The Boss (8 page)

"Neither am I," I said, maybe a little
defensively.

His face fell, and he took a slow step toward
me. "I wouldn't care if you were. What I'm trying to say is, this
is completely new to me. I spent that night with you six years ago
because I genuinely liked you, Sophie. You were so cute and direct
and a bit odd. And we did have an awfully good time together." He
smiled tentatively. "It does trouble me that you're the same age as
my daughter. But you're not my daughter. And that night was... it
was one of the best nights of my life."

I was about to respond with something pithy,
but he closed the small gap between us and pulled me into his arms.
My feet tangled with his, but he somehow kept us upright. Our gazes
locked for a fraction of a second, and my mouth opened with a
surprised gasp just as his lips met mine.

Chapter Five

Neil Elwood was
kissing me, and it was every bit as good as my highly detailed
memories. His soft lips coaxed mine apart. His tongue swept in and
darted along the edges of my teeth. He held me with a splayed hand
at my lower back, an arm around my shoulders. Pulled up tight to
his chest, I gripped the lapels of his black wool coat and held on.
There was little else I could do. It was like the man exuded some
kind of pheromone that made my central nervous system go offline.
Standing without wobbling was not an option. It didn't help that it
had been so long since the last time I'd been kissed, I'd almost
forgotten how to do it properly. I tore our mouths apart and, with
a noisy gulp of air, inhaled the scent of him, the faint trace of
his cologne and the wooden cask ghost of whiskey.

And that was my clue. "Have you been
drinking?"

"Quite a lot," he admitted sheepishly.
"Otherwise I wouldn't have had the courage to come over here."

"And when the hangover hits you, you'll
probably regret that you had the courage." I pressed my palms to
his chest and pushed back a step. "As romantic and like-the-movies
as you may have imagined this whole scenario, you've jerked me
around so much in the last twenty-four hours that I don't even know
how to respond."

Apparently, drunken honesty was contagious.
And thank god for that, because I could have easily been swept
along in what he wanted, without a single thought to the
consequences. That made Neil a very dangerous man for me to be
around.

He looked crestfallen. "You're right. I
shouldn't have... I just wasn't sure how we'd left it. And I would
like, very much, to see if there's anything between us."

"I think it's pretty obvious that there is."
There was no point in denying that anymore. "But I’m not sure it’s
going to work.”

"It isn't that I'm looking for a serious
relationship," he continued, watching me warily. I wondered if he
thought he’d hurt my feelings by not holding onto some tortured,
unrequited love for me.

I had to put that notion to bed, right away.
Christ, had I just thought about bed? No, serious relationships,
that’s what we were discussing.
Keep it together, Scaife. You
can’t be stupid about this.

"I’m not in the market for anything serious,
either. At least not right now. Not for a while." It wasn't a ploy;
having a boyfriend was fairly low on my list of priorities. "I just
got a life of my own two years ago, when I graduated college. I'm
not ready to share it with anyone else."

He smiled with... was that admiration? I
didn't think I'd said anything all that admirable, just honest.

"That sounds fair. But earlier today you
suggested we might see each other casually." How did he manage to
sound so reasonable and smart while being stinking drunk? It
probably had a lot to do with the accent. He could have come in
here and said he was turning
Porteras
into a car magazine,
and I would have praised his vision, because he sounded so cultured
and posh.

God, I could be so stereotypically American
sometimes.

I shrugged. "That was before I really thought
about the job you offered me. I would love to take the position,
but the last thing I need is to have people saying I got a
promotion because I slept with the boss."

"That would be a problem, if we were
indiscreet. Do you plan on broadcasting all of our sexual
activities to the entire office?" He raised an eyebrow.

"No, of course not." I tried to think of a
time I'd ever...
Oh, fine. I'm caught.
"I do occasionally
discuss private matters with one of my work friends."

"So do I, which is exactly why I'm here." He
motioned to the couch. "Do you mind if we -"

"Oh, yeah, sorry." I covered my eyes with one
hand, but it didn't do much to hide my embarrassment. "I'm sorry, I
don't entertain much."

