Page 26 of The Boss

“You aren’t going to do anything stupid, are you?”

She honestly seemed concerned, and I wondered if it wasforme oraboutme. Did she think I’d make a scene and it’d be her fault? It was impossible to figure out what she was thinking, and that wasn’t something I was used to.

“Why would you think that?” I asked.

“Because you seem to have an impulsive streak sometimes,” she replied with a smile.

I liked seeing her smile.

“Stay here. I’ll be back as soon as I deal with the problem.”

I took a step toward the door, and she put her hand on my arm. I stopped, the pressure of her touch more arresting than anything she could’ve said. Heat flowed through me, diffusing the anger, changing it into something else.

“Please, don’t do anything rash,” she pleaded.

“You’re going to want to step back,” I said as my gaze moved from her hand to her eyes. “Because if you keep your hand there, something is going to happen between the two of us.”

Seventeen

Ashlee

I wasn’tsure when I figured out that Nate wasn’t going to fire me and that he wasn’t even angry at me, but when I did, when I realized that he was furious because of what Zed had done, it changed things. Changed the way I saw Nate Lexington.

He wasn’t perfect, and there was still the fact that he was my boss’s boss, but I could now see a side of him I hadn’t seen before. A part of him that took care of his employees. Except something in my gut said that wasn’t all of it, that he wouldn’t be getting this worked up for any employee.

I didn’t want to know that or think that. I didn’t want to complicate things any more than they already were. Except it looked like it was too late to turn back the clock. I’d told him everything that had happened, and now he was talking about ‘taking care’ of Zed. All sorts of interpretations of that phrase ran through my mind, each one worse than the other.

To think, when he’d first brought me to this room, I’d been worried about getting fired. Now, I was concerned that Nate was going to do something he couldn’t take back. If he got into a fight with the lead singer of his label’s biggest artist, he might be okay with it for a little while, but once he cooled off, he’d be furious with himself for losing his temper.

And he might be furious with me for giving him an excuse to fight. Sure, he was on my side now, but he’d been all over the place this past week. Ready to fire me one minute and asking me to come here the next. Kissing me. For all I knew, he’d call me into his office on Monday and demand that I tell him the truth about what happened because Zed was a jerk, but he wouldn’t have taken things that far. Or maybe he wouldn’t accuse me of being a liar, but would blame me…

No.

I wasn’t going to overthink things and come up with all the ways things could go south. I needed to think about the here and now, which meant I had to keep him from doing something stupid like punching the lead singer of Unraveling in front of the press and everyone else.

I went over to stand next to him as I asked what he intended to do, hoping that my presence would maybe calm him, or at the very least distract him.

I put my hand on his arm. “Please, don’t do anything rash.”

“You’re going to want to step back.” His voice was quiet, but not at all soft. “Because if you keep your hand there, something is going to happen between the two of us.”

That should have made me back off in a hurry, and a part of me recognized that he was trying to scare me into letting him go do whatever it was he wanted to do. He’d tried that posturing earlier when he’d demanded to know what happened. I wasn’t any more frightened now than I was then. Even though I didn’t know what he might say or how he might act, I did know that I wasn’t afraid of him.

Well, not physically.

He wasn’t the sort of man who resorted to violence to get what he wanted. If he was, I could think of several different times where he could’ve used physical force on me. Even the times he’d touched me, I’d been able to feel how much he’d held back.

If I was being honest with myself, that was the part of him I felt drawn to, and the reason my stomach was currently in knots.

I could move back, let him go do whatever while I got a ride home, then text him to let him know where I’d gone. He’d have the weekend to calm down, and then things could go back to normal at work.

But I didn’t want to do any of that. I wanted to distract him to keep him from making a mistake he couldn’t take back, but more than that, I wanted to know what he’d do next. Wanted to know what thatsomethingwas that he promised would happen between us. I’d never been this curious about another person before, and that should have scared me as much as any almost-threat he made.

I left my hand where it was, my eyes locked with his, and waited to see what he’d do next.

Several seconds ticked by, and neither of us moved or said a word. The room was quiet. The party continued on without us. No one came looking.

Then he moved all at once. His hand catching mine as he spun me around and pressed my back against the wall. I had a few seconds to register what was happening, seconds to stop him if this wasn’t what I wanted. Instead, I tipped my head up, inviting him to kiss me, to see where this would lead us.

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