BOUND: Together

by Cynthia Dane

  “If that were true, I’d fire her.”

  “That’s more or less what I told her.”

  “Has she told you anything?” I asked. “About the trip.”

  Brooke cocked her head. A breeze rustled her blond hair, and foolish me longed to run my fingers through it, like I used to so long ago. Then I remembered Natalie’s hair, and how luscious it had felt beneath my fingertips.

  When I kissed her. When I rubbed myself all over her, desperate to memorize every inch of her body before she ran away from me.

  I sipped my tea and pretended to not perpetually have fantasies of Natalie and how wonderful she had been in my bed. Because what if it made me relapse?

  “She gave me a report, as I asked of her.” Brooke shrugged. “Why? Is there something I should know?”

  “Anything you need to know about, Sherman would have informed you.”

  Brooke continued to study my countenance before grabbing her bag and saying she needed to run some errands on my behalf. I asked her to send Sherman my way if she saw him.

  Fifteen minutes later, Sherman took her place on the bench.

  “I hear Natalie is asking after me.”

  Sherman barely had time to get settled before he shook his head. “I don’t want the details, but whatever you did to her this weekend has her hooked on you. It’s almost embarrassing.”

  “Really?” That was the first real bit of good news I had heard all week. Doubtlessly, it was the first thing to make me smile. “Good to know.”

  “Erica…”

  Sometimes I hated that he saw me as a woman first and foremost. Never stopped him from using male pronouns when we were at work, but when we had privacy, I was always Erica. Probably because he had known me since I was a child, and he was the only one I could get to acknowledge I wasn’t my brother. “She’s something else, huh?”

  “I’m worried about this thing you have with Ms. Chen.”

  “Why? Did your background check pull up something unsavory?”

  “Not necessarily, but I’m still following leads.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Then what? The fact she doesn’t know I’ve got a cunt?”

  “To start with.” Sherman chuckled, which was a bigger surprise than a koi bursting through the pond like a whale. “And the fact you disappeared the day after you made an indecent woman out of her.”

  “Indecent? Excuse you. She was treated like a lady as soon as I rescued her from your scary grasp.”

  “She’s not an idiot, Erica. I’m sure that’s what attracts you so much to Ms. Chen, but that can also work against you.”

  “I’m more concerned that she may think I have spurned her with my absence.” I didn’t want to believe it, but it was probable. After the night we shared in my bed? I had promised her that we would talk about our relationship the next time we met. I’m sure she assumed that meant the following day. To be fair, so had I.

  “You want my advice?” Sherman said with a half-hearted grunt.

  “Dating advice? From you?” The last time that happened, Sherman and I were half drunk in my room, talking shit about romance after he and his wife had another fight about how often he was gone from home.

  “I’m married, aren’t I?”

  “I was almost married.”

  “If you want to stay on Ms. Chen’s good side, do something for her right now to show that you’re thinking about her.”

  A snort blew through my nose. “You’re actually giving me dating advice?”

  “I’ll humor you for a few days. But I won’t save you when Brooke finds out.”

  “You’re not the one that has to deal with me dating my intern.”

  “I’m also not the one you have to worry about making jealous.”

  I shot him a heated look. For one, the thought of Brooke having any right to be jealous about my love life was laughable. For another… it was rich for Sherman to think he wouldn’t be jealous. Because I knew the thought of me falling in love with someone hurt him more deeply than we would ever be able to hash out.

  Sherman and I had quite the pile of complicated feelings for one another. I loved him. Just not like that.

  Like I had been more invested with Brooke than she was with me, Sherman was more invested with me than I was with him. Even his marriage hadn’t changed that. While I didn’t disbelieve that Sherman loved his wife, I knew it probably wasn’t as strong as his love and commitment to me.

  But I wasn’t into men, and that was that.

  I gazed at the flowers blooming between us and the pond. A bit late in the year for full blooms, but a few red roses caught my attention.

