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-f*ck
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 f*ck
ed 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 f*ck
ed 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.”