Taking the Score(11)

Who was this woman?

Luminous blue eyes met his in challenge. “What the hell are you doing creeping up on me like that?”

This forceful version of Emma—or should he say Chardonnay?—might take a little getting used to. “I’m fairly sure this is my office and if anyone’s creeping, it’s you.”

“I was just…” Deflated, she trailed off and turned to her desk, the reveal of emotion on her face sending his heart into a lurch.

“Time you and I had a talk, Emma.” Before she could protest, or do something dumb like resign, he walked back into his office.

…

Emma was used to getting here early to prepare for satisfying every one of Mr. Kane’s needs. His needs. Wow, that took on a whole new meaning after last night. She had stopped by the printer, picked up an empty box, and proceeded to scan her desk for personal stuff she should pack away for her ignominious exit. That’s what people in office jobs did on TV, right? Cleared the browser search history. Grabbed the plant, the goldfish, and the vodka stash in the bottom drawer. But she didn’t have any of that because she’d worked to keep her desk as circumscribed as her life at the office. No personal intrusions, no allowing the tectonic plates underlying her two disparate worlds to shift and collide.

Last night Brody had said she was his assistant, the one who kept his life in order. In keeping his life so categorized, she had done the same for herself. Thrown off self-destructive Emma and reinvented an image that worked. But it only worked if she could keep the darkness from infringing on the light. Fisting her hands on her desk, the horror of her situation burned through her.

He wasn’t supposed to be here. The plan was to bleach her presence from the office and leave a note of apology. Just seeing him this morning conjured a tsunami of competing images: her grim, unsmiling boss; the man whose face had come within kissing distance of her twitching ass; the sex god who had rocked his cock inside her greedy body and made her come in seconds flat.

Her ex-employer.

She stepped inside his office, but left the door open. Always know the nearest exit, Granny Maude would say.

He took in her yoga pants and baggy tee, snapped his brows together, and shook his head framed by carefully disheveled hair, because apparently the frown wasn’t enough to encompass his disapproval. Leaning on his desk, in his French blue shirt with the monogrammed cuff links, he projected the epitome of casual elegance. The impeccably tailored charcoal gray pants covering those magnificent thighs, along with the silver-and-blue chevron tie, an exact match to his eyes, would usually have yielded a whispering sigh of appreciation. But right this minute, his perfection in the face of her manifest not-perfection really got on her tits.

Pride surged in her chest. “I can have my desk cleared out in five minutes.”

“For someone as efficient as you, Emma, I’d think you could manage it faster than that.” She detected smugness in his tone. She also detected her own urge to smash his face in. “Have a seat.”

Shaking with anger, she lowered her body to the armchair and placed her hands in her lap. The primness might seem like a prime example of locking the stable door and all that, but it was better than letting him see how close she was to a meltdown.

“You ran out on me last night.”

“Off the clock, Mr. Kane. I don’t have to answer to you.”

“Did you get home safely?” he asked, not unkindly.

At his gentle tone, a bolt of guilt shot through her. “Yes. And Mr. Smythe-Osborne—is he okay?”

“I left him snoring like an overweight baby with a sinus problem.” He cocked his head. “So what are we going to do about this, Emma?”

Which? The stripper thing? The grinding on her boss’s hands and crotch thing? Or the sex-shaped elephant in the room? “Well, I know you would be mortified if any of our clients found out about my other job—”

He raised a hand imperiously. “That’s not the problem I’m referring to. Of course, your taking your clothes off at a strip club is probably not the image I’d like to convey to our clients but there’s nothing in your contract that says you can’t have a second job.” He sounded extremely annoyed at that loophole. “The problem I’m referring to is your insistence that you need to, and I use the term loosely, dance to express yourself. I don’t believe that. What kind of debt do you have?”

Revealing that her sister was a drug addict with budget control problems was just one more level of defeat she couldn’t face right now. She opened her mouth to say something about student loans but came out with, “Just a few bets gone wrong.”

“You gambled yourself into a stripper job?” His mouth worked in fury. “How much?”

Practicality warred with embarrassment. Her pride made a late charge and overtook them at the finish line. “I can take care of it myself.”

“Working yourself into the ground with two jobs? You leave that club at what, two in the morning? Are you even getting any sleep?”

Sure, a few snatched moments here and there with her demon cat for company. But despite that, despite everything crashing down around her, a shiny beacon of hope pulsed through the fog.

He wasn’t going to fire her.

Maybe it was guilt at what happened last night. Maybe he was a stickler for the rules and was worried she’d sue. Whatever the reason, she had more power in this situation than she’d previously thought. For a woman who had lately felt powerless, this gift was the sun beating in her chest.

“Do you think I do a good job here? Have you ever had cause to question my abilities, dedication, or professionalism?” Okay, the last one was a stretch. Real professional, begging her boss to do her. And then letting him.

“No. You are a paragon of professionalism, Ms. Strip-land.”

Fire raced to her cheeks. “That’s not—”

“Funny, Ms. Strip-land?” He shook his head. “No, you’re right, it’s not funny at all. My apologies.” But amusement warmed his voice all the same.

Something passed between them, a moment of recognition at just how crazy-as-all-fuck this situation was.

“So, are you firing me?” she asked, knowing that he wasn’t.

“Of course not.”

Mental fist bump. “And what happened last night—”

“When I took you against the wall of a room in a strip club and fucked your gorgeous body into the middle of the next millennium?” He held up his hand in apology, his expression grave once more. Gorgeous body, he’d said. And he had fucked her into the middle of the next millennium. The one after that, actually.

“Emma, what I did last night was completely inappropriate. You would be completely within your rights to sue me into bankruptcy for how I took advantage.”

“I made that decision. I was right there with you.” And he was right there with her, holding her to the end of the best orgasm she’d ever experienced. With the crapfest that was her life, to have that special experience tainted by regret would crush her.

“Yes. Yes, you were.” He scrubbed his hair, pushing that flopping overhang back off his forehead. “We didn’t use a condom. I’m clean but is there a chance—”

“No,” she pushed out quickly. “No chance of diseases or diapers in your immediate future.”

Those gray eyes held her prisoner, his mouth silent.

“I need this job. I don’t want to give it up and I have no intention of suing you.” Though it would solve all of her problems. A huge payout, wiping the slate clean. Old Emma might have thought about how best to turn this to her advantage, but that bitch was in the grave back in Millet, Pennsylvania.

“And your other job? Do you need that as well?”

“Yes, I do. If it’s not against the rules to work there—”

“It’s against my rules, Emma. My personal rules.” He gripped the desk, white-knuckled it, in fact. It amazed her how much passion lay beneath that cool surface.

It amazed her how much she wanted to see him lose control.

Last night, she had seen snatches of it, but she suspected he’d held back. To think that they had barely tapped the potential between them was mind-blowing. Blinking back the images of what she’d like to see him do to her—a Brody unleashed like a sex-crazed kraken—she called on her own self-control. She wanted to keep this job. Repeating such inappropriate behavior would not help her keep this job.

She stood, intending the gesture as an end to the cozy chat. “I don’t have to go back to the club until tomorrow, so it’ll give me time to figure some things out.” Like how to get Katerina to teach her some moves that might make her money. Now that she’d taken the plunge, the next time wouldn’t be so hard. The lies we tell ourselves. “I’d assumed I was out on my ear, which is why I’m not dressed appropriately.”

That drew his gaze in a heated rake over her body, and memories of last night flooded the space between them. She felt as if she’d been touched in an intimate way and enjoyed it far too much.

“Take the morning off. Come back in this afternoon.”

She was already moving toward the door. “I don’t need to do that. I can be back by the start of the workday at nine.”