Page 89 of Mr. Flirt

And I wasn’t sure she even did now, but I was convenient and familiar. I think those two things were more important to Lucy than she even realized.

I let out a deep sigh and kicked my feet up on my desk. My assistant just left with an armful of folders and a determined look on her face. Tara didn’t like having to always dig through all my receipts at the end of the month for expenses, so she was going to create a new filing system.

Shaking my head, I smiled, knowing I didn’t have the heart to tell her that my previous assistant had tried the very same thing a year before.

It just didn’t work for me. Filings, folders, and notebooks were all too tedious and rigid. My system worked plenty fine. I’d write on the back of the receipt who attended and for what if it were for a meal or what the item was needed for if it were something else. Then at the end of the month, I’d hand them all over to reconcile the expenses or deduct anything personal that interfered.

I scratched my chin and thought back to last night when I left Lucy at the office. She had slight shadows under each eye, but she looked just as beautiful as any other day. But I wondered if she was doing too much and if she’d ever let herself rest.

There was one thing I’d done well in life after starting my own business, and that was carving out enoughmetime, which might be one of the reasons I got into so much trouble at times. I shouldn’t be dreaming up silly bets all the time, or I’d wind up like my father.

The thought chilled me to my core.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like my dad. I just knew that I had to keep him at arm’s length, or all the bad memories from when my parents split would bum me out.

Really hard.

And then I’d usually try to console myself by finding a beautiful woman.

It was a vicious cycle and made absolutely no sense.

But the weird thing was that since I’d screwed up my chances with Lucy on the first night at the matchmaking event, I hadn’t actually slept with anyone. I didn’t even know why. It was like things just became meaningless, and I felt like a complete ass, which I’d always managed not to do when dating women. I was always upfront with them. They knew before climbing in the sack with me that there was nowhere for the fling to go but down.

Until Lucy.

Then the thought of other women just started feeling... gross. Like why did I need quantity? What was I really searching for, or more to the point, avoiding?

And last night, I wanted so badly to rip Lucy’s clothes off and taste her skin, rub her back to make the tension go away, slide inside her and... just be.

But I knew better.

It didn’t matter that we’d already been teetering on that line of having sex. She’d made it a point to get us very close before putting a stop to it, and I respected that. I always would.

Just like last night.

If we were really starting over, I needed to pace things with her.

The thought made my pants tight, and I brought my legs off my desk to hide the surprise that had suddenly erupted from merely thinking about Lucy.

She sighed so heavily last night over and over again as she’d stared at her pleadings, took endless notes, and looked up things online that I couldn’t imagine how she found what she did pleasurable. Instead, it seemed to drain her.

When I’d left, she still thought she had another hour or so before she could go home. I offered to stay, but I could see that she needed some time.

But the moment I left her office, I missed being near her.

It was funny how the little things turned me on about her, like when she’d scan documents, she dug her teeth into her bottom lip and sucked a little, making a clicking sound. Or when she needed to look at something online, she’d always rub her eyes and tilt her head before scrolling on her screen. Or the way she’d take notes with her knee bobbing and her hand angled so the pen wrote fluidly. But my favorite was when a piece of hair would get in her way. She’d do a couple of poofs of air from her rounded lips to blow the strays away.

Tara came back in with a stack of colorful folders and set them down on my desk. I was grateful for the shield between us so she didn’t spot anything unusual from my daydreaming about a woman who was most definitely out of my league.

“Okay. It shouldn’t be hard to train yourself. Red folders are for office items. The green folder is food and beverages. Yellow is travel.” She looked up at me.

“Oh, a little different from when Lila did this for me.”

She scowled. “What do you mean?”

“Last year, we gave this a go, but it didn’t last long.”

“Well, I’m not a quitter.”

---