
“It’s a little too soon to be jumping to conclusions,” I tell her. “It could just be a very odd coincidence.”
She doesn’t reply to this, instead saying, “Why would the police suspect I had anything to do with it though? They’re not going to…” She looks up at me, her eyes wide.
“No, of course not!” I hastily reassure her. “You have an alibi and there is timed security footage. You have nothing to worry about. Besides, you and I spent the night together so…”
Her face turns bright red at my comment.
I continue, satisfied at her response, “I’ll be your alibi for the whole night.”
She unfolds herself, putting her feet down on the ground, mumbling, “We didn’t spend the night together. Stop making it sound like we—like we…” She can’t get the words out
I blink innocently at her. “Like we what?”
She raises her head to shoot me a venomous look.
I just smirk. “You really need to be clearer. Like we what, Halley?”
She just presses her lips together, her cheeks flaming. “Nothing.”
I just smile.
She shoots me a look that is part anger and part something else and I meet her gaze steadily.
She looks away after a moment. “I should go.”
Yes, she should. She’s really starting to test my self-control.
The whole weekend goes by without seeing hide or hair of Halley, and for the first time ever, I find myself impatiently waiting for Monday to come.
I reach the office early and see Elise standing at the front desk with Lucas, who’s holding Sophie in his arms.
“Morning!” Lucas greets me.
The man is always smiling but underneath his eyes, I see the cruel monster that lurks. I’ve seen how easily and ruthlessly he destroyed an entire empire in front of my eyes, dragging them to court, stripping them of everything but the clothes on their backs. I’ve also seen how vicious he is when it comes to protecting his friends and family.
Lucas Black is a dangerous man, one I want to keep a healthy distance from.
I’m not a particularly violent man but I have a temper, which I keep very tightly leashed because of certain reasons.
The last time I lost my head was when a boy in my neighborhood called my mother a two-bit whore. I had broken his head with a lead pipe and he had been hospitalized for a month.
So, I control my temper with a tight fist.
However, Lucas is like a prowling tiger, who camouflages his stripes under a pleasant demeanor. In front of his cheerful fiancée, he's completely relaxed.
Sometimes, I wonder if Elise really knows what he’s like, but there are times when I feel that she does and she accepts him.
Elise smiles at me, warmly. “Did Halley show you what she bought?”
Lucas blinks at his wife. “Why would she show him—?”
Elise pinches him on his arm, making him wince, her smile not faltering in the least. “Did she?”
I shove my hands in my pockets. “Ah, no. But she seemed really grateful to you for helping her shop.”
“So, you haven’t seen her this morning?”
Elise’s smile is making me more and more wary by the second.
“Ah, no.” I narrow my eyes at her. “It’s too early for her to—”
“Oh, she came in ten minutes ago,” Elise informs me, now smirking broadly.
I stare at her, my feet screaming at me to go see the woman who’s turning my whole world upside down.
Elise raises a brow. “What are you looking at me for?”
I don’t hesitate, hurrying towards the elevator, which is open as if waiting for me.
As the doors close behind me, I hear Elise sigh. “Those two are so cute.”
Ears red, I pretend I didn’t hear it but my feet move quickly once I reach my floor. The door of my office is open, and at the last few steps, I break into a run, only stopping once I’m standing in the entrance way.
However, to my disappointment, it’s empty.
Halley’s laptop is there along with her headphones and I can hear some faint music coming from them. However, there’s no Halley.
Heart sinking, I step into the room, taking off my messenger bag and tossing it onto the couch before shrugging out of my coat.
“You sure took your time,” a smug voice comes from behind me.
I whirl around, in the process of taking off my coat sleeve. My mouth turns dry at the sight before me.
The woman in front of me doesn’t resemble the girl who used to sit on my couch like a casual teenager, her clothes looking like a paint set threw up.
A cerulean colored silk blouse with the first two buttons artfully opened. The ends are tucked into a black pencil skirt, which reaches her knees, her remaining legs covered in skin colored stockings, black heels covering her feet. Her blouse matches her eyes and her red hair is carefully combed, a single golden colored feather dangling from one ear.
My cock hardens immediately and I instantly turn around, bewildered by my own reaction to her.
I stride over to my desk and sit down abruptly, forcing myself to calm down.
“Well, what do you think?” Halley asks, gleefully.
I meet her eyes. I see the hope and expectations in her eyes; a part of me wants to tell her that she looks awful and that she needs to revert back to her normal clothes and yet, I can’t do that to her. “Very professional,” I manage.
At least, she’ll be in the office the whole while, so I can make sure nobody hits on her.
“Also, get this!” She tells me excitedly, putting her hands on my desk and leaning forward.
I can see a hint of cleavage, which just makes my blood pump faster.
“Lana says that I can have my own cubicle. Isn’t that great?”
“Great,” I grind out. “Fucking-fantastic.”
She doesn’t seem to hear this, her excitement at getting her own desk blinding her to my irritation. She’s prancing around the room like a little elf, her eyes gleaming at the prospect of having her own space.
; I can’t stand it any longer. “What’s wrong with our arrangement from before?”
She stops and looks at me as if I’ve lost a brain cell or two. “I was working on your couch. That’s hardly professional. Now I have a place where I can keep all my things and—”
I brush half my desk empty, tossing the things to one side. “You can keep your things here. See? It’s empty.”
She stares at me before pointing out, slowly, “You just mixed the two contracts that we didn’t bind on Friday.”
“Fuck!” I immediately start going through the papers.
She snickers. “I’ll be at my desk.”
“Wai—?”
But she’s already gone.
Groaning at this disaster, I lean back in my chair, sulking.
Stupid Lana.
“Excuse me?”
I look up to see the Head of HR standing in my doorway, glaring at me. “Did you just call me stupid?”
“What?” Damnit!
She crosses her arms.
I scowl. “Why did you have to give her a desk? Our arrangement from before worked perfectly fine.”
Lana’s expression clears and she raises a brow. “She’s your intern. She needs a place to work.” When I open my mouth, she raises a hand to cease my arguments. “Which is not your couch.”
“How am I supposed to talk to her about stuff now?” At her raised brow, I hastily amend. “Work stuff.”
Lana gives me a strange look and her lips twitch. “Some distance will help the both of you.”
“Huh?”
“Use your legs, you idiot. Or send her an email like a normal person.” She gives me a narrow eyed look. “And watch that language or I’ll make your sister wash your mouth with soap.”
Since Lana and Kendall are so tight, I don’t doubt her. And my insane half-sister would spend a good few hours trying to do just that. I roll my eyes. “What did you want?”
She shrugs. “Just wanted to see how things are going between—I just dropped by to see if Halley was doing okay.”
Why are all the women acting so dodgy today?
After she leaves, I stare at the door, mentally willing Halley to walk through it, declaring that she hates her new desk and wants to come back to work on my lumpy, uncomfortable couch.
Fat fucking chance.
The day rolls by, slowly.
I’m half distracted by the thought of Halley in her brand-new self-image, her clothes defining her exquisite body as the men around her leer at her.
I’m stuck in an imaginary scenario where one of her colleagues puts his hand on her and she’s too afraid to remove it…I stand up, my chair falling back with a clatter, my face red.
As I march out, I try to tell myself it’s just to check up on her and whether she’s done with the data analysis.
However, when I reach the cubicle section, my eyes take in Halley smiling at a man who’s leaning on the wall of his cubicle with his arms and grinning at her.
I don’t know why I’m so angry but my feet are moving to her, and my voice is sharp, “If this is why you wanted your own desk, then it’s better that you move back to my office!”
Halley shoots me a startled look. “Jace—?”
“If you have time to flirt, I’m sure you have time to finish the analysis you were supposed to have gotten done an hour ago.”
Halley bares her teeth at me, a flash of annoyance in her eyes, along with embarrassment. “I sent it to you two hours ago, if you bothered to check your email, which you obviously didn’t since you’re standing here trying to humiliate me.”
When the guy standing in the next cubicle, who’s been trying to flirt with her, snorts, I shoot him a cold look. “You have something to say?”
He immediately sobers up. “No, sir,” before he slides back into his seat.
“If I didn’t respond to my email, then you come and get your next assignment,” I hiss at her.
She gives me a chilling look, which makes me want to shut my stupid mouth. But my own feelings are so conflicted when it comes to this girl that I choose not to obey the suggestion, as age old male instincts whisper my way and I cross my arms and glower at her.
Halley stands up suddenly.
I fight the urge not to flinch at the fierce anger in her eyes.
She says, “Come on, Jerry. Let’s go have lunch together.”
Jerry, who had just slunk into his seat at my cold look, perks up. Then as Halley brushes past me, he makes to follow her.
I grab him by his shoulder, whispering in a menacing voice, “You put one hand on her, and I’ll break every bone in that hand.”
He gives me a look that people reserve for the clinically insane before rushing after her.
But I see the way he’s so careful to stay one foot behind her, so as to not accidentally brush against her.
I grind my teeth.
It seems I have made a decision.
8
Halley
“So, how’re you liking your new cubicle?” Kendall grins at me, leaning on the faux wooden desk. “Elise told me you were so excited.”
I fiddle with my pencil, not knowing how to tell her I would be enjoying it even more if a certain someone didn’t keep popping up every five minutes, running the ‘Halley Patrol’. “It seems Jace likes it more than I do,” I say, carefully.
Kendall’s lips curve in a knowing smirk. “You don’t say? Do tell.”
I lift up my head and wheel my chair slightly back only to see Jace standing at the edge of the curve in the wall, glaring at Jason, the blonde guy who sits five cubicles away from me.
He had invited me to lunch two days ago and Jace has been glaring at him ever since.
If he had wanted to go with us, he could just have tagged along! I think to myself, irritated.
Kendall follows my line of sight and blinks. “What’s he doing?”
I roll my eyes. “I don’t know. He’s been doing that ever since I got my desk last week. He keeps coming here and glaring at people. And every time I go to lunch with someone, he gets all moody and grumpy. It’s like he’s on his period.”
Kendall snorts. “Maybe. Or there could be another reason.”
I look up at her, mystified. “What reason?”
She stills before giving me a strange look. “You can’t be that dense.”
“What?” I persist.
She opens her mouth before snapping it shut. “Ah, best I not say anything. Have you two been fighting though?”
I frown. ”It’s hard to be civil when he’s such a dick to me.”
She nods gravely. “Sounds like Jace.” Then, something mischievous flashes in her eyes and she leans forward. “Have you been asked out by any of the guys here, yet?”
I freeze before blushing slightly. “Well, you know Harry and Clark?”
“I don’t but go on.” Kendall’s smile grows broad.
I fidget with my fingers. “Harry asked me to go for drinks this Friday and Clark wants to take me to dinner Sunday evening.”
Kendall purses her lips. “And did you say yes?”
I look uncertain before leaning closer to her. “I’ve never actually been on a date, so I really wanted to know what it’s like to go on one. So, yeah. But…” I hesitate. “I’m not really attracted to them. They don’t seem my type.” I can’t tell her that every time I look at them, I’d much prefer a pair of scowling brown eyes, dark smoothed back hair, and a familiar haughty attitude. I sigh. “Let’s see how it goes.”
Seeing Kendall, Jace makes his way over and I wince.
“Look who it is.” Kendall grins. “What drags you here from your lonely corner of the world, brother?”
Jace looks annoyed and he doesn’t meet my gaze.
Considering that we’ve been at odds for the past week, it makes sense. I ignore him and get back to my work, but I can feel his eyes boring holes in the back of my head.
“Nothing,” he mutters.
I feel a little upset.
�
��So, two dates in one week, Halley? Good for you!”
I bite my tongue at Kendall’s cheerful words, and from the corner of my eyes, I see Jace stiffen. “What?”
I really wish I could slap my hand on Kendall’s mouth as she babbles on, “Oh, didn’t you know? Halley got asked out by two guys. She’s so popular. It’s probably because you’ve upped your style.”
“I liked her like she was before,” Jace mumbles.
I realize it wasn’t meant for my ears but my chest tightens at his words.
All my life, even Mia and Cameron had constantly tried to convince me to change my clothing style and here’s this man who seemed to prefer it over this sleek and playfully sexy one.
I don’t know why I feel this rush of affection towards Jace all of a sudden. Maybe, I’ve been—
The sound of footsteps coming towards us has us looking up.
Hannah, Lana’s assistant, is coming towards us, her face pinched. “Miss Cooper. There’s a detective here to see you. He’s waiting in Mrs. Thornton’s office.”
I stand up, my legs suddenly unsteady, and I open my mouth only to be interrupted by Jace, who says, “We’ll be right there.”
We?
Despite the fact that he’s been a major asshole to me this past week, he’s still standing behind me right now. Uncle Raymond had told me to call him in case any detective showed up to question me but he’s out of town for a business meeting.
“Does she need legal representation?” Kendall asks, her smile replaced by a hard look. Even as she’s saying this, she’s whipped out her phone and has dialed a number. “Lucas. Get down to Lana’s office. We might have trouble.”
The way everyone has formed ranks around me makes me feel a bit overwhelmed.
“Come on.” Jace touches my hand arm in a way that’s both possessive and comforting.
I glance at him, trying to tell myself that it’s probably just a follow-up interview and nothing serious.
We go down but Kendall doesn’t go to the office with us. Instead, she shoots Jace a sharp look to which he nods and she takes the other elevator to her own office.
Lana’s office is a large one, and when I knock, it’s Lucas who opens the door.