“Right.” He crossed his arms. “I have a couple of things to go over with you. First things first: this is delicate, but I’ll be informing one of the board members about yesterday’s...events.”
Her mouth went dry. “What?”
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “It’s Dover policy. If colleagues do something...sexual in nature, they have to report it.”
“Report it?” She practically choked on her words. “You mean like, every single time staff at Dover sleeps together they have to give some kind of detailed report?”
“Well, no. Not every single time. Didn’t you read the handbook? It was very clear,” Simon replied. “We just have to report any kind of romantic relationship—”
“We’re not in a relationship,” she said, cutting him off.
Simon blinked. “No. We’re definitely not.” He sighed. “But we were intimate, and that has to be reported. You’re not expected to give details. Just something that says that we were intimate together.”
“No. Absolutely not.” She hated to sound so terse, but she refused to have that kind of information getting out.
“It’s company policy,” Simon explained. “We run a very ethical company here, Heather. We even have an ethics office.”
She glared at him. “You seriously think I’m going to sign off on someone at Dover knowing I screwed my boss?”
He winced. “You make it sound so mercenary. As if there weren’t any emotions involved.”
“There weren’t,” she said, knowing full well what a lie that was.
What she and Simon had shared together wasn’t just physical. She knew that. Which was why they had to put it behind them completely. Letting Simon back into her heart would be disastrous. He had broken her heart once, and with a recent divorce barely behind her letting feelings get in the way of rebuilding her life would only torpedo her plans. She needed a clean break from what they had done yesterday.
“I see.” His jaw clenched, and his blue eyes narrowed. “I guess I read too much into it.”
“I let my emotions from the speech get the best of me,” she said. “And I suspect you finally getting confirmation that I was hiding my identity got the best of you, too. We had a good time. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that.”
“There’s still the matter of telling one of the board members what happened,” he pointed out.
“Please, Simon, don’t do this. Working together is complicated enough as it is.” She hated having to beg, however, appealing to Simon’s old feelings for her was the only strategy she had left. The only way she knew how to protect her career. “I can’t have this getting out. It would destroy my reputation.”
“I don’t want to cause you any distress,” he said. “That’s the last thing I want to do. But this is for our protection. If we report this, your evaluation will get taken out of my hands. Someone else will decide if your three-month contract should be renewed. That means your job won’t be influenced by anything we’ve done together. You’ll get a fair and impartial evaluation.”
“Can’t you just have someone else evaluate me without explaining exactly why?” she asked desperately.
Simon frowned. “I don’t know... I guess I could act like I need help evaluating you.”
She nodded vigorously. “Yes. Exactly. You’d be doing the ethical thing by asking someone else to evaluate me, while keeping what we did a secret. Can you that for me, Simon? Keep this between us?”
He gazed at her, a pained expression evident on his chiseled features. “I suppose. But this probably complicates my next piece of news.”
“Oh? What is it?”
Simon sighed heavily, as if the weight of the world was resting on his shoulders. “There’s another conference coming up that I have to attend. Only it’s out of town, and you and I will be the only people from Dover attending.”
SIMON WATCHED HER ENTIRE body stiffen.
“We should tell the board member what we did,” he said firmly. Heather was clearly uncomfortable with this new development, and maybe drafting a report about their encounter in his hotel room would fix things.