"On the contrary, you entertain me
immensely." He sat on the couch and frowned as he picked up the
hemostat Holli used as a roach clip. The burned down end of a
healthy sized joint was still clamped tightly in the pinchers. I
grabbed it from his hand and in my panic, tossed it over my
shoulder to clatter on the kitchenette floor.

"It's my roommate's," I explained quickly. "I
would never -"

"Don't be so jumpy, I'm not here to inform on
you." He patted the sofa beside him, but I didn't sit there. I sat
on the arm of the easy chair, well out of the field of his sexual
magnetism.

Who was I kidding? He could be in Finland
right now, and my girl parts would still be all achey at the
thought of him. Just the fact that he’d said “
our
sexual
activities” had sent my pulse due south.

"Sorry, I thought I might have shocked you."
Why had I said that? Maybe explaining further would make things
better. "You know, different generation and all."

Explaining further never made awkwardness
better. I should have known that by now.

"Yes, terribly shocking," he mockingly
agreed. "Since youth and recreational drug use were invented only
five years ago, I've obviously never been exposed to either."

My face flamed with embarrassment. "Did you
come over here just to tease me?"

His expression softened into one of remorse
at hurting my feelings. "I think it's quite obvious that I came
over here because I'm still attracted to you. I've thought of you
every day. I may have said that before, but it bears repeating. If
I hadn't stolen your plane ticket - and let me express again how
very sorry I am about that, in hindsight - "

"Forgiven," I interrupted him. The sudden
shift in his mood seemed to have less to do with alcohol than with
me, and I was flattered and slightly overwhelmed. But something
he'd said before wriggled in my brain. "You said you talked to a
work colleague, and that's why you're here?"

"Rudy," he admitted. "I'm sorry, I know he
works with you, but he's been my best friend for years. I suppose
it does change the dynamic, now that he's working for my company...
but I needed to speak to someone. He’s the only person in my life
who knows about you, how we met. And he's the only person in New
York I trust in personal matters. There was a bit of a custody
battle, and I lost most of my friends here."

I frowned. "I thought your daughter was
twenty-four."

"Custody of the friends." He smiled sadly.
"Acquaintances, really. I spend a lot of my time working. Elizabeth
made most of our connections here through her charity work."

"Ah." I really, really didn't want to talk
about his divorce, almost as much as I didn't want to think about
him being lonely in the city. I remembered the two weeks at NYU
before housing had dropped Holli into my lap, how awful and empty
they had seemed. I didn't need to sympathize with Neil in that way,
because it was just another excuse to get involved with him for a
wrong reason. If we were going to do this, we were going to do it
right.

I took a breath and carefully considered my
response. "I don't know how I feel about you telling... whatever it
is you told to Rudy. I have to work with him, too. But if you trust
him to keep your secret, I can. You have more to lose in this
situation than I do, I think."

Neil shook his head. "This is all going much
differently than I expected."

"You expected you'd show up and we'd fuck?"
The word sent a jolt of tension through me.

"Can you blame me for trying?" He gave me
that half-smile that melted my bones. "I should go. This was an
inappropriate visit."

I watched him as he stood and strode toward
the door, and my chest tightened. Okay, so he'd let Eye-Rolling
Rudy in on our dirty little secret from six years ago. I'd told
Holli, hadn't I? And she occasionally worked for the magazine. It
might not have been the same level on the indiscretion scale, but
if he was feeling even a fraction of the emotional confusion I was
suffering from, no wonder he’d needed a sympathetic ear.

Plus, he wasn't looking for a serious
relationship. I loved sex, and finding someone I wanted to have it
with, someone who was actually good at it and who didn't want to
involve me in their five-year plan, was absurdly difficult in a
city of eight million people. Especially when you were holding
every available man to the impossible standard of being as amazing
as Neil Elwood.

And here he was, the guy who set the bar for
my sexual expectations. And he wanted exactly what I wanted.

