IN BED WITH THE BOSS

Staring at him, feeling a sinking sense of confusion assail her, it all suddenly changed to a sense-crawling horror when she realized what they’d done. She spun away in a shaken, horrified need to escape but he stopped her.

“Just get back in the car so I can take you home, Vivian” he said.

His voice was calmer now, no longer angry, and maybe it was that tone that made her turn and began to move back towards his car. He walked beside her, not saying anything till they got to his car. He opened the door for her and when she got in, he went around and climbed into the driver’s seat.

The ride was quiet. They turned into the street on which her apartment block was situated, and Scott slowed down. “Was that just about the wine or did I do something wrong?” he asked.

He just couldn’t leave it alone! “Why the sudden interest in my sleazy feelings, Scott?”

“It’s not sleazy, Vivian,” he pointed out. “Believe it or not, but I…. I… I care about you, damn it.”

Only slightly mollified by that response, Vivian pulled in a tense breath. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You were perfect in fact… maybe that was it…. And I guess the alcohol too.” she explained, tightening her grip on her ribcage as if trying to hug her feelings in.

They arrived at her place and Vivian got out quickly. Without waiting for him she began walking to the front door. She was so anxious to put her key into the lock so she could get inside before he could reach the door that she missed the lock and had to try again. His arm reaching across her shoulder to do the job for her drew sparks from her muscles as they pulled taut.

The door swung open. Neither said another word to each other as they both stepped inside. Refusing to look at him, Vivian glued her eyes to floor. She could feel his presence though, like a fierce wave of energy battering into her and her insides were fizzing so badly she could not even breathe.

This was the first time he was in her home and it felt so… intimate for some reason. “I have to go… change… and then go to… bed” Vivian said, and tried to walk away from him.

“Wait a minute, Vivian.” His quiet voice pulled her to a stop. “You’ve forgotten something.”

Narrow shoulders snapping with tension, she did not want to turn around but stiff pride made her do it. He was standing near the door, his broad-shouldered posture somehow deceptively passive because, even with her nonexistent experience, Vivian was able to detect the prowling sexual pulse beat emanating from him. Wild butterflies were beating their wings in her stomach. Without being aware she was doing it, she brought her fingers together across her front in an anxious defensive pleat.

“What is that?” she prompted warily, and not for the life of her could she look at his face…

Scott wondered how she would react if he offered to finish what they had started down in the street. She looked so damn beautiful standing there, trying hard not to show she was upset. And her innocence pounded at him like a bloody great barrier. It made him want to crash through it and just- Just what?

Desire was one hell of an aphrodisiac when someone else was feeling it for you, he thought heavily. One unguarded look, the tempting thought of those anxious fingers touching his body, the sensual promise her lush parted mouth had offered him when he kissed her…All it would take was a loosening of his self-control and the conflagration would happen and they might both gain some relief. Shame he had to hold back.

“Your manners,” he responded finally. “It is usual to thank the guy that bought you dinner.”

It was like he’d reached out and cut her throat. So cool, so sardonic, he was even still in lecture mode. Vivian drew her eyes shut as the whole wretched agony of the way he was treating her exploded like a firework of needle-hot sparks which turned to ice as they embedded themselves in her flesh.

“Thank you,” she delivered with stiff obedience, “for such-a pleasant evening, Mr McCall”

“My pleasure, Vivian” he returned, and even the super controlled Scott McCall could not stop the rueful twitch that took hold of his mouth. “And please let’s not go back to using my last name”

He caught a glimpse of some arrogance in the way she nodded her head at him before she spun away on the heels of her ridiculously high shoes.

Her chin was high, her shoulders back, her hair a glossy black stream of loose waves down her taut back. Not a single tremor showed in her body as she walked away from him, and pushed open what he assumed was her bedroom door and stepped inside.

The door shut with an impressively controlled soft thud behind her. As if it was a sign that he could drop his guard-or whatever it was that was holding him-Scott let his shoulders fall back against the wall behind him and closed his eyes. Not even a damn hug or a kiss goodnight on the cheek, he thought. Vivian Sanchez was fast becoming the kind of recreational drug he never indulged in. The kind you only took on if you were looking for total loss of control of your life.

He needed a woman, Scott decided grimly. He should not have blown off his relationship with Olivia, in favor of chasing after the one he could not have, but he couldn’t get her out of his mind no matter how much he tried.

Opening his eyes on that lowering confession, mouth turned down at the corners as he dragged himself free of the wall, he speared a final glance at her closed bedroom door, then turned to open the front door and walked out of her apartment.

Vivian watched from her bedroom window as Scott walked over to his car with the long loose-limbed stride of a man eager to depart. Duty done, she thought miserably. Annoying responsibility returned safely home, now he was going out to catch up on his real life. And he had his phone clamped to his ear to find out where that life happened to be situated right now.

A woman?© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

Of course a woman, she told herself, reaching out to snap the blind shut so she could not see him any more.

_____________

The sound of her phone chiming out its jingle brought Vivian swimming up from the dark depths of the heavy sleep she had eventually tumbled into after tossing about restlessly for half of the night.

Stretching out a hand and groping the bedside table to make contact with the flat black contraption, she tucked her arm back beneath the duvet and pushed the phone to her ear without checking who it was, before mumbling,”Hello. Who’s this?”

“It’s Scott” he announced with his usual impatience. “I have to go out of town and you’re coming with me. We’re going to San Francisco.”

Sitting up with a jolt, her sleepy eyes opened wide as saucers. “What?” Vivian echoed. “W-what for-?”

“Work,” came the sardonic answer. “Of the socializing kind.”

Still trying to cast off the heavy mists of sleep, Vivian pushed the tumble of dark curls off her face. “But it’s Saturday,” she remembered. “I am supposed to be -”

“I don’t recall promising you would get your weekends free when you came to work for me,” Scott rode roughshod over what she had been about to say. “So whatever it is you have planned get out of it. If it’s your job at the cheesecake shop, then I have already told you to quit. It’s interfering with you work for me. I have to go out for a few hours but when I get back I will expect you to be ready to leave. You will need a dress- something formal.”

“Formal,” Vivian repeated, stunned by the way he had just discarded her plans. “H-how formal?”

“Red-carpet-best formal,” he delivered dryly, “Do you have something like that to wear?” he then thought to ask.

Dragging herself to the edge of the bed and standing, Vivian sent her mind’s eye sweeping down the packed dress rail in the bedroom. “Yeah. I think so,” she mumbled. “But-Scott, you know I am not very good at these formal occasions,” she threw in anxiously. “I don’t think-”

“That’s your business, not mine,” he informed her with the cool thrust of a murderer plunging a knife into her chest. “You came to me for this job, not the other way around, and this is part of your job. Are you telling me that you’re not up to taking on the responsibility-?”

“No, I’m not,” Vivian surrendered heavily. “I will come.”

“Good,” he approved. “Pack a bag because we will be staying for a while. See you at one o’clock.” He cut the connection before she could find the necessary brain cells to ask any questions.