Page 36 of The Reading

Ethan shook his head before muttering, “I think I’m going to need some aspirin for this.”

Yeah, this wasn’t going well.

*****

Ethan~

The problem with the pissed off woman that was currently glaring at me was that she was fucking beautiful. When I’d first met Hattie Jacobs a couple of years ago, that had been my first thought. Though I’d met plenty of beautiful women in my life, Hattie Jacobs was five-foot-three of dark auburn hair, fiery green eyes, a face like one of those enchanted dolls by Marina Bychkova, all soft skin and big eyes.

The thirty-two-year old beauty was also curvy as fuck, and it had taken a long time for my dick to get the message after meeting her. For those first few months, I had walked around with a perpetual hard-on all goddamn day, but I had finally been able to master my response to her nearness.

Still, for all that she was beautiful and built like my hands would love to explore every curve on her body, the chick was unpredictable and a bit unorthodox. She was big on winging life, and the only reason that she worked here was because homelessness seemed less appealing than being a bank teller, but barely.

I, on the other hand, had always been good at math and loved how it always made sense. College hadn’t been a possibility for me, so I’d been lucky enough to get a job here and work my way up to bank manager. Granted, I’d gone back to get my degree in finance and mathematics eventually, but that had been more as a safety net in case I ever lost this job. Looking at Hattie Jacobs, that scenario was looking more like a possibility than it ever had before.

Of course, I had a great family, so it wasn’t like I would end up homeless. Nevertheless, my parents weren’t swimming in wealth, and even if they had been, they certainly didn’t need their thirty-three-year-old son living with them again. Thank God for my degrees, sense of fiscal responsibility, and shrewd investment portfolios.

“Look, I was just doing what I thought was right,” Hattie said, continuing to defend her ridiculous actions. “I thought I was preventing a bank robbery.”

“That’s even worse,” I pointed out. “Had it been a real bank robbery, you didn’t follow proper protocol, Hattie.” I shook my head again. “Plus, Mr. Traverse isseventy-four. In what world did you think that a seventy-four-year-old man would attempt to rob a bank?”

Her head reared back. “So, you’re age discriminating now?”

See?

She was crazy.

“I am not age discriminating,” I bit out between my clenched teeth, feeling that headache coming on. “I’m merely pointing out the statistical chances of a seventy-four-year-old man committing a goddamn bank heist, Hattie.”

“Ethan-”

“And even if he were up to robbing a bank, you still didn’t follow proper protocol,” I reminded her again. “You set off the alarm like a delinquent pulling the fire alarm at school.”

Her beautiful green eyes rounded. “That’s not how it happened,” she argued, but that’s exactly how it had happened. “Besides, it’s different when it’s the real thing-”

“But it wasn’t the real thing,” I said, stating the obvious.

“-The real situation is different from mock practices,” she continued like I hadn’t even spoken.

“This wasn’t a real situation!” I finally yelled, fed the hell up with the way that she had me speaking in circles.

“There’s no need to raise your voice,” she huffed, and I almost started banging my head on my desk.

Taking a deep breath, it took everything that I had in me to remind myself that I was her boss and nothing more. Did I want the woman in my bed? Fuck yeah, I did. Did the bank have a no-fraternizing policy? No. No, it did not. Nevertheless, I was still her boss, no matter how dirty my thoughts about her were.

“Hattie, do you have any idea of the trouble that your assumptions caused?” I asked, my voice even again. “You not only upset Mr. Traverse, inconvenienced our customers, wasted the Patch PD’s time, frightened your coworkers, and are making us have to stay open later to accommodate those inconvenienced customers, but now I have to call everyone under the sun to explain this fuck-up.” I eyed her. “Don’t you care aboutanyof that?”

Hattie lowered her eyes to her lap, and now I really felt like an asshole.

Chapter 2

Ethan~

“If you’re going to fire me, then just do it,” she snapped, her eyes still glued to her lap. “I mean, that’s what this is, right?”

“Hattie, look at me,” I instructed.

“I’d rather not,” she huffed.

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