Page 4 of Dirty Damage

I rifle through the emergency clothes bin with increasing desperation. There’s got to be something in here besides…

APaw Patrolt-shirt sized for a kindergartener.

I stare at the cartoon dogs grinning up at me. The shirt might—might– cover about a third of my torso. At best.

“We need to find scissors,” I mumble, trying to think through my options. None are good.

While I’m having my minor breakdown, Chloe has wandered over to the locker room door. Before I can stop her, she pushes it open.

“Chloe, wait?—”

But she’s gone. I hear her voice from the hallway, and then a deeper one that makes my stomach drop through the floor.

“You have to help us, Mr. Beast! Belle is stuck and needs her zipper down!”

Mr. WHO?Oh my God.

I look down at myself—half-in, half-out of a soaked yellow princess dress, sticky with apple juice, and basically exposed from the waist up save for my nude-colored, barely-there bra that I wore because it’s the only one that doesn’t show through my white work shirt.

I lunge for the paper towel dispenser, yanking out a fistful and pressing them against my chest like Eve in the Garden of Eden just as the locker room door swings open.

Chloe appears, her small hand engulfed in a much larger one that belongs to?—

Sweet baby Jesus…

Oleg.

As in Oleg Pavlov.

As intheOleg Pavlov, CEO of Pavlov Industries.

The man whose name is on my paycheck. The guy everyone calls “The Beast” behind his back because of his temper and the burn scars that mark the right side of his face and disappear under his collar.

He fills the doorway, a mountain of a man in a black tank top and gym shorts that reveal exactly why people also whisper about his fitness regimen.

His muscles don’t just have muscles—they have their own zip codes and tax brackets. Sweat glistens on his skin, highlighting the ridge of scars along his jaw and neck.

His dark hair is damp at the temples, and his eyes—a startling amber like whiskey on the rocks—lock onto mine.

Those eyes sweep down my body—taking in my bare feet, the yellow polyester bunched around my waist, and finally landing on the paper towels I’m clutching to my chest like Tarzan’s Jane in hand-spun lingerie.

His jaw tightens, and something flashes in his expression that makes my skin tingle in places it absolutely should not be tingling.

I press my back against the cold tile wall like I could teleport through it if I try hard enough.

Think, Sutton. Think.

But my phone is in my office. My pepper spray is in my purse. And my dignity?

Ha.Never had that in the first place.

“What is happening here?”

His voice is more growl than words. If the busted A/C in the walls is a dying animal, then this is an animal that’s very much alive.

Chloe pipes up immediately. “We were playing princesses and had an accident with the juice and Miss Palmer’s dress is stuck and we had to use the showers because Miss Mara said to and now she can’t get the zipper down and I went to find help and you’re the Beast so you have to help Belle!”

She delivers that whole explanation in one breathless rush while I struggle to form words like a functioning adult.

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