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Copyright © 2017 Penny Wylder
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or businesses, organizations, or
locales, is completely coincidental.
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1
Usually I hate Mondays, but the redhead sitting in reception might just change my mind. Not many people make it up to the executive reception area on the twenty-fifth floor, even fewer are incredibly attractive women. She’s wearing a dress that clings to her in all the right places—of which she has many—flipping through a folder. I should stop staring at her and go to the meeting with my business partner that I’m late for, but chances are this is the best view I’m going to have all day so I decide to savor it for a few more precious seconds.
A moment before I step away, she looks up to catch me glancing down at her legs. I watch as her eyes drift from mine down the length of my body and back, and when her gaze meets mine again, there’s a faint smile on her face. She arches an eyebrow as if she’s daring me to keep looking, and as she does, she leans forward, allowing me to see down her dress to the generous swell of cleavage within. The sight makes my pants uncomfortably tight, and I shift so that it’s less obvious. She has a smirk on her face that tells me she knows exactly what she’s doing and loving it. Which is…intriguing.
A glance at the clock on the wall tells me if I don’t move Jack is going to use it as an excuse for me to buy drinks at happy hour all week long, as well as busting my ass, even if it is good-natured. I give the redhead a small smile and head down the hallway to his office, filing away her image in my mind for later. Hopefully I’ll see her again. Jack Warner has been my closest friend for the last ten years, and as long as I’ve known him, people being late is one of the things he hates the most. Or maybe he just hates it when I’m late. Which is why I generally try not to be. I think he’ll understand when I tell him about the red bombshell in reception. Hell, he’ll probably walk straight out of the office to take a look himself.
I tap my knuckle on the doorframe as I walk into his corner office. Mine is in the opposite corner, and sometimes it feels like we’re in different universes. Jack looks up, a glare on his face. I serve that look right back to him. “I’m not that late.”
“You do realize that ‘late’ is a thing you are or you aren’t. There is no ‘that late.’”
I chuckle as I sit down into my favorite chair in his office. “I do since you say it every fucking time.”
He sighs, resigned. “Fine, I have just a couple things. But first,” he says as he pushes the intercom on his phone, “Liz, send Cora in, will you?”
“Cora?” I ask.
“Our new intern,” Jack says, nodding to the door.
Seconds later, the redhead from reception appears in the door and damn that dress looks even better now that she’s standing. Cora. I have a flash of the two of us twined together and what it would feel like to have that silky material under my hands, peeling it off her shoulders. I snap back to myself as Jack stands, coming around the desk to stand with her.
“Michael,” he says, “this is Cora Bradbury, she’ll be our intern for the rest of the summer. She’ll be a senior at University of Houston in the fall and she’s also my daughter.”
I do a double take, having lost myself in imagining my hands in her hair while she moans my name. I feel the surprise register on my face. “Jack, I’ve known you for more than ten years. I didn’t know you had a daughter.”
“It’s not a long story,” he says, looking a little sheepish. “I never knew about her. Cora’s mother never told me, and I only found out a couple of years back when Cora reached out to me. Cora is a computer science major and we wanted to get to know each other better. An internship seemed like the perfect opportunity.”
I nod, turning back to Cora and holding out my hand. “It does seem perfect. My apologies Cora, I’m very happy to have you here.” I can’t help but notice how soft her hands are as she shakes mine, or imagine them other places. Shit. It would just be my luck that she’s Jack’s daughter. It’s been longer than I’d ever admit to anyone since I’ve been with someone that mattered. Sure, there have been women, but they’re never my guest for more than a night. I keep telling myself that I’m going to invest more, find someone, but I don’t. Somehow there’s always work to be done and other things occupying my thoughts. That is until Cora was sitting in reception and I stopped and looked.
Of course she would be my best friend’s daughter. And I’m still holding her hand. “It’s nice to meet you,” she says. Her voice is nothing like I expected, a rich alto that reminds me of caramel and chocolate and sex. “I’m a big fan of the way you’ve integrated aesthetic and function on both the app and your website. I’d love to talk to you about how you got your code integration so smooth.”
Now my brain as well as my dick is intrigued. Compliments always go to a man’s brain, but I like the fact that she caught on to the coding tricks. It took me a long time to make everything flow as well as it does, and the fact that she took note tells me that she really knows her stuff. “Thank you, I’ll be happy to show you the source codes and answer any questions you might have.”
