Beautiful Bastard (16 page)

Fear gripped my heart and the panic from last night returned, bringing an uncomfortable silence with it. I sat up, pulling the sheets with me and up to my chin. “Oh, shit.”

His hand shot out, wrapping around my arm. “Chloe, I can’t—”

“We probably need to get ready,” I interrupted before he finished that sentence. It could be the beginning of a million forms of heartbreak. “We have a poster session in twenty minutes.”

He looked confused for a moment before speaking. “I don’t have any dry clothes in here. I don’t even know where my room is.”

I fought a blush as I remembered how quickly everything had happened last night. “Right. I’ll use your key to go get you something.”

I showered quickly and wrapped a thick towel around myself, wishing that I would’ve had the sense to bring one of the hotel bathrobes in here with me. With a deep breath I opened the door and stepped out.

He was sitting on the bed, and his eyes rose to meet mine as I entered the room.

“I just need
.
.
.” I trailed off, motioning to my bag. He nodded but made no move to speak. I was usually never self-conscious about my body. But standing here in nothing but a towel, knowing that he was watching me, I felt uncharacteristically shy.

I grabbed a few things and rushed by him, not stopping until I was once again safely behind the bathroom door. I dressed faster than I thought possible, deciding I would pull my hair back and finish the rest later. Grabbing the key cards from the counter, I returned to the bedroom.

He hadn’t moved. Sitting on the edge of the bed with his elbows resting on his thighs, he appeared lost in thought. What was he thinking? All morning I’d been a nervous wreck, my emotions shifting wildly from one extreme to the other, but he seemed so calm. So
sure
. But what was he sure o
f
? What had he decided?

“Do you have anything in particular you want me to bring you?”

When he lifted his head, he looked slightly surprised, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “Um
. . .
I just have a few meetings this afternoon, right?” I nodded. “Whatever you pick will be fine.”

It only took me a second to locate his room; it was right next door. Great. Now I could imagine him in a bed just through the wall from mine. His bags were already there, and I paused briefly, realizing I would have to go through his luggage.

Lifting the largest one and placing it on the bed, I opened it. His scent hit me and caused a heavy pang of desire to wash through me. I began looking through the neatly packed items.

Everything about him was so tidy and organized, and it made me wonder what his home looked like. I’d never thought about it much, but I suddenly wondered if I would ever see it, if I would ever see his bed.

I paused as I realized that I wanted to. Would he want me to?

It struck me that I was stalling and I continued searching through his clothes before finally settling on a charcoal Helmut Lang suit, white dress shirt, black silk tie, boxers, socks, and shoes.

Putting everything back where it belonged, I gathered up his clothing and headed for my room. I was unable to stifle my nervous laughter as I walked into the hall, shaking my head over the sheer absurdity of the situation. Thankfully, I managed to compose myself as I reached my door. I made it two steps inside before I froze.

He stood in front of the open window, awash in morning sunlight. Each beautiful line of his chiseled form was accentuated in perfect detail by the shadows cast across his body. A towel hung indecently low on his hips, and there, poking out just above it, was the tattoo.

“See something you like?”

I reluctantly returned my attention to his face. “I—”

My eyes drifted back down to his hip as if pulled by a magnet.

“I said, did you see something you like?” He crossed the room, stopping just in front of me.

“I heard you,” I said, glaring. “And no, just lost in thought.”

“And what exactly where you thinking?” He reached out, moving a piece of my damp hair behind my ear. Just that simple touch caused my stomach to jump.

“That we have a schedule to keep.”

He moved a step closer. “Why don’t I believe you?”

“Because you’re self-absorbed?” I suggested, meeting his gaze.

He quirked an eyebrow and watched me for a moment before taking his clothing from my hands and placing it on the bed. Before I could move, he pulled the towel from his hips and tossed it to the side.
Sweet mother of God.
If there was a finer specimen of man on this earth, I’d pay big money to see it.

Picking up his boxers, he began to step into them before he stopped, looking at me. “Didn’t you just say we had a schedule to keep?” he questioned, eyeing me humorously. “Unless, of course, you see something you like.”

Son of a—

I narrowed my eyes and turned quickly, returning to the bathroom to finish getting ready. As I dried my hair, I couldn’t get past the unsettling feeling that he was trying to say something more important than “Look at my naked body some more.”

Before I could even untangle my own emotions I was trying to guess at his. Was I worried he would want to leave or stay?

When I returned to the bedroom, he was already dressed and waiting, looking out the large window. He turned, walked to me, and placed his warm hands on my face, staring at me intently. “I need you to listen to me.”

I swallowed. “Okay.”

“I don’t want to walk out that door and lose what we found in this room.”

