What the Heart Needs (11 page)

Elliott pulled himself into a seated position, his head in his hands.

Hannah could feel her heatbeat pounding in her throat and wrists and chest. Every nerve ending felt sensitive. Try as she might to ignore it, there was an achy throbbing between her thighs that spoke of desire unattended to.

She couldn’t wrap her head around what had just happened. One minute they were just standing there, shocked to see each other. The next thing they were on her sofa, writhing and groaning. She felt an epic blush spreading across her face. Good god, she had actually pushed her pelvis against his. She had thrust the most private part of her against his erection and practically begged him to take her then and there.

“Hello,” she breathed into her phone, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Hey baby,” her mother’s voice said cheerfully. “I didn’t think you were gonna pick up. You’re all out of breath.”

Hannah squinted, her hand covering her face. “Yeah I had to run to get the phone.”

“Oh okay. I just wanted to call and check in. You didn’t sound great this weekend. I just want to make sure you’re doing okay.”

“Yeah,” Hannah said, her voice unconvincing even to her own ears. “Yeah, Mom, I’m fine. Don’t worry. But hey, I’m still at work. I have to finish up a few things so I can get out of here. I’ll call you on my way home.”

Her mother’s voice sounded concerned, and Hannah could practically see her eyebrows furrowed in concern. “Promise?”

“Yes, I promise.”

“Okay I love you.”

“I love you too. Bye.”

Hannah ended the call, realizing too soon that she should have kept her mother on the phone. Elliott was still sitting on the couch, his breath steady again. Why hadn’t he left? He couldn’t possibly think she was going to go back over and finish what they had started. Could he?

Why had she let that happen? She should have turned away. She should have started talking about work instead of standing there like an idiot looking at him. She certainly shouldn’t have wantonly melted into him.

She was just an easy target. He had obviously had a long, hard day at court and he was tired and frustrated. And he had walked in on her and saw no rejection in her eyes. Men like him, powerful men with little free time, always reached for what was closest. She was yet another personal assistant to be reached for in a time of need.

How the hell were they ever going to go back to a normal employee-employer relationship after having tasted each other’s kiss and felt one another’s desire? They couldn’t. Well, she couldn’t. And she doubted he had any respect left for her now. He wouldn’t trust her in the way he had before.

She knew better. She had always known better. She never so much as got involved with a coworker, let alone a boss.

Elliott could just sense the wheels turning in her head. He had sat there, watching her back as she talked to her mother and her breathing slowed. Her hair was still mussed from rolling around on the couch and from his hands. He could hear the confusion in her voice, sense the disappointment in herself.

She wasn’t the kind of woman he was used to. She wasn’t yet another in the line of assistance who had thrown themselves at him, dressed provocatively to draw him in, flirt with him, stand too close. She wasn’t the kind of girl to get involved with her boss. And she certainly wasn’t the kind of woman who got rolled around on office furniture.

He cursed himself for putting her in that kind of situation. He had manipulated her desire and her obvious innocence of it. She wasn’t even aware she was attracted to him, for chrissakes. Just because he saw it didn’t mean he should use it against her to satisfy his own frustration.

He had wanted her since she snapped back at him at her job interview. He couldn’t count the amount of times he imagined grabbing her and taking her right on his desk in the middle of a work day.

The fact that he had a hard day in court, wanting nothing less than to throttle Dan and her lawyers, the countless amount of work he had missed out on for being out of the office and out of reach had caused an insurmountable amount of frustration and anger. He felt on edge than usual and it had caused his usual rigid self-control to abandon him. When he walked into her office and she turned and looked up at him with those big grey eyes that slowly filled with something he recognized as attraction, what little tethers that held him back snapped.

And her inviting mouth, her soft body pressing into his, her soft moaning against his lips had driven him so mad that he couldn’t pull himself back. When her hips rose to meet his erection, he had to fight every desire to pull her pants off and bury himself deeply inside her.

Then the phone rang. He both cursed and thanked it in equal terms. If he took her right there in the office, there would be no coming back from it. He would probably never see her again. But, god, it might have been worth it. He felt her desire which she must have kept taut as a chord thrumming from her. If he had taken her, she would have been like an explosion.

She had hung up well over a minute and she still stood facing away from him, her hands on her desk making her back hunch slightly. Her head was down. She was waiting for him to leave, to act like nothing happened so they could go back to pretending there was nothing between them.

Elliott stood up slowly, rolling his neck. He was still as hard as he had been with her beneath him despite trying to distract his mind. He took a deep breath, walking up to her slowly, deliberately. She must have sensed his presence because she straightned herself. But she didn’t turn around.

He walked up behind her, close enough to feel her outline against his chest. He placed one of his palms on the desk in front of her. His face rested against her soft hair as he spoke into her ear.

“We can try to ignore this, Hannah. But we both know it is going to blow up in our faces.”

She swore she could feel his lips press a kiss against her hair before he turned and left, but she shook off the idea. It was too personal, too intimate a thing to do. He wasn’t that kind of man.

Hannah walked slowly over to her chair, her hands on her desk the whole time as if she needed help standing and walking. She sunk into her chair, resting her elbows on the surface of the desk and cradling her head in her hands.

Blow up in their faces? Didn’t that just happen? How much worse could it get? Even if they had slept together, it was really no different. She wouldn’t feel any less shame or embarrassment than she did now. She wouldn’t be able to face him and better than she would the next morning.

Hannah groaned and picked up her phone, texting the first person she could think of.

Hannah: 8:02PM: I think I have to quit.

Tad: 8:02PM: Um… no. That is unacceptable.

Hannah: 8:03PM: You don’t understand, Tad.

