“My new boss doesn’t need to see me drunk.” I motion with my drink in his direction.
She looks him over and then turns to me with an “oh” face. Then she steals another look while taking a long drink. Then another. I have to bump her to get her attention again. “He’s so fucking hot. Straight-up daddy material. I was definitely right. Oh my god, Claire.”
“Shush, Camille. He’ll hear you.” I shove her lightly, eyes flicking back to him. “Please, I’ll let you call him whatever you want. But please let’s just go.”
“Hell, no. The drinks are good and cheap.”
“There are other bars with good looking guys just as willing to pay for us to get drunk.”
“Yeah,us. Glad you admitted it finally. But no. I’m comfortable here with all these hot daddies.”
“Don’t do the self-love shit with me right now. I want to leave.”
“Ten more minutes.” She motioned to me. “And you need my extra dose of love because you refuse to believe you’re hot as hell. You got junk in the trunk and a killer body.”
I roll my eyes, but I know I won’t win this battle with her. Sighing, I finish my drink and shake my head at her. I order water as she decides on tequila. This can only go badly. “Ten minutes more and then you’re buying pizza tonight.”
“There’s my girl.”
Chapter 4
James
Ishould probably be focusing on my friends, but I can’t keep my mind off my hot as hell new hire, Claire Evans. With her teasing, wit, and that sexy-as-sin body, she must be a gift from the universe. There’s no other way she’d be presented to me like this. A drop-dead gorgeous woman who’s bratty but smart. Exactly my type of woman.
It had taken effort to leave our goodbye at a handshake. It had also taken effort to keep from stroking my cock under my desk. No woman has had that effect on me in years. I don’t know what to do with this pent-up lust.
And I’ll get to see her in the office every single day, starting Monday. Feast on her with my eyes while drawing out the fantasy of eventually getting to touch her. Fantasize that it’s only me she looks at that way. That my hands will be the only hands on her. I want to be all over her. I want to fuck her fifty different ways in my office alone.
This is proof she’s dangerous. Dangerously beautiful, perfect, sexy. A distraction that I shouldn’t have hired I know, but how was I supposed to resist her? Even if lusting after her makes me a dirty old man I don’t care, even if some call it a classic midlife crisis, I know what I want.
And I want Claire Evans on her knees, begging for my cock.
“Come on, Jimmy.” Dave elbows me. “Try to be present with us. Stop thinking about work!”
I arch an eyebrow at him. “There’s a lot to think about. I can’t just walk away from work like some people.”
“Whoa, low blow.” Dave snorts.
“Yeah. No business at the bar!” Tom reminds me. “We made that agreement in college. Doesn’t matter how long it’s been. A pact is a pact.”
“Jeff was always willing to listen,” Dave says to his beer, muttering the name of someone I never want to think about again.
I pin him with a look. The four of us go way back. We have always been together. Jeff, Dave, Tom, and me. But fucking Jeff Donovan overstepped and tried to make me take the bad end of a business deal. We could have recovered from that. But not when he decided to fuck my wife. No, there’s no recovering from something like that.
He slept with Caroline the night he sold me the bad deal. I’d come over to try and work things out with him. Instead, I found my best friend and the love of my life betraying me, right on his pool deck. Of course, according to her, I was the bad husband for not knowing that it had been going on for six months. It disgusted me. I could never look at my wife the same again.
It’s hard to forget the way he smothered her moans with kisses, or how brazen he was. His own wife and daughter had been sleeping in their house. If his daughter hadn’t distracted me, I might have done something worse. Instead, I told his daughter to go back to bed, that everything was fine. What was her name? Clara? Carla? It doesn’t matter.
It took me a full twenty-four hours before I’d cooled off enough to decide what to do. I told his wife about the affair. I figured she would want to know. My life was never the same after that. It had fractured my world. But all that is in the past, and now Jeff, his wife, and his little girl are out of my life.
“Stop thinking so hard,” Tom says. “You’re going to scare the chicks away.”
“Or you’ll get wrinkles, a major turn-off to the younger ones,” Dave chimes in.
Dave, a twice divorcé, loves to pick up young girls. As long as they’re legal, they’re fair game to him. He eyes a pretty girl with soft, sun-kissed skin. From this angle, I feel a twang of disgust—more for myself than for Dave. He’s not the only one fantasizing about a younger girl.
“I love living in a college town.” Dave drinks to punctuate his remark.