Weston bent to his knees by the side of the bed. “It’s not fun. We Skype a lot for work, but I won’t lie. I miss our poker games.” He lifted the bed skirt and looked underneath. “If I brought you on as an employee, he’d be super impressed. So.” He peered up at me. “What do you say?”
I crossed behind him and picked up my earrings from the nightstand. “I can’t tell anymore if you’re being serious or if you’re just trying to get me to give you another blowjob.”
“Can’t the answer be both?”
I fastened my earrings and wondered again if I should be considering his offer. Because there were things that were tempting about it. There were things that were tempting about him.
“Aha!” he exclaimed suddenly. He stood, dangling a pair of black lacy panties from his finger that he’d apparently found under the bed.
“Those aren’t mine,” I said.
He looked at me, looked at the panties, then back at me. The color drained from his face as he realized what I must have been thinking. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“I know,” I said, my voice steady. “You have lots of girlfriends.” And that was exactly why I couldn’t take his offer seriously. Because he was always going to have another woman and there was always going to be another offer.
He knew I understood without having to say it.
“I’m sorry,” he said, because Weston King was nothing if not a gentleman.
It wasn’t disappointment I felt—not exactly. But there was something that now felt lost that had almost been found. Like the thread of a thought that can almost be grasped but not quite and then it’s gone.
I let out a small sigh. “I didn’t think this was anything other than what it was, Weston.” That was honest. Too honest, maybe.
Then it was Weston who seemed disappointed. “But what if it’s something else?” His tone was disoriented, but hopeful. He didn’t know if I was the woman he wanted. He was a man taking a chance.
I didn’t want to be a chance. I wanted a man who knew.
“But what if it’s exactly what it is?” I reached my hand out and stroked his cheek. “I’ve had a good time. Can we leave it on that note? And not ruin it?”
He put his hand over mine and brought it to his lips and kissed it. “It’s not ruined already?”
“It’s not. It’s been a special weekend. I needed this. Thank you.”
He kissed me goodbye, and I went my way, leaving behind the what if that I’d carried around all those years and a mauve pair of panties that I never did find.
And whatever thoughts had been stirred up about Donovan, I buried under the thoughts I always had about him. The thoughts that I’d had since college. The thoughts I pretended only had life when I was alone with my nightmares in the dark. If I’d thought Weston might have been the one to chase them away, I’d been wrong. If anything, he was the one to bring them into the light.
Eight
“And another thing...”
I stirred my coffee and nodded while Ashley continued with her rant about inner office politics. Though I was in full agreement, I didn’t need to go over every detail of my indignation.
I raised the back of my hand to my mouth and stifled a yawn. I’d had another one of those nightmare filled nights when I’d woken in a sweat, convinced I’d been pinned down and forced to do things I didn’t want to do by a terrible man. As usual, the only way I’d been able to fall sleep again was to imagine that the man forcing me wasn’t Theodore Sheridan but instead was Donovan Kincaid.
Those dreams had been recurrent over the years since my near rape by Theo in college. They didn’t happen as often as they had in the beginning, but they still happened regularly. It had become so normal that I’d stopped thinking about them in daylight, stopped worrying that the wicked things I fantasized about Donovan had anything to do with the real me. The “awake” me. The me that didn’t have dirty thoughts and didn’t want filthy men.
But since my weekend with Weston, that had changed. For whatever reason, he’d triggered something. It was as though the past, which I’d done so well to hold down, had resurfaced, and now I couldn’t push it back where it belonged. The bad dreams had become more frequent, and barely a day passed when I didn’t sit in my office remembering the naughty things I’d thought about Donovan in the dark the night before, having to press my thighs together because the buzz between them was so great.
What was he doing now? Did he ever wonder about me? Was he ever sorry for how we left things? Was he ever sorry that he saved me?
Ashley stopped pacing my office and plopped down in the chair facing my desk, pulling my attention to her. “I’m not shitting you, Bri, Monahan is on a rampage. He is blaming everyone but sales for everything that’s gone wrong on every campaign this year. It’s a nightmare.”
Interesting choice of words. I could tell her a thing or two about nightmares.
But I was frustrated with our boss too. “I know what you mean about Monahan. He asked me to redo the strategy sheet for Dove. Again. This will be the third time. The strategy sheet was good the first time. There was nothing wrong with it.”
Monahan, our new president, had turned our friendly office into a war zone. He was keen on showing favoritism to teams he’d worked with before he’d been promoted. Lately, it had been hard to find the motivation to keep giving my all, and a few times I’d even considered looking elsewhere for work.
“You know why he’s doing this? Besides the fact that he’s just an asshole, I mean.” Ashley seemed buoyed to have me join her in her complaints. “It’s because he won’t get his promotion bonus if he doesn’t find another ten percent in revenue this quarter. I don’t think it’s possible.”
“I don’t either. I love this job, but if he doesn’t calm the fuck down…” I trailed off.
But though I wasn’t ready to be that bold, Ashley was. “Time to get our resumes ready.”
My phone lit up then. It was the line from my assistant. I pushed the intercom button. “What’s up?”
Kent’s voice filled the room. “There’s a phone call for you from Mr. Weston King on line two. Want to take it?”
My stomach knotted at the mention of Weston’s name. I hadn’t heard from him since our weekend together in May. It was almost August.
“He’s just now calling you?” Ashley whispered loudly. “It’s been three months!”
“Yeah, Kent,” I said, simultaneously glaring at Ashley. “I’ll take it. Thanks.”
I clicked the intercom button off and stared for a handful of seconds at my friend. “It can’t be what you think,” I said, finally. Even though I wasn’t exactly sure what she was thinking, I could guess it had romantic notions. “We didn’t leave things like that. We didn’t even start things like that.”
“It has to be something if he’s calling you.” Her giddiness was making me nervous.
I wiped my sweaty palm across my skirt. “Maybe he’s just going to be in town and thought it would be polite to say hello.”