They were back to that. He took a deep breath and let it out. The last of the pain eased from his body, but he knew that one wrong move and it would return. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “I told you that you won’t get fired.”
“I’d still have to leave. It would just be too weird after that. It would be like I got paid to come here and have sex with you. I know that after what just happened you might not believe this, but morally and ethically, I just can’t do that.”
Morally and ethically, he did not have a problem with having sex with his assistant. None at all, but he’d never been the type of guy to pressure a woman who didn’t want sex. Not even when he wanted it so bad his teeth hurt and his balls ached.
“I don’t know what else to say.”
He glanced over at her. Suddenly he felt tired. And old. Like he’d just gone two rounds with Darren McCarty in overtime. “You do
n’t have to say anything. I took a bunch of Vicodin just before you got here and lost my mind.”
She stood, and he looked up her bare legs. “Does it usually make you lose your mind?”
No, she made him lose his mind. “It makes me forgetful, and I forgot that I can’t have sex with you.” But he wouldn’t forget again. He had blue balls and she was about to walk out the door. Just like last time. She was cute and sexy and he liked her, but there were a lot of cute, sexy women that he liked. Cute, sexy women who wouldn’t let things like morals and ethics stand in the way of a hot, ra sy ounchy roll in the sheets.
If not for a leg cramp, Chelsea would have had sex with Mark. Right there on top of the granite island. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind about that. He hadn’t been the only one to lose his mind that afternoon in his kitchen. And just like there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that she would have done him, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that it would have been good.
Real good.
Scream at the top of her lungs, rock the gates of heaven, and beg him not to stop, good.
She didn’t know what it was about him, other than his good looks and hot body. Other than the heat of his brown eyes and the touch of his skilled hands and mouth, that made her forget everything. Forget her ethics and plans and who she was and what she wanted to do with her life.
She’d worked for fantastic-looking men before. Men who’d made it known in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that they wanted to have sex with her. She’d never been tempted. To them she’d just been a woman they found attractive. A body. It hadn’t been personal.
Mark was different. There was just something in the way he looked at her sometimes. Not as if he wanted her, but as if he needed her. It surrounded him like some sort of hot magnetic force that drew her in and drained her brain. It made her all raw nerve endings and warm urges. It made her throw caution and good judgment to the wind, along with her clothes, and want to press her naked body against his. To touch him all over and feel him touch her.
I’ve only ever been good at two things. Hockey and sex, he’d said. My hockey career is over. So that only leaves me with one thing I’m good at.
She’d never seen him play hockey, but she imagined his approach to both was the same. She imagined he used the same thoughtful precision to score goals as he did to score with women. He stayed with it and took his time. Didn’t rush and did whatever it took to get the job done.
In the cooler section of Whole Foods, she’d wondered what the man did to make women scream; now she knew. And now that she knew, she worried that getting through the next few days, heck, the next three months, was going to be torture.
But she needn’t have worried. The next day at work, Mark returned to his previous pattern of behavior and ignored her. He ignored her the day after that too. In fact, over the course of the next few weeks, the only real time he spoke to her was when she took him to appointments or chauffeured him around to look at real estate. He looked at so many properties, she didn’t think he’d ever find anything. The property was either too big or too small. If he liked the floor plan, he didn’t like the area or vice versa. Either it was too secluded or the houses were too close. He was like the Goldilocks of house hunters and couldn’t find something that was just right.
Often his friends picked him up, or he spent time in the weight room upstairs or on the golf course just outside the backyard. On the rare occasions he did speak to her, he was so extremely polite, she wanted to hit him on the arm and tell him to knock it off. To send her on a stupid errand or insult her clothes and hair.
Instead, he asked about safe stuff, like her acti s ling. She told him about the background work she’d done for HBO. She’d been hired for a commercial shoot in a local coffee shop, and she’d tried out for the part of Elaine Harper in a local production of Arsenic and Old Lace. She didn’t get it, which was a little disappointing but okay. The play wasn’t set to open until September. She wasn’t sure how much longer she would be in Seattle after September.
Perversely, the less attention he paid her, the more attention she paid to him. The more he ignored her, the more things she noticed about him. Like the way he tended to draw out the O’s when he talked. Or how when he was irritated, his “yeah” got chopped to a “yeh.” She noticed how his voice sounded through the glass as she stood in the office and watched him coach Derek on the driveway. His coaching style was equal parts encouragement and exasperation, and he was in turn amused and annoyed by Derek’s utter lack of coordination.
She noticed the way he smelled. Like some lethally good combination of soap and deodorant and skin. And she noticed the way he walked. He no longer wore his splint, and he’d switched his cane to his right hand. His strides seemed easier. Less thought out. Smoother. She noticed he seemed more comfortable and that pain rarely bracketed his mouth. And she noticed that he fell asleep less during the day but that he often looked tired by the time she left at five.
All that she noticed about him, but he didn’t seem to notice much about her. Sometimes she wore clothes so bright, she thought for sure she’d get a reaction. Nothing. It was like that afternoon in his kitchen had never happened. As if he’d never touched her and kissed her and made her want more.
Yet…yet there were a few times when she thought she caught a glimpse of something in his eyes. That hot need burning just beneath the surface. That barely controlled desire, but then he’d turn away and leave her wondering if she was crazy.
Over the next month, she came to view him as something decadent. Something she craved like brownie fudge ice cream. Something bad for her, but the more she told herself she couldn’t have it, the more she seemed to crave just one bite. And just like brownie fudge ice cream, she knew that should she ever indulge, one bite would not be enough. One bite would lead to two. Two to three. Three to four, until she’d feasted on the whole thing and there was nothing left but regret and a bad stomachache.
She also knew just where she’d start feasting on Mark. Right where the collar of his T-shirts hit the base of his neck. She’d kiss the hollow of his throat just below the slight bump of his Adam’s apple.
Working for him was as hard as it was easy. She didn’t have to make sure he got invited to the right parties or arrange events as she had for her past employers. She didn’t have to call up designers and make sure he had the right clothes. He was very low-maintenance, but his very laid-back attitude was what often made him difficult.
Three days before the Stanley Cup party, he suddenly remembered that he had to buy a shirt. Chelsea drove him to Hugo Boss and sat in a chair next to the trifold mirror as he tried on several dress shirts. Since the accident, he discovered that he’d lost an inch around the neck, chest, and waist. Which meant he had to buy a new suit and have it altered by the party. He picked out a two-button wool jacket and pants of classic charcoal. To go with it, he tried two different shirts. First a charcoal and bl sharack, then a stark white.
The salesman brought him a selection of ties, and he picked out a simple blue-and-green stripe with the stark white. Chelsea watched him through the mirror as he flipped up the collar and wrapped the tie around his neck. Even though he’d regained a lot of the dexterity in his fingers, his stiff middle finger kept getting in the way.
“Shit,” he swore after the third attempt.