Page 34 of Undeniably Corrupt
He frowns, but I don’t know why he’s asking that. It’s not new, and he knows that about me, so I give him the same answer I’d give him whenever he’d tease me for being bright.
“Color is my happy place. We’re from Maine. The sky is gray ninety percent of the time, and everything else is green and brown unless you’re on the water, and then it’s gray and blue.”
“Come for a ride with me.”
It’s not a request. It’s a demand.
“A ride?”
“You’ll be back in time to get Hazel. Pack your laptop. We’ll take the big bike.”
With that, he turns and walks away from my office.
The big bike? As in a motorcycle? A weird sort of laugh flees my lungs. I haven’t been on a motorcycle since I was a teenager, and yes, the last time was with him. I can’t go on a motorcycle with him. I’m a single mother. And I’m in a skirt. Road rash isn’t an accessory I want to wear.
Yet I’m disconnecting my laptop from its cables and slipping it into a bag that’s miraculously on the floor just waiting for me when I’m positive it wasn’t there Friday. I need to tell him no, but how do I do that? He’s my boss.
I stare balefully down at the flirty fabric of my skirt when he’s back in my office. “You’re going to make us late.”
I glance up, my hand furiously working my bracelet around and around. “I’m a single mother.”
He tilts his head. “I’m aware.”
“If something happens to me, Hazel is in foster care with no other family to care for her.”
“Care to explain why that is when you have two parents in Maine?”
Shit. “Vander, you have to promise me I won’t die!”
He doesn’t crack a smile, and there’s no teasing in his tone when he says, “I promise I’d never let anything bad ever happen to you.”
Well then.
“Where are we going?”
“To a meeting. It’s faster on my bike.”
“And did you take Champagne on your bike to meetings?”
He smirks. It’s a dirty, sexy as all fuck curve of his lips, and with the stubble he has going on and those green eyes… yeah. Finding your boss hot sucks.
“Champagne never liked to ride the way you do. Come on.”
Bastard.
I follow him like a puppy obeying its master.I hate him, I hate him, I hate him. “I hate you.”
He chuckles as he walks ahead of me toward the elevator. That’s it. Just that stupid laugh.
“I do. I hate you.”
He shrugs. “You should. I’m a total dick.”
I slip in beside him as we wait for the elevator. “I didn’t use that word. I think I would have gone with mercurial, deceitful, manipulative?—”
“Dick.”
I shrug. “If you say so, I won’t argue. I’ve already been more up close and personal with him than I’d care to be, though I haven’t seen him in the flesh in the last ten years, so that’s a win.”
