Page 23 of Foreplay with the Boss

Her chest rose and fell with her rapid breaths, the sun catching her necklaces and adding extra sparkle to her cleavage, like it wasn’t hard enough not to gape at as it was. She relaxed into my side, and her lips parted. She was close to giving in, I could tell.

But since she kept backing away, I decided to back off first this time. I opened the door to the deli for her and ushered her inside.

We ordered and then took our food to one of the outside tables. It was a warm day, so I took off my suit coat and draped it on the back of my chair. I caught Kat giving my sandwich dirty looks as I squirted on some extra mustard.

“Mustard is seriously the grossest,” she said.

Keeping my gaze on her, I grabbed another packet and smothered on some more. Then I took a big bite and made a big show of how much I enjoyed it.

Her shoulders shook with a silent laugh. I felt the glob start to fall, but was too late. I glanced down at the mustard on my white shirt.

Her laughter wasn’t silent anymore, and it drew the attention of everyone around us, people smiling even though they didn’t know why she was laughing. “That’s usually my kind of move.”

I reached for a napkin and dabbed it off the best I could. At least my suit coat would cover it. “This never would’ve happened if we’d done ‘something else’ for lunch.”

“Pretty sure that’d make us hungrier, so then we’d have to eat faster, so the result would probably be the same.”

“The fact that you say that just proves you have no idea what exactly I planned to do to you.”

She crossed her legs, then reached for her drink and took a sip.

I could see she wanted to say something but was holding back. “Just say it.”

“Fine.” She glanced around and then leaned in. “Where exactly were you planning on doing all these things? The side of the street while people watched?”

My mind didn’t reject the idea as strongly as it should.

“An alley? A classy one, I hope.” She leaned even closer, close enough that I could make the different shades of green and brown in her eyes. “Or just a public restroom, with who knows how many germs lurking?”

“Now you’ll never know,” I said because it was more fun to tease her than to say she might have a point. We should avoid the office, and I worried she might take me saying I’d pay for a hotel room for an hour the wrong way, regardless of how nice a hotel— The Four Seasons wasn’t very far from here.

Plus, an hour wasn’t nearly enough time for all the things I wanted to do to her body.

“Did you grow up here?” she asked. “Talk about a change of subject.”

“I just thought I should…” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Get to know more about you.”

I didn’t know if she wanted that information to convince herself to sleep with me, or not to. But she was easy to talk to, so I figured we could do the get-to-know-you exchange. “I grew up here, yes.”

“Does your family still live here?”

“My mom does, but my dad passed away about a decade ago.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

I swiped a hand through the air, not wanting to go too deep into that subject. Yes I missed him, and yes he was a good guy who people liked, but thinking too much about him brought up conflicted feelings about how he’d left my mom and me in such a huge financial mess, and how he’d basically given up once his company started to sink. That only added to our financial ruin, and every time someone made the connection between him and me, it made it that much harder to prove myself. Or to not punch them in the face if they talked badly about him. Like I said, conflicted.

And now Kat was looking at me with too much pity.

“It was a long time ago. My mom lives outside the city, not too far from my place. I’ve toyed with getting a place in Back Bay or Beacon Hill and living closer to the office, but I worry about her getting too lonely.” Now this line of conversation made me feel like I was revealing too much. I wasn’t very used to talking about myself in terms other than what I could do for a company.

“Aww, that’s nice. I sometimes worry about my dad being too lonely once he retires. My mom’s one of those social butterflies, so she belongs to all these clubs and has a big group of friends. People are just attracted to her.”

“You must get that from her, then.”

Pfft. “I’m hardly a social butterfly, and I tend to scare people away with my awkwardness. Numbers are easier to predict, which is why I like them so much.”

How could she have such a skewed view of herself? Maybe she wasn’t a social butterfly, but she had this contagious happy energy. In general, I didn’t like people, and I especially didn’t like big social gatherings. I could pull out the charm for the clients, but it was exhausting, and I counted down the hours till I could go home and run numbers and look over accounts in solitude.

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