Page 105 of Boss of the Year
His arms tightened at first, then released me as I sat up to look at him in the face and see if he felt the same dread that was creeping into my gut.
There was only awe there.
“Hey.” He pushed a bit of hair off my face. “That was beautiful, Marie. It was fucking beautiful. We didnothingto be ashamed of.”
“But…” I didn’t bother to cover myself again. After all, he’d seen everything from the waist up now and had felt much moreunder the water. Still, the shame was spreading through my heart. “But I’m your employee. You’re my boss.”
“Which has never meant a damn thing in this spring, and you know it.”
“And then there’s…Daniel…”
It came out like a squeak. I didn’t want to name the elephant in the spring, so to speak, but it wouldn’t be silenced.
That was when I felt Lucas deflate. Unable to bear it one second more, I scrambled off his lap and out of the pool, where I grabbed my robe off the ground and put it on with quick, jerky movements.
“Marie,” Lucas called from the spring. “Marie, stop. Baby,look at me.”
I did stop then. And like he was pulling on a string, I turned to face him, water still dripping from the ends of my hair, my skin still wet enough that it had soaked through parts of the robe, which I pulled tight around my body.
Lucas was standing in the water now, which lapped at his hips, showing off the muscled lines and the clean V of muscle pointing to that organ I’d just ridden like a harlot. The silver in his hair and the water droplets on that carved chest glinted in the moonlight, and for a moment, I considered jumping back into the spring to finish what our bodies had clearly wanted.
God, I was a horrible person.
“You did nothing wrong,” he told me. “You and Daniel…you don’t owe him a damn thing, and I know my brother well enough to know he won’t see it that way either. Whatever happens between the two of you—whatever youwantto happen when we get back to New York—this time here between you and me belongs to us and no one else. Nod and tell me you understand.”
Unable to stop myself, I obeyed. My voice was a whisper. “I understand.”
Whether I believed it was another question.
Lucas’s eyes shuttered. “Good. Now go get some sleep. We’ve got an early flight in the morning.”
I nodded again, but it took me a few second before I managed to make my feet move properly.
“And Marie?”
I couldn’t ignore him even if I tried. “Lucas.”
His eyes were so dark, they were almost black. He did nothing to hide the naked yearning there. The intensity we both were feeling. And maybe something else that couldn’t be named.
“It will be okay,” he said. “I promise.”
With a quick, jerky nod, I darted away. How could I believe him?
I’d just had one of the most intense experiences of my life—an experience I’d wanted, practically begged for, an experience that would change me forever.
But now I had the sinking feeling I’d had it with the wrong man.
And there was no coming back from that.
21
STEAK AND KIDNEY PIE
*sometimes comfort food is whatever gets you through the night.
I’d never been an easy sleeper. Joni slept like an eggbeater, which meant that until I was eight, I got kicked at least twice a night and often woke up perpendicular to how I’d originally fallen asleep.
But even after we finally got separate beds, I would frequently stay up hours after my bedtime, worrying about all kinds of things. What would happen when my mother got out of prison? Would my brother be killed when he went to war? What would happen in the event of a fire, a burglary, a blizzard, or any other emergencies my adolescent brain could conjure?
