Page 54 of Mr. Big Shot

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, obviously no one at work could know. That goes without saying.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m your boss.”

Her voice lilts up as she continues. “So what better person to give me critiques? It’s practically your job!”

I reach over and yank her door handle so the door flies open. Biting cold wind blasts into my car.

She starts to scoot off the seat. “Fine, Mr. Grumpypants. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“No, we won’t.”

Her confident little wave over her shoulder says, Oh yes, we will.

Chapter Eighteen

Scarlett

This is another reason why I don’t belong in the courtroom. On top of my hot temper, I have no powers of persuasion. If my goal was to have Hudson agree to my ludicrous plan, I should have really buttered him up first, maybe even spoon-fed it to him slowly over a few days—like the boiling frog metaphor—so he wouldn’t even realize he’d agreed to have sex with me until we were already in the middle of the act.

My mistake was approaching him with austere simplicity. “It’s just sex” and “What’s the big deal” did little to convince him I am not absolutely out of my mind. I shouldn’t have blurted it out like that, but I wanted to strip away all the fuss and make it seem very black and white.

Despite Hudson’s initial response, I still am of the mindset that it’s a simple proposition. I just need someone to confirm for me, definitively, whether Jasper was correct in his assessment of my sexual abilities.

I don’t want to give Jasper this much power. Truly I want to write off his comment, but if for some reason he was right, well then maybe Hudson could also give me a few pointers and simple corrections, like “That thing you’re doing with your hand really hurts” or “Yeah, not sure where you’re heading, but that’s my butthole.”

I understand that I could seek help from another man, but Hudson is unequivocally the right person for the job. Not only is he, strangely, the only person in my life I trust to bring in on something this embarrassing, he’s also—I’ll just say it plainly: Hudson Rhodes looks like he knows his way around a bedroom.

You don’t have confidence rippling off you like he does unless you can absolutely make it happen between the sheets. And if I’m wrong about that, well what better way to find out THAN BY HAVING SEX WITH HIM!

It’s all I want for Christmas. The only thing on my list.

After the night I brought up my stellar idea and Hudson all but kicked me out of his car, I start to bring him coffee every morning for a week straight in an attempt to get back in his good graces, but if I so much as breathe in the direction of the sex conversation, he shuts me down.

“No.”

“Not happening.”

“Scarlett.”

“Absolutely not.”

You’d think each day his resolve would crumble little by little. I’ve been wearing my sexiest work dresses, which, okay, aren’t all that sexy with their business-appropriate hemlines and sensible wrinkle-resistant fabric, but I still see him glancing at my body when he thinks he’s being sly about it. On some level, Hudson wants me, and I just have to figure out how to make him act on that want.

Our company holiday party seems like the perfect opportunity to bring him to his knees, or at the very least, show him a new side of me. Physically, that is.

It takes me eight hours on the last Saturday before Christmas (aka the busiest shopping day in America aka I had to fight your mom in Macys) to find the perfect dress for the party. Good thing I had a secret weapon: Katherine Elwood.

My mom couldn’t believe it when I called to ask her to go shopping with me.

“Is this an early Christmas present?” she teased.

“What? N—yes, it is. Surprise!”

Willingly partaking in one of my mom’s favorite pastimes wasn’t without risks. She wouldn’t let us get started before we’d stood in a twenty-minute line to purchase an extra-large cup full of doughy pretzel bites glazed in so much Butter SauceTM I swear I could hear my heart valves sigh in disappointment. When I suggested that we “just glance through the first floor of Nordstrom,” she looked at me like she couldn’t fathom how we share DNA then she thrust me onto the escalator with wild abandon. I could have died!

I didn’t give her the full details of her assignment. Like a rookie detective only given the information absolutely necessary to do their job but nothing deemed classified, she assumed I just wanted to look my best for my first big company holiday party. She was completely unaware that I need to transform into a bombshell worthy of making Hudson throw caution to the wind, that I need to find the holy grail of dresses that will straddle the line between being sexy and remaining HR-approved. We’re talking about a razor-thin margin here.

We settle, eventually, on a long silver halter dress that hugs my figure and seems to move like liquid across my body every time I take a step. It’s a work of art, and the price tag reflects it. The only tricky part about the design is the open back, but my mom won’t let that deter me from getting it. She has a white faux fur she offers to let me borrow. With that layered on top, the outfit will be perfect.

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