Page 3 of Her Boss

“So people don’t ask me if it’s like the city.” It was a lie, but needling him was surprisingly enjoyable.

He grimaced but said nothing. His thumbs tapped at his screen, and he dropped the phone to the table. His long fingers waved toward my friends. “Do they get to call you Genie?”

“Sure—but you don’t. Not yet, anyway.”

You’re veering awfully close to cunt-y. Dial it back, idiot.

I gave him a quick, flirty smile, hoping to throw him off balance a little.

“What are you doing with them?” He didn’t even bother to meet my gaze, instead staring at his phone once again, the screen bright in his huge right hand, looking almost like a credit card laying there in his palm.

I’d never seen a man with hands that big. I hadn’t so much as noticed a man’s hands before—until his.

“With who? My friends?”

He nodded, maddeningly still not looking at me, as if my attention upon him would be assumed, as if the very notion that I wouldn’t hang on his every word was patently absurd.

He’s not wrong, you know.

For a long, pregnant moment, he seemed engrossed in the words upon the screen of his phone, and then finally he looked up at me. I tried not to let him see me swallow, knowing that a man with his keen attention would pick up on just what that meant.

I didn’t want him discovering how nervous he made me. For any man who could make me nervous was either a scary man or an irresistible one. Like so much else about Rick, as I was soon to learn, it was a combination of both.

“Why are you here tonight?” He was utterly still as he watched me.

“Um, probably the same reason you are.” It was stupid, and I cringed as soon as I said it, but it was too late.

His eyes narrowed just the tiniest bit at that, but I thought I detected a smile at the corners of his lips. The man’s mouth was surprisingly full, soft, and… sensual. I never imagined a man who looked as quintessentially masculine, hard, and mean as Rick would be anything resembling that word. But it fit, even if I didn’t yet know why. “I think you need to come with me.”

That was a new line for me, probably because it sounded like something a cop—or a high school principal—might say. I wasn’t exactly inexperienced with lines from men, commands and games and gambits. Schemers and players, man whores and arrogant assholes. I had seen them all, or so I thought until I’d met Rick.

Everything from the set of his shoulders, their great width shown off much too provocatively by the tailored charcoal button-down shirt he wore, to the arrogant jut of his strong chin, to the world weary just-this-side-of-cynical glint in his gaze, spoke of nothing but casual command. A man who was used to getting his way—or hurting whomever he needed to in order to get it.

He seemed to really believe he was God’s gift. And I would have a difficult time arguing that he wasn’t.

What the hell is wrong with you? You encounter a man with a little game and you’re ready to drop your panties at a moment’s notice? He’s your fucking dad’s age!

It should have mattered. Should have been a deal-breaker.

But it only piqued my interest further.

Damn it.

“I don’t think I need to do anything,” I finally said, the DJ starting up a new song with an absolutely thunderous bassline that made the steel railing along the mezzanine buzz with the beat. I sat down on the chair opposite him, laying an elbow on the table trying desperately to look casual, unfazed—in other words anything but the nervous girl pinned in my place by his glittering gaze.

“But you’ll come with me anyway.”

“We’ll see about that…” My mouth was so dry, I almost choked on the last word, but I was desperate to project confidence.

“You know, I watched you over there, how you interacted with them, how alone you seemed with them.” He nodded toward my friends. “You’re not like them, are you? You feel… like there’s something more. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re not just wrong, you’re dead fucking wrong.” It was puffery, blatant bluffing, and I knew he could see it for what it was. “So, unless you’re gonna say something interesting—other than thinking you can tell me what to do—I think I’m gonna go back over and join those friends that you think I don’t belong with. You’re welcome to watch me dance with them, too. Maybe that’s your thing? Is that it? You like to watch, sit there and observe girls dancing and laughing and having fun? Girls that are young enough to be your daughter?”

“Ah, now we get to it. That intrigues you too, doesn’t it?” The muscle at the corner of his jaw flexed just a little. “You’re not used to being attracted to someone my age.”

“Who said I was attracted to you?”

But it was too late to argue it, his tiny wink confirming he’d landed the shot squarely, and was already strutting off in victory.

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