"I like this job. It's a good job."
He scoffed at this. "It's not like there's one good job in the world and this is it. What about the time Jenner tried to poach you? He offered to make you his assistant-at, I believe, almost double the salary. And you didn't take it."
Erik Jenner was an old friend of his, going back to prep school. They played golf and talked sports and tried to outdo each other with bigger boats, better cars and everything else. It hadn't surprised him at all that Jenner had tried to poach Liberty for his real estate business. He was surrounding himself with the best talent money could buy.
What had surprised him was that Liberty had said no. Not that she'd told Marcus-Jenner himself had related this whole story with the air of one who had failed in his quest and didn't know why.
Marcus didn't, either.
"I didn't like Mr. Jenner," she countered. That got Marcus's attention. Then she quickly added, "I mean, I didn't like his business model. His real estate developments seemed unsustainable."
"You play it safe, Liberty. You're more than smart enough to go elsewhere and move up the ladder. But you won't take the risk. Are you really content to be my executive assistant for the rest of your life?"
She opened her mouth to answer, but just then their first courses arrived. The waiter explained their dishes for them and instructed Liberty on how to eat hers. She gamely sampled her dish while giving Marcus's lily bulbs the side eye.
"They're good," he told her, spearing one on his fork. "Try one."
He held out his fork to her and, after a moment's pause, she leaned forward. Her lips closed over the bulb and he suddenly realized exactly why he'd asked if she was dating anyone-it wasn't because he was concerned that she was burning herself out.
It was because watching her lips slide off the tines of his fork was close to a holy experience. Her eyes widened as she chewed and then the tip of her tongue slipped out and traced the seam of her lips.
"I don't know how you can accuse me of playing it safe," she said in a low voice, "when you're feeding me bulbs and God only knows what else." She dipped her spoon into her bowl and held it out for him to taste. "I take lots of risks."
Seven
Marcus leaned forward, with a glint in his eyes that she wasn't sure she'd ever seen before. "Do you?" he asked, and then took her spoon into his mouth.
Liberty's heart beat so fast that she wouldn't be surprised if Marcus could see it thumping in her chest. Him feeding her? Her feeding him? She stared at his mouth, at his lips. Was it wrong to wonder what it'd be like to feel his lips moving on her body as they moved on her spoon?
Would it be bad if she found out?
She shook her head. That must be the wine talking because right now? This was a hell of a risk. The kind that could put her job in jeopardy. Under any normal circumstances, it would be unacceptable.
But there was very little about today that felt normal. Including this dinner.
Especially this dinner.
Still, she didn't know how to answer him. So instead she turned her attention back to her dish. She was forced to call it a dish because she simply had no other words to describe it. She wasn't sure that what she was eating qualified as food.
She took a sip of the most expensive wine she'd ever had. "This is good. Weird, but good."
"Next time, we'll go to a steak house," he told her in between bulbs.
"Next time?" Because this dinner walked a fine line between a business dinner and a date. Having more of the same would be decidedly date-like.
She couldn't date Marcus, no matter how wonderful it might be. She wasn't the kind of woman who belonged in a place like this, drinking wine that cost hundreds of dollars and eating things that barely met the basic standards of being edible while also probably costing several hundred dollars. There hadn't been any prices on the menu, which, in her experience, was a bad sign.
She was the kind of woman who considered a five-dollar bottle of wine and a carryout pizza to be a rare treat. If she got really wild, she'd go to the small Thai restaurant a block away and get pad see ew.
"The question remains," Marcus said, finishing his bulbs. "You haven't left me. Why?"
"Because." She was aware that wasn't much of an answer. But it was the only answer she had.
Because Marcus was right. She'd worked her ass off to get this position, to get to a point in her life where she wasn't living on the line that divided poverty and extreme poverty. The fact that she'd made it this far? Gotten off public assistance, paid off all her college debt and was finally able to say that she was comfortable? Valuable?
Why on God's green earth would she want to risk that?
"Because is not an answer," Marcus said. The waiter reappeared, cleared their dishes and refilled their wineglasses. Liberty sipped-slowly.
You haven't left me. That was what he'd asked and she'd truly never thought of it in that light. She'd stayed with a job. She hadn't stayed with the man.
Had she?
She thought back to Erik Jenner, how he'd arrived in the office unexpectedly one day. He'd propped himself up on the corner of her desk and smiled down at her. It wasn't the kind of smile that Marcus gave her-no, this was different. Jenner was attractive and rich-on paper, he wasn't that different from Marcus. But the way he'd looked at her made her uncomfortable.
He'd offered her a lot of money and a lot of responsibility if she'd jump ship. And she'd be lying if she said the money wasn't tempting.
But she hadn't wanted to risk it-any of it. Having a boss who made her uncomfortable. Starting over in a place where people would ask questions about her: where she'd gone to school, who her family was. As tempting as the money had been, it hadn't made up for the stability-the safety-that Marcus offered her.
"I don't want you to work on Saturdays anymore," Marcus announced over the lip of his wineglass.
"It would affect my job performance," she informed him.
"Fine. Then I'm giving you a raise. I pay you now for a forty-hour week. I'll up that by twenty percent."
She choked on her wine. "You'll what?"
Oh, that lazy smile-that could be her undoing, if she let it. She wouldn't let it. "Really, Liberty, you need to work on your negotiation skills. A good negotiator would have come back with thirty percent."
"I wasn't even asking for a raise!"
"True. A good negotiator would have used Jenner's job offer to ask for one. He offered you thirty percent more than I'm paying you with stock options. The benefits package was considerable and you didn't even tell me about it." He wagged a finger at her as if he were scolding her. "I've seen you be a hard-ass with clients for me. Can't you do that for yourself?"
"I don't-" She exhaled.
"Ask me for something," he demanded, leaning forward and pinning her with his gaze. "Right now. Tell me what you want."
Liberty began to panic because she'd had enough wine that she couldn't be 100 percent sure that she wouldn't say something horrible, such as she wanted him. Because she did. This felt like a dream: Marcus Warren sitting across from her in a dimly lit restaurant, offering her what her heart desired. All she had to do was say the word.
She bit down on the inside of her cheek-hard. The pain snapped her out of her reverie. "I want my food," she said in a light tone. "I think your bulb thingies were better than my-my whatever it was."
He stared at her. "Are you afraid of me? Is that it?"
"Don't be ridiculous," she retorted.
"Then why won't you tell me what you want? Come on, Liberty! Do you realize that today, asking if you could leave early to go see William-that was the first time you've ever asked to leave work early? That's not normal. People have appointments, stuff comes up. People get sick. But not you."
"Did it ever occur to you that I already have everything I want? I like my job. I like working for you. Nothing has to change."
He gave her a look then that seared her. Heat flushed her, starting low in her back and racing upward like a forest fire. He leaned forward and although she knew she needed to lean back, to break his gaze-to do anything to put a little distance between them-she felt the pull of his body on hers. He was like gravity. That's what this was-an unseen force that guided her every movement.
"What if it's already changed?" He reached out and put his hand on top of hers. His touch was warm against her skin-intimate, even. The air around them felt charged with electricity, and the shock of it all made it hard to sit still. "What if we can't go back?"