by Falon Gold
In the corner of my eye, I see that my boss stands up, too. “I’ll walk with you, Malisa. I don’t want anything to happen to you on the way there.” His tone is hard, his posture territorial.
I wave him off. “I’ll be fine. The hotel’s hallways are equipped with cameras that have security personnel behind them.” I know because I checked before booking the room. I worry about my safety, too.
He grimaces. “But your room doesn’t have cameras, so let’s go.”
Derek sets his dark sights on my boss’ looming figure, which is standing rigid on the other side of the table. “I’m not a rapist or a murderer, Mr. Ford. Everything I do to a woman is consensual.”
Ford grins, but it’s a humorless twist of his lips. “You’re not exactly going to admit to being a rapist or murderer, now are you, Derek? And this woman is clearly intoxicated and unable to consent to anything. I’ll be coming along to make sure she makes it in her room and you don’t take advantage of her after you get her there.”
I cringe inwardly then look up at Derek helplessly. We can’t stop anyone from getting on an elevator with us or following us to my room, so there’s no point in worrying about what I can’t do anything about. However, I’d be lying if I said I was upset that Ford wants to make sure I get to my room safely. At least he actually cares for me, and I really don’t know Derek from a can of paint.
Derek lifts one corner of his mouth in a nonchalant manner. I move away from the table and wobble on my heels again before stopping in my tracks. Derek’s grip tightens around my waist, holding me in place. It feels like the earth is tilting, making me want to lean, and there’s nothing right about that at all.
“That iced tea was deceptively lethal,” I mention to no one in particular.
“They usually are when the waitress is refilling them when you’re not looking, and you probably haven’t eaten since this morning, have you?” Ford asks, but he knows the answer since I often forget to eat when at work and swamped with his pressing problems.
He’s the one that always reminds me to eat.
“That means my liquor is holding me instead of the other way around, doesn’t it?” I ask, before giggling again. “Oh God, why am I giggling? I don’t giggle.” Unless, I’m drunk that is, and I haven’t been this smashed since my first and only beer in college during freshman week.
I grab a fistful of Derek’s jacket before braving another step forward. When I don’t lean, even though I want to, I keep moving through the casino on carefully placed heels for the wide doorway that leads through the main lobby to the elevators.
Ford grunts behind me, but keeps quiet while following us.
“Derek, what brought you to Vegas?”
Before he answers, my attention centers on the next step take I need to take. We all board the elevator and the compact atmosphere feels small because there are two giant men looking down at me from each side.
“What are you doing here, Derek? Business or pleasure?” I bring the question up again.
He laughs. “You’ve already asked me that, Malisa.”
Oh damn! How did I become an airhead, and go from having zero men in my life to two domineering ones following me to my hotel room?
I look over at Ford. He looks absolutely delicious standing there looking protective and strong. I mentally damn him to hell. How dare he decide to follow me and block me from the only potential intimacy I’ve had all year?
Derek releases my waist and opens one side of his jacket with one hand. He extracts a phone from its inside pocket and extends it to me.
“Put your number in,” his tone is soft and only slightly demanding. I like that about him.
Ford frowns again. “Why would she give you her number? You live in New York, and she’s in Utah,” he interjects.
Why does he care? He doesn’t want me.
“You don’t have that concern when you’re dating women from different countries, Mr. Ford,” I retort then take the phone from Derek.
I punch in the digits slowly. My phone is currently on my kitchen table in Utah. I should’ve just brought it with me. Maybe I’d have gotten the heads up when Ford decided to fly out here. I could’ve left before he arrived.
Chrisette Michelle’s A Couple of Forevers begins to play in my boss’ pants. That’s my cell phone’s ringtone and one that no heterosexual man would pick for his, which means it’s my phone that’s in his pants. I watch horrified as he unearths the singing device from his pocket, while he’s wearing a guilty-as-sin look.
