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"What happened?" came a voice from the doorway and she was too aggravated to even jump at the interruption.
"I was typing a letter and it just disappeared and went black," she said, waving a hand at the computer and forcing herself to fight back the tears.
Elliott stepped into the room and walked up behind her. She felt the full line of his upper body against her side as he reached over and started messing with her keyboard. She had never been that close to him before. She could feel the heat from his body through the fabric of his clothes and smell the faint hint of spice from his cologne. Even hunched over, he was a head taller than her and she felt very small, almost fragile next to him. Which was a strange feeling for a woman who was five foot seven.
"All you have to do next time is," he started to say, making her snap back to attention, "is hit this and this button and it will come right back up. See?" he asked, then glanced down at her to see if she was listening.
It felt like she was on a roller coaster and had just went over the edge and felt the drop. Like her stomach jumped and all the air was gone. His eyes looked right into hers. After a second, they changed. Softened somehow. And deepened. She felt herself looking back, her mouth parting with the palpable tension.
His eyes lowered to her lips, then came back up to settle on her eyes. They had gotten smaller, heavy-lidded and intense. She felt completely naked under his gaze. It felt like ages to her but it was probably only ten seconds.
It happened at almost the same time. She looked up, and his head lowered slightly. It was almost imperceptible, but she felt herself turn her face up toward him and he bent down. She felt the tension deep in her core, her heartbeat didn't race, it felt like it had completely gone away. Along with her breath. And then...
The shrill sound of his cell phone had them breaking apart like guilty teenagers. Elliott scrambled for his phone.
"Thanks," Hannah said, her breath barely a whisper.
Elliott grunted. "See you tomorrow," he said, going to his office and slamming the door.
What the hell just happened? Hannah shook her head and looked at her screen. Her breath had come back and her pulse was pounding hard in her throat and wrists. Her work was just as she had left it. She wasn't even attracted to him. If told to choose between them, she'd choose James every time.
She was just tired. Exhausted. And delusional from not eating. All she had eaten that day was a small snack bag of almonds Tad had thrown at her when she had snapped at him a little over something on the schedule.
It was just the product of an over worked mind and a worn out body. There was absolutely no way she was, even in the least bit, attracted to him.
–
What the hell was he doing? Elliott paced his office, ignoring the blinking message light on his cell phone. It was from Dan and he couldn't bring himself to deal with her nonsense right then. He had bigger issues to deal with.
Like what the hell just happened with his assistant. He had heard her tapping furiously on her keyboard and mumbling angrily. He had gotten up and walked in to her looking positively overwhelmed, angry, and upset all at once. Normally, he would have walked away. It was her job to figure all this stuff out. But there was something to the defeated slump to her shoulders but the fact that she was still not giving up, that made him offer his help.
He shouldn't have gotten so close to her. It was unprofessional. He would never have leaned over a male employee's shoulder like that. He could feel her arm against his side and knew her ponytail was brushing his back. She smelled soft and sweet, almost like baby powder, though he knew it was some sort of perfume. And there was still the smell of coffee clinging to her skin.
And then he had looked at her. And felt like someone had punched him in the stomach. She was so much closer than he had realized. Her face was less than a foot from his. Her big, round gray eyes looked both innocent and full of longing. Then she had parted her lips and tilted her head up, closer to him. He had felt a rush of desire like he hadn't experience in longer than he could remember. All he could think about was leaning toward her, taking her lips to his and teasing, nipping, taking it deeper and deeper until she moaned and writhed and begged for more.
Then the phone rang and he felt like someone had just dumped him into a bucket of ice water. The fact that it was Dan that called was just ironic.
He needed to control himself better. She was obviously drained and vulnerable. And she was probably projecting her attraction to James onto him. It hadn't escaped his notice how she looked over at him under her lashes and responded to his wit and laughed at his jokes.
She wanted James, not him.
He grabbed his briefcase and slammed his office door with utter frustration. He left before Hannah even finished typing her letter.
It was the first time ever in twelve years that he wasn't the last to leave the office.
–
Hannah heard the elevator doors chime and looked up as if she could see through the wall. From what she understood, EM never left the office until everyone else was gone. She felt dread well up in her chest until she felt like her breath could barely squeeze out. Maybe he was mad at her. What must he think of her? That she was just another of those money hungry, easy girls that had come before her?
The thought rested heavy on her. She had never been that kind of girl. No one would even have thought it of her before. She was seventeen when she and her boyfriend, Sam, went all the way. They had been dating for years. And they had only done it the once. She just never felt emotionally ready to repeat the experience. She also wasn't so keen on dealing with that kind of pain again either.
Sure, she had done a fair share of dating after they had broken up and she moved away. But she could never find someone she wanted to spend a meal with, let alone her body. It was always a sore spot with her. Whenever her best friend Emily from Star's Landing called, Emily often had a story to tell about some guy she was dating and how things had gone down in bed. And she never had anything to say to contribute to the conversation.
Maybe it was a good thing that she didn't come off as a "goody goody", but she certainly didn't want to be thought of a slut either.
Especially not by her own boss.
Hopefully he had rushed out of the office, not because he was angry, but because he was as put off by the whole experience as she was. He had never even really glanced at her, let alone implied that he was sexually attracted to her.
