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‘I’m prepared to recycle and do my bit to conserve fossil fuels, but I’m not having sex with Hunter.’
CHAPTER FIVE
I tried to ignore him, really I did. I ignored him so hard I walked into walls while trying not to look at him.
I took my classes. I trained. I attended meetings and managed to look focused and professional, which was more than could be s
aid of the rest of the female staff, who spent their time with their noses pressed to the glass windows of whichever space he happened to be working in.
Hunter managed focused and professional, too.
But that’s the funny thing about intense sexual attraction. You can try and ignore it, but it’s still there. You can feel it on your skin. It simmers in the air, wraps itself around you, seeps into your brain and makes concentration difficult. I knew without turning my head when he was in the room, and not just because I couldn’t get any sense out of my female clients.
And he seemed to be avoiding me, too.
Neither of us mentioned what had happened in the changing room that night.
Our interaction was all business. At least, on the outside.
A week after he’d arrived to take control, he pulled us all into the meeting room on the top floor of the building and told us his plans for the business. He talked about his vision. Unfortunately, he did it while wearing a karate suit and everyone else’s vision was focused on his broad, muscular chest rather than his presentation. I kept my eyes on the floor but it didn’t help. I kept remembering how it had felt with his mouth on mine and his fingers deep inside me. That sort of intimacy isn’t easy to forget.
I shifted in my chair and caught his eye.
Shit.
I was glad I wasn’t the one giving the presentation. I would have been stammering and distracted but Hunter didn’t falter.
With the benefit of five years apart and some distance, I could see now why I’d been overwhelmed by him. Dazzled. I didn’t feel like quite so much of a fool for falling for him. He was impressive. Self-assured, confident, self-reliant. All the things I hadn’t been as a teenager. He’d been around at a time of my life when I’d been at my most vulnerable. It was as if something in me had been looking to supplement what was missing, to borrow what I didn’t have myself.
I’d been looking for security, consistency and dependability because I had none of those things at home. Using our parents as an example, Hayley chose to reject everything to do with marriage and settling with one person. She became a lone wolf. But I’d always been more of a pack person and Hunter was a born alpha.
I realized now that as well as friendship and sexual attraction, there had been a lot of other things mixed up in our relationship. I realized we hadn’t really been equals.
Things were different now.
I’d built a life I loved, my sister was my family and we had a great bunch of friends. True, my sex life was mostly battery operated but a girl couldn’t have everything.
‘Are you joining us tonight? Team night out. We’re going to a club.’ Caroline’s mouth gleamed with freshly applied lip gloss. I turned away to avoid the glare, wondering if the extra shine was for Hunter’s benefit.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Hunter wants us all there. He’s really keen on team building. He wants us to bond.’
He and I had already done more than enough bonding.
I needed to keep my distance.
But Caroline was looking at me curiously and I realized that to not go would draw attention, so I nodded and decided to arrive late and leave early.
Like so many of my plans, that one backfired. Because I’d elected to arrive late, I found myself squashed in a booth, thigh to thigh with Hunter. He’d bought drinks, and everyone was laughing and enjoying themselves.
Everyone except me.
I couldn’t think of anything but his thigh pressed against mine. I tried to ease away but James arrived, even later than me, and sat down on the other side of me, leaving me no choice but to move closer to Hunter.
My thigh was glued to his. I tried to ease it away but there was nowhere to go and I sat there keeping as still as I could, trying not to think about that night in the changing room. I stared at the dance floor and nursed my drink, wondering why on earth I’d agreed to come tonight.
Across from me Caroline stood up. ‘Let’s all dance.’