“Why the hell…” I start. “No forget that. How the hell do you have my phone?”
“When you said you didn’t have it, I used the emergency key you gave me to get it from your apartment. You should have it with you at all times, Malisa. I don’t just call about passwords you know. I worry if you’re safe, too.” He lifts the phone up in the air.
I snatch it from his hand, ignoring the niggling feeling that I’m developing. Ford wouldn’t wait until now to tell me that he secretly likes me too. Would he?
I’d ask but this is something I don’t want to discuss in front of Derek or anyone else for that matter because I don’t know how I’ll react. I'm going to get to the bottom of something else right now though.
“Gave you, Mr. Ford?” I yell, suddenly sober. “You demanded a key in case something happened to me. Nothing’s happened to me, and giving you my key was completely unnecessary since I’m always with you. I’m always with you.”
I’m bitter that he consumes my days and nights, while I reap no benefits. I only get heartache when he’s in the same room, or out on dates. I deal with each minor or major heartbreak at his hands silently. He lives his life to the fullest with me on standby. And still, he’s in the way, refusing to allow me even a few days to explore and enjoy something… anything.
And he’ll keep doing this to me as long as I let him. I’m too angry to speak coherently without yelling. Yelling will just make sure he doesn’t hear a word I say. I most certainly want to be heard when I give my demands to Ford.
The elevator’s doors open, as if it knew I needed some space. At my hotel’s room door, I spin around to face both men with my phone clenched in one of my fists at my sides. “Derek, I’ll call you tomorrow to make sure you got… wherever you’re going safely. I need to talk to my boss about limits. Hard ones,” I emphasize through clenched teeth.
I have never been this angry with anyone in my life.
“Someone’s in trouble,” Derek mumbles then leans over and pecks me on the cheek. He whispers goodnight and walks back the way he came. I watch him walk away, along with my chances of getting laid, until he disappears into the elevator.
With my luck, he’s going to find another woman who doesn’t have an interfering boss following her from one state to another, nixing her chances for getting to know another man. It is beyond me why Ford is doing this when come Monday I’ll still be in the work-zone of his life.
I swipe my keycard through the reader on the door angrily. After using more force than necessary to turn the handle, I have to convince myself not to stomp into the living space of my suite like a petulant child.
Ford follows me inside. When the door closes behind him with a quiet click, I turn on him in the middle of the small lane between the door and white leather couches.
“What the hell, Mr. Ford?” I ask through a gritted clench, attempting to keep my anger in check.
He steps forward, cups my face, and then his mouth is on mine. My senses scatter and my mind reels, while heat gathers in my midsection. A steady throb starts to emanate in the space between my thighs. A tingling takes over and spreads outward. When I’m feeling more than I’ve ever felt with any man, he steps back and smiles with one side of his mouth.
I watch speechless, as he unbuttons his jacket then tosses it behind me on the arm of the couch holding the burden of my purchases from my spa visit. His glib mood just makes me angrier.
“Call me Apollo, my Lisa,” he returns to nonchalan
tly calling me his Lisa, like we’re supposed to be here together.
It does feel like we’re supposed to be together, but we’re not. Being here alone with him is another mistake that my heart will pay for later. Just like accepting the job as his personal assistant was. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. I decide that from now on I will keep as much distance as possible between us.
“First off, my name is MaLisa, not your Lisa, Mr. Ford.” The chance for me to become anything other than his assistant has passed, or at least that’s what I’m going to keep telling myself until my heart believes it. I’m done wanting something I can’t have, and my heart better get used to it.
He grins. “First off are fighting words where I’m from, my Lisa.”
I have no idea where he’s from, oddly, and now isn’t the time to ask. “Oh, we’re certainly having a fight about my life. I’ve let you take too much time from it with your schedule and now your thinking is warped where it concerns me. That stops right now. We’ll set regular hours for me to be off where you can’t call, text, email, or show up as my boss. And you most definitely cannot enter my home without a valid reason! I would like my key back now.”