  “Do me a favor,” I said to Sherman, unabashedly reaching into his coat pocket and withdrawing a small pad and pencil he always carried but rarely used. “Call the florist and have them deliver a bouquet to Ms. Chen’s home address. I want her to see it when she gets home from work today.” I wrote down a few words I had harbored in my broken head all day. “Make sure this is with them.”

  He glanced at the note before pocketing it. “Jesus. That’s atrocious.”

  “If you knew how she kissed,” I said, leaning back against the bench, “you wouldn’t think so.”

  Sherman only shook his head.

  Chapter 21

  NATALIE

  Eric didn’t come to work Monday. Or Tuesday.

  I should have guessed he wouldn’t, but it was still a blow to my ego. Because I didn’t hear from him at all. His decompression was completely without me, and there was no way I couldn’t take that a little personally.

  Let me tell you, sitting in that executive office, knowing that I had fucked the boss only two nights ago, did a number on my addled mind.

  It’s probably how I ended up bumming a cigarette off Jimmy during lunch.

  Until that day, I hadn’t touched the smoking area on the executive floor. But when I saw Jimmy close out of her computer and grab her box of Marlboro’s out of her Louis Vuitton purse, I felt that old itch I once scratched when I was an undergrad and smoking at least two a day. One in the morning to start my day, and one in the evening to de-fucking-compress from stress.

  I quit before grad school, if you can believe it, but I was practically drooling by the time I saw Jimmy head to the smoke room and decided to follow her.

  “Can I have one?” I asked. “Sorry. I don’t have my own on me.” With any luck, I wouldn’t get back in the habit.

  She studied me before reaching into her pack with a languished sigh. “Didn’t know you smoked.” She offered me a light.

  “I quit a long time ago, but this job is killing me.”

  The first drag in years was like welcoming an old lover back into my embrace. Ah, there it was. Sweet fucking nicotine.

  And a cough, because my lungs had enjoyed being smoke free for these past few years. Oh, well. It had already been established that I did not love myself at all.

  “The job, huh?” Jimmy snorted smoke in one large puff of her nostrils. “Try my job sometime. If someone doesn’t like the way I talk to them, I’m out on my ass. Well, unless Mr. Mann is here to see what really happened, but he usually isn’t. That would be convenient.”

  “Suppose so.” It was such a pain in the ass having a head of a corporation who wasn’t even in the office most of the time. God, was I feeling it right now! All I wanted was to clear up what went on between us. Were we dating? Screwing in private? Or were we going to pretend that it never happened?

  Men. I swear to God.

  “Yeah, I really wish he was here today. I need to talk to him about something.”

  Jimmy took a long drag of her cigarette, the both of us filling up the glass enclosure with plumes of smoke. I was going to smell so disgusting by the time I got home. I didn’t care. “Personal or professional?”

  “Professional, of course.”

  “Yes.” She extinguished her cigarette. “Of course.”

  My brain had a sudden, terrible thought. What if she saw right through me, because she w
as also sleeping with – or at least had slept with – Eric Mann? Maybe the man was a racial fetishist after all. I had the insatiable urge to look up the last Asian woman to have my position and see what had happened with her. Wait, was it far back enough that he would have been engaged to Brooke during that time?

  Jimmy understood more than she usually let on. Not that I thought she was dumb. Not at all. There was no way she got her position by being pretty. She certainly didn’t get it for being sociable and approachable! She must’ve been smart as a fucking whip. Her English was more than good enough, too.

  “You should keep any thoughts you have about Mr. Mann to yourself,” she warned me through a cloud of smoke. “It’s not safe to even have them.”

  I choked on my final drag before extinguishing the cigarette. “What are you talking about? Like I shouldn’t criticize him too much?” That was a given. Honestly, I shouldn’t criticize him at all if I valued my future in this business.

