Page 3 of Broken Rules
And the boss was out of town!
A few days ago, Joe had flown to England to visit friends he’d met during his semester abroad. Before he’d left, he made Savannah the closing and opening manager for the duration of his impromptu vacation, which, by his own account, could be characterized as a ten-day stretch of British debauchery. Savannah imagined him stumbling around London’s top clubs with a group of English bad boys in Church’s leather brogues, messy hair, custom-made shirts from Jermyn Street with cufflinks, and accents that would curl her toes.
“No,” she said out loud.
Still, there was something so hot about an English guy.
She caught her reflection in the small mirror on the office wall. “No! No more assholes. Not even ones with accents!”
She turned to head downstairs and tripped on the chair. It took a moment to regain her balance, and when she did, she realized she had almost left the safe open.
Too many martinis! Damn Roman!
After securing the safe and carefully making her way down the stairs, hand firmly gripped on the rail, she pushed open the back exit. The heavy door slammed shut behind her. She loved that sound. It meant work was done.
Taking a deep breath, she invited the salt air into her lungs before setting out through the rain toward the house, which beckoned her with vivid brightness when lightning slashed the sky. Trudging through Joe’s yard, the wet sand dragged her down. She stumbled more than once, but soon, the towering posts and broad stairwell rose up in front of her. The house was more windows than walls with stunning panoramic views of the coast—this she knew as she had often stood gazing out at the setting sun, wrapped in Joe’s deceptively warm embrace.
Her stomach growled when she climbed the white, wooden steps to the wrap around porch, reminding her that she’d been too upset earlier to eat her shift meal. Inserting the key into the lock, she opened the oversized door and let it slam shut behind her. Darkness surrounded her. Rain pelted the house from all sides, making a symphony of pitter-patters on the glass. Inside, the air felt thick and warm after several days of the windows being shut tight.
Fumbling around in her purse for her phone, she pulled it out and used the flashlight to avoid turning any lights on. Then, without hesitation, she crossed to the stainless-steel fridge. Not surprised by the sparse contents, she considered her options—beer, old takeout, and a block of white cheese. Seizing the cheese, she brought it to her nose, inhaling the smoky scent before reading the label.
“Twenty-seven dollars a pound!” Gripping the cheese possessively, she kicked the fridge door shut.
Screw Joe and his high-end cheddar. She would eat it all if she could.
Digging around the cupboards, she found some crackers, a chopping block, and a cheese knife...but she wasn’t done.
Setting everything down on the end of the island that stretched the full-length of the kitchen, she went to Joe’s wine closet. Here she knew she had to tread more carefully. He was a huge wino—connoisseur, in his words. Some of the bottles could have cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars. She doubted that he would miss a block of cheese upon his return, but the absence of an expensive bottle of wine would certainly be noticed. Using her flashlight, she skimmed over the numerous labels and settled on a bottle of Tuscan red they often carried at The Cove. It was costly, but normal expensive, not—I’m descended from freaking royalty—expensive.
As she headed upstairs, she had no trouble finding her way in the dark...
Unfortunately, she was well acquainted with the location of Joe’s bedroom.
“Bad girl,” she muttered to herself, knowing she’d been an idiot to date the boss to begin with.
A part of her had known he was a player from the start, and still she’d clung to his promises, despite how her own intuition had thrown her a lifeline of reason. As always, she ignored her gut, believing, foolishly, that she could be the difference—the woman that could turn the bad boy into the good man.
If only she had learned from her mistakes with Joe, she never would have fallen for Roman’s silken promises.
Walking into the spacious room, she shined her flashlight on the king-sized, four-poster bed and sighed with pleasure at the comfortable sight. Then her gaze was drawn to a momentary glimpse of ocean outside the glass balcony doors, illuminated by a flash of bright lightning. She set the wine and her midnight snack on the nightstand and shivered despite the warmth of the room. From head to toe, she was clad in Cove blacks, which were soaked through to her skin. Turning the flashlight back on, she crossed to the closet and opened the double doors.
Her whole bedroom could fit inside.
She shut the door and turned the closet light on. Shaking her head, she considered his well-ordered world. Then a giggle burst from her lips as she lunged toward his extensive shoe rack. Carefully arranged by color and type, she mismatched the lot—sneakers next to dress shoes, flip flops beside winter boots, toes pointed out and in. Then she saw his lucky work shoes, which she seized, her mind spinning with ways of how to destroy them forever. But catching a glimpse of her greedy expression in the mirror caused her to hesitate. After all, the object of her fresh scorn was Roman, not Joe.
She started to return his favored work shoes to their rightful place, but then, she stuck her tongue out at herself before hiding them behind his stack of cashmere sweaters.
“Take that, Joe Wilder!”
She shivered again and remembered why she had ventured into Joe’s closet in the first place. After shuffling among numerous drawers, she pulled out a navy-blue t-shirt that she recognized from one of their dates and groaned. Joe really was ridiculously hot.
Taking command of her thoughts before they conjured memories of Joe’s sinewy naked body, she quickly put the familiar shirt away, resisting the urge to bring the fabric to her nose. She already knew it smelled good.
Joe always smelled good.
Stripping off her work shirt and skirt and removing her bra, she pulled another t-shirt on, but as the shirt cascaded around her, she inhaled deeply, drinking in Joe’s scent.
“Damn it!” She always was a glutton for punishment.
