Page 59 of The Ice Queen in the Corner Office

He nipped my lower lip. “You don’t think I could have friends?”

I shrugged. “I just can’t picture it. You’re so focused on work.”

“They were friends from my childhood. We grew up together. They’ve stayed in the old neighborhood, and I don’t see them very often.”

I just stared at him. “You grew up around Atlanta, right?”

He nodded, but he wasn’t meeting my eyes. “Around there.”

“And? That’s too far to visit? They must be good friends if they helped you commit a crime.”

“How about you?” he asked. “Would your friends help you commit a crime?”

I was fully aware he was changing the subject because he didn’t want to talk about his friends. I allowed it because I felt warmer and safer in his arms than I’d ever felt in my life and I didn’t want to say anything that might spoil the moment. “Hell, no. They all have families or careers they love, and they wouldn’t risk a record or jail time for anything.” I ran a finger over the sharp line of his cheek bone. “You’re the only friend I’ve ever had who would do anything like that for me.”

His expression softened. “That’s a damn shame. Everyone needs at least one friend who’ll commit a crime for them.”

I couldn’t resist, I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his in a soft kiss. He kissed me back slowly, gently, like we had all the time in the world.

God, I could love this man. That thought jolted me so hard I almost managed to slip his grasp. But he held on tight.

“How are you not busy with a million calls from work?” I asked, desperate to avoid him asking me why I’d tried to pull away.

He rolled to his back and stretched his arms behind his head, looking at me sidelong. “I turned off my phone.”

Pure panic chilled my veins. My phone was back in my room, but I hadn’t worried because I was with the boss. “What if something happens? What if there’s a genuine problem?”

“It should be a slow week,” he said, not looking at all concerned. “Which is why, I assume, you chose to take this week instead of the week of Christmas.”

“Even so. There can always be a problem. Anything could come up and—”

He had turned his head fully to look at me and his smile was so wide and…Warm, it made me nervous.

“Wh-what?” I asked.

“I just love that you care so much about the company. You could have come to work for me out of obligation to your family’s business, or to see me fail, or even just for the money, but you really, truly care about the company and every one of the people we employ.”

I pinched my lips together in a tight frown, because his words were affecting me. I’d never been good at taking compliments. “I don’t know every single person. I just want to make sure I still have a job after the new year.”

He raised his brows, letting me know he thought I was full of shit and rolled his head to look at the ceiling. “If there’s a major problem, Agatha will call the Inn. I gave her all the contact information here.”

I sat up. “I like Agatha and she’s scary good at reading people, but can you be sure she’ll understand what’s important?”

He didn’t get offended by my questioning him, which surprised me. He’d have every right to take it personally, even to get mad. He rolled onto his side and faced me. He cupped my cheek in one large hand. “Yeah, I do. I gave her a list of possible complications that might come up and would be worth a call, but I trust her. And I wanted this time. There’s no point in running this company, in living my dream, if I can’t take a break from it every once in a while, if I can’t make time for someone I want to spend time with.”

My throat tightened. This was huge. This wasn’t just a line. Alex’s whole life was that company and the fact that he would risk anything going wrong there just to spend time with me…It meant he was committed. In that moment, he was one hundred percent committed. I had to be the same, or I was wasting that time. Time that was more precious than money.

“I was engaged,” I said. Noah was the only other person who knew this story, but it felt good to say the words aloud. “We met in college. I’d never really dated before him and he was…He was just easy. He was this golden guy, you know? He’d been born into a wealthy family, had never known struggle, couldn’t really comprehend it, and I loved that about him. There was never any drama with him, he never needed anything from me. It was fun and, for the first time in forever, I felt free. Kind of like these past couple days with you, everything was so relaxed in his world and I wanted to be a part of that.”

Alex watched me, intently. Listening without comment.

“I was naive and stupid. My father’s company was just getting off the ground, just starting to be successful, and I didn’t tell Freddy about my past. I just let him think I was a middle-class girl whose family was on the way up economically. I knew I was going to work for the family business, already knew I loved numbers and wanted to go into accounting, and I knew I wanted to marry Freddy, to have a happy, easy life.”

“Sounds like a dream,” Alex said, his jaw tight.

“It was a dream. Until he took me home to meet his family. They all made it clear they expected me not to go on to business school, but to stay at home, to be the kind of wife who handles the social events for her husband’s career. I thought I’d been sucked into a nightmare from the nineteen-fifties, but I smiled and went along with it in front of his family. Of course, I thought, Freddy didn’t really expect that of me, he knew my ambitions, knew my plans. After we left, I asked him. He was shocked. He thought I’d be happy that he was offering me such a wonderful life, thought I ought to get down on my knees and thank him for the opportunity to be his wife.”

Even after all these years the memory still hurt. Not because Freddy had broken my heart, I’m pretty sure I’d never really loved him, but because my dream of an easy, rainbow-filled life was destroyed. My belief that people could love me without asking me to be something I wasn’t, that someone could see me, the person I was beneath it all, and love me, was shattered. “It was like he didn’t know me at all. He didn’t care about what I wanted or what was important to me, he just wanted what he wanted. He wanted me to smile and look pretty and do whatever he asked like some freaky Stepford wife and, when I revolted against that, he got angry. He pulled over and made me get out of the car, ten miles from campus. I had to call one of my friends to drive out and pick me up.”

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