Page 5 of A Billion Dollar Romance
* * *
I retreated, as quickly as I could without arousing suspicion, to the safety of my own office where I paced behind the mahogany desk.
What thehellwas she doing here, at Verity?
And did this mean I could see her again?
No. I forced down the stirrings of arousal. She was my employee now. My feet slowed to a halt as I scrubbed my hands over my face.
Yesterday morning, she’d been just a memory, a well-worn fantasy I turned to after long days in the office. Last night, she’d been in my bed, the sounds she’d made, the feel of her body against mine, very,veryreal. But as of this morning–fuck, not this morning, this morning I’d had her moaning up against the wall of my shower–but as of eight o’clock, she was my employee.
Just as she’d been my student, then.
Why had she reappeared, just to be forbidden to me once again?
I sat down at my desk, shifting uncomfortably, willing down my stiffening cock, and typed out an email.
CHAPTER4
Edie
I tookthe elevator from the third floor up to the fourteenth and the executive suites, my heart pounding. I left my stomach around floor five and the feeling in my fingers around floor twelve.
He’d recognized me.
We’ve met. Good to see you again, Miss Taylor.
Miss Taylor.
He’d called me that during senior seminar, one leg dangling as he half-sat on his desk at the front of the room. He’d been the object of all my darkest fantasies. I hadn’t had the time nor inclination to date much in college, so my nights had been spent mostly alone with my books and my thoughts, which prominently featured that low, husky voice.Miss Taylor.
The elevator dinged, heralding my arrival at floor fourteen, and a thought crossed my mind: was it possible he didn’t recognize me as the woman from the other night? I’d been dressed for a night out then, my hair loose around my face, and now, in my pencil skirt with my hair pulled into a sleek low pony, maybe he hadn’t made the connection…? I sighed.Yeah, right, Edie.Not likely, not unless he’d had a serious head injury sometime during his commute, and I hated to think of that. He needed that brain, I thought nonsensically, to write more of his brilliant, brilliant words.
Despite how conspicuous I felt walking through the executive floor, no one seemed to pay me any mind until I reached his office. His secretary, an older lady with a pristine gray bob, sat at a desk just outside the door, and she looked up at me expectantly.
“I’m Edie Taylor, I’m here to see Mr. Martin,” I said, trying with moderate success to keep my sentence from tilting up into a question. “He’s expecting me.”
She nodded, and pressed a button on her phone.
“Miss Taylor here to see you, sir,” she said. The door to the office swung open, and I heard his voice calling from within.
“Thanks, Alice. Come in, Miss Taylor.”
I smiled tightly at the secretary, and resisted the urge to duck down behind her desk and hide, instead, making my way into Professor Martin’s office. No–CEOMartin’s office.
I passed through the doorway to his office, and sat in the chair he gestured towards, one of a pair of stiff leather club chairs on one side of his imposing mahogany desk. A huge window on the far wall backlit him with morning sunlight, making his wavy hair glow like an angel’s. Or an avenging god’s, maybe, given the situation. I took a deep breath and waited for him to pronounce my fate.
“Miss Taylor,” he said, finally, and damn it if it didn’t send a thrill up my spine, even now. The desk was different, the room, but I still felt that bubbling heat in my belly that I had during office hours all those years ago.
“Professor,” I said, unthinking, then froze. “I mean, Mr. Martin. Sir.”
His lips twisted, somewhere between a smile and a smirk.
“So you do remember, do you?” he asked, his voice icy cold. My heart sank. Any hope of him not making the connection was gone, then. I’d been so stupid. I hadn’t really changed, had I? I was still the awkward, bookish girl I’d been in his classroom, just with a pencil skirt instead of a college sweatshirt.
“Yours was the class that made me want to be a writer,” I said, sitting up straighter in my uncomfortable chair. “How could I forget?”
“And…” He frowned. “Last night?” he said at last.
