Page 44 of Enemy Boss

“Come in,” I call, and I’m pleased that my voice sounds level and normal, as neutral as my facial expression. I well and truly have my game face on now.

Chapter 33

Cullen

My office door opens and Max steps into the room. She is wearing a black pencil skirt with a pale pink blouse, and I hate that the sight of her still takes my breath away, even now. The skirt skims over her hips, showing off those gorgeous curves.

Stop it, I think to myself. You are not going to get through this if you spend the whole time thinking about how hot Max is.

She closes the door behind her and stays standing by the it like she is awaiting some sort of instruction. Her face is slightly flushed, and she is watching me, seemingly waiting for me to smile or wink or to give her some indication that I want her. I won’t let her get the upper hand though. Not this time. She’s had more than her fair share of having that and now it’s my turn.

“Take a seat,” I snap.

Max heads toward the chair opposite mine, but at the last minute, she diverts herself and comes around behind my desk. What the fuck is she playing at? Before I can really work out what’s happening, she is behind me and she wraps her arms around my shoulders from behind, something that even now makes my cock come to life in anticipation of what is to come.

“Have I been a bad girl?” Max says playfully into my ear, her breath tickling my skin and making it tingle.

I ache for her, and I know I have to get her off me if I am going to be able to do this. If I can’t even stop her touching me, I have no chance of getting the truth out of her. I need her to know that I mean business here. With that in mind, I reach up and take one of Max’s hands in each of mine and pull them off my shoulders. She doesn’t resist me, but I hear her swallow loudly and I know she wasn’t expecting that reaction from me, and she is in uncertain territory now. Good, because that makes two of us.

“This is serious Max,” I say, using my cold and emotionless ‘CEO voice’. “Sit down please.”

Max surprises me a little bit by doing what I say. She goes and sits down in the chair opposite mine, but she doesn’t look sheepish or ashamed of her actions. She sits there, as bold as brass, looking me dead in the eye and it sends another surge of anger through me. It hasn’t even occurred to her that I might be onto her.

“I don’t …” I start, ready to tell Max that I don’t want to hear her bullshit anymore and to get out of my sight. But the truth is, angry or not, I am still clinging to the hope that she can explain this. I tell myself that it’s only fair that I give her that chance and that’s why I’m doing this, not because I so badly want to be wrong here. I stop myself from saying what I planned to say, but I can’t seem to stop myself from talking until I think of something better, and instead, a more heartfelt statement comes out of my mouth. “How could you betray me like that?” It’s not what I wanted to say, but it really is the question whose answer lies right at the heart of this matter.

I watch her, looking for sign of discomfort, but there’s no sign of her fiddling with her fingers, or picking at her clothes. She’s not even shuffling in her chair. Oh, she’s good. She is really fucking good, like another level good. She is looking at me like she has absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, and I don’t know whether I want to congratulate her on a great performance or shake her and scream in her face for lying to me. I do neither obviously. Instead, I wait to see what she is going to say.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she says finally, and it sounds so truthful that I almost apologize for doubting her and send her on her way. I can’t do that though. She knows what she’s done and either she can explain it in a way I can live with, or she can’t; it’s that simple.

“You can drop the innocent act Max,” I say.

I’m done playing around, nibbling at the edges of the issue. It’s time to get everything out in the open.

“It isn’t an act,” Max says. She is looking at me like I’ve lost my mind and for a moment, I wonder if I have, but then I remember Bill’s email and I know I haven’t. “I genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about. I haven’t betrayed you in any way.”

So, she’s going to play it this way then. I kind of hoped she would make it easy, but I should have known better than that. Even on her best days, nothing is ever easy or straight forward with Max. It made being with her challenging in a good way and I liked that about her, but right now, it is just pissing me off. There’s challenging and then there’s this shit.

“Are you really going to make me spell it out for you?” I ask, giving her a final chance to just admit to what she’s done and get this over with.

“I guess so because unless you do, I will still have no idea what we’re talking about here,” Max replies.

So, this is how she’s going to play it then. She is going to stick to her story like a safety blanket until I pull it out from underneath her altogether then. I suppose there’s a chance she only thinks I suspect something rather than have proof of it, and that if she can lie well enough, I will believe her when she insists that she has done nothing wrong. She obviously doesn’t know that Bill has emailed me so she thinks she can convince me that I have it all wrong. It’s time to drop that card in her lap and see what she does with it.

“Does the name Bill Bryson mean anything to you?” I ask.

Max pauses for a moment like she’s thinking. She’s really good at this. She should be a spy or some shit. She shakes her head after a moment.

“No,” she says.

“What about Cyber Safe?” I ask. “Have you heard of them?”

If she says no again, then I will know she’s lying. Everyone in the industry has heard of Cyber Safe, just like everyone in the industry has heard of ITSafe, too. Max must know that I know this, and she doesn’t try to deny it. She nods her head.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” I say. I want to know how much information she is willing to give up at this point. “Who are they?”

“One of the firm’s competitors,” she says.

I’m pretty sure that’s the first true thing she has said since telling me she has been a bad girl.

---