Tempting the New Boss(16)
She raised her gaze, and he dropped his hands to pick up the spilled drink and set it on the counter.
The plane steady again, she helped herself to a fresh bottle. After all, she’d barely started on the last. Since they were heading east, the light outside the window was growing fainter by the second. Or maybe the storm was catching up with them.
He sat back down and so did she across the aisle from him again. He picked up his magazine, and she tended to her scotch, relishing the smoky taste of a very good brand.
After a few minutes, she said, “I’m sorry but I still feel like I need to clear the air here. Are you always this blunt in coming on to women or is it just me again?”
He put down his magazine. “I heard you about no sex. I’m sorry I even mentioned it.”
“Well, me, too.”
“I just haven’t had it in a while, and you reminded me of that. Okay? Simple enough. Just drop it.”
She finished off the almost-second scotch, and the buzz it gave her made her less likely to try to treat this whole situation as just another bizarre thing bosses were apt to want you to do. Like working all night proofreading impossibly convoluted merger agreements for deals that probably weren’t going to close the next day anyway. Or writing endless memos on legal strategies that anybody with a brain in their head could see were stupid from the get-go.
Like that.
“I see,” she said. “So, since you’re not getting any, or not much anyway, being with me made you think maybe you could fit some in during the flight, is that it?”
“Well, kind of. But that was probably a trick question, right?”
“See, you’re not as clueless as you seem.” She resisted the impulse to get up for another scotch and said sullenly, “Anyway, don’t you have a girlfriend or something? God, you’re rich enough.”
“There’s a necessary correlation?”
“Please! You might actually not know what sexual harassment is— And I’m still not sold on that.”
He shrugged.
“But you can’t possibly be naive enough not to know that rich guys can get whoever they want.”
“I’m not naive. I just work a lot,” he pointed out.
“To the exclusion of everything else probably.”
“Most people don’t,” he hesitated, “interest me.”
“Oh, I forgot. Because you’re a genius, right?”
“I don’t like labels.”
“Look, I didn’t get my Ph.D. at twenty-five and make a killing in an IPO or anything, but I’m not stupid here.”
“Are you talking about the shirt? It was the only thing I could put on that was clean.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“So do you think it’s easy to get into Harvard and graduate cum laude?”
“For some people, probably not.”
She stopped short and lost the battle on the scotch front, getting up to get another one after all and pouring two of the mini-bottles into the glass for good measure and some ice. All right, three doses of the liquid courage.
“I must say, though, it would be impossible for me to go to law school. If I had to read legalese all day, I’d go nuts.”
When she sat down, she muttered, “You’re already there. And you can fire me for that, by the way.”
“Why?”
“It’s disrespect. Calling you nuts.”
“I told you, they don’t let me fire anyone. They don’t let me give interviews, either.”
“Now, that one makes sense.”
He did that head cocking thing again. “Have you had sex before?”
“Me? Of course I have! What kind of a question is that?”
“You just seem extremely shocked by the suggestion we have it.”
“It’s the context.”
“I see.”
She shouldn’t say it. She really shouldn’t. She took another drink of the scotch, which got smoother with every swallow. But hell, he’d been blunt enough with her. Her turn.
“I do like your looks, though. I was thinking that just before you opened your mouth and blew everything all to hell by asking to fuck me.”
“Yes, I see now that was a mistake.”
“I’m glad I managed to get that through to you.”
“You were very clear.”
Camilla drank her liquor and looked at him, lovely still, but her pale blue eyes a little glassy. Her tidy bun was somehow messier now, too, and the blond wisps around her face made her look more attractive, not less. She started to play with the damn strand of pearls around her neck again. She was purposely trying to drive him crazy now. He was convinced.
“I could never sleep with my boss,” she said in what must have been the twentieth variation on that same theme since he had brought the subject up. “It’s so retro and really wrong. I mean, who does that?”