Sweet Surrendering (2 page)

Then he turned around and I almost choked on the words I was about to spew at him. He seized my moment of silence and spoke first.

“Are you Aurora Clarke? I’m Lucas Blaine and I’m here to apply for the administrative assistant position. I was hoping to speak with you about it in person.” His voice was deeper than I thought it would be. It reminded me a bit of a country singer I couldn’t name at the moment. It was the kind of voice that made me quiver, deep down inside, and I hoped he didn’t notice.

I finally let my eyes travel from his sleek black tie up to his face, where I nearly gulped when I saw that he had a chin dimple. He had a dusting of freckles on his nose to go with the hair, and then I met a set of eyes that were a strange color in between blue and gray. Like wet stones I used to collect on the beach at our vacation home in Maine. Or the color of the clouds before a storm.

I gaped like an out-of-bowl goldfish for a second and he held his hand out. I kicked myself as I stared at it, as if I’d never seen one before.

Shake his hand, Rory.

No! Don’t shake his hand! You’re here to yell at him, not ogle his chin dimple.
This was only happening because I hadn’t gotten laid in months. I was just a little sex starved, that was all. Looked like it was time for another session with Mr. Buzzy, my favorite vibrator. A long session.

I finally found my voice. “Listen, I’m sure you’re more than qualified for this position, but that doesn’t mean you can come in here and harass Mrs. Andrews. It doesn’t really start you off on the right foot, you know.” I tried to turn on what I liked to call my “bitch voice.” It was the one I used when I had to talk over a bunch of men who all thought they were right, but none of them were. I’d dealt with far worse than this, so why was it so hard to think when I was looking in his eyes.

Stop looking at his eyes.

“I figured you’d see it as assertive,” he said. “Being assertive is a good quality to have in an employee, don’t you think?” He sort of turned his head to the side and, once again, I was speechless.

Oh, fuck me.

“Well, do you have your résumé with you?” He had a briefcase in one hand and I could see a white piece of paper.

“Signed, sealed, delivered,” he said, holding it out as the Stevie Wonder song floated through my head. I took it from him and pretended to scan it, though it could be written in Chinese for all I took in of it, but I had to keep up appearances. He waited while I pretended read, just barely tapping his briefcase against his thigh. That could get irritating. Fast.

Finally I had to say something, so I cleared my throat and nearly choked in my own spit. Smooth, Rory.

“Well, Mr. Blaine, this a bit unorthodox, but I’ve been having some trouble finding a suitable candidate and I do have some free time now, so why don’t you come with me and we can do an interview right now?” I wondered if he could spot all the lies. Firstly, I didn’t have free time. I had a meeting I had to prepare for. Second, there was no way I could interview this guy without doing something stupid.

It had to be the cursed chin dimple. It was rendering me incapable of behaving normally.

I’d taken shit from men ever since I started at this company as an intern in high school. There was no way this guy was going to come out on top, so I rolled my shoulders back and motioned for him to follow me.

I made extra sure that my heels were loud as we marched back to the interview room, Mrs. Andrews gaping at me from where she’d been eavesdropping in the hallway. I gave her a look that told her I had everything under control and opened the door to admit Mr. Blaine.

This . . . could be interesting.

“May I offer you some water? Coffee?” I motioned to the little table that had a mini water cooler and a Keurig on it. I turned my back to him for a brief second to pour myself a glass of cool water, and I could feel his eyes staring at my ass. Granted, it did look great in this skirt, but you’re not supposed to ogle your future boss.

“To be honest, I’d like a Scotch on the rocks, or even a Whiskey, but I’m guessing that would be frowned upon.” He was trying to throw me off; I could feel it. Two could play at that game. I turned slowly, sipping my water. I set a glass down in front of him and sucked my bottom lip into my mouth to get off the last of the water.

He watched me without blinking and I could almost see the wheels in his head turning under that gorgeous mop of hair. Something sparked in his earlobe, and for the first time I noticed a tiny diamond stud in his left ear that was out of place, given the office setting, but somehow suited him.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but this is an alcohol-free building. Unless, of course, it’s one of the corporate dinners. Then all bets are off.” I sat down across from him, making sure my back was as straight as possible, crossed my ankles and rested my hands on the table.

“Would I get to see you go a little wild? Let your hair down?” He motioned to my tight chignon. Oh, he knew absolutely nothing about me.

“How about we talk about you, Mr. Blaine, since you’re the one that needs a job?” I put emphasis on the word “job”. Mr. Blaine leaned back in his chair as if he were in his living room and gave me a whisper of a smile.

“Aren’t you a little ray of sunshine?”

I fumbled with my list of normal interview questions and could only come up with a few.

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” He smirked at me for a second, as if he was going to give me a wiseass answer and then changed his mind.

“I see myself being happy. Having a job I love and working with people who are reaching for the same goals. Despite my earlier comments, I’m not a slacker. I work hard and I don’t take no for an answer. I just see it as an incentive to make someone say yes.” He leaned forward then, placing his forearms on the table and I saw his arms flexing under the jacket. One sleeve slid up and a watch glinted on his wrist. I pulled my eyes away from the watch and back up to his eyes, which were blazing now.