Tad: 8:04PM: Make me understand.

Hannah: 8:04PM: I cant. It’s complicated.

Tad: 8:06PM: Nothing is complicated. Do you still want this job?

Hannah: 8:06PM: Yeah…

Tad: 8:07: Then its not complicated. Don’t quit. Change your mindset. Take a cold shower. Have a cup of tea. Eat a whole bag of cookies. Go to bed early. Whatever it takes to get you out of this funk. You’ll only regret quitting.

Hannah: 8:10PM: I’ll see you tomorrow, Tad. Thanks for the pep talk.

Though she wasn’t feeling any more peppy than before, at least she wasn’t seriously considering putting her letter of resignation, effective immediately, on EM’s desk for him to find first thing in the morning.

She wasn’t sure how she was going to get through a day working in close quarters next to him, but she was going to do it. She had been warned from the beginning to stay away from him. She would just have to try a little harder, be more deligent and in control.

Hannah sighed, rose from her desk and took a stack of papers she needed to file away before she left for the night.

She came back ten minutes later to find EM’s office light off, indicating he had finally left for the evening. She let out a sigh of relief, opening her office door and going to grab her purse and car keys.

But then she saw something out of the corner of her eye. Unsure what was off at first, she looked around her office quickly. Then there it was. The surface of her desk. Everything had been moved off to both sides so the entire center of it was free of clutter.

And something was carved in the beautiful wood.

I saw what happened.

Hannah felt her stomach drop. A sudden cold had the hair on her arms standing on end. The air in her office felt thick and hard to breathe. This was like something out of a horror movie.

Who could have seen? Hannah looked down at the crude carved words with dread. Everyone had been long gone. Or so she had thought. There hadn’t been any activity outside of their offices for hours.

But someone had seen. Someone had watched her and Elliott writhing around on the couch like a couple of horny teenagers. Someone she worked with on a daily basis had seen her grinding against their boss.

Oh, god.

Hannah felt her head start to pound with a terrific migraine.

Who would carve something into her desk? Even leaving a note seemed juvenile and tactless. But to actually deface work property was a whole other level of extreme. Who did things like that?

And she had only been gone a few minutes. Someone must have been waiting for her to leave, rushed in, moved stuff, carved their message and gotten off of the floor in under ten minutes.

Hannah found her scissors on the floor next to her desk, one of the blades was covered in wood shavings. She cleaned them off quickly, as if them being implicated felt wrong.

What was she going to do? Part of her felt like she should tell someone. But who could she tell? Tad? Then she would have to explain, in painful detail, exactly what this person had seen. And then she would be open to his censure. Tell Elliott? She knew she probably should. It was just as much about him as it was about her. But what could she say?

Um. Hey. Someone saw us tonight and carved a message into my desk. Just thought you should know.

That just wasn’t even an option. He would be furious. He would come barreling back into work to see for himself and then they would be alone together in her office. Again. And she would be feeling vulnerable and stressed. Again.

What good could it even possibly do? What would he do? Question all the employees? Like that wouldn’t cause a stir and rumors to circulate like wildfire. Were there cameras? The thought had never even entered her mind before, but now that it had, it planted itself deep. Oh, geez…
were
there cameras? Could someone actually be watching her every move in and out of EM Corporation every day? Could someone have actually watched her making out with EM?

Hannah felt dizzy with stress. All she could think about was finding some way to cover this accusatory message up. She searched around the office supply closet until she found one of those huge desk calendars, the ones that take up three-fourths of the surface of any given desks. She placed it carefully and put a few items around it on the edges so it wouldn’t accidentally budge.

Then she sat down, a picture of paranoia, to fill in some dates on said calendar. It would look weird if, all of a sudden, she had decided to put an empty calendar on her desk. She scheduled in EM’s business trips, his meetings, when she was supposed to make his doctor’s appointments, or get his car inspected.

By the time she was done, nearly every day had multiple events, important ones written in bold red permanent marker and everything else in black. It would actually prove to be a rather useful thing to have.

Hannah exited the building, feeling uneasy and constantly looking over her shoulder. As if she expected to see the author of the note hiding behind desks or office plants.

The only people she passed were the cleaning personelle who waved and told her to have a great night.

Hannah called her mother on the drive home as she had promised. She knew she sounded even more unconvincing as she had when answering during her make out session. And, for once, her mother was having nothing of it. She got lectured about not staying at a job that was making you miserable. About how life was too short and work was only supposed to be a small aspect of it. About how her friends and family almost never heard from her anymore and, even when they did, she sounded tired and defeated.

Hannah felt tears welling up and forced them away. She could absolutely see where her mother was coming from. But she honestly just couldn’t take any more stress on top of everything in her life that she couldn’t confess to anyone.

She felt utterly alone. And on edge. And she wasn’t sure how long she could go on feeling that way.

Eight

It felt almost wrong that nothing was amiss the next day. She got into work at her normal time and no one glanced at her with suspicion or accusation in her eyes. No one even commented on the fact that she was carrying with her a brand new coffee machine. She had gotten to the store just as they opened and ran in and grabbed one before work. If she didn’t constantly have to fill his coffee cup, she would cut down on actual face to face interaction by at least two-thirds. And she had made sure she got the kind of pot that brewed into a caraffe so it would stay hot without getting burnt for hours. She could sneak in to brew fresh pots whenever he left the office. It was a good plan, if perhaps a bit childish of her.

Hannah rushed into EM’s office and set it up on a sidebar above a small mini fridge he kept cold drinks in. Next to it she placed three pristine white mugs and a canister of coffee inside the cabinet. She brewed a pot and ran into her own office just as she heard Sally greet EM.