Out of nowhere, the air around her turned spicy with musk, and her body came to life in a way it had always been pretty dead before.
She turned to look at him but saw he was on his phone. Though she gnawed at her lip a little, she decided to brazen this out. If she tried to chat to him, he might think she was trying to soften him up, or he might think she was chasing him.
And while that was the best sex she’d had in her life, Samantha Garrett would chase no man. Ever again.
For that reason, she allowed the silence to carry on throughout the ride out of the city center and toward the Upper East Side where her small home was based. As they approached, she felt the change in the traffic, saw the difference in pedestrians as the people on the streets evolved from a broad spectrum of society—anything from a priest walking side by side to a punk rocker—to a more elegant kind of person…
She had to stay in the city, it had been her compromise although almost everyone in the area was stuck up beyond belief.
Erin chattered on at her side, and she gave him short answers that seemed to satisfy him—he’d been playing a game that had some story that thrilled him and bored her, but he was content to chirp away about it, and she was happy not to have to focus.
It was hard to concentrate on anything other than the man at her side, the man studiously ignoring her, and when her house came into view, she let out a short breath—relief to be out of the awkward situation filling her.
He’d made it awkward.
The dick, she thought.
She hadn’t wanted, nor had she needed, him to declare his undying love for her. Neither had she asked for him to make this false engagement of theirs real because they’d had one stupendously good round of sex…
He was acting like she had, though; but rather than mortify her, it angered her.
Made it so easy to open the door herself and usher Erin out onto the sidewalk. Moving behind her son, she bowed low so she could peer into the car, and when their eyes caught, she nodded. “I’ll see you around, Josh.”
His scowl came as a surprise, but before he could say a word, she slammed the door in his face and turned her back on him.
There would be no seeing him around. They traveled in different worlds. Had done, even when he’d been best friends with her husband.
No, that would be the last time she saw him without him seeking her out, and that was how it was going to be…
If there was a first move to be made, it was going to be on his part, not hers.
Chapter 12
Josh
Three weeks later.
As Josh did his nineteenth bicep curl, he grimaced as Ethan, his PA, gaped at his arms.
Ethan was definitely gay. Even though he’d never mentioned his sexuality, hadn’t discussed if he had a partner—male, female, or neither—Josh simply knew from how the man stared at him at moments like these.
If he wasn’t fucking awesome at his job, Josh would have gotten rid of him a long time ago. He didn’t give a shit about who the man fucked, but being gawped at while he was working out?
It was creepy.
Some might say he didn’t have to work out while his PA was in the vicinity… That was true. But as he trained, he dealt with business. Dictating emails in between sets, making calls or answering them as he took a breath.
To do so, he needed Ethan around. And when Ethan was around, Josh was very aware of every single bead of sweat, of every bulging vein in his limbs and on his forehead.
It was, truth be told, why, in the last year, he’d implemented a rigid sexual harassment policy in all his umbrella corporations, not just his head office.
Having come to learn what it was like to be hypersexualized by someone, there was no way he was allowing any of his staff to feel as uncomfortable as Josh felt in his PA’s presence at times like these.
When Ethan licked his lips, Josh grunted. “How long?”
“Until the meeting with Caracas?”
“Of course.”