Page 6 of Tempting Eden

Still, he was definitely different. Not in the color of his skin or his accent, but in his bearing, his confidence. He was not what I expected to find in my newest assistant. I stared at the frosted glass doors long after he was out of view. This was going to be an interesting month.

CHAPTER TWO

JACK

ISAT DOWN ATmy desk in the wide-open area that took up the center of the Thornfield floor. The support staff worked in this area, each assigned to different ‘pods’ of business. My pod consisted solely of Ms. Rochester and myself as far as I knew.

I kept glancing back to the glass leading to her bright office. All-in-all, our first meeting had been nothing short of a clusterfuck. I’d heard she was a ball-busting bitch, and I realized the rumors were true during my first ten seconds with her. Even so, she was toying with me a bit, looking me over too closely and blushing. I wanted to tap into those feelings, to get a better feel for the woman beneath the hard exterior. It didn’t hurt that she was hot as hell. The idea of bending her over her desk flitted through my mind.

Settle down, Jack.

Her harsh demeanor did nothing to rid me of the feeling that I didn’t fit here, like any minute someone would come along and inform me that I was mistaken and escort me from the building. Then again, she hadn’t treated me as less than her equal, which was nice.

Assistant to Ms. Rochester wasn’t exactly a glamorous position, but given my background, I’d already reached higher than anyone else from my past.

The people here all seemed to ignore the fact that I wasn’t like them, and I didn’t mean color. My mixed race was obvious, but it wasn’t the point of difference that struck me. It was a completely different mentality; one that seemed ingrained in the people who flitted about this office. Things like having a computer that wasn’t pay-as-you-go for Internet, free coffee, even pens that weren’t attached to the desks with those beaded metal strands—they took it all for granted, as if it was the natural state of things. It wasn’t. The natural state of things was far more selfish and close-fisted.

Only a few miles from this office, in Lowood where I’d grown up, what was seen as normal here would have been thought of as impossible. The freeness was so uncommon there, lack of choice was so instilled in me, that it still struck me as foreign. It would probably always strike me that way. The people in this office were so far removed from that other world as to be on completely different planets. I felt stretched thin, bridging the gap between them.

Helen had told me things could be like this—easy, clean, open. I didn’t believe her back then. She was wise beyond her years, but I was too busy digging my own grave in Lowood to realize it. I shook my head, trying to dislodge the dark memories from taking hold. I needed to focus on this job. Keeping it was imperative. It was a means to an end, a way up and out.

My gaze strayed back to the glass doors. Fairfax had been right. Ms. Rochester—who I’d noticed never directed me to call her the more casual Eden—was difficult to read.

I’d wanted to lift her into my arms to save her the pain of the ankle, but going Tarzan and Jane in the Galway building was probably frowned upon. Still, she fit so easily against me as I carried her. I enjoyed the feeling. She was confident and attractive, tough enough to get my interest, but when I realized she was my employer, everything changed.

I’d interviewed the prior week while she was on a trip to Atlanta. I received the lowdown from Fairfax on how the office ran and which projects Ms. Rochester handled. I managed to keep up—for the most part. Fairfax ran a tight ship. He even quizzed me on Ms. Rochester’s appointments for the week, making sure I would be on the ball when she returned.

Getting the hang of Eden Rochester was already proving a puzzle, one I was more than a little interested in solving, and not solely on the professional level.

“How’d it go?” Fairfax walked up behind me and startled me from my thoughts.

I wasn’t sure how to answer.

He laughed conspiratorially, his eyes twinkling to the point where I wondered if he didn’t have a bottle of Jack stashed in his desk. “Moody? Sharp? She give you an inquisition?”

“You could say that.”

“That’s her way. She works hard. She expects everyone else around her to do the same. And she can be mighty temperamental, but she doesn’t mean anything by it.” He took a swig from his coffee cup. “That’s one of the reasons why I hired you, you know. You seem so calm. Like everything just rolls off. She needs that, needs someone to even her out a bit. You’ll do just fine.”

He gave me a reassuring pat on the back before striding down the hallway toward the accounting offices.

I fired up my computer, ready to start ticking off calendar entries for the hectic day ahead. She’d been gone for a week, but her work and appointments had piled up the entire time until it was an avalanche of to-dos. Daunting was an understatement. How could one person be so busy?

As soon as my email was open, a reminder pinged that Ms. Rochester had a meeting with Gray Poole, a developer on several of her projects.

Showtime.

I rose and knocked on her door.

“What?” Her tone was sharp, no-nonsense.

I pushed through the glass and into her office. She had composed herself a bit more. Her light auburn hair was less messy than it had been on her way in. I liked it better before, not that my opinion mattered. She’d added some lipstick, too.

“You have an appointment with Mr. Poole in five minutes. Main conference room.”

“Fine.” She stood. If her ankle pained her, and I was certain it did, she didn’t show it. “Get your notepad and meet me. I’ll be there in a moment. Make sure he has a cup of black coffee ready for him, two packets of sugar on the side.”

I did as she asked, hitting the light switch in the wood-paneled conference room and preparing the coffee. After setting out the cup and sugar as instructed, I settled into one of the leather chairs. I ignored the luxuriousness of everything in the room, pretending it was commonplace so that I could continue to pass as one of them. I arranged my notepad and the spreadsheet of her projects, including Mr. Poole’s expenditures and other data on each one, on the table in front of me.

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