He walks around me to take a seat on the arm of the couch across from the one wearing his jacket. I turn around to continue the fight.
“Or,” he says simply then crosses his arms.
“Or I quit… right now.”
He shrugs. “Okay.”
Does that mean I’m fired or I can quit right now?
“Okay what?” I ask before locking my jaw, preparing to lose everything I’ve known and wanted, but never gotten from him.
“Okay to your demands as an employee with scheduled hours where I can’t call, text, email, or show up as your boss. And, here’s your key.” He places my key on the table closest to him.
“Good,” I say curtly then nod, unsure if I just won or lost something.
He stands up suddenly and walks toward me. My mind and mood goes on high alert. I watch him approach on silent black loafers. I step back when he invades the first of three feet in my personal space.
“What are you doing?” I ask in a whisper. “Mr. Ford…I think you should go.”
His smile widens, which makes his high cheekbones lift into a predatory expression, while I back away until my spine hits the door that we both just came through. Only then does he stop, standing toe to toe with me, literally. His stare is intense enough to suck me in and make the corners of the room bend around us.
“I’m about to give you my demands now.”
“What demands? You’re not supposed to have any.”
His smile grows crooked. There’s no limit to what I’d give to be the woman who wakes up to that shit-eating grin every day.
Shit, Malisa, you’re supposed to not be wanting him, remember? But how can I not after his lips have christened my mouth with the glories of Mr. Apollo Ford?
One of his hands lifts off, so the tip of his finger can trace the underside of my chin, making me shiver despite the heat that’s made its home inside me.
“You would think that I don’t have the right to have demands after I’ve monopolized your time for years and made sure you never met a man who would see the woman I saw beneath your plain clothes and glasses when you first walked into my office. But when you walked into the casino tonight showing off your curves and beauty, my worst fears had come true. Now, I have demands.”
Chapter Four
Say what now?
It sounds like he just admitted to sabotaging my dating life so he could keep me all to himself. That can’t be right. My mouth starts to open and close, wanting to speak. But my mind can’t make sense of my boss’ confession. Therefore, my thoughts are scattered and I’m just looking like a fish out of water.
“Could you explain in plain, small words why you monopolized my time deliberately, Mr. Ford?”
He steps closer, placing one leg between mine and killing what’s left of the distance between us. Fire licks at my insides and my knees grow weak. I have to press my back into the door just to be able to keep standing upright. I force myself to concentrate on his next words and not his mouth.
“Because I wanted you for myself when we met, but you were a twenty-one-year-old fresh out of college, and just stepping into your real life. From that day forward, I considered you my Lisa and not Malisa. But I was twenty-eight and you weren’t ready for a serious relationship yet. I had every intention of letting you do what twenty-one-year-olds should do, date, go out, live life…but I just couldn’t do it.”
What he shouldn’t have done was made me schedule his dates so he could go out and live life, while I fell in love with him and went home alone with just my love for him as company.
“That was so fucking selfish of you and so damn unfair to me it should be criminal,” I hiss.
He shakes his head and runs the pads of his thumbs across my jawline then up to my lips. Instinct makes me want to lick the fleshy pad of his finger, but I bite my bottom lip instead to keep my tongue to myself.
“No, my Lisa, I’ll tell you what’s criminal. The way you look when sleeping with your blouse falling open, giving me glimpses of your gorgeous breasts, and how your skirt pulls tight around your ass when you bend over my desk. I’ve been going through hell, trying to keep my hands off you. All of those useless dates with surface-deep women to make you jealous, in hopes that you would give me a sign, anything, to let me know you were interested, is criminal.”
“I… I was… jealous,” I stammer, his touch making me forget to filter my words and impossible for his words to truly sink in.
“Were you really jealous?” he asks quietly. “You never said anything.”
I swallow before responding, my throat suddenly desert dry.
