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At work, I had my hands full with the investors, and we hadn’t gotten around to getting another secretary yet. My company was doing well. We were releasing new products every other week. Market surveys looked great, the feedback and reviews were positive, and our beta testers had come back with positive criticism. Nothing was wrong.
So there was no reason for me to feel the way I did.
I had a feeling it had to do with Rena, but I didn’t know what it could be about. Lately, we hadn’t been spending a lot of time together. Since we’d arrived back from Boston, we’d both been working ourselves to death and there hadn’t been time for even a short conversation, never mind something more.
Maybe I was sexually frustrated. That could be it. Maybe I needed a good fuck to get it out of my system.
I wanted it from Rena. I wasn’t going to go looking for someone else just because Rena and I were too busy to get around to each other. When I’d told her I expected to be exclusive, I had set that same rule for myself. I was a bit of a womanizer, I was willing to admit to that, but I wasn’t a dick.
I had to make a plan to get Rena alone again. Now that she wasn’t my secretary it was harder, but I knew where she lived and I could make things happen. I was Brent Hooper, for crying out loud. I could do whatever I wanted and get away with it.
With that little fact in mind, I started working. I pushed through, focusing on what needed to be done. When I felt I had been working for hours, I glanced at the clock. It had to be nearing lunchtime.
Only a half hour had passed. I groaned. What was going on with me today? I felt so fucking unfulfilled, and I had no idea how to fix it.
I got up and walked to the break room to make myself a cup of coffee, stretch my legs, and get away from my computer for a while. Maybe all I needed was a change of scenery. Maybe I had to get out of the office altogether. When I’d been in Boston, I had been able to concentrate so well. But Rena had been with me for most of the trip. Maybe it was what had kept me on track.
I groaned. I couldn’t get her off my mind, and I couldn’t help but think she was the reason things either went really well or really terribly. And it irritated me because it wasn’t who I was. I had never allowed someone to affect my mood so much before.
When I returned to my office with my coffee, my phone rang.
“I have a furniture delivery for you here, Mr. Hooper,” Margaret said, calling from the front desk.
“Right, I’m expecting them,” I said. “Send them up.”
I put down the phone and walked to Rena’s office. She sat at the small desk she had at her disposal, the whole thing covered with papers.
“Your new desk is here,” I said, knocking on her open door twice so that she looked up at me.
“Oh, great,” she said, jumping up. She started cleaning up her desk, neatly stacking the papers in piles before putting them in rows on the floors. This was why she had been such a good secretary. Rena was extremely organized. She’d been away from my office for a week now, and I had already drowned in pure chaos.
“Let me help,” I said. I stepped toward the desk, but I had no idea what to do with the papers. She had a system, and I didn’t want to mess with it. So I started packing ornaments and picture frames into a box that stood empty next to the desk.
I couldn’t help but glance at the photos as I packed them away. There were photos of her and some friends out on the town. She was the most attractive of the lot of them. She had photos of what I assumed to be her parents, too. She appeared to be a sentimental person. It made more sense to me now why learning she had a sister and having to meet her could be difficult. Rena struck me more and more as the kind of person that could allow herself to become very attached to someone.
I would be lucky to have someone like her feel so deeply for me.
What was I thinking? I berated myself for wandering down the road again and focused on what I was doing.
It didn’t take very long for us to clear the desk. We carried it out of the office together. We were a good team. Rena wasn’t scared of physical work, which was admirable.
When her office was cleared, ready for the new desk to arrive, Rena looked at the empty space with her hands on her hips.