The storm was raging. This . . . this was a passionate man. Was he passionate in all areas of his life, I wanted to ask, but I already knew the answer.

Unequivocally, yes.

I re-crossed my ankles and cleared my throat again, moving on to my second question.

He answered it the same way as the first, with a sincerity that was hard not to believe. I moved on to a few more questions and I realized that it was growing hot in the room, and I was wishing I could open one of the windows without making a fuss.

“So,” he said when I was done with all the normal questions I could think of and was groping for something else to say, “where do you see yourself in five years, Miss Clarke?”

That was none of his business. This was his damn interview, not mine. I’d already gone through one of those. Several, actually, as I worked my way up. Being the boss’ daughter only got me so far. In fact, I was pretty sure being Walter Clarke’s daughter made it even harder to get where I was.

“But we’re not talking about me, Mr. Blaine. This is your interview.” A beat of silence followed what I said and he was studying me in a way that made me both uncomfortable and a little intrigued. He stared so openly, so confidently. Not in a gross way, more in a way that said he was just as interested in me as I was in him.

“Why can’t we talk about you? Yes, I am the one who needs the job, but wouldn’t it be good to see if we are . . . compatible? We will be working very closely together.” Was it just me, or did he mean to make that sound dirty? To make my mind play a little fantasy of the two of us getting close? As soon as I thought it, I was picturing it.

I swear to God, I was going to kill Royce Winkle for cheating on me and forcing me to break up with him, so I wasn’t getting regular sex anymore. The fact that his last name was Winkle should have been my first red flag, but he was charming and rich and liked to pay for dinner when we went out. That was before I found out that he was just after my money (big shocker) because he had a gambling problem and owed a lot of people a lot of money. He was also banging a bartender on the side, but that was just the straw that broke this camel’s back.

“I suppose you have a point there. What, do you want to play twenty questions?” This was already an off-the-wall interview. Why not make it even more so?

He didn’t answer so I sighed, looking up at the ceiling as if it would tell me how to deal with this guy.

“I see myself being president of this company. Dad wants to retire and sail around the world with Mom on his boat and I want nothing more than to make that happen.”

What. The. Fuck.

I’d meant to give him a vague answer, but I’d told him exactly the truth.

SERIOUSLY, WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME?!

I blushed and waited for his reaction.

“That’s very . . . sweet.” He finally said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, although I didn’t know what I was apologizing for. Being sweet? There were a lot of people who would never call me sweet. Raging bitch monster was more like it.

Awkward silence followed as he continued to study me and I tried not to squirm and show him that I was uncomfortable.

“Well,” I said, finally snapping back into business mode. “I’ll look over your résumé again, and have Mrs. Andrews give you a call.”

I stood and stuck out my hand, as is customary at the end of an interview.

He stood slowly, as if he didn’t want this to be over yet, but gave me a nice firm handshake that didn’t linger. Hm. Most men were worried about crushing my delicate lady hands so I was used to the dead fish handshake.

“Thank you for coming in and we’ll let you know,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.

“I look forward to it, Miss Clarke. Very much.” He gave me a wink, gathered his briefcase and was out the door, shutting it behind him.

Je-sus Christ.

I had to sit back down and stare at the wall for a minute to recover. One thing was for sure. Actually, two things.

One, I needed to get laid. Soon.

Two, there was absolutely NO WAY I could hire Lucas Blaine.

No. Way.

Part of me wanted to take the rest of the afternoon off so I could go home and have some quality time with Mr. Buzzy, but I had meetings and my revisions on the quarterly report were due at midnight or else the board would have my hide, and I didn’t need to give them any more reasons to dislike me.

To top it off, I kept getting interrupted by assholes who thought that somehow, it was in my job description to do their work as well as my own. Sometimes I thought it would be better if I could do their jobs as well as my own because I’d do it right. I wrote four terse emails, asking ONCE AGAIN for various projects/reports/files that I needed yesterday, or last week, or even last month. Some people liked to put smiley faces and so forth in their emails to make them seem less mean, or terse. I didn’t believe in that. Smiley faces didn’t get anything done. People being afraid of you did.

But they weren’t all bad.

Dad believed that no company could run without everyone being accountable, even him, which was why he had a board of trustees to make sure that happened. The only problem was that they were (mostly) a bunch of old white dudes that would be content going back to the 1950s to make sure women stayed in the kitchen and out of the boardroom. Ironic, considering they worked at a software company that was all about reaching for the future.

I took a cab back to my apartment, even though I could have taken the T. Dad had tried to make me use a driver, but I kept paying him off and then ditching him, so Dad had given up and compromised by buying me a car that I only used when I drove up to the summer house in Maine.

I’d grown up just outside Boston in a nice suburb, but had always longed for the noise and cacophony of living here. People said New York was the greatest city of all, but it was definitely Boston, hands down.

The other thing Dad had tried to insist on was a lavish apartment, on which I had relented, but only as long as my best friend from college, Sloane, could live with me. Dad adored Sloane, so it was easy to convince him.