Chapter 1
Brooklyn, New York, January 1903
Iwillnotlustafter my secretary today.
Garrett MacInness took a deep breath of icy air and repeated the mantra as he turned the corner onto Jay Street, the old firehouse looming in front of him. The imposing granite structure that jutted five stories above street level was not intimidating for its soaring Gothic turrets or wide windows resembling gnashing teeth, but for its occupant.
Miss Sarah Wilton.Sadie. The reason he no longer wore snug trousers to work for fear of bursting the buttons at his fly each time she shot a quip in his direction. The cause of his daily walks during the dinner hour, because he could not stand to watch her eat her sandwich in tiny bites, her pink tongue darting out periodically to catch the crumbs on her lower lip. The justification for his willingness to brave the trolley ride and ten-block walk through the—was thissleet? Hail? Some ungodly combination of the two?—so she wouldn’t have to prepare the mailing about an upcoming legislative vote alone.
The reason he walked away from the job that kept clothes on his back and food on his table, the job that heated the midtown apartment he’d finally paid off after years toiling on Wall Street, only to take up an unpaid post with the Brooklyn Women’s Suffrage Society.
But she didn’t need to know any of that.
I will not lust after my secretary today,he repeated as he tugged open the heavy door of the retired firehouse. When the department built a more modern facility down the street, Garrett’s best friend Ben had snapped up the property to serve as headquarters of the Brooklyn Women’s Suffrage Society. Sadie had been a brilliant addition as the first official employee, hired to answer letters and manage the day-to-day operations of the rapidly growing organization. Garrett made the mistake of calling her a secretary once, and she’d given him a verbal lashing that had left him hard and wanting for hours after.
He’d relegated the suffrage cause to the sparse hours after his time laboring for Mr. J.P. Morgan, the drudgery only broken by anticipating when he would arrive at the firehouse to see the formidableabsolutely-not-hissecretary. But last week he’d laughed in the face of his manager when the man demanded Garrett work through yet another weekend. And now, one of the up-and-coming proteges of the financial world was woefully unemployed and carrying an unrequited torch for a woman with permanently ink-stained fingertips and a fearsome glare.
He kept up the ruse that he had grown more efficient, spending fewer hours in his office so he could support the society.A temporary leave, he’d called it when she remarked on his sudden free time.
Sadie didn’t have to know the effect she had on him, especially when he had a cross-town commute to get his arousal under control. Or so he thought. What a fool he was, pretending he could curb his ardor for the flaxen-haired termagant who terrorized his days and haunted his nights by walking throughprecipitation.
“Good morning, Miss Wilton,” he bellowed as he tugged the door shut behind him, blocking out the gust of wind that threatened to tear his bowler hat from his head. It had already claimed his scarf somewhere around Cathedral Place, and he couldn’t stand to discard another layer without succumbing to the elements.
“Mnnh?” Sadie didn’t bother looking up from the newspaper she scoured, spectacles perched on the end of her pert nose.
Those spectacles haunted him as well, particularly once he imagined her riding his cock wearing only them, her small breasts captured in his hands as she encouraged him to—
“Fuck me!” She slammed the paper down on the desk.
“Language, Miss Wilton!“ He unbuttoned his jacket, shook the lingering sleet from the wool, and hung it on the coat rack by the door before turning to face her with a smirk. Sadie enjoyed publicly eschewing any evidence of her Upper-West-Side upbringing whenever possible; besides her impressive repertoire of profanities, she ate with her hands, wore trousers even if the weather didn’t allow for it, and, most painfully, dismissed the practice of courtship and marriage as outdated and nonsensical.
Garrett appreciated a trouser-wearing, foulmouthed woman. In fact, just last month he had worked up the courage to ask her to dinner, and would readily take her out again, despite how disastrously the evening had gone.
Because as much as he wanted to deny it, Garrett did not simply lust over his secretary.
He suspected he may be in love with her.
“You’ll never catch a husband with a mouth like that.”
“Good,” she fired back, and he grinned. He enjoyed needling her, watching the color rise in her fair cheeks as her blue eyes blazed.
He flopped into the chair beside her in what he hoped was a nonchalant gesture but was most likely terribly awkward, like most of his attempts to communicate or, in fact, commune with Miss Sadie Wilton. “What has you summoning me to engage in carnal relations with you?”
Was it his imagination or were her ears reddening? “If Francis Linden cannot pull his head out of his ass, I’m going to have to do it for him.”
“How charitable of you.” Garrett plucked the newspaper from her clenched fists and spread it out. The pallid face of the conservative lawmaker smirked back at him. “Lord, not this fool again.”
“Oh yes, he’s back with yet another restriction on women. This time—” she flicked the paper and scowled, “—the blunderbuss wants to restrict unmarried women from receiving maternal care from the state.”
“He’s getting more creative. Bully for him,” he drawled, attempting to ignore how, even when glowering, Sadie managed to look utterly adorable with her furrowed tawny brows and rosy cheeks.
Too rosy, now that he thought about it. “Sadie, it’s freezing in here.”
“I know.”
Did she? Her nose was in the paper again, reading at a fantastic rate, judging by the speed at which her eyes traveled over the letters. “Did you turn on the furnace?”
“We’re out of coal.”
