“No. I'm fine here with my wine.” Until that moment, she'd been amused by his flirty behavior, but now it was more. He'd undressed in front of her, knowing full well that it was bound to turn her on. Add the wine and it was a very dangerous cocktail indeed. Be strong. Don't give him what he wants, she thought. Christ, you've only been working for him for a day. Who does he think he is?
Colten swam a few lengths and then pulled himself out of the pool. As he did so, she saw the large muscles in his back flex. When he walked toward her, she saw a faint hint of a six pack. She didn't like the body builder type, but she did like men with well-defined muscles, just like Colton had. He was dripping when he stood next to her to take a gulp of wine. Water ran down his chest and dripped onto the floor via the considerable bulge in his shorts. She tried not to look at it, but he was standing so close that it was unavoidable. He lay down on a sun bed next to her sofa and closed his eyes.
“Perfect,” he said. “What a great evening. I've got all I want: the pool, wine, and you.”
She looked across at him disapprovingly. You haven't got me, she thought. I'm just a guest. But she couldn't help but look down his chest and stomach to his bulge once more. She was sure she saw his manhood twitch, and she turned her reddening face away.
“Tell me about yourself,” she said. “You know everything about me, but I know so little about you.”
He put his arms behind his head and looked at the sky. “Not many people have asked me to tell them my life story.”
“I'd like to know.”
“My mom and dad live in LA, in the same house they did when I was born. I've offered to buy them a new house, but they won't budge, so why waste my money. I've got a sister who has three kids and a man who hits her, and a brother who is bipolar. He lives in a mental hospital most of the time.”
“Wow. Can't you get your brother-in-law to stop hitting your sister?”
“I've tried. I set some of my heavies on him once, but my sister went mental. Totally mental. I can't understand it. She kept saying that it wasn't his fault.”
“I'm sorry to hear about your brother. That's hard.”
“Harder for him. It's made my parents’ lives so difficult. I think they feel guilty. As for me, I went to high school, graduated, and went to the Yale School of Management.”
Avaline finished her wine and put the empty glass down on the ground. He still had droplets of water on him, and she was sorely tempted to run her hand over his stomach and grasp his manhood. It was the wine, she told herself.
“But how did you get so rich? It's no mean feat.”
“I bought a piece of land when I was twenty for next to nothing. It was just a speculative deal. Then the military decided they wanted it for a shooting range. They paid me ten times what I'd paid for it. After that, I was up and running. I reinvested and bought four apartments in LA. They were pretty seedy when I bought them, but I renovated them and sold them at the right time. I just kept the circle going. Buy, sell, reinvest. You can see the result.” He gestured to the house.
“Yes. Well done. I would never have thought to do that.”
He turned his head to look at her. His eyes ran over her smooth legs and admired the shape of her thighs. “You are different. You are worth more than pure money. You don't have to get rich.” A cat appeared from somewhere and began to rub around the bottom of the sofa. “That's Duke. He's the boss around here.”
“So you like animals?”
“Love them. They are so much more trustworthy than people.” He put his hand out and Duke purred as Colten stroked him.
“Do you want a family one day?” she asked. “Settle down with one woman and have some kids?”
“One day. But I'm only thirty-three. Time is hardly pressing.”
“Well think about this. If you wait until you're forty, when your child leaves college, say at twenty-three, you'll be sixty-three—almost ready to retire. You shouldn't leave it too long.”
“A very gloomy outlook indeed,” he said.
Edwin came out and asked what time Colten wanted dinner. They settled on 8 p.m.
They ate in a dining room that was large enough to house a fourteen-seater table. It was bigger than a pool table. They sat next to each other at one end, and Avaline looked over the vast expanse of the unused table and imagined it filled with children, grandparents, and aunts and uncles.
After dinner, Avaline was tired. The wine has taken its toll. “Thank you for a lovely evening,” she said, and she was tempted to kiss him.
“My pleasure,” he said.
When she had gone to bed, he sighed. She was hotter than hot, but for the first time in his life, he didn't know quite how to approach a woman. She just sent out negative signals all the time. He wasn't used to it. But he still had his trump card to play, and that was that he was the boss and she had to do what he said or leave. But did he really want to play that card on someone so lovely? He might.
After two weeks, Avaline returned to work. She and Colten had spent most evenings chatting around the pool. As each evening passed, Colten became more and more frustrated. Every time he tried to lead the conversation toward the bedroom, she refused his advances by telling him it was unprofessional to sleep with one another.