Once she made it to her feet with Mr. Gale’s help—which his mother did not miss—she smoothed her skirt and swallowed hard, still clinging to the fork for dear life as if it could somehow save her from what was coming. “Mrs. Gale. This isn’t—”
“Quiet,” the older woman snapped, without taking her murderous glare off of her son. “No one was speaking to you.”
Picking up her wine, she swallowed a healthy mouthful, and it washed down the retort attempting to choke her to death in front of her boss and his nasty mother. The woman watched her son like he was a bug she’d stepped on.
Something to be scraped off and forgotten.
And, in return, Mr. Gale watched his mother with all the warmth of a winter’s night. Maggie had never wanted the power to be invisible as much as she did right now.
And she used to pray for it every night.
Guess she knew now where he’d gotten his cold, emotionless exterior. He wasn’t rude to her or anything. He never was. He just didn’t really have the time, or the desire, to chat idly all day long. Something told her that he’d never been taught how.
They must not teach small talk at Harvard.
But they spent a lot of time alone at the office, so she got to see a side of him no one else did. And the more time she spent with him, the more he reminded her of a lost puppy who had all the bones in the world, but no idea what to do with them.
Especially after tonight.
“Please tell me this ‘dinner’ is not being billed to the company,” Mrs. Gale said, each word icier than the last. “Last I checked, there is no clause in your contract that states the company must pay for your many dalliances.”
Many dalliances?
She’d never have pegged Mr. Gale as a playboy.
Sure, he had the looks and the money to pull it off, but he spent almost all his time locked in his office, scowling out at his employees through the glass windows on either side of his closed door. Alone.
Covertly, she stole another glance at him as he shrugged back into his jacket while his mother watched him angrily. Tonight, he wore a black suit with a light green pinstripe dress shirt and a pair of black loafers. Something about the way his custom-made suit hugged all those hard muscles was a lot harder to ignore than it usually was—maybe because moments before she had been kneeling at his feet, staring up into his eyes and thinking how handsome he was from down there.
And he was. Handsome. From every angle.
Not just his feet.
He always had a slight five o’clock shadow going on, but she’d never seen his hair when it wasn’t picture perfect. The man easily could have been a GQ model, but instead he was the CEO of his family’s pharmaceutical company. He was well over six feet tall, weighed a little under two hundred pounds, was thirty-three years old, had attended Harvard for six years, and wore a size thirteen shoe.
I know way too much about him. Stalker.
She sighed.
Oh, and he was freakishly, devilishly, impossibly hot.
And single.
A muscle in his jaw ticked, but he remained otherwise motionless. “This isn’t a ‘dalliance’, Mother,” he said.
“It’s not.” Maggie tore her eyes off of him, flushing when his mother shot her a condescending look. “It’s so not.”
He shot her a narrow-eyed look.
She stared right back at him, and took a big gulp of wine.
The second he turned away, she put down her glass, swiped a napkin across her mouth, gently set her fork down, and decided to creep out while no one paid attention to her. If she had any luck—which she normally didn’t—she’d escape before whatever was about to happen here happened. World War Three, maybe.
Slowly, she stepped sideways to the left.
Mrs. Gale snapped her fingers. “Sit down. No one excused you.”
Before the sentence was even finished, Maggie slammed her butt into the soft leather chair. Mr. Gale was her boss, which made his mother her even bigger boss, so she didn’t exactly have a choice. “This really isn’t what it looks like, Mrs. Gale. I—”
“Don’t bother, Maggie.” He frowned. “She won’t believe you.”
Mrs. Gale shrugged. “You’re right. I won’t.”
He rubbed his jaw. “You can’t come in here and order my employees around. If Maggie wants to leave, she’s allowed. She’s not a prisoner in my office.”
She stood again. “Great. Thank you. I’ll be on my—”
“Your employee?” The other woman laughed, but it didn’t sound like humor at all. “Oh, that’s just rich. You have one of your workers under your table doing…doing…”
Shoot me. Shoot me now.
“As we already told you,” he said, his tone tight with exasperation. “It’s not what it looked like.”
“Oh, but it was. And there are rules against such things.” Mrs. Gale focused her cold gaze on Maggie. “Get out. You’re fired.”