His simple words rocked me. He wasn’t declaring, he wasn’t promising, but he said exactly what I’d needed to hear. We might not know what was happening, but we wouldn’t leave it unfinished.

Letting out a shaky breath I brought my hands to his chest. “I don’t either, but I also don’t want your career to swallow mine.”

“I don’t want that either.”

I nodded, feeling like words tangled my thoughts and I was unable to think of anything articulate to add.

“Okay then,” he said, looking me up and down. “Let’s go.”

Fifteen

The theme of the conference this year was The Next Generation of Marketing Strategy, and as a way to embrace the new generation, the organizers had scheduled a poster session for students getting their degrees. Most students from Chloe’s program were here, standing straight and eager beside their poster boards. In fact, presentation at this venue was considered a requirement for Chloe’s scholarship, but I had applied for an exception for her given the size and confidential nature of the Papadakis account, her primary
project
. No other student here was managing a million-
dollar
deal.

The scholarship board had been happy to grant the exception, practically drooling over the prospect of putting Chloe’s success story in their program brochure once the design was completed, signed, and released publicly.

But although she had no presentation at the meeting, she insisted on walking through every aisle and looking at every poster. Given that I was apparently incapable of being more than four fucking feet away from her and didn’t have a meeting until ten, I followed her around the entire time, counting posters (576) and staring at her ass (perky, fun to spank, currently wrapped in black wool).

She’d mentioned in the elevator that her best friend, Julia, provided a majority of the wardrobe I loved/hated. This morning’s selection of a fitted pencil skirt and deep blue blouse was now also on my list. I tried a couple of times to convince Chloe that we needed to go back to the room to get something, but she’d only raised an eyebrow and asked, “Get something? Or get
some
?”

I’d ignored her, but now I wished I’d admitted I needed one more round before conferencing. I wondered if she’d have gone for it.

“Would you have gone back to the room?” I asked into her ear as she carefully read an undergraduate poster on a rebranding idea for some small cellular company. Graphs were
taped
to the poster board, for crying out loud.

“Shhh.”

“Chloe, you’re not going to learn anything from this poster. Let’s go get a cup of coffee and maybe a blow job in the bathroom.”

“Your father told me it was impossible to predict where I’d get my best ideas, and to read everything I could find. Besides, these are my student colleagues.”

I waited, toying with a cuff link, but she apparently wasn’t going to address the latter part of what I’d said. “My dad doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

She laughed, appropriately. Dad had been on every top-twenty-five list of CEOs practically since before I was born.

“It doesn’t have to be a blow job. I could fuck you against a wall,” I whispered, clearing my throat and looking around to be sure no one was near enough to hear. “Or I could lay you down on the floor, spread you wide, and make you come against my tongue.”

She shivered, smiled at the student near the next poster, and walked closer to read it. The man held his hand out to me. “Excuse me, but are you Bennett Ryan?”

I nodded, distracted as I shook his hand, watching Chloe move farther away.

The aisle we were in was practically deserted but for the students standing near the posters. Even they had begun to wander off to more interesting areas of the room, where larger companies—conference sponsors, mostly—had put together shiny, trademark-filled posters in the interest of getting the inaugural student-led session off the ground successfully. Chloe bent and wrote something on her notepad:
Rebranding for Jenkins Financial?

I stared at her hand and then up at her face, fixed in a thoughtful expression. The Jenkins Financial account wasn’t one of hers. It wasn’t even one I handled. It was a small account, occasionally half-ass managed by one of the junior executives. Did she actually know how much it was struggling with the dinosaur marketing campaign we had?

Before I could ask, she turned and moved on to the next poster, and I was mesmerized with Chloe at work. I’d never let myself watch her so openly—the surreptitious stalking I had done only told me she was brilliant and driven, but I never realized the breadth of her company knowledge before.

I wanted to compliment her somehow, but the words got tangled in my head, and a strange defensiveness surged in my chest, as if to praise her work would somehow break strategy. “Your penmanship has improved.”

She smiled up at me, clicking the end of her pen. “Fuck off.”

My dick twitched in my pants. “You’re wasting my time here.”

“Then why don’t you go glad-hand some executives over in the reception hall? They have breakfast there. Those little chocolate muffins you pretend not to like?”

“Because it’s not what I feel like eating.”

A small grin pulled at her lips. She watched my face as another student introduced herself to me.

“I’ve followed your career ever since I can remember,” the woman said, breathless. “I heard you speak here last year.”

I smiled, shook her hand as briefly as I could without appearing rude. “Thanks for saying hello.”

We moved to the end of the aisle and I wrapped my hand around Chloe’s elbow. “I have one more hour until I have a meeting. Do you have any idea what you do to me?”

Finally, she looked up. Her pupils were so large her eyes turned nearly black, and she licked her lips into a wet, decadent pout. “I suppose I need you to take me upstairs so you can show me.”

