I was not the kind of man who paced, and yet here I was—lingering at the door to her building, wearing holes in the pavement while I went back and forth. I glanced at my watch for what felt like the fiftieth time. Nine minutes past seven.
Not once had I been stood up and I refused to even entertain the thought of being stood up by my twenty-two-year-old virgin employee. Fuck no.
But damn it if I couldn’t feel another blow to my ego with every minute that passed.
The loud clatter of the door opening dragged my attention from the sidewalk and I whipped my head to face her, feeling relief spread through my body as she hurriedly rushed over.
“I’m so sorry! I was getting ready and the stupid clock in my hallway is slow and I didn’t realize it until I pulled out my phone and I’m so, so sorry to keep you waiting.”
I heard the words as she spoke them, but they didn’t immediately click in my mind. No, I was far too busy staring at her like I had never seen a woman before.
Her long, dark hair was down and flowing in soft curls. Her lips were glossy and pink while the rest of her face looked bare to my eyes. Her lacy dress showed the tops of her breasts and hung a few inches above her knees, giving me a flash of thigh when the wind blew.
The irony of her dress being white wasn’t lost on me. Nor was the fact that she was completely oblivious to what her appearance was doing to me.
She looked so fucking perfect it hurt. So innocent.
I wanted to tear her clothes off with my teeth and fuck her on the sidewalk.
“Ready to go?” I asked in a daze.
I was seriously torn between feeling like the luckiest man on earth and feeling tortured. She might have been the sexiest woman I’d ever seen, but as I already knew, I stood no chance of peeling that dress off.
The next few hours were bound to be a brutal combination of Heaven and Hell.
During the ride to the restaurant, it became more clear than ever that Mallory had no idea what kind of effect she had on men.
Her body was twisted toward me and she crossed and uncrossed her legs over and over again. I might have respected the fact that I wouldn’t have her that night, but I was no saint.
I peeked enough times to catch a flash of her panties. Leave it to her to change my favorite color on a woman from red to white.
“So, what got you into publishing in the first place?”
“I’ve always loved reading,” I said as I snapped out of my panties-induced trance. “Like I said before, I was pretty awkward in my early twenties. More so as a teenager. Books were my escape.”
“I thought boys were supposed to spend their early years playing video games,” she noted with a musical laugh. “Or... you know.”
“Or what?”
“Watching porn.”
The way she whispered it so scandalously made me laugh out loud. Her blush said she was embarrassed, but she laughed along with me.
“Well I was born before the internet craze, remember? And while video games were around, my father would never waste money on anything like that.”
“But he’d get you books?”
“No. Every month, my mom would plan an elaborate day of yard sale shopping. She’d take me and my sister and give us an allotted amount to spend. It was our family’s version of an allowance. I’d get as many books as I possibly could.”
“What’d your sister get?”
I raised my eyebrows, surprised that she was interested enough in the story about my childhood to ask questions. I’d never shared that particular fact with anyone before. It was fairly well known that I didn’t come from a wealthy family, but nobody really knew the extent of it.
Then again, nobody ever cared enough to ask.
“She’d bank it up. She’d jot down the amount every month until she could afford to get what she really wanted.”
“Which was?”
“A piano. My mom couldn’t believe we managed to find one, but we did.”
Mallory smiled and the sight of it brought me back to the day we loaded that piano on our neighbor’s trailer to take it home. I could vaguely recall how much trouble we had getting it into the house, but I’d never forgotten the matching smiles that my mom and sister wore. It was one of the greatest nights as a family we had before my father passed away.
“Does she still play?”
“She teaches it, actually. On that very same piano. It’s been fully restored since then, though. It was one of the first things I spent the money on after the company turned a profit.”
That had been a good day as well. Back when Jeremy was only an energetic toddler and my mom was still well enough to travel. In an effort to keep from lingering on the thought of my mother, I flipped the conversation around.