Barely legal jailbait?
“Hi! Are you a friend of Jack’s?”
A tall blonde was draping pine garlands along Jack’s porch railing and looking, with her rosy cheeks and her pink fur-lined parka, like the spawn of L.L. Bean and Victoria’s Secret. The girl didn’t even look like she was twenty. Even as tears—stupid, juvenile tears—prickled in Cassie’s eyes, her brain kicked into high gear. This was none of her business. She had no claim on him, so what—or who—he did in his spare time was none of her concern. He didn’t do relationships. He’d told her that explicitly from the beginning. What he hadn’t said was what he really meant. He didn’t do relationships with girls like her.
Pink Parka Girl laughed as she tried to disentangle herself from a garland.
Cassie struggled for words. She could hardly explain that she was here to return Jack’s house key. “Ah, actually, I think I have the wrong house.”
“This stupid thing looks awful!” said the girl, finally extricating her glove from the pine bough and trotting down the steps to stand beside Cassie. “Jack is going to hate this! He has his house professionally decorated, and then I come and add this crap.”
She had to get out of here. Cassie took a step, backing away like she was trying to ease her way out of the path of an animal poised to attack. Her heart was pounding accordingly, too. The key would have to wait until she could—
“Cassie?”
Jack. Stepping onto the porch. Holding a mug of coffee, as if it was totally normal for his stunning blonde hopefully eighteen-plus girlfriend to meet his plump, nearly thirty math nerd temporary-friend-with-benefits accounting helper in his front yard.
“Cassie?” the girl squealed. “As in Cassidy? The Cassidy my dad told me about?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “OMG! Cassie, I’m Britney. My dad works with Jack. He’s my godfather. Jack, I mean, not my dad. Because that would be stupid.”
Another peal of laughter, laughter that suddenly seemed obviously of the teenage variety. The girl with the hockey game Jack had asked Carl about. Jack’s goddaughter. Relief flooded Cassie. But only because it was good that Jack wasn’t secretly the poster boy for statutory rape. Not because it mattered to Cassie whether Jack was seeing someone else.
“Cassie,” said Jack, from his perch above them. “This is Britney Larsen, my CFO Carl’s daughter. You remember Carl?”
She could only nod mutely.
“Britney and I have a little tradition where we make a gingerbread house for the company party.”
“Oh, Cassie! You’re going to stay, right? Jack said you had to work, but please won’t you come tonight?”
“Um. I do have to work.” Cassie eyed Jack. “I just came because I forgot to…leave this.” She couldn’t make herself utter the words “your key” in front of Britney. She might as well paint a scarlet A on her forehead. She stepped onto the first step and opened her palm in Jack’s direction.
He looked at the proffered key, face blank. “You can at least stay and help us with the gingerbread house.”
“And the decorations!” said Britney. “Because I’m so bad at it!” She gestured in the direction of the admittedly uneven garlands.
“The party is here?” Cassie asked, hearing the bewilderment in her tone. She’d imagined the Winter Enterprises Christmas party at some swank restaurant. They hosted lots of those sorts of things in the private dining room at Edward’s.
“Yep!” said Britney. “Jack always puts on a huge spread!”
“Well, I don’t do it,” said Jack. “It’s catered. I just show up. And make a gingerbread house.”
Britney waved dismissively. “He just pretends to be a humbug,” she stage-whispered to Cassie. “But really, he’s like the best boss ever.”
Cassie looked back and forth between the man and the girl, unable to find anything to hold on to that would help her make sense of this odd situation. “That’s, uh, great. But speaking of bosses, I’ve got my own, and I’ve got to go.”
“You start at six, don’t you?” asked Jack.
Leave it to him to stand in the way of her escape. Which was extra annoying because eight hours ago, it seemed he couldn’t get away from her fast enough.
When she didn’t answer immediately, he locked his eyes on hers like blue lasers and said, “I want you to stay.”
…
It was the truth. He wanted her to stay. The sudden appearance of Cassie on his doorstep might as well have been divinely orchestrated. He’d spent the entire day feeling like a complete jerk because of how he’d acted this morning. They might not be having a relationship-relationship, but he treated his cleaning lady better than he’d treated Cassie. And his cleaning lady had never blown him until he nearly blacked out and then thrown herself into ferreting out fraud in his company. It was just that his rules were there for a reason. Women were a distraction—they got in the way of work. He hadn’t built Winter Enterprises from nothing into a multimillion-dollar company by being distracted. Though they had clearly negotiated the parameters of their short-lived, rule-bending entanglement, in the clear light of day, last night seemed…wildly dangerous. Still, she hadn’t done anything wrong, and he had pulled the rug out from under her.