Damn it! That was not at all what I meant to do. My flight reaction got in the way of common sense.
Ezra blinked up at me, clearly not expecting me to walk into this arrangement so easily. He glanced back at Junior before he stood to his full height, crowding me, towering over me, eating up every inch of space that his tall frame needed and then some. His hand wrapped around mine, warm and firm and dry—such a contrast to the hand I’d just run away from. “As am I,” he said coolly.
Mr. Tucker slammed his hands on the desk excitedly, no doubt already preparing Ezra’s invoice. He started to say something congratulatory but all I wanted to do was get out of this office.
“I can take you to our conference room,” I blurted to Ezra, my hand still wrapped in his. “We can go over details while you acquaint me with your company and give me a better vision of what you’re hoping to accomplish with STS.” I let out a slow, steady breath, hoping the beads of sweat along my hairline weren’t obvious.
“That’s a great idea,” Ezra replied. “Lead the way, Miss Maverick.”
I turned and smiled bravely at Mr. Tucker without meeting his eyes and shot another nod of confidence somewhere in the vicinity of Junior’s feet. Then I escaped quickly to a conference room, Ezra close on my heels.
Pushing the door open with one arm, I gestured for Ezra to enter. “Right in here.” I followed after him just as soon as I’d glanced back to make sure Senior and Junior hadn’t bothered to follow me.
“I had been prepared to negotiate,” Ezra began talking. “I should probably apologize…”
Nervous energy buzzed through me, but I blamed it on Ezra’s sudden appearance. Although I could still feel the phantom brushing of Henry’s thumb over my neck. I shuddered, wishing I could erase the memory altogether as I walked to the wall of windows in the conference room.
I should say something to Henry, I decided. That was too much. Too intimate. And on top of every terrible thing, super inappropriate. He was my boss and in general he gave me the creeps. If he gets close again, I’ll say something. I’ll ask him to stop. He’ll listen. He’s a professional. I’m a professional. It will be fine.
“Molly?”
Ezra stood up and walked over to me. Belatedly, I realized I had been staring out the window at downtown Durham, completely lost in thought and he’d been talking since the door closed behind us. Actually, now that I thought about it, I thought maybe he’d been apologizing, but I hadn’t heard a single word of it.
“Sorry,” I told him, reverting to my familiar tactic of always being the one that had to make the other person comfortable. “It’s been a weird day.”
His eyebrows scrunched together over his eyes. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I told him with a smile that lied. “Perfectly fine. I just wasn’t expecting…” I met his dark gaze again, braving the concentrated gaze I knew would be waiting for me. “You.”
He let out a slow breath, seeming to gather his thoughts. “I told you on Friday that I wanted to work with you.”
“I didn’t realize you would go above my head to do it,” I snapped, dropping the happy fa?ade I didn’t feel.
“You’re angry,” he concluded.
“I’m pissed,” I countered.
He looked away and I swore it was to hide a smile, further feeding the furious dragon-woman living inside me. “Aren’t they the same thing?”
Aren’t they the same thing? Somebody hold my earrings!
“Is this really what you want, Ezra? You could hire anybody. Anybody! But you really want me?”
His entire body swiveled to face me again, tension pulling him taut, straightening his shoulders and widening his stance. His face was all cut marble, stone, granite, something that symbolized immovable strength and conviction. He was too intimidating, too beautiful. Too him.
“No one tells me the truth anymore, Molly. Not even the people I pay to do that. The current website is dated and dysfunctional and yet I paid my last web designer excessive amounts of money and all he did was give me exactly what I wanted.” I decided not to argue with him about why his last web designer was doing what he was paid to do. He went on, “I want someone who is going to ignore my personal taste and instead make something that has market appeal. I want someone who is going to stand up to me and fight me when I’m wrong. I believe that person is you. It’s true, I don’t like your taste. You’re too modern. Your designs are too simplistic and I hate your color schemes. And that is why I need you on my team.”
I glared at him even while I tried to convince my mind to stop plotting his murder. He wanted to hire me because he hated everything about my style?
“Despite what you think, Ezra Baptiste, I don’t get paid to fight with my clients. Nor do I want to spend my valuable time standing up to a pigheaded, outdated, stubborn old man. So here is how this is going to go, since I’m clearly trapped in this project that you’re forcing me into. You’re going to listen to my advice and you’re going to take it. You’re going to approve my designs and social media strategy and then you’re going to hire more people to implement every single thing I tell you to do. And lastly, but this is probably my most important point, you’re going to go somewhere else for your on-screen advertising because so help me God if I do all of this work for you and then you mess it up by letting STS do your commercials...”
His head cocked back in surprise. He blinked once, twice, then his mouth broke open in a victorious smile. “This is exactly why I hired you.”
I resisted, barely, the urge to roll my eyes. “I’m confident you’re getting more than what you asked for.”
His eyes darkened with promise, his smile turning sly and secretive. “That’s what I’m counting on.”
A shiver skittered down my spine, pulling goose bumps from my arms. It was the exact opposite reaction of how jittery I felt toward Henry. Fine, I was still jumpy and frustratingly nervous, but I was also too hot and too dizzy and something else entirely.
Ezra Baptiste had some kind of magic juju that lured confident, professional women in and turned them into melting piles of goo. This was why nobody could be honest with the man. This was why everybody told him what they thought he wanted to hear. Because frankly, they lose their damn minds around him.
I refused to be that girl. I refused to be hypnotized by his good looks and entranced by his secret charm. I refused to find his dark eyes mesmerizing and his smile adorably boyish. I refused to like this man that was heavy-handed and bossy and so ridiculously confident.
Do you hear that, libido? This is a sexy man boycott!
And I was definitely going to have to reopen my eHarmony account. Tonight.
Maybe over my lunch break.
I needed a date STAT.