Chapter Two
Connor
“Here’s your lunch,” Sophie said, walking into my office with a plastic container in one hand, a bottled drink tucked into her elbow, and a stack of papers clutched in her other hand.
I rose from my chair and took the food, forcing myself not to look at the hint of cleavage that I could see as I towered over her much shorter frame. Sophie was curvy in the best way, with an hourglass figure that she couldn’t hide even if she tried. She dressed conservatively at the office, but her generous breasts still stretched the front of every blouse she wore. Not that I was complaining, but I didn’t want to get caught ogling, either.
She was a walking temptation that I had to interact with every single day. A dark-haired bombshell with captivating green eyes and full lips that I’d fantasized about kissing way too often, not to mention dirtier thoughts of how they’d feel wrapped around my dick. Just being in the same space as her heated my blood and made me want to touch her—or rather, more specifically, bend her over my desk, push her skirt up to her hips, and sink my cock into her sweet body until she moaned my name.
But, I refused to go down that road. Sophie was my assistant, and a damn good one at that—the best I’d ever had—and no way would I risk our working relationship because I was intensely attracted to her.
She didn’t know this, but the reason that I wasn’t booking the team building retreat somewhere with a beach was because of her. I didn’t think I could stand to see her in a bikini. It would surely drive me crazy and make it impossible to keep my hands to myself. So, I decided to take us somewhere that would require her to stay covered up. The more clothes, the better. Besides, I liked skiing.
Not as much as I would like to rub oil all over her smooth skin and watch her sunbathe, but that was part of the problem.
“Thanks,” I said, sitting back down in my chair and quickly pulling the screensaver up on my computer monitor. I didn’t want Sophie to see what was currently on display. It was hard to hide something from my assistant, but I’d been working on a secret project for the past two weeks that I didn’t want her to know about.
“These are the finance reports you need to review and sign,” she said, placing the papers on the desk. “They need to be in by the end of the year, but I figured we should take care of it now so it’s done.”
“Sometimes I wonder which one of us is in charge around here,” I said, my tone playful as I opened the container of food to find a turkey club sandwich and fries.
“You know you’d be lost without me.” She smiled brightly before turning around and leaving the office.
She was right, which was more of a reason not to cross those lines and sleep with her. Sophie was more than just an assistant. With her business degree, sharp eye for detail, and product knowledge, she was extremely valuable to the company. And to me.
I ate my lunch and reviewed the reports. Sophie was right, better to get it out of the way now before the holidays hit. I had just finished my meal when the phone on the corner of my desk rang. Most of my calls came through Sophie, but there were a few people that had my direct line, mostly family. So, I picked it up without hesitation.
“Connor Renshaw,” I said absently as I scrawled my name at the bottom of the final finance report.
“Hi, my boy!”
The cheerful voice on the other end of the line belonged to my father, and I was surprised to hear from him. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d called this number. The two of us didn’t talk much these days.
He’d been the one to start Renshaw Manufacturing forty years ago, and I had taken over the company when he retired early at the age of fifty-eight. We worked together for three years before that, so that I could learn the ropes, but we’d never really developed a close relationship. Maybe it was because there was too much in the past that I couldn’t let go.
When I was a kid, my dad was busy building this company and chasing after every young woman that he came across, especially his assistants—and I refused to follow in his footsteps that way. Every time he hired a new one, she was younger and hotter than the last, usually completely unqualified for the position, but that didn’t matter. The real position he had in mind only required a willingness to sleep with a married man.
His affairs had caused the end of all of his marriages. First, he and my mother split up when I was only five years old. Since then, he’d been married and divorced two other times. For a while, when I was a teenager, he convinced my mother to give him another chance, and he played the part of a devoted patriarch for a few months. Then, he’d blown it by hooking up with my twenty-two year old English teacher.
I’d had a crush on the woman myself, which made the whole thing even worse. I felt strangely betrayed, which led to the two of us not talking for a couple of years. When I was studying business in college, we’d finally found something to reconnect over, but I would only describe our relationship as lukewarm. Despite that, I could tell that he was calling to deliver bad news of some kind. His voice was a little too bright and peppy.
“Hey, Dad. What’s up?” I asked, putting the call on speakerphone as I threw away my trash from lunch and put the finance reports in the outgoing tray where Sophie would collect them later.
“Well first, I wanted to call and say merry Christmas.”
“Christmas is next week, dad. And we’ll see each other at Vanessa’s place.”
“Yeah, about that…”
I sighed. He was bailing on Christmas. Iknewit. He had talked me into guilting my sister, Vanessa, into inviting him to the Christmas gathering at her house on Christmas day this year. She’d just been a baby when he left the first time, but the second time, she’d been devastated to get a taste of what it was like to live as a happy family, only for it to be taken away. She’d never forgiven him for that, especially when she saw how upset our mom was at the time.
But this year, our mom was newly remarried and willing to spend the holiday with our dad, making nice. So, I had made it happen, even though I knew that the man had no follow-through.
“Did you find a different family to spend the holiday with?” I asked, unable to hide the annoyance in my voice.
“No, just a woman. And don’t be so grumpy. We both know that your mom and sister don’t really want me there.”
If I was honest, I wasn’t sure thatIwanted him there. I should have felt bad about it, but I knew that his presence would bring tension and that wasn’t what the holiday was about. I just wanted to go to Vanessa’s house, hang out with my brother-in-law, and watch my four-year-old, twin nieces go crazy over their gifts.