Chloe was still looking for a new pair of panties when I was already five minutes late to my one o’clock. It was with Ed Gugliotti, a marketing executive for a smaller Minneapolis firm. We used Ed’s firm to subcontract smaller jobs, and had a more significant project we were thinking of passing off to him to see how they handled it. As I zipped my pants, I reminded myself that Ed was himself pathologically late.

Except this time he wasn’t. He was already waiting for me in one of the hotel meeting rooms, two of his junior people sitting beside him, eager smiles in place.

I hated being late.

“Ed,” I said, greeting him with a handshake. He introduced me to his team, Daniel and Sam. They shook my hand in turn, but by the time I got to Sam, his attention was behind me, at the door.

Chloe had walked in, hair down now, looking wildly beautiful but professional, miraculously hiding the fact that she’d just had a screaming orgasm atop the desk in her hotel room.

Gugliotti and his men watched in rapt silence as she walked over, pulled out a chair, and sat down beside me, turning to give me a small smile. Her lips were red and swollen, and a faint red mark bloomed on her jaw. Stubble burn.

Too right.

I cleared my throat until everyone finally looked back at me. “Let’s get started.”

It was a simple meeting, and the kind of thing I’d done a thousand times. I described the account in the most general, nonconfidential terms, and of course Gugliotti told me he thought his team could come up with something great. After meeting the men he’d assign to it, I agreed. We planned to meet again the following day, when I would present the account in its entirety and officially hand it over. The meeting was over in less than fifteen minutes, giving me time before my two o’clock. I looked over at Chloe and raised an eyebrow in silent question.

“Food,” she said with a laugh. “Let’s get some food.”

The rest of the afternoon had been productive, but I’d been entirely on autopilot, and if someone had asked me specifics about the meetings, it would’ve taken me a good long time to remember any details. Thank God for Chloe and her obsessive note taking. I’d been approached by many colleagues, had likely clasped a hundred hands over the afternoon, but the only touch I remembered was hers.

She distracted me endlessly, and what bothered me was that it was different here than usual. It was work, but it was a completely new world, one where we could pretend our circumstances were whatever we wanted them to be. The itch to be near her was even greater than it was when I had to keep my distance. Looking back to the evening keynote speaker at the podium, I tried unsuccessfully once again to redirect my thoughts to something productive. I was sitting up front, I had given the keynote last year at this very conference, and yet I somehow couldn’t find a way to engage.

I saw her shift in my peripheral vision and instinctively I looked across the table at her. When our eyes met, every other sound blended together, floating around me but never breaking into my consciousness. Without thinking, I leaned toward her, she leaned toward me, and a tiny grin flickered across her mouth.

I thought about this morning, and how transparent she’d been in her panic. By contrast, I’d felt strangely calm, as if everything we’d done had been leading to that precise moment when we could both see how easy it was to just
be
.

A cell phone ringing somewhere behind me broke me from my trance, causing me to look away. Quickly sitting back in my chair, I was shocked to see how far forward I’d actually been leaning. I looked around and stopped dead as a pair of unfamiliar eyes met mine.

This stranger had no idea who we were, or that Chloe worked for me; he’d only glanced at us and quickly looked away. But in that moment, every bit of guilt I’d been suppressing hit me. Everyone knew who I was, no one here knew her, and if it ever got out that we were fucking, the judgment of an entire community would follow her around for the rest of her career.

A quick glance back at Chloe told me she could see panic written all over my face. I spent the rest of the lecture staring forward, not giving her another glance.

“Are you okay?” she asked in the elevator, breaking the heavy silence that had accompanied us for fourteen floors.

“Yeah, just
.
.
.” I scratched the back of my neck and avoided her eyes. “Just thinking.”

“I’m going out with some friends tonight.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

“You have dinner with Stevenson and Newberry at seven. I think they’re meeting you at that sushi place you like in the Gaslamp.”

“I know,” I said, relaxing as we fell into the familiar details of work. “What’s their assistant’s name again? She always comes.”

“Andrew.”

I looked over at her, confused. “That’s a touch manlier than I was expecting.”

“They have a new assistant.”

How on earth did she know that?

She smiled. “He was sitting next to me at the keynote and asked if I’d be at the dinner tonight.”

I wondered if his was the pair of unfamiliar eyes that caught me staring at Chloe, and he asked because of the way I looked at her. I stuttered out a few sounds before she interrupted me. “I told him I had other plans.”

My unease returned. I wanted her with me tonight, and soon she wouldn’t be my intern anymore. Could I be her lover then? Could I still be her boss
now
? “Did you want to come?”

She shook her head, looking up at the doors as we reached the thirtieth floor. “I think I should probably go do my own thing.”