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And then she’d stormed out of my house like I was evil incarnate.
All because of a stupid stack of papers.
I had thought that she would understand. Beverly had long since proven to me that she was both practical and driven. While I wished I didn’t have to have an NDA for anyone in the industry that I shared the night with, I’d long since learned my lesson.
It’s happened about a dozen years earlier, when a woman I’d had a tryst with had tried to blackmail me. It had been such a PR nightmare because she had taken… er… photographic evidence of certain things and wanted quite a pretty penny for them.
I remembered feeling stupid after. Tricked. Used. And I vowed to never put myself into that situation again. The contract protected me, made sure that my trust couldn’t be violated again. If Bev had just given me a chance to explain, I was certain she would have gotten it. She knew what it was like for people to break their word, to take advantage.
Or would she?
Maybe I was just far too hung up on her. Like she had said multiple times, she was just an assistant. A nobody. A recent graduate who hadn’t had a chance to amount to anything and would stand to benefit quite a bit by being involved with me.
Perhaps that was why she was so angered by the contract. Maybe she’d had nefarious purposes in mind and was upset that he cut her off at the pass. Maybe her entire virginity story was fabricated to try to lure him in.
No.
I knew that wasn’t the case.
Bev wasn’t the type to lie, and even if she did, I could tell that she had never had sex before. While people’s obsession with the hymen was so scientifically inaccurate it was often ridiculous, there were other ways to tell. The nervousness, the uncertainty, the way her body resisted his push like it had never been entered.
The way she had looked at him with those green, green eyes.
I sighed and let my head rest in my hands. What was I doing?
“Mr. Fitzgerald?”
The intercom at my door buzzed with my other secretary’s voice and I tried not to automatically bark out a response. I wasn’t a child, throwing a temper tantrum because I didn’t get what I wanted. I didn’t need to take my crankiness out on my employees.
Even if they were grating on my last nerve.
Maybe I was the one who’d gotten too reliant on Bev’s soothing presence.
“Yes?”
“Charlie’s here for you, sir.” I didn’t like her using the same honorific that Bev used for me. It sounded wrong. Grating.
“What? I thought we were supposed to meet Thursday.”
“He says he’s here for pleasure, sir. Not business. He’d like to take you out to lunch if you still have time for old friends like him. Those are his words, sir. Not mine.”
“Yeah, I figured.” I rubbed my temples, wanting more than anything to send him away. But I couldn’t just sulk because my hookup was mad at me. I had a business to run, after all.
“Fine. Tell him I’m on my way down.”
There was a pause where I assumed, she was using her company phone to relay my agreement to Charlie. He had the number of both of them, of course, as well as several other high-level managers. “He says he’s out front in his town car. Try not to dawdle.”
“Tell him to shove it,” I said, managing the slightest chuckle at the old goat’s chutzpah before getting out from behind my desk. If anyone could distract me, it was him.
Our lunch ended up taking two hours and did help the afternoon go faster, but I still felt scraped like a raw nerve by the time I got home. I went straight to my bed and collapsed, hoping it would comfort me, but instead I still smelled Bev’s presence.
It had to be mostly in my head considering that I had changed the sheets, but just like my desk she lingered there, marking me. I just wanted some peace, but my mind kept returning to her again and again.
“This is ridiculous,” I told myself, groaning and holding my head in my hands. I’d had lots of great sex before. Why was I letting this young, orphan girl from nowhere affect me like she was Aphrodite herself?
I didn’t know, and I didn’t like what that particular line of thought made me think. Life was always better when my work was my center and the rest of my life was only fun. Bev wasn’t fun. She was wonder and ecstasy and warmth but not fun. She was far too intense for that.
I groaned and draped an arm over my face, wondering if I had lost her forever. Because as much as I told myself that I shouldn’t care, that I was being stupid, I couldn’t help but feel a jagged sort of loss in my bed where she had just been not too long ago.
