Page 7 of The Dom

I couldn’t stop my smile. “Mostly, that’s true.”

“What does this mean for work?” She tapped a finger on her lower lip. “You can’t have a termination on your resumé and definitely not one that’s about you lying and stealing.”

“Nate knows that I didn’t do either of those things,” I said. “I won’t have any problem getting a good reference.”

“You can’t have a reference from a guy you’re sleeping with.”

That was an excellent point, but I had a solution to that at least. “He’s not technically my direct boss. Mr. Hancock will give me a good reference.”

“That means you’re going to be looking for another job when we get back?” She made it a question rather than a statement.

A question for which I had no answer.

“When I get back to New York, I’ll talk to Nate. We’ll work something out.” I hoped that I sounded more confident than I was. I didn’t doubt for a minute that Nate would help me work out what I wanted to do. I just wasn’t sure what that was going to be.

Now that I’d explained to him my real reason for coming to work at Manhattan Records, I didn’t actually need the cover to get to know Finley. Which meant I didn’t actually need this specific job…unless I wanted it.

That was the real question, wasn’t it?

What did I want now?

Five

Nate

Spending the rest of the weekend alone wouldn’t have been my first choice but leaving Ashlee and her mom in Virginia Beach had been the right thing to do. They’d gone down there for a vacation, to get away from New York. To get away from me, honestly.

Since Ashlee and I had patched things up enough to wait to talk over where things were going from here, it wouldn’t hurt anything for me to go home. Well, nothing but my dick and balls. Those protested the entire flight home and had been tormenting me ever since.

Case in point, I was currently trying to get my hard-on to go away before anyone happened to notice it. Thankfully, one of the heads of my A&R department was more interested in what I was proposing than he was in my current state.

Stu Hancock was a good guy. Hard-working, creative, great with people. He understood his job as well as the ways he and his co-VP, Suzie Lamas, each had their own roles to play.

“I’m on board with all of this,” Stu said. “Do you want me to talk to her about it?”

I shook my head and tried not to show how eager I was to see Ashlee. It had been too long since I’d seen her, touched her. It was going to be extremely difficult to keep my hands to myself.

I was accustomed to self-control, but not under these particular circumstances. I wanted to be the one setting the terms, deciding who did what when and where. Giving up that aspect of control was new for me, and I didn’t like it. But I’d deal with it because I wanted her more than I wanted everything to be the exact same as every other relationship I’d ever had.

Now, there was a word I didn’t want to think about too much. In the past, when it came to interactions with the opposite sex, I used relationship to distinguish between the women with whom I only had a sexual arrangement. We didn’t go out together, and I never referred to them as girlfriends. I wanted Ashlee as my girlfriend, but I was still figuring out how that was going to work.

Step one had been talking to Stu. Step two was to pitch my idea to Ashlee. Her answer would determine where things went after that.

Stu cleared his throat, and I suddenly remembered that he was still here.

“Thanks,” I said, straightening things on my desk that didn’t need to be straightened.

I could feel Stu’s eyes on me but didn’t raise my head, concentrating instead on looking nonchalant. I hadn’t really given him a reason why I wanted his opinion…or a reason for why Ashlee was coming back. If he asked, I didn’t know what I’d tell him. I didn’t plan on hiding my relationship with Ashlee, but I wasn’t going to spread it around either, especially when things were still new between us.

“Does this mean you want me to reassign her to the projects she was working on before?” he asked.

“That seems like the best course of action, but it’s up to you.” I opened one of my desk drawers and rummaged through it like I was looking for something. I wasn’t.

“And the flash drive?”

Now, I did glance up. “She left it in her desk.”

Stu frowned. “But it’s not there.”

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