Page 17 of P.S. I Dare You

“Just that I’d give him the seat if it meant getting him out of my hair,” I say, chin tucked. “And when he told me I looked familiar, I showed him the stain on my shirt and then I walked away.”

It sounds so much nicer when I say it out loud, but in that moment, I was all scowls and boiling blood and I’m one hundred percent sure he felt the irritability emanating off me like radiation fallout.

“That’s not so bad,” Lillie assures me. “Maybe you should go introduce yourself? Properly? Maybe you can have a good laugh about this whole thing and it’ll blow over?”

My back is to Calder, but I can’t help notice every time a woman walks by, her gaze is immediately drawn in his direction. It’s insane. Every eye is pulled to him like magnets, every observant girl holding her head higher, her shoulders straighter, and adding a sway to her walk the second she sees him.

If they only knew his beauty is strictly skin-deep. All his desirable qualities come to a screeching halt from there.

I suppose it couldn’t hurt to introduce myself. I mean, as far as I know, he hasn’t even accepted his father’s offer yet. We might not ever work together. But if we do, if I can slap a little soothing balm overtop of this thing before it starts to bruise and turn even uglier, I might be able to salvage this job and thwart any potential damage to my professional reputation.

Grabbing my drink, I take a sip. “You’re right. I should go over there and clear this up.”

Lillie smiles. Of course. And gives me a thumbs’ up.

Clearing my throat, I slide out of the booth, gin and tonic in hand, and weave through the human obstacle course that leads back to the bar. And like some kind of otherworldly, divine intervention, the gentleman sitting beside Calder gets up and leaves.

Stealing the empty spot, I sit my drink down and immediately feel the weight of Calder’s glare.

“I knew you’d be back,” he says, his long fingers curled around a glass of some amber-colored liquor.

“Excuse me?” It takes everything I have not to let my jaw hit the bar top.

“I wasn’t flirting with you.” He takes a sip, his eyes diverting away from me and pointing to the back of the bar.

“I … didn’t think you were flirting with me.”

The side of his mouth lifts. “Right.”

“Trust me, you’re the furthest thing from my type. And even if you were my type …” I swallow the rest of my words, reminding myself this man, this royal prick, is supposed to be my boss.

Calder turns to me, his shoulders angled. I think he might actually have been listening to me? I think he wants to hear what I was going to say.

“You’re exactly my type,” he deadpans.

If I had just taken a drink, I’d be spitting it all over myself right now. That’s so not what I expected him to say, so out of the left field.

“I beg your pardon?” I ask, second-guessing whether or not I heard him correctly.

“I said … you’re exactly my type.”

His dark eyes hold me prisoner. I couldn’t move if I wanted to, and I’m not sure why. This isn’t me at all.

None of this is me.

“Unfortunately, you’re also just a snack,” he says, reaching for his tumbler. “And I’m not hungry.”

Calder turns away.

My breath grows hot in my nostrils, and I sense the tremble growing in my hands.

This man.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I say, waiting until I have his full attention again. “I’m a five-course meal at a restaurant you’d never be allowed to so much as set foot in. And by the way … I’m also your new PA.”

I walk away before he has a chance to respond.

I’m so going to be fired tomorrow.

WHAT.

The fuck.

Was that?

She’s the woman my father hired? The girl who spilled her coffee down her shirt after bumping into me in the hall?

That’s fucking golden. I can’t even be mad right now.

It makes perfect sense.

He brought on an assistant who happens to have all of the qualities he thinks I lack. She’s civil, tactful, punctual, classy as fuck.

I bet he thinks she’s going to be a good influence on me, like she can fucking domesticate me and turn me into a Corporate American civil servant.

Poor thing. She doesn’t realize she stepped inside the lion’s ring with nothing but a flimsy whip and a barstool. I’m not that easily tamed.

Regardless, I don’t know her name, but already I’m impressed. She’s not afraid to stand up for herself. I like that. If she’d given me a chance to explain, I’d have told her that’s what I meant when I said she was exactly my type.

I’m not a moron. I know she didn’t think I was flirting with her. I know she didn’t come back over because she wanted me. Quite the opposite. I saw the contention in that caramel-brown gaze of hers.

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