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“Is this how we’re going to do this, then?” I asked. “You just grab what you like, stick your mouth where you like?”
“Only if you’re into it like we agreed,” Lucas said, smiling at me like he was really pleased with himself now.
That was not what we had agreed, but of course it was impossible for me to argue that now. “You’re not fucking cute, you know that? You act like you can just talk or smile or flutter your eyelashes out of anything, but it’s not true. You keep pulling this shit and you’ll just have everyone seeing right through what you’re doing. People already see through what you’re doing. You should have heard what Ashleigh had to say to me the other day.”
Once that was out of my mouth, I realised I’d made a big mistake. And for all I’d said about his bullshit tactics, I knew I didn’t have one percent of his probable ability to get out of even a situation this bad.
“I’ll be sure to ask her about that on Monday,” he said now, “if I don’t see her before then. I’m sure she’ll be very interested in hearing just how much she can trust you with her thoughts.”
“I’m not usually like that, repeating what other people said,” I protested. “I just… you’ve got me so confused at the moment…”
“Because you like this,” Lucas said, his hand sliding up and down a little, shifting my skirt over my skin.
“No,” I said, “I mean, not necessarily, I—”
“I wouldn’t bother fucking around with you if you didn’t,” Lucas said. “Seriously, Callie, you’re constantly showing me you want this, even if you’re too shy to say it in words. Makes it a lot more fun than some girl who just opens her legs because I breathe in her direction, actually.”
“It is true,” I said, “you’re going to have to do a lot more than breathe to get me to just roll over for you.”
“Oh, of course,” Lucas said. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from you. But actually I really hope you don’t just roll over, Callie. Because that would probably attract a lot of attention you won’t want.”
I didn’t quite know what I was supposed to take from that, but I knew better than to ask.
When we pulled into a parking spot in front of Stacks Brothers, Lucas shifted his hand off me in a perfectly natural move as he went to grab the door. I could never forget that this guy probably ate girls for breakfast.
“Wait,” I said, as he stepped out. “I need you to help me put the roof up.”
“You’re going to be right next to it the whole time in there, right?” Lucas said, staring at the building. “It’s got a glass front and you just sit… right there?”
I didn’t bother asking him when he’d come by and watched me at work. “Dane and the other guys are going to tell me off if I leave it up again. They think it’s insecure no matter what, that I’m just making myself look like a target.”
“Well,” Lucas said, “what I think is that you shouldn’t be letting men other than me tell you what to do.”
I shivered. It was strange to think of him as a man, though technically I supposed he was now. I could barely cope when I was just thinking of him as an old version of that boy who’d made my life a bemused misery when I was ten. “Are you sure I can’t convince you to, I don’t know, go take a walk to the mall or something while I’m working?”
“Oh hell no,” said Lucas. He disappeared from my view for a second, and I started when he came up behind me and started herding me towards the doors, his hands straying so close to my arse I didn’t dare slow down. “I’m going to be right there next to you making sure nothing happens to your car if you have to take a toilet break.”
Dane appeared from somewhere in the back rooms to meet me, just like he had ever since I’d started working there. It was nice to say hi to him, to chat a bit, but I knew he was doing it less because he liked me and wanted to be friendly and more because I was a little girl to him, and that was not what I wanted. I wanted to be seen as a serious prospect for co-managing the place, taking on the role Dane’s useless brother had skipped out on long before my time, and failing that I was eager to become a trained operator of backhoes or forklifts or the like, and throw myself into the mix as one of Dane’s contractors. Anything that would get me out of a secretarial role and somewhere I would at least be believed when I said I had aspirations for myself that went further than finding a man to marry who could give me half a dozen babies to worry about.
Today, I couldn’t think about anything but how I was going to look bringing what looked for all the world like a boyfriend to work. But, of course, Lucas came forward and introduced himself and Dane fell right all over him and got him a chair he could squeeze in alongside mine at my desk, never mind even glancing at me the whole time. Maybe he was just so relieved there was now some man around to keep his uppity accountant-secretary from getting ideas women weren’t supposed to have. He didn’t even call me out over the damn car, though I saw him flick a glance out the window at it.
“You know,” I said once Dane had disappeared into his back rooms, leaving us mercifully without scrutiny. “I wish you weren’t able to do that.”
“What’s that?” Lucas shadowed me with all the dedication of a baby duck, settling himself with annoying grace into his chair after I’d dropped into mine.
“You just somehow have this way of talking people into letting you get away with things the rest of us never would,” I said, “and it bugs me.” The first thing on my list, as always, was double-checking all Dane’s figures from the previous day. All the other parts of a business were hinged on getting the numbers right, and on this occasion even if Lucas managed to hijack my productivity such that I became horrendously behind with everything else, I would at least have the most important details under control.
“You see,” Lucas said, “that is completely the wrong attitude to be taking about it. Instead of looking at me like I’m some annoying unattainable standard… see if you can work out how to attain those same things for yourself.”
“It’s a very masculine way of doing things,” I observed. I started dashing off some calculations on my notepaper. With Lucas talking to me I was going to have to go over everything three times, but if I threw him out I’d just spend the entire two hours worrying about what he’d do when I left, so this was the solution I had to go with.
“We men are known for being good at just taking what we need to take,” Lucas said, and then, so smoothly I didn’t even see him shift his position, his hand was on my knee again.
I must have been making some dramatic face, because he murmured, “Easy,” like I was a wild animal in need of a bit of taming. I certainly felt like that was the case. My eyes were flicking around the room: to the door that led out to the street and my car, to the open doorway which Dane could walk through at any moment. If Dane or any of the contractors or potential clients saw me squabbling with an apparent boyfriend while I was supposed
to be working, it wouldn’t end well for me.
I tried to ignore him and keep working, but it was proving difficult when his fingertips were running lightly over my skin, not quite tickling but definitely making my leg jump every now and then.