  “All I’m saying is don’t air your opinions, good or bad, unless you want to get into trouble. Keep your head down, nose to the grindstone, and be the biggest ‘yes’ girl you can get away with.” How many of those idioms had she memorized for these situations? “I’ve seen more than one person get burned in this office. Brooke is one of the only ones with true seniority over me. You know what she’s like.”

  Yes. The former fiancée of the man I hoped to get to know even more intimately. “What kind of trouble have you seen?”

  “Eh… enough to know you don’t say anything that implies you know Mr. Mann well at all. People disappear from this office overnight.”

  Flashbacks to the way Sherman shoved that NDA on me, right before I was due in Mr. Mann’s bedroom, took me over. Perhaps Jimmy saw it in my eyes, for she slowly shook her head and excused herself from the smoking room.

  I had a powerfully sick feeling in my stomach, and I don’t think it had much to do with the cigarette.

  Something was so very wrong that I had no idea how to process it. I didn’t even know what it was yet. Should I try to contact Eric? No, that would be bad. It would make me look sad and desperate. We weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. I had no right to pry into his personal life because we slept together. Maybe the reason he hadn’t come back to work was because he regretted what we did.

  Regretted making me feel that good, that worshipped…

  Now that was the toxic thought I truly didn’t need.

  “Hey,” Aiden asked on his way by my desk later, “do you know anything about why the boss is out today?”

  I didn’t want to look at his puffy face, yet there he was, blocking my view of the doors. “Not a clue. Why?”

  “Because I heard a little nugget that I thought you might be able to confirm.”

  Where did he keep hearing these ridiculous rumors? “Dare I ask?”

  “My sources say Mr. Mann checked himself into Yesterday’s River last night.”

  I paused. I knew that name from somewhere.

  Oh. The in-patient counseling center for rich people with mental problems.

  “You shouldn’t spread rumors like that,” I muttered, my throat so dry that I could barely speak. “It’s sick.”

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself. Thought you might want to know.”

  “Why?” Aiden was already halfway back to his desk, but my mouth didn’t know any better. “Why did you think I would want to know something like that?”

  “Because he likes you, Natalie.”

  I was even more sick to my stomach after that.

  ***

  My nausea culminated with my arriving home and heading straight for the bathroom. While I didn’t throw up, I did grip my sink as if I were going to heave.

  It was too much to process in one day. Eric possibly in a place for those suffering a mental breakdown. Jimmy’s warnings that I not let people know something was amiss. Aiden probing into things he truly shouldn’t and trying to take me down with him.

  My mother being her usual, nosy self.

  “You’re not pregnant, are you?” She stood in my bathroom doorway, her dog cupped beneath her arm. “If you are, I hope to God the father can pay for it.”

  “I’m not pregnant,” I mumbled. I doubt she heard me.

  “Anyway, there’s something that came for you today down in the kitchen. You huffed by so quickly that I couldn’t tell you downstairs.”

  I’m sure she was amazingly put out by that. She always was.

  Once I had my bearings, I splashed some cold water on my face and quickly changed out of my work clothes and into yoga pants and a baggy T-shirt. My plan was to make a quick dinner and then spend the rest of the evening holed up in my room watching TV, eating mango ice cream, and maybe doing my nails. No self-imposed homework. No socializing. Just me and my shitty memories and thoughts I desperately tried to stuff down my own throat.

  Right. There was something for me in the kitchen.

  In the corner nook neither my mother nor I used for anything but collecting bills, was a humungous glass vase stuffed with two dozen red roses. Sprigs of greens were carefully arranged between each rose stem, encasing the red petals that were sprayed with fresh dew.

  I stared in disbelief as the heavy floral scent washed over me.

  “Well?” my mother called from behind. “What does the card say?”

  I was amazed that she hadn’t read it for herself. But no, the card was still sealed in its envelope, which I deftly opened with a swipe of my nail.

  In gold embossed lettering were the words, “Roses are red, and so is my heart when you’re in my bed.”

