But Maude grabbed Edmund’s hand and arm and was trying to remove them from restraining her. She wanted to sling that dirt right back. She wasn’t about to let that stand.
But Edmund whispered in her ear. “You do realize you’re the only black face in this entire house?”
When he said those words it got her attention. She stopped the push and pull. “But she started it,” she said to Edmund with less venom.
“They don’t care that she started it. They’ll only see your retaliation, and fire you as a result. So wise up and knock it off!”
Maude looked at him as if he had some nerve telling her to wise up! But when she saw that his sky-blue eyes were lookingat her with a kindness she rarely saw in anybody, it caught her short. And she found herself staring at him. Who was this guy, she wondered, and was he as kind as his eyes?
As soon as Maude’s big brown eyes looked at Edmund with such a keen curiosity, he had an immediate reaction to her too. Only his reaction wasn’t just physical, although his sudden aroused penis told that her physical attributes was a part of it too. But his reaction was on a much deeper level than that. Because just looking into her eyes gave him a profound sense of relief that made him feel good in a strange, unpredictable way. It was as if he’d found somebody he’d lost when he’d never laid eyes on that woman before. But that was exactly the feeling he felt. Like finding something so precious that it overwhelmed him with emotion. And it was so sudden and so out of nowhere and so stark that it baffled him.
They stayed that way, staring at each other, as if neither one of them could break their stare. And suddenly that moment had nothing to do with Maude’s fellow reporter. It had nothing to do with his warning to Maude. Suddenly it was just the two of them. And they felteverything.
Maude felt the warmth of his arms around her waist. She felt the power of his thighs against her thighs and his hands and the bigness of his body. She even felt him expanding beneath her as it pressed her. As it aroused her.
Edmund felt the warmth of her waist as his arm encircled her. He felt her slender arm pressed against his chest. He felt her butt on top of his penis as if it belonged there. And that aroma that came off of her. She felt so fresh and so wonderful to him as if her perfume wasn’t from a bottle, but from her natural scent.
But mostly he felther. He felt the presence of a genuinely sweet, kind human being with a look in her eyes that was so sincere and honest and chocolate-brown that he couldn’t takehis own eyes off of her. She was on the young side. More likely in her mid-twenties when he was already thirty-eight. But that old soul within her shined through as if she could be his soulmate. Which he knew was ludicrous on its face. How could she be anything to him but another female to sleep with when he had his hands full in that department already?
But he couldn’t deny the attraction.
“Hello Edmund.”
That voice broke the spell and both of them quickly looked away from each other as if they’d been found out.
Natasha Keating, Maude’s new boss and Edmund’s sister, was standing there with a smirk on her face and a hand on her hip. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
Maude’s heart dropped. How could she have been so careless, and around her brand new boss no less? “You aren’t interrupting anything,” she said as she quickly got off of Edmund’s lap. “I was just . . . I was just . . .”
Maude couldn’t figure out what to say so she pointed across the room, as if to say she was headed in that direction before she landed on that strange man’s lap. But then she got an even worse revelation. What if that man was her boss’s boyfriend? What if he was her husband? And Maude was sitting on his lap??? She was mortified. She could not believe this was happening to her. So instead of trying to explain herself, she just headed across the room. She got away from both of them.
Natasha laughed, shook her head as if Maude was another sorry sap, and then sat beside her playboy brother. “Isn’t she a little young for you?”
“Since she’s not for me, then no.”
“It can’t be an accident, Edmund. Surely it just can’t be.”
Edmund looked at his older sister curiously. “What can’t be an accident?”
“You and your preferences! Does every single woman you’re attracted to have to be black? Every single one? That’s not the only race in this world you know. There are dozens more. But not to my kid brother. Not to Eddie. Black is always the new black for him.” Then she smiled. “Will you ever dateinsideyour race?”
Edmund wasn’t dignifying that silly question with a response. “Funny how I never thought of you as an editor,” he said instead.
“But I am one, so get used to it. And I aim to be a very good one. And I’m that young lady’s boss, so don’t go there. She’s actually one of the reporters around here with some potential, and I don’t want you mucking that up. Lay off of her.”
“Since I’m not laying on her, that won’t be a problem.”
Natasha smiled, then she grabbed his hand, stood up, and forced him on his feet. “Come! I want you to meet my fiancé.”
“Oh no not another one, Tasha!”
“Yes, another one,” she said. “Come!”
Edmund went reluctantly, but his eyes were scanning the room in search of that woman that rocked his world if only for a few minutes.
Maude was on the other side of the room, out of his eyeshot on purpose, and feeling so awkward by their encounter that she didn’t know what to do with herself. Her normal self would have quickly forgotten about that encounter and searched out that bitch who pushed her into his lap in the first place.
But that didn’t even enter her mind. She kept glancing over at Edmund as he conversed with his sister and a few other businessmen. She kept turning down her male colleagues who didn’t seemed concerned at all about the pitfalls of sleeping with a coworker. She even tried to text her source again. But he never text her back.
