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She shook her head. “It’s okay. I just didn’t hear you. I kind of go off into my own little world.” She looked down at her gym gear and shrugged awkwardly. “I have trouble switching my brain off. Exercise helps but I always hated running and sport and stuff. But yoga…it’s all about angles and weight and balance. I think they designed it for architects. You focus so hard on getting everything lined up and balanced, you forget to think. And I need to not think, right now.”
I nodded. I couldn’t even imagine the stress she was under. “You looked good.” Shit. It just spilled out before my brain had a chance to vet it. “I mean, you make it look good.” Not much better. “I mean, you make it look easy.” Smooth, JD, real smooth.
Her gray eyes glittered in the darkness, analyzing everything, probably realizing I’d been staring at her ass. She ducked her head and I couldn’t see, in the darkness, if she was blushing. “You should try it.”
“Me?!”
“I could show you. It might help your back. Your back hurts, right?”
How did she… Sure, my back hurt, but I just pushed on through, like you were meant to. No one else had ever been able to tell, not even the Stormfinch guys I worked with every day. She must have studied me as I walked, locating that knot of muscle in my back the same way she’d find the stress point in a building or a bridge. “Thanks. But I don’t think I can see myself in Lycra.”
She nodded meekly. My eyes were adjusting to the dim light, and I could make out more details. Her gym top was cherry red and it must have some sort of built-in bra because I couldn’t see any bra straps, but I couldn’t see any nipples, either. Stop staring at her boobs! And her tights were sea green and outlined every luscious curve of her rear. And her ass!
I stalked out, closed the door and leaned against it. From now on, I’d make damn sure I stayed out of that room because if I saw her in that tight yoga gear again, I was going to do something dumb. I let out a long growl of frustration, my cock still rock hard against my thigh. Being this close to her was torture.
And it got worse. For the next week, I never left her side for more than a half hour.
The days fell into a routine. I got up early, went up to the roof and ran a few laps around it, looking out at the city as the dawn broke across it. Then I’d grab a shower and eat breakfast with Lorna, Cody and Paige. Usually it was oatmeal and toast and stuff but one morning, Cody got me talking about food and I mentioned I used to make blueberry pancakes. He’d never had them. And before I knew what I was doing, I’d asked Paige to pick up flour, eggs and extra milk when she went grocery shopping. The next day I made a batch of them, hot and fluffy and drowning in maple syrup, and Cody thought they were the best thing ever. Lorna—who kept telling us she was too busy for breakfast—even tried some and just for a second…
Just for a second, I felt like I had a family again.
Paige took Cody to school each day, with one of the FBI agents riding shotgun. I went downstairs with Lorna and watched over her all day, either at the office or on-site visits. She was managing to keep everything running but as fast as she tackled one problem, a new one would come up. The latest thing was pay negotiations with the workers building the hydroelectric dam in Poland. “We have these negotiations every five years,” Lorna told me. “My dad always handled it and it always went fine. But with me, their negotiator’s just digging his heels in, holding out for more and more money. It’s like they’re seeing how far they can push me.”
I was worried about her. She was working twelve- hour days, barely eating and I guessed barely sleeping, either. Each day, she looked a little paler and more drawn. Meanwhile, business journalists were writing clickbait articles about how she was a mom, not a CEO, and it made me mad. They didn’t realize that all those feminine qualities they thought were weaknesses were strengths. Yeah, she was a mom. It meant she cared about every employee like they were her kids. And just like a mom, she’d sacrifice her own health to look after them.
Early one morning, the tailor showed up with a whole pile of clothes for me: two suits, one gray and one blue, and eight tailored shirts. I stared at them, trying to get my head around clothes that cost as much as I made in a month. But when I pulled them on…holy shit. The shirts were the softest thing I’d ever felt and they fit like a glove: suddenly all my cheap shirts felt uncomfortable and scratchy. And the suit…wearing one still felt unnatural but this one kind of flowed around me, moving when I did, instead of pulling and catching, and when I took a look in the mirror…dammit, I thought I actually looked good.