“Wait,” I said.

He stopped, his forehead creased with
confusion.

"If you're down for a little extracurricular
fun, and this isn't some kind of weird male sexual scavenger hunt
wherein you need to fuck your secretary to score points..." My
voice trailed off. I had gotten off track somewhere. I inhaled
through my nose and straightened my spine. "Then fine. Let's just
see each other casually."

"When you say 'see each other'..." he began
cautiously.

"I mean have sex. In a friendly, no-strings
kind of way." It never crossed my mind to be worried about whether
or not he'd think it was “slutty” of me to want such an
arrangement. It was strange, but I felt like I could trust him to
be honest with me and not judge me according to some bullshit
misogynistic double standard. Maybe having the kind of sex you have
with a person you think you're never going to see again is the way
all relationships should start.

"And nothing is going to happen tonight," I
stated firmly. It took a lot of self-control not to whimper during
that sentence. I'd spent so many years fantasizing about him and
only him, and now he was standing right next to me, totally willing
to do all the nasty things I'd dreamed of. But I had a strict "no
sex with drunk people" policy.

A slow smile tilted his lips, and the
naughtiness promised in the expression was enough to make goose
bumps stand out on my skin. "Quite right. We've waited six years,
there should be nothing to another... twenty-four hours?"

"Twenty-four hours?" I echoed, my heart
lodging firmly in my throat. I crossed my arms over my chest,
acutely aware of my hard nipples chafing against my sweater.

“Twenty-two?” He stepped toward me, his lips
still twisted in a wry grin, and looked down his straight,
classically handsome nose at me. He didn't touch me, but he stood
so close his coat brushed my sleeves. A thrumming, purely sexual
energy throbbed between us. If he'd opened his arms, if he'd made
any move to embrace me, I would have fallen against him gladly,
drunk rule or not. But he didn't. He just gazed down at me
thoughtfully, his eyes moving over my features as though he were
deciphering an intricate code. "I think six years of wanting you is
long enough, Sophie."

Six years of wanting you
. He'd wanted
me, just like I'd wanted him. Relief and tension at the same time
make for a strange sensation. I could think of lots of good reasons
not to let him push me up against the wall and fuck me with all my
clothes on, and none of them seemed good enough.

My tongue darted out to wet my lips, and I
glanced up. It was easier to make eye contact when I could be
sarcastic and guarded. "Well, now that all that's out of the way...
I would offer you a drink, but I think you've had enough."

"No, I have a car waiting." He leaned down,
his lips a fraction of a millimeter from mine. "I'll see you
tomorrow, with further instructions."

He kissed me, far too briefly, and left.

I stood by the door for a long time,
wondering what exactly had just happened. At the moment, it seemed
like I was getting what I'd hoped for, after six long years of not
hoping very much. At the same time, I'd just agreed to have sex
with my boss, again. Holli's bedroom door opened a crack. "Is it
safe to come out?"

"I have no idea." I walked on numb legs to
the couch and dropped onto it. I put a couple fingertips to my
bottom lip and smoothed over it slowly. I could still feel him
there, a relentless tingle that echoed all the way down to my very
wet panties.

"I peeked. Don’t be mad.” She padded into the
living room. “In person, he just looks like a normal... person."
She shrugged.

"Okay, clearly you've taken your contacts
out, because he's gorgeous." We never, ever agreed on men, mostly
because when Holli was into guys, they looked like they'd just run
away from their Disney Channel contracts.

"Yeah, I guess. If you're into the daddy
thing." She shrugged.

It takes different strokes, I guess. "He
could have been horrifically scarred in a chemical fire, and it
wouldn't matter. He just... does something to me."

"Yeah, naughty, spanky things." Holli's eyes
glittered with lascivious enthusiasm. "What do you think he's going
to do to you this time?"

"If I stopped and thought about it, I
wouldn't be able to sleep tonight." I probably still wouldn't. How
was I going to get through the night and the next day knowing that
I was about to repeat the most fantastic sex of my life?