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It was warm and sunny, the sky high above the skyscrapers a beautiful blue. Spring was warming New York. I dressed at six as usual, eating breakfast in my kitchen and checking my boss’s schedule on my phone.
My boss, Aidan Winters. Who I definitely had not fucked on Saturday night.
Oh, God.
You can do this, Samantha.
In my work clothes and my regular makeup, I looked nothing like Sarah, the woman who had picked up a stranger in a bar. The man she had hooked up with was a beautiful specimen in a dark blue suit, not New York’s infamous Man in Black.
I scrolled through Aidan’s schedule for today. He was scheduled to be at the Monday meeting, which was a company-wide check-in to set up the week. Since Tower had only twenty employees in the New York office, it was easy to have meetings that included everyone. Sometimes Aidan attended them and sometimes he didn’t. Today he was going to be there.
He had more meetings in the afternoon: with Finance, with Legal. After staying away from the office for weeks to avoid me, now he was going to be there all day. It was probably on purpose, because everything Aidan did was on purpose. Let’s see if we can get along, this schedule said. I’m willing to try if you are.
There was one way to find out. I finished my breakfast and went to work.
I got to the office at eight and did my usual routine. I opened Aidan’s office and booted up his MacBook. I prepped the meeting room for the Monday meeting. I went through Aidan’s email, sorting the urgent from the not-so-urgent and the garbage. I picked up the firm’s mail from the receptionist at the front desk and sorted through the things that Aidan would need to see.
At eight forty-five, I heard his voice in the open office, talking to the receptionist. As if I had a radar attached to me, I heard his footsteps as he walked into his office and sat at his desk.
The moment of truth. I picked up papers from my own desk and walked—briskly, normally—to his office door.
Aidan was behind his desk, dressed in his usual black. He was clean-shaven, his hair combed neatly back from his forehead, his dark eyes intent as he read something on his MacBook screen. He looked up at me, and his expression gave nothing away. “Good morning, Samantha.”
“Morning,” I said. I stepped into the office and put a paper on his desk. “This is the itinerary for the Monday meeting. Oscar is sick today, so he’s going to phone in.”
“Did the signed contracts get sent to Wells and Vane?”
“I couriered them first thing. I’ll get a call when the receptionist signs for them.”
“They have to be there by ten.”
“They will be.”
It was a normal conversation. We’d had a dozen Monday morning conversations just like it. And what I felt as we talked was pure, unmixed relief. With the strangeness of Chicago and the weeks afterward, I’d missed Aidan, my boss. I’d missed my job, which I genuinely liked. I’d missed feeling normal.
We were normal again, thanks to the game.
Well, almost normal. When he handed me papers, the sight of his hand reminded me of
the moment when it was inside my black panties, making me come as he said dirty things in my ear. And I definitely, definitely wasn’t thinking about him deep inside me, saying I’m going to make you come. Which he had.
Those things had happened to different people. I had a staff meeting to arrange.
We had finished our business conversation, and Aidan had drunk most of his first coffee of the day. I was turning to leave his office when he said, “Oh, Samantha, there’s one more thing.”
“Yes?” I turned back.
“I have some dry cleaning I need to have picked up this afternoon. Do you mind doing it for me?”
Never, not once, had Aidan made me pick up his dry cleaning. He’d always treated that job as beneath me. For a second I was angry, and then I remembered Aidan never did anything unless it was on purpose.
He was up to something.
His expression gave nothing away, so I said, “Picking up dry cleaning isn’t really in my job description, Aidan. Maybe you should get an intern.”
He leaned back in his chair. “I don’t trust an intern with the codes to my penthouse, Samantha. I only trust you.”
His penthouse. I’d never been there, though I knew he lived on the Upper East Side. “You need your dry cleaning dropped off at your penthouse?”
