AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Not tonight,” I whisper. “Tonight, I’m your fiancée. Jane, was it?”
He swears. “It was always you. Which I should apologize for.”
“Or you could make it up to me.” My voice sounds pleading, halfway between aching and breathy.
The elevator arrives at his floor.
The doors open.
And he doesn’t move.
His eyes stay locked on my mouth. “You deserve that,” he murmurs. “You deserve everything.”
But that can’t be true, because if it were, I’d have Mr. Newton Smith to call my own, every day, instead of just today, for an hour of pretend. And no amount of bold flirting on my part will change that, no matter how tightly he holds my hand or how right it feels when he gathers me in his arms.
The man has had multiple chances to kiss me and he hasn’t taken any of them.
The odds that I have gravely misunderstood this situation are rising higher by the second.
I push against his chest. “Can we just get this over with?”
“Definitely not.” His voice is thick, his words slow. Then he frowns. “Get what over with?”
“You…I don’t know. Giving me some kind of very kind reminder that we can’t blur the lines between boss and assistant, and I shouldn’t overstep or interject myself into a situation I don’t fully understand, and—”
“There’s more?”
“I hope not.”
“That makes two of us.” He groans and pushes off the wall of the elevator and catches my wrist, all in one sudden fluid motion. “Come on.”
I follow mutely as he tugs me through the still-open elevator doors into a private foyer. There’s only one door ahead of us, and he opens that in the blink of an eye.
I’ve never been in his private residence before. I’ve seen photos, but the grass wall isn’t where I thought it was, and the whole place is bigger than I imagined.
Bigger, emptier, and…solemn.
That’s very Rufus, of course.
I bet he has a whole room dedicated to bow ties and pocket squares.
“I’m not going to lecture you,” he says as he guides me forward, his hand on the small of my back.
“I think I saidgentle reminder.”
“But you were thinkinglecture.” His voice is dry.
He’s not wrong.
“I kept that thought to myself,” I say.
“You kept it quiet,” he corrects. “Your face gave it away.”
Stupid face. I pull away from him, feeling silly. I let some fantasies carry me away and spin what might happen today with my handsome, older, wealthy boss. And in the end, he saw through me the whole time. Not to my desire, but to my self-conscious worry. To my fear.
And maybe to my guilt.
My heels tap on the hardwood floor as I cross to the living wall, whichisvery cool, then to the floor to ceiling window looking down at the city below. “It’s very strange,” I murmur.
