Chapter 1
Max
“Who’s that?”
Pointing my finger through the wall of glass, my aim was a pretty young woman with hair like silk.
Okay, so I know that must sound trite. Hair like silk? What was this? A shampoo commercial? But seriously, I’d never seen hair like it.
Not only did it gleam under the bright lights of the reception area outside my office, the colors were insane. But crazier still was the notion that it was all natural.
There was way too much work there for that to have been anything other than the good Lord’s masterpiece.
There were so many golds and bronzes and shades of silvery white that my eyes were captured by the majesty of it. Sure, it could be a seriously expensive hair job at the salon, but fuck. That was the purview of rich housewives and mistresses; neither of which I had so that didn’t explain the stranger roaming around the ante office before me.
Derek, my PA, snorted. “She’s my assistant while Mary’s out.”
I blinked at that. “Who’s Mary?”
Derek sighed, but then, he had a habit of doing things like that. The man had been with me long enough for me not to mind. On anyone else, I’d have gone insane. Issued warnings, dire threats of employment loss, but Derek had been with me so damn long that I couldn’t find it in me to get too riled up at his antics. His sighs were as much a part of the furniture as my desk or the sofa opposite me that I slept on more than I did my bed at home.
Derek was caustic, sarcastic, and just Alpha enough not to knock swords with me without letting me get too big for my boots.
Considering Avalon had just hit the Fortune 500, it was very likely my boots were going to start getting too small for me.
Derek said it was his moral duty to keep me in line.
As the bastard was my best friend’s kid brother, I hadn’t knocked him out when he’d said that. Hell, who am I kidding? The last time I knocked someone out, it was by accident.
If knocking my head into a quarterback could be considered an accident…
There’s a reason I was nicknamed ‘The Wall’ back in college.
“Mary was my assistant,” he explained slowly, literally in slow motion. Jeez, the man treated me like I was mentally challenged sometimes. “You know? The one with the huge basketball tucked under her dress for the last three months?”
I’m anything but mentally challenged; Avalon’s status proves that, but still, I blinked.
Again.
Because what the fuck was he talking about? “She was pregnant?”
“Yeah, dumbass. She really was.” He shook his head. “Wow. You really didn’t notice? I mean, I know we’re not supposed to notice anymore. Heaven forbid we look anywhere else than a woman’s eyes, but she was huge.” He rubbed his chin, the scratching noise came as his nails rasped over his stubble—it was Movember, and the idiot was refusing to shave. He looked more hobo than chic in my opinion. “I wonder if she was having twins or something.” He shot me a look. “Seriously. You didn’t notice? I mean, she was this stick thing with this huge bump. How couldn’t you notice?”
I processed his bewilderment, rifling through my memory banks for the elusive assistant who I must have seen at some point but seriously couldn’t remember. “Redhead?”