Both he and Savvy froze, and then they turned in sync to see the woman standing in his doorway.
Ashton recovered quickly. “Hello, Kalli. Perfect timing, as always,” he said. He sat up with Savvy in his arms, then scooted her off his lap none too gently and jumped to his feet.
The woman shot a death glare toward Savvy. “Apparently so,” she told Ashton in icy tones.
“This is my new employee. We bumped into each other and fell.” For some odd reason, he didn’t really give a damn that he’d just been caught completely compromised.
“Yes, of course. That’s what it looked like,” Kalli snapped. To his amazement, though, she quickly regained her composure.
Ashton wasn’t quite sure how to take Kalli’s reaction. She’d just busted him with another woman and yet she was sauntering toward him with a seductive smile on her outrageously plump lips. If the roles had been reversed, he’d have decked the guy she was with and then walked right out of the room and out of her life.
Dressed impeccably as always in a green Versace outfit that hugged her skin, she wrapped her long arms around his neck and planted a cold kiss on his mouth.#p#分页标题#e#
“I missed you, darling. Why don’t you introduce us?”
Ashton couldn’t seem to find his voice quickly enough, because Kalli turned from him and faced Savvy, who looked like a frightened mouse stuck in a trap.
“Since my fiancé seems to be a little flustered, I’ll go ahead and introduce myself. I’m Kallista Blanche Huntington-Hart. Ashton and I are engaged to be married.” She held up her hand to show off a gigantic diamond.
“It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Hart. I’m Savannah Mills, the newest grunt employee.”
There was just enough of a spark in Savvy’s eyes for Ashton to see that she wasn’t in the slightest bit intimidated by his fiancée. Hot damn if that wasn’t sexy too. Double dammit! He couldn’t help it, but his opinion of Savvy went up another notch as the three of them stood in his roomy office.
“Hmm. A grunt, huh? I figured.”
Instead of responding to that, Savvy turned toward her new boss. “If you can give me those papers, I’ll get them filled out and give you two some privacy.”
Privacy. Yeah, he looked forward to having some with Savvy. But that might be a bit difficult with his fiancée hanging around. What to do, what to do? Why did life have to be so effing difficult? Especially right after it had become so much better.
Well, then again, adversity only brought out the best in a man, didn’t it? What doesn’t kill me …
Chapter Three
He was doing the right thing.
This was his mantra, the one he kept repeating to himself as Kalli continued talking, her fingers waving in the air as she moved around the desk and talked about seating charts and who couldn’t be near who — sorry, near whom – and other boring-as-hell wedding details.
No. That wasn’t something he should be thinking. Kalli was perfect for him, perfect in every sense of the word. She was blue-blooded, sophisticated, beautiful, and respectable. She was the ideal mate for a successful man like himself. She’d keep up appearances and crank out genetically admirable heirs.
She was the sort of wife a man in his position was supposed to marry.
So if that was all true, why in the hell did he keep wandering to his office windows, the ones overlooking the docks, just so he could catch another glimpse of his newest employee. And where did she get off wearing such inappropriate attire?
Even as he thought that, he knew he was being a jerk, and he was also close to getting off. Yes, she was wearing shorts, but so were most of the men and women out there. It was just that he didn’t get a hard-on watching his male employees while they walked around in board shorts. Hell, not even when watching the other women.
There was a God after all, he thought, almost smiling.
But Savvy was wearing a pair of shorts that hugged her thighs and showcased the muscles in her calves as she stretched up to scrub the side of one of his boats. As she reached higher, her top crept up and he got an enticing view of her toned midsection.
Damn, one week on the docks and her creamy skin was already getting a nice golden glow to it. It looked good on her — really, really good.
“Are you listening to a thing I’m saying, Ashton?”
Kalli’s irritated voice pulled him away from those straying thoughts. Turning away from the view and focusing, or trying to, on the woman he was soon to marry, he plastered an unreadable expression onto his face. Yes, he was about to be married, and it would be best — and brightest — to remember that.