Page 36 of After-Hours Heir

“How neat.” He tugged on the cuffs of his perfectly tailored shirt. “A little narrative to explain each and every difficulty in your life. I don’t know that I think the story of my life is at all relevant. Because the truth is, I watched everyone around me go through the same things that I did, and they emerged differently. Or didn’t. But I can’t say definitively that a specific instance shaped me into what I am.”

She thought he had to be lying.

“Or rather,” he continued, “I cannot say that it did so without my permission.”

“Oh. Well. Of course. Even your issues didn’t appear without your express written consent.”

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “your mother is incorrect about your appearance. You are extremely attractive.”

She blinked. “I am… What?”

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

With as much emotion in his voice as she had ever heard. Meaning none.

“I’m not sure what to say to that.”

“Many people would saythank you.”

“Many people would probably not say it to you, since there is undoubtedly some…lurking danger beneath the compliment.”

“When have I ever been alurkingdanger? I am quite in the open with it, I would think.”

Well. That wasn’t wrong. She resented him for that.

“I just have a hard time believing it. Given that you and I had many, many interactions over the years, and there was never an indication that you—”

“Fantasized about bending you over your desk and smacking your ass while I rode you?”

She actually lost her footing, in the elevator. Her knees sagged and gave out, and it was only because she was leaning against the wall that she didn’t plummet entirely to the floor.

“Excuse me?”

“Do you really need me to restate that? Because I thought it was quite clear.”

“You cannot have thought that.”

He still looked so unbothered.

“I did. I couldn’t decide whether I found it titillating or perplexing. Because you were involved in a business dealing, and it is not usual for me to have sexual feelings in context with business matters.”

She gritted her teeth. “Oh, that’s weird. I’m constantly getting aroused over staplers.”

“When did I say that I saw you as a stapler?”

The weirdest thing was a small bubble of jealousy welled up in her chest. “Did you really fantasize about…that while you were carrying on conversations in our texts?”

“So were you,” he said.

“But you didn’t know that.”

“No. I didn’t.”

He said nothing else to follow up.

It was weird that she was jealous of herself. Astonishingly so. Especially since everything that had happened between them before now felt fake.

How could it be real? Because everything she knew about him led her to believe that the texting had been a game. Yes. That would make sense. That it had been a video game to him. Something he had found amusing, as he had texted words of support, filthy sentences and the kinds of sensitive reassurances that she was fairly certain had never crossed his mind before.