Page 61 of Foreplay with the Boss

Have your girl sign this ASAP. No reason to risk losing everything over a hot piece of ass.

-Nate

I didn’t know whether to be offended or paranoid. It depended on if the girl/hot piece of ass was me. If it wasn’t, Jameson and I had a problem. If it was…well, we also might have a problem.

I peeled off the Post-it and took a better look at the document. Non-disclosure agreement? Why would I need to sign one of those? Doesn’t Jameson trust me?

Okay, so the fact that I was reading confidential documents might make it seem like I wasn’t 100 percent trustworthy, but they’d opened by accident.

Not so much an accident? Reading on. For one, the papers were a good inch thick, and surely NDAs weren’t that hefty.

What I found after the first five pages that made up the non-disclosure agreement was even worse.

There was yet another Post-it.

Severance package for Stuart Taylor

If it wasn’t my dad’s name, I might’ve been able to slide the documents back in the envelope, but once I saw those words, I couldn’t not read on. My gut dropped as I skimmed through, a sense of disbelief and panic wringing out my lungs.

I’d just finished leafing through the documents when Jameson stepped into the office.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he said, exhaustion dragging down his words. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. I was afraid you’d already left for the day.”

Just like that, the panic and what-the-fuckery I was feeling ignited and turned into seething anger. “Well, considering what I just found out, you should be afraid of me in general.” I lifted the document. “What the hell is this?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, walking closer and tilting his head to get a look at it. “I… Oh.”

“Oh?” My breaths came right on top of each other and I crossed my arms, squeezing my biceps to try to contain my rage and the urge to cry. “Explain.”

He let out a sigh that sounded like it weighed 100 pounds and then sat on the edge of the desk, facing me. “One of the main reasons I was voted into the CEO position was because I promised I’d find ways to cut the overhead and increase profits. I’ve run the numbers several times, and there’s one branch that’s not pulling its weight.”

I shook my head. Dad mentioned things were tight, but he said everything was turning around and would be back to normal in no time. “We had a couple of hard years, but we’re bouncing back.”

Jameson leveled his blue-eyed gaze on me. “You’re not. When I said it wasn’t pulling its weight, I was being generous. The Hartford branch is deadweight. Your father has a bloated salary, especially for how little business he brings in, and you’ve lost more clients than you’ve signed for a while.”

Each word struck my chest, stinging and burning. “Jeez, tell me what you really think.”

“I’m not going to hold back because…” He trailed off and ran a hand through his hair.

“Oh, now you’re the one not finishing sentences? You’re not holding back because we’re fuck buddies, is that it? Yeah, I’d hate for you to lose everything over a ‘hot piece of ass.’” I tossed the other document at him, wishing my voice wasn’t shaking as badly as my hands.

Jameson picked it up and sighed. “Ooh, another sigh.”

“Kat,” he said, in that firm, no-nonsense, do-what-I-say-or-else voice. “I’d like to talk about this like civilized adults.”

“You think going behind people’s backs makes you civilized? When you made a play for the open CEO position, my dad voted for you. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“It means that he and the rest of the board thought I’d do the best job of deciding how to run the company and where to cut costs, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. It also means that when he called me up and asked if his daughter could work with me, I took him up on it, even though I didn’t have the time to train someone.”

The stinging pain radiated outward, spreading until it took over my whole chest. I stood, unable to just keep sitting there while he looked down on me with that stony, unfeeling expression on his face. “So sorry I was such an inconvenience. I could tell it was a big hardship when you bent me over your desk. If you think about it, I was actually saving you a lot of time, because you didn’t even have to leave the office to get laid.”

Jameson reached for me, and I jerked my arm away. “Come on, Kat. Don’t pull our relationship into this. It’s just business.”

“It’s just business? Really?” My voice cracked and I took a steadying breath. “This is my life. Why bother training me when you knew I wouldn’t have a job in a couple of months?”

“So that you could get hired somewhere, even if your daddy wasn’t there.”

My heart knotted, so tightly I didn’t think it’d ever beat right again, and tears were definitely forming. “That’s what you think of me?”

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