  Black ink marked the initials “EM.” I dropped the card, hand over my mouth.

  “You sure you aren’t pregnant?” my mom asked again. “Because you’re obviously sleeping with someone who can afford this!”

  I was lucky she had piss-poor eyesight and couldn’t read the card over my shoulder. Good. That thing was about to go into my personal safe, because no way in hell did I want anyone getting a look at it!

  It was for me. To look at all night, to marvel over, to wonder if Eric really felt that way about me or if this was a stock card he flippantly picked when he placed the order.

  Nevertheless, it was for me. Wherever Eric was now, he had thought of me, and that was all that mattered to my thumping heart.

  Chapter 22

  ERICA

  When I told Brooke that my doctors said I could leave Yesterday’s River on Thursday, she nearly leaped for joy. That meant I would be in work Friday morning, and her job had become exponentially easier.

  Of course, my thoughts weren’t on work. They were on Natalie, whom I hadn’t seen since my mouth was on her pussy.

  I brought out my best Armani suit Friday morning. Being back home meant I had all the time in the world to consider my closet and decide what would turn her on the most. I wanted Natalie to melt into a little puddle of lust the moment I strutted into my office. I wanted her to remember how much pleasure I had granted her.

  I wanted her.

  It was like the past few days hadn’t happened. As soon as I was dressed, had breakfast, and freshened myself up in the bathroom, I was ready to head into work and change Ms. Chen’s life.

  Too bad the first thing I contended with as soon as I was at work was… well, work!

  My life was a hurricane all Friday. It didn’t help that the first person I saw – besides my receptionist, Ms. Cho – was Natalie, who leaped up from her desk with a visage that screamed she had seen the ghost from her sex dreams.

  Lips, full for kissing. A throat begging for me to suck it. Hands wringing before her, and all I could think about was allowing them all over my body. My loins commanded me to go to her and kiss her in front of my office – in front of Brooke, who escorted me to my private office. Instead, I spared her one lustful look and continued to my double-doors. My goal was to get through as much work as possible, so I could summon her to my office for that talk.

  It was Friday. It may have be
en my first day back at work, but the weekend was upon us. Come hell or high water, I would take her out on a date. I already had a few venues in mind.

  Right before my final pre-lunch meeting, Brooke asked me if we could include Natalie, since my dear assistant had to multitask taking notes and working out my afternoon schedule. Natalie could help take better notes. Besides, Brooke informed me, she was tired.

  “Of course she can join,” I said, attempting to keep my tone professional. “The more the merrier. As long as we can have lunch afterward.” My stomach growled.

  Brooke fetched Natalie from the main office. Everyone was heading toward their own lunches, and Natalie was caught halfway through putting her bag together. I heard Brooke assure her she would get her hour after this meeting was complete. So happened that was when one of my clients, a Mrs. Richmond, appeared to go over the finances of one of my subsidiaries.

  I couldn’t put any of my focus on Natalie for another forty-five minutes, and it fucking killed me, because she was right there, looking like a duchess as she took notes and futilely attempted to catch my gaze. But like she could be professional enough to not give away our relationship, I was also professional enough to keep my focus on Mrs. Richmond and her concerns about her investments.

  As soon as Brooke booted her out the door, she turned to us with a haughty sigh and a smile that implied she was God’s gift to personal assisting. I didn’t disagree, which was why I went along with her plan to get us all slices of gourmet pizza for lunch. She insisted on doing it herself instead of having it delivered, and even offered to get Natalie a slice on the company account. The least she could do for all of Natalie’s help that week.

  Brooke left. I was finally alone with Natalie. No appointments, no onlookers. Just her, me, and the sexual tension renewing itself between us.

  I stopped her before she could leave. “Hold a moment, Ms. Chen.”

  She froze, back still to me.

  “Close the door, please.”

  As if I turned the handle on her professionalism, Natalie slammed my door shut and rounded on me before I had the chance to ask, “Did you get my flowers?”