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I closeted myself inside my office—two doors down from his—and booked Rosie a plane ticket to San Diego. I wanted her to spend Christmas with our parents. Truly, there was nothing I wanted more than to tag along with her and make it an epic family week, but one last-minute ticket was expensive enough, and I needed to be financially cautious. In any case, I was certain Vicious wouldn’t give me the time off.
Sending Rosie to the other side of the country had nothing to do with her warning last night. Right.
After I sent her a text with the surprise ticket, I sorted through Vicious’s email. I responded to requests from charity organizers, cleaned up the junk and flagged messages from investors that he needed to answer himself. His inbox was so career-focused it was almost sad. There was nothing personal except some banter with Jaime and Trent and a clipped question about the merger from Dean. I wasn’t snooping. It was part of my job description to keep his inbox in order.
It wasn’t a part of my job description to check out his Facebook interactions and read through every single exchange he’d had with a female in the last six months, but I took the liberty of doing that too because…well, because I was just hard-working like that.
I yelped and jumped to my feet when I realized he was standing at my door, staring me down like I was his breakfast.
“Trying to watch porn in the office again?” he said while I blushed. “We have security measures for that. Those websites are blocked.”
I let out a nervous laugh and brushed my hair from my forehead. He looked too good to be so evil. Vicious was in another one of his dark suits, but he’d discarded the jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves, exposing muscular forearms peppered with a smattering of that LA sun and those scars that made my heart beat erratically.
The only thing I could think about was how we’d almost kissed last night and how I’d silently cursed Rosie while I fixed her soup for her in the kitchen after I’d had to pull away from him.
I quirked an eyebrow at him and leaned back. “Your IT people are doing a terrible job. I’ve been watching snuff all morning.”
He laughed, and his amusement looked genuine. Rare and brief like cherry blossoms in the spring. But just like the flowers, it died quickly.
“I didn’t peg you for a kink girl, Emilia.” He tucked his hands in his pockets. “Whatever floats your boat, I’d be happy to be captain.”
“Tacky.” I pretended to gag. “And now I’m ninety-nine percent sure you are a virgin.”
I was teasing him, and I didn’t care anymore. Yes, he was a damaged person, but I now knew there might be reasons for that. No, I wouldn’t ever forgive him for what he’d done to me. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t have some fun with him until I dug out of my financial mess. Might as well take him up on every single thing he offered while I could. Because that’s essentially what we were doing. Using one another.
Vicious’s eyes licked my body head to toe, slow and taunting, then landed on my face. “Have your ass in my office in ten minutes. We need to tie up a few loose ends with the merger.”
With that, he left, closing the door behind him. I didn’t have time to catch my breath before my phone rang. I answered it with a grin.
“Please tell me you’re coming with me!” Rosie exclaimed. I was glad she was feeling better, and even happier that she was so excited about seeing our parents again.
“Sorry, Little Rose. I have a ton of work and besides, I’ve wanted the new apartment to myself ever since I walked in. I’m going to put Panic! At The Disco on full blast, dance naked, eat pizza, and paint while you’re gone.” Despite a pang of sadness at not being there with my family, this actually sounded like a great idea. It would certainly top our last two Christmases, one of which ended up with me giving Rosie a half-empty bottle of perfume, though she pretended it was brand new.
“I’m not going anywhere without you, you crazy ho. Not on Christmas.”
“Rosie…” I sighed, pushing my office chair back from my desk and standing up.
I spent the next ten minutes in the bathroom, multi-tasking, trying to convince her and brushing my hair with my fingers, trying to look good. “You’re being ridiculous. I just saw Mama and Daddy. It’s been two years since you’ve seen them. Please.”
“Come with me,” she insisted again.
“I want to save some money.”
“You make a fortune!”
“Now, maybe, but who knows what’ll happen in a month or two?”
Silence fell. She knew I was right. I was still looking for another job, knowing this one was only temporary. Vicious said so himself. He didn’t even live in New York year round.
