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PROLOGUE
I was fucked.
Done for
Profoundly screwed in the head.
The issue, of course, was my assistant, Devereux.
She was slowly but surely driving me crazy. I was literally going to lose my mind.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Hiring her was supposed to bring order to my life.
Instead she’d brought disorder. Chaos. Vexation. Irritation. Malaise.
Joy. Fun. Comfort. Exuberance. Delight.
I was obsessed with her.
She was stubborn. Standoffish. Painfully honest. Take no prisoners efficient. In summary, a termagant.
And even I, oblivious bastard extraordinaire, was aware in some corner of my mind, of every well laid plan I’d ever had slowly crashing down and exploding into dust.
I was simply no match for Devereux Laurent
It all started with one innocent conversation with my good friend Dair.
“Iris found someone that she swears would make the perfect assistant for you. She’s organized, meticulous, and highly intelligent. She has management experience, but evidently has decided that she’d like a change, and is extremely interested in learning more about the literary world.”
I had assistant issues. It was a notorious and long standing problem of mine. I needed someone to pick up all of the loose ends in my life. Instead, I had a history of hiring the wrong people and then allowing that to blowup in my face.
I needed to hire someone I wasn’t attracted to, but more importantly, someone who wasn’t attracted to me.
My goal was to find an assistant I didn’t want to, and wouldn’t, fuck. Someone who would actually stick around and do their job.
“I’m listening,” I told him pleasantly. “Please tell me she’s fifty years old. No wait, sixty.”
“She’s young, but not at all your type, though she is actually Candy’s cousin. You remember Candy? She was your assistant a few years ago.”
I rolled my eyes at that, because he knew as well as I did that my memory was excellent, but I found myself confused. “How does Iris know Candy’s cousin?” I tried to wrap my mind around that strange connection.
Dair’s smile was beyond fond and into sappy. “You know Iris.” He said his wife’s name like she was the key to the universe, and I totally got it. The woman was off the charts hot and crazy enough to keep his life interesting. “She makes friends with everybody. She went out dancing with Candy and they hit it off, and they’ve remained friends. Recently, Candy invited us to a family barbecue where she met your new assistant, Devereux, who was visiting from out of town.”
“You make it sound like a done deal.”
Dair glanced around my disastrous office pointedly. “What have you got to lose? This place is a mess, and you’re behind on everything, right? Your emails, your social media, your deadlines, God only knows what else. She’s available to start right away.”
“Explain what you mean by not my type,” I said, interested. I really did need an assistant, especially one that would do some actual work.
“Not like Candy. Or the ones that have followed her. Devereux is smart. And wholesome. She’s not interested in you, she’s interested in learning about the book world, and having a job.”
My nose wrinkled up in distaste muddled with a bit of reluctant fascination. “Wholesome,” I tasted the word. It didn’t taste bad. Just utterly foreign. “That’s not something you see everyday.”
Dair laughed. “No, my friend. It’s not something you see every day.”
CHAPTER ONE
Our first meeting was a bit awkward, for her more than me, but I figured it was necessary. Best she knew up front just who she was working for.
I answered the door for her myself. It was early for me, ten a.m. on the dot.
Had I told her to come this early?
Dammit, I had. What had I been thinking?
Well, I hadn’t intended for the party to go so late the night before. Or to keep on going once most of the partygoers had left.
At least I was awake. And clean. In fact, I was barely dried from a shower wearing nothing but the damp towel I’d used to dry off tucked haphazardly around my hips.
I grinned at the sight of her.
At first glance I knew she’d do. “My new assistant, I presume?” I inquired.
“Devereux Laurent,” she said stridently, pushing up her glasses and holding out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Thorn.”
I shook her hand, tilting my bemused head to study her.
She was cute, with a very nice face, which wasn’t good. She had clean, neat features, and big brown Bambi eyes that were probing to the point of disconcerting. Not the best-case scenario.
But she’d do.
She wasn’t a dime, just based on her figure and wardrobe alone, which I gave a point in her column.
She was wearing a long, dark green, bulky skirt that nearly dragged on the ground, a loose, black turtleneck blouse that covered her entire throat, and a boxy blazer that hung well past her hips.
She wouldn’t stop traffic with two red lights strapped to her ass.
