Page 5 of Perfect Proposal
“Yes.”
“From the moment you sat down in my office and told me you were going to become invaluable. Do you remember what I said back?”
I immediately recall that first conversation that left me feeling buzzed and loopy. It’s only now I’m beginning to understand why. “You said, ‘I have a secret for you. So am I.’” I blinked. “Then you turned away, throwing me out of your office.”
Burke hummed. “It was that or lose my new position on the first day.”
“That was two damn years ago!” I semi-roared. “You mean to tell me…”
“That I had goals, a timeline, and you weren’t ready for what I wanted.” A level look laid upon me let me know Carys wasn’t oblivious to my after-hour proclivities. “Because let me assure you, David, the moment you enter my bed, you’re not leaving it.”
Sliding out of the booth, her jacket caught on the edge of the booth, pulling back away from a pair of perfectly tailored dress slacks that cupped a remarkable ass. I’ve always been an ass man, and the one in front of me was spectacular. I stood until I was able to reach out and trail a smooth finger down flawless skin from the corner of her brow to the throbbing pulse fluttering where short whips of hair settled next to an ear. “What do we do now?”
With a smirk, she slipped on her overcoat. “Come find me. Then we’ll talk terms.”
Baffled, I demanded, “We’re going to negotiate?”
“Why not? We both do it so well.” And on that note, I found myself watching everything, and nothing, walk away.
* * *
It tookme less than a week of a lifeless work environment to realize my work—no, my life—just wasn’t the same without Burke. Three days later, I made my way, hat in hand, to Burke’s new office and was offered the job of a lifetime but under one critical condition.
“Here, I call the shots.” Burke’s voice was calm. She wasn’t Carys—which is what I’d started calling her in my mind as I thought about her in my bed. In her new office, this unfamiliar territory, she was still Burke.
And a part of me was relieved by it.
She continued. “In this office, I’m still the boss. I’ve worked too damn hard and waited too long for whatever this might be to affect it.”
“On one condition,” I agreed.
Lips quirked. “Let’s hear it.”
“When you’re not my boss, you’re my lover. And that’s where I get control.”
Aqua-colored eyes lit with interest. “I can work with that.”
“So can I.” With a wicked smile, I leaned across the desk and asked, “Do we seal the deal with a handshake or a kiss.”
“Both,” Burke said, surprising me. “But lots of paperwork before we do either.”
And so, it began. And for the last three years, it’s worked beautifully.
Until now.
Pushing through the revolving door, I swallow the mild nausea that’s been threatening when I think of what Carys is going to say when we get home tonight. I’ve been making significant plans that are going to forever alter the balance of our relationship.
As I stand amid the crowd of individuals waiting to crowd on the gilded elevators to carry them to the higher floors of the magnificent skyscraper to get through another workday, I wonder if any of their thoughts are as tumultuous as mine are—that nothing will be the same tomorrow as it is at this very moment.
Two
Carys
I hear David call out a greeting to Angie as he makes his way into the outside office. My heart begins to pound when I remember the deliciously controlled way he took me up against our headboard last night. Despite the warm air allowing me to shed my suit jacket, chills run over me, raising the hair on the back of my neck.
It’s been like this since I met him half a decade before. Whereas I spent a career building a reputation as a cutthroat attorney, I wanted—no, needed—David to see me as someone beyond that.
For almost two years, I tried to bury the urges he stirred in me every time he was in my presence, which was too damn often to name. Client after client, meeting after meeting, unable to do a damn thing because I was his boss, yet being forced to endure overhearing the occasional office rumors and wanting to rip someone’s perfectly coiffed hair out of their head out of sheer fucking jealousy.