Her face lights up into a bright, genuine smile that nearly knocks me over. “That would be great.”
Jack smiles at Cora. “Liz will give you your orientation.”
She gives me another smile, the smaller, sultry same one she gave me in reception, and exits the room. I let out a breath. “You sure this is a good idea, Jack?”
“Why wouldn’t it be? She’s very bright, and I’m sure she’ll be able to help us out around here.”
I shake my head. “I’m sure she’s brilliant, but you know family and business can be sticky.” It’s a long shot, but maybe I can convince him it will be a bad idea and I’ll save myself three months of being uncomfortably hard behind my desk.
Jack waves a hand. “It’s only for a few months, Michael. I can’t imagine anything that dire can happen that fast. Besides, she’s only an intern. We’re not even paying her; she’s getting school credit. So while she gets to observe the business, she won’t have her hands in anything real.”
“Okay,” I say, fighting the panic and frustration building in my chest. “It’s your call.”
Jack returns to his desk and types out something on his computer. “This week we really need to evaluate our options.”
“Options?”
He sighs, turning his screen toward me, and I see the familiar logo of our lead competitor, Takedown Clothing. Their motto in bold print flashes across the screen, and I fight the urge to roll my eyes. Take Down. Suit Up. “They’re rolling out a new service this week. Instead of the standard custom measurements submitted by customers, they’re starting to send out tailors to meet people in some of the big cities. New York, L.A., Chicago.”
I fold my hands together and wait, but he doesn’t say anything else. “And?”
“And we need to keep up. They’re getting more popular.”
“Even though they’re popular, they still lose the head-to-head competition. When people think of a custom suits and men’s clothing apps, they think of us. Not them.”
He stands. “You think that matters? They’re doing stuff that we’re not. Once they do enough things that we don’t do, customers will start to think of them first.”
“So what would you like us to do?”
“Watch them,” he says. “See how their launch goes and consider either launching something similar or branching out in a different direction.”
I school my face into the cool, impassive face I’ve perfected in the last ten years of building this company. It helps to hide what I’m really thinking and my instinctive reaction to this is no. We’re good at what we do, some would say the best, but there are still ways our existing product can be improved. Yes, I want to expand, but not until what we already have is as perfect as we can possibly get it. It’s taken us years to get where we are, and I won’t pretend that I want us to lose ground because we rush into an expansion we’re not ready for. “I can do that. Next week we can talk about options.” It’s the best I can give him, for now.
“Fine.”
I’ve known him long enough to know that’s it. He’s not pissed, but on Monday mornings he’s all business. Later he’ll loosen up a bit and turn into the Jack that I remember: the one that can drink me under a table and tells the dirtiest jokes of anyone I know. That Jack is becoming rarer now, and I’ve wondered why. Maybe he’s trying to be different, more serious, now that he knows he’s a father.
Fuck. Gone are my plans to fantasize about the gorgeous redhead in the lobby. Cora. Nothing can happen there. Ever. She’s Jack’s daughter, not even mentioning the fact that she’s twenty years old. I knew she was younger than me, but god. My cock stirs again at the thought of her in that dress, even though I shouldn’t. But she’s like a dream come to life for me, all curves and fire. I love that. And the way she saw my stare and threw it back at me like a challenge, I like that, too.
I head into my office, trying to clear my brain of the fog of lust that’s inhabiting it. Sitting down, I see the logo for our company on my computer screen. Tailor Me. We started the company seven years ago, thinking it was way too difficult and expensive for men to own a custom suit. Since then, we’ve become the biggest custom clothing retailer for men, and we don’t have any brick-and-mortar locations, just the website and app. We started with suits and then moved to everything from jeans to underwear. We’re now international. Each of those expansions was calculated. Controlled. Plotted out step by step months in advance. Sometimes years. I don’t know why Jack thinks we can evaluate a new expansion within a week.
Sighing, I click my calendar open. Not too much on the calendar, which is fine with me. I’m in the middle of working on a reboot for our measurement input system. It’s always been a little clunky for my liking, and I’m finally getting around to giving it the love and attention it needs. In fact, I think I might have Ellen—my executive secretary—push the rest of my appointments so I can focus on that. It’s going to take some experimentation with the code, and those things are hard to do when you lose your groove by being interrupted.