Perfect.
I couldn’t see her shoes, but I just assumed they were as hideous as the rest of it. Good. Nothing sexy to see here. She’d come to do a job, and that job was not to seduce me.
Still. It wasn’t summer, but it was an unseasonably warm autumn day. “Aren’t you hot in that?” I asked her.
“Aren’t you cold in that?” she asked back, deadpan, her eyes staying on my face, never drifting down once to openly check out my tanned, ripped to shreds, barely covered body.
I smiled. A bit of sass never went unappreciated by me. Another point in her favor.
I flexed my abs and her eyes shot down for a brief second before shooting back up at me and glaring.
My smile grew. I wasn’t like my friend Dair, some humble, unassuming hunk.
I knew exactly how appealing I was. I was big, built, hot, and used it shamelessly at every opportunity. Good looks were a weapon just like every other asset a person carried around, and I made a point of using my assets at every opportunity.
It didn’t hurt that I was a shameless hedonist.
I continued to study her blatantly.
Her hair was brown bordering on black, and must have been thick going by the size of the chignon she had it wound into at the back of her head. She wore those square framed glasses that were so in right now. Normally I didn’t like them, but on her they looked adorable. Point against her.
She wasn’t wearing makeup, which was a point in her favor.
But her lips still looked soft and were naturally pink. That was a point against, since that color made me think of her nipples, and I looked at her breasts under her baggy blouse. They were well covered, but I could still tell that there was something substantial there. You couldn’t hide a big chest, not from a connoisseur like me.
She was petite, which was a point for her. I usually liked them tall and leggy, with outrageous curves, like her cousin Candy, who incidentally had been my short-lived assistant a few years prior.
Devereux didn’t even reach my chin, and though I couldn’t see her legs under the awful skirt she was wearing, I was confident that they weren’t long enough to wrap around me properly.
She’d do.
“Come on in,” I said, moving aside to let her pass. “I’ll give you the tour.”
“Go ahead and get dressed first,” she told me briskly. “I don’t mind waiting.”
My brows shot up in intrigued surprise. I couldn’t remember the last time a woman had asked, no ordered, me to put my clothes on.
“I’m fine,” I assured her. “The essentials are covered.” I started moving, motioning for her to follow me. “Right this way.”
I led her straight to my office. The back wall was lined with my book covers. I explained this to her.
“Yes, I can see that,” she said wryly. “Red Twin is my favorite, but Red House is a close second.”
“You’ve read my books?” I tried to recall if any of my former assistants had ever read my books.
No.
I tried to recall if any of my former assistants could read.
Who knew?
She raised a vaguely insulted brow at me. “Well, yes. Of course I did,” she said. “I’ve read them all. I’m looking at this job as a mentorship. I want to enter into the field myself at some point.”
“You want to be an author?” I asked with no surprise.
Everyone thought they wanted to be an author until they realized how fucking hard it was to write an entire book without hating it, the world, and yourself by the end.
“Yes. And an illustrator, though I know that’s not in your wheel house.”
My brow furrowed, “An illustrator? What genre are you interested in?”
“All of them. I read everything.”
“No. I mean, which genre are you going to write in?”
“Guess,” she said with no expression.
So she was playful, with a dry sense of humor. I liked that. “Fiction?”
“Yes, but I’m not impressed by your guessing skills. Don’t you think you can narrow it down?”
I studied her. “Perhaps some sort of graphic novel? Manga? I’m trying to get a feel for how the illustrating ties in. Nothing in the horror category. You’re not crazy enough.”
“You don’t know me that well.”
“True. But I’m still eliminating it.”
“That’s fair,” she said blandly.
Damn, she had a good poker face. “Not romance. No offense, but you don’t look like you have a romantic bone in your body.”
“Fair enough,” she agreed.
“Not erotica. No one could write good sex and dress that way. No offense.”
“Offense taken,” she shot back, looking not at all offended.
Oh, God. So she was sarcastic and good at it. I really liked that.
“Historical. No,” I kept musing, almost to myself, answering my own questions as I went. “Sci-Fi. No.”
“Definitely not fantasy,” I said with conviction. “You’re too level-headed to have your head in some other world all the time.”
“God, you’re terrible at this,” she told me with a small smile.