“Why would I? You’re my boss and I’m not your type. Do I look like I want to lose my job… or you?” I question, stupidly admitting my desperation to be connected to him.
“Well, you would never lose me, and my type is the woman who doesn’t know she’s beautiful. She doesn’t notice men who’ve seen the woman behind her glasses and too big clothes. That’s my type. So will you have me, my Lisa?” he whispers, inciting doubts and reservations of the paralyzing kind at the same time as making my dreams a reality.
Ford has flaws that could break a woman; he’s a serial dater, has never called a woman his girlfriend for as long as I’ve worked for him. I could lose everything I’ve known for four years if we rush into a relationship and my dream turns into a nightmare when he can’t give me what I want the most: true love, along with a picket fence around a happy castle with kids. I haven’t considered what will happen when he’s had his fill of me.
Suddenly, I’m too afraid to reach out and grab what I’ve wanted for years. My stupid heart hadn’t considered any of this before it let me fall in love with him. I didn’t have to consider anything when my love was on ice, and I was convinced our working relationship would always be just that. If it’s allowed to thaw completely, the consequences of sleeping with him could be catastrophic. More for me than him.
My heart starts to slowly break apart in my chest. As much as I hate the drowning feeling taking over me, maybe it just isn’t meant for me to know Ford as more than my boss.
“I think getting together, even for a night, will be a bad idea, Mr. Ford,” I murmur, while diverting my gaze to the thread pattern of his shirt on his chest.
“Why?” he asks in the softest of whispers above me. “You just said you wanted me.”
I lick my lips, which seem to be drying out under his stare.
“I still do want you… I just don’t want to be a fling of yours. Someone else’s maybe, but not yours. I think you should keep dating other women. I promise it won’t be a problem. I’m used to it with the countless dates I’ve watched you go on. That’s actually helped me to manage my love for you.”
His fingers slip under my chin to tilt it up and give me a front row seat to the frown he’s wearing.
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“Who said anything about a fling? That’s not where I’m at with you, my Lisa. If you walk away from me now that I know you feel the same about me, what’s going to help me manage my love for you?”
He loves me?
The slow crumbling in my chest ceases as mild shock takes over. I’m finding it hard to believe that he does after watching him go through women like sand running through an hour glass. How could he even know what love is?
“Mr. Ford, you can’t love me. You’ve never had a girlfriend in all the years I’ve known you. I don't want a player. I want the whole fairytale life of king, castle, and little princes and princesses running around it. You can’t give that to me because you claim to love me, but you can’t see that your going out on dates with other women bothers me. I don’t want to ever know how blind, insensitive, and inattentive you’d be to my feelings if we dated, because that’s what you do… date.”
He hasn’t had a third date with any woman that I’ve had the misfortune of booking a dinner reservation for, and I don’t want to join the mass of ‘wined, dined, and left behind’ bodies that’s laying at his feet.
“Why don’t you give me a chance and find out who I truly am? If I turn into all those things you think of me, then quit me.”
He makes ‘quitting him’ sound so easy, but it’s not. I’ll be completely heartbroken by the time he’s proven he can’t be what I want. I’d rather have him in my life in a professional capacity than not at all, or I’d have quit my job and him long before now. Dating then losing him will probably break me. But losing him is what I’m afraid of the most.
“I don’t want to ruin our friendship for a few moments of sex, Mr. Ford. You’re not just a love interest to me. You’re my employer, a damn good one that would be hard to replace, even if you’re a workaholic. Plus, you’re the only person I have in the way of family and friend in Utah. Much more is at stake than just my job if whatever it is you think you feel for me goes away.”
And when I show up in Colorado with my tail tucked between my legs and a broken heart, my mother and father will know it. God forbid my brother, Blake, finds out about it. He’d never let me live it down. I guess it’s a good thing that Blake went into the Army to pay for college a year before I left for college and never came back to Colorado.