Page 48 of Boss Me

I stepped out of her reach. “I—I can’t. Talk to him.” Every time I did, the ice inside me turned to fire. When I’d smacked the desk almost two weeks ago, I’d really wanted to punch him, right in the solar plexus, so he’d hurt as much as I did.

“Have you talked to Dr. Pradhi lately?”

“Yeah. Earlier this week.”

“Okay. I’m sure she said you’ve got to do what’s right for yourself. For your mental health. If that’s saying an Irish good-bye to Jackson and Synergy, so be it.”

I let my gaze drift to the beach and the ocean beyond my fenced-off pool. Could I stay on the island? Let my responsibilities in California drop away? Working on the community center felt good. Fulfilling. And there was plenty more to do.

Could I convince Mamá to move back? She’d be safer this far away from my father. She’d miss her friends at church and at the senior center, but on the island, she had family.

I sucked in a deep breath of the salty air. Let it out. If Jamila hadn’t been there, I’d have walked through the gate onto the sand and dug my toes in. The island always felt like home, soothing me, reassuring me, embracing me in a way my childhood home never had and in a way I could never recreate in California in the big, cold mansion in Pacific Heights.

“Though that Ben—” Jamila slid me a sly look. “It’d be a shame to tell him good-bye.”

My mind spun, and for once, no words came.

“Thought so. A little island fling might do you some good. Get you past all that mess with Jay. Let you move on.”

I snorted. “A fling with my assistant? That’d be a terrible idea. I’d have to write myself up.”

“Good lord, Cooper. Everybody fucks on vacation. Hell, you and I—”

I cut her off with a sharp shake of my head. “The COO doesn’t fuck his assistant.”

“What if Ben wants to fuck the hot guy he can’t keep his eyes off, who happens to be his boss when they’re an entire continent away? As long as it’s consensual, it doesn’t seem like an issue to me.”

“So when I write his performance report at the end of the year, do I rate him on how well he fucks, in addition to his other responsibilities?” But it wasn’t just a fling with my assistant I was protesting. It was a fling with Ben. Ben, savior of children and animals. Ben, with his soft brown eyes and softer skin. Ben, who’d come all the way out to this tiny island to care for me. Ben deserved so much more than a fling. So much more than me.

She propped her fists on her hips. “You’re both adults. I think you can figure this out. Clearly, y’all need to get it out of your systems.”

“No, I don’t. I’ve dealt with it for six months, and—”

“Six months? You mean since he started at Synergy?”

I winced. “Yes?”

“Oh, honey.” She put her hand on my arm, and it didn’t tingle the way it had when Ben had done it last night. “You need to work this out. Besides…”

I took the bait, hope flickering in my belly. “Besides?”

“If you don’t go back, he won’t be your assistant anymore.”

Holy fuck.

18

COOPER

It was his wrists. The delicate curve of them over his laptop’s keyboard as he typed, sitting six feet away from me on the sectional. The bones and tendons shifting as his fingers moved. That was the part of him I most wanted to touch, to explore.

After his lips, of course.

As he’d done a dozen times already, he tensed and turned his head to look at me, somehow sensing I was staring. He sat straight, feet on the floor, his laptop on his knees, all business. His expression said, Why are you trying to distract me from my work?

Or maybe, Stop staring at me, creeper. I was his boss, and I had to stop ogling my employee’s wrists.

I was half-sprawled in the corner of the sectional, my legs stretched toward him. My bare feet hung off the seat. I buried my nose in my beat-up paperback, pretending to read the thriller. When I flipped the page, it fluttered away from the spine. Books didn’t hold up well in the Caribbean humidity, especially those I’d read as many times as I’d read this one. I smoothed the page back in place and then, without moving my head, cut my eyes to Ben.

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