Page 9 of Wrong Idea

“Yes, sir, that’s where she works. She’s a great employee. She’s been working for The Crown for almost eight years now.”

“Almost a decade,” I muttered.

“Yeah, since she was sixteen.” My girl was twenty-four. Fuck. Not only was she my employee, automatically making her off limits, but she was way too young for a man my age.

Eighteen years younger.Shit.

At forty-two, I didn’t date women under thirty. I’d made it a point. I didn’t want to be some kind of lame cliché like my own father was when he had been alive.

Date? My girl?I had fucking lost it.Does it matter if you have?a voice perked up in the back of my head.She’s yours,the voice stated with confidence. I licked my lips.

She’s mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.The word played in a loop, and I heard Stan clear his voice.Shit!

“Right… well, please have her clean my office if she has time,” I rumbled.

“Will do, sir. You won’t be disappointed.”

I really needed to have Harry talk to the man and reassure him we were more than happy with his performance. I had a feeling if The Crown would have gone under a long time ago if it weren’t for Stanley Ledesky.

“That isn’t possible,” I accidentally said out loud before ending the call.

I shut my bedroom door, and my feet took me directly to my laptop. I started it up despite having promised my brothers that I would be done with work for the night. I typed in her name and found out as much as I could.

Like a man possessed, I read through every page in her employee file. Every tidbit I could find on her. She’d been working at the resort for eight years. Since she was in high school. She was twenty-four, way too young for me, but fuck if that was going to get in the way.

Everything inside of me wanted to go stomping about the grounds to look for her. To find her and talk to her. To look into her beautiful dark eyes and get lost in that beautiful gaze of hers.

But I wasn’t who she thought I was. I got out of bed and paced around my room. I couldn’t just introduce myself, could I?

No. I couldn’t.

Not when she had trusted me to touch her naked body. Let me be the first man to caress her skin and hear her whimpered moans of relief.The only man, if I had anything to say about it. My eyes caught the polo shirt I’d worn the day before. The thing had been stiff and scratchy. Knowing she wore the same shirt, that coarse material touching her skin, made me head straight to my computer to make an order I hadn’t been planning on, but I had no choice. There was no way I could let my sweet girl wear something so rough. Not when her skin should only touch the finest fabrics. I sat back in the desk chair as I stroked the polo in my hand and dropped it on top of my keyboard. My hands tightened into fists and then relaxed.

She is here.

I had been driving myself close to crazy all day. Pissed at the world but mostly at myself for not asking for her phone number after her massage. I had no idea how I had been quick enough on my feet and told her the massage was on the house since it had been her first. I took the fifty-dollar bill out of my pocket, the same one she had forced me to take as a tip before I’d walked her out the front door all without someone bumping into us an giving away my identity.

Fuck, if Harrison found out what I’d done, he would shit a brick. I could only imagine how many boundaries and laws I’d broken by pretending to be a masseuse.How many more I will cross trying to get a peek at her.

Before I could stop myself, I changed into joggers and a hoodie and walked out.

“A run,” I mumbled to myself.

A run would be good for me. It would let me burn off some of the pent-up energy I had inside of me and figure out my next move when it came to Max.

I shouldn’t have a next move, the sliver of the sane man still inside of my head mumbled. I should keep to myself. And Idefinitely shouldn’t have her come up to my office to clean it. I had no idea why I’d asked Stan to do that. It was risky.

But you need to see her again, a little voice in my head whispered. The air was cooler, and the breeze helped me breathe, but not enough to temper the almost manic urge to go find her. To head to the laundry room just to look at her.

Almost like I had conjured her up, I saw her. She was pretty far away and in the darkness, so there was no way she could see me. I stopped running and leaned against a tree. My girl was outside, pushing the big bulky yellow housekeeping cart. Without a hoodie or a sweater.Fuck.I didn’t like it. My jaw clenched and my teeth mashed together. It looked like our employees were not only going to get new uniform shirts but sweaters as well. Maybe a jacket and matching beanie?

Suddenly, my girl stopped walking and glanced around. I slipped deeper into the shadows, wondering if she could feel me watching her. I had no idea how I was going to make her mine, how I would get her to forgive me for pretending to be someone I wasn’t, but I would. Because even though all we had exchanged were a couple of little words here and there, there was no denying Maxine Munoz was mine.

I watched her shake her head and continue to the main building of the resort. I followed her, waiting in the shadows, even after she had come back out and headed towards the small structure that held the laundry department. No matter how much I tried to talk myself into heading back to my room, I didn’t.

Instead, I stood sentry throughout the night until her shift ended. I watched from afar as she walked out with some girl with light brown hair. The one other person still working in the laundry department. I followed them, giving a wide berth so as not to call attention to myself acting like an obsessed zombie.She waved at the other girl and kept walking right out the resort and straight to the bus stop that was right outside the property.

The bus stop.

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