I got a kick out of that, because she was right, and because, even on her first day on the job, she had no problem giving me shit.
“Children’s books,” she put me out of my terrible guessing misery. “I want to write and illustrate children’s books with a focus on ages four to eight.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that, it was so unexpected.
And it was adorable. “Well, I hope you know that’s not what I do,” I warned. I wasn’t sure how I could help her on that particular path, but I was game to try if she was.
“I’m aware. Your books would give children nightmares and probably put them in therapy, but it’s not about the genre. I believe I can learn a lot from you. Like I said, I’ve read all of your books, and you’re clearly competent at the many nuances of your craft.”
She said it with no expression, none of the fan enthusiasm I was used to, but I somehow found myself more flattered because of it.
I was trying to think of a proper response, a thank you maybe, but that was when a half-dressed redhead leaned in the doorway, sending me a very pointed smile.
I’d flat out forgotten about her, which was kind of sad, since I’d left her sleeping naked in my sex room mere hours before. “Oh, hi,” I told her pleasantly. “You’re awake. Well, I’m working, but help yourself to whatever’s in the kitchen before you leave, and feel free to make an extra for me if you decide to cook.”
A throat cleared not so subtly behind me, and I turned to grin at Devereux. “Oh, sorry. How rude of me. Glasses, this is . . . Red. Red, meet my new assistant, Glasses.”
Devereux shot me a less than friendly look, approaching the other woman, who towered over her. She held out her hand exactly as she had to me, and the redhead let her shake hands, looking confused at the exchange.
“My name is Devereux,” she told the other woman pointedly. “Nice to meet you.”
“Oh, um, nice to meet you. My name is Jennifer.” She shot me a friendly grin. “Though Red works fine, too.”
I smiled blandly back. That was good, since I had no intention of remembering her name beyond this moment. There was only so much space in a brain for one-night-stands.
“Okay, back to the emails,” I began when Red/Jennifer had left.
I was sidetracked by another figure promptly filling the doorway. I smiled warmly. It was the blonde with the mad oral skills from last night that I’d left naked in my sex room a few hours prior… in bed right next to the redhead. How could it be I’d already forgotten there were two?
She was wearing one of my T-shirts, and I was assuming not much else. “Hey,” she said in a soft bedroom voice.
“Hey, erm, Blondie,” I said back. “New assistant, this is Blondie. I’m working, but feel free to feed yourself breakfast before you take off.” I turned away, trying to get back to business.
Devereux wasn’t having it, rising again, shaking the other woman’s hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Devereux,” she told Blondie.
“I’m Sara,” she replied, eyeing Devereux up with less than friendly eyes. I, for one, thought the hostility was uncalled for.
Blondie/Sara looked pointedly back at me. “Do you have to work right now? I’m in the mood to spend the day in bed.” She was using her best bedroom voice and her best bedroom eyes.
She was good, but I was done. “Not today. I have your number though, right? Maybe I’ll text you sometime.” I turned my attention back to my computer, putting the whole thing from my mind.
It would have stayed off my mind if a persistent little voice hadn’t said archly, “Red and Blondie, really? You could at least remember their names.”
It was probably for the best that I hadn’t gone with my first auto-names for them. If she took offense with Red and Blondie, she’d have had a conniption if I’d just cut to the chase and called them the first thing my filthy mind had come up with: Spit and Swallow.
“They didn’t mind. I just met them yesterday. How can they possibly be offended?” I was standing in front of her, looming over her tiny form, and I didn’t even remember how I’d gotten there.
That should have been my first warning that she was going to be trouble, but I was so distracted that I didn’t wonder at it.
She looked up at me like she was looking down. I was a full head taller than her, but it didn’t feel like it. She was the only person I’d ever met that treated being short like it put her higher.
Infuriating little termagant.
“Don’t be so judgmental,” I told her with my most charming smile. It was a smile that let me get away with a lot. Usually. “I’m sowing my wild oats.”
“Well, you’re an over-achiever. But did it never occur to you that you’d have to reap what you sow?”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“Not from me, but life tends to find a way.”
“You know, I’d bet they don’t know my name, either.”
“Is that what you tell yourself, to make it better?”
I squinted at her. It was a bit early on for her to be giving me this kind of shit, but I was twisted, so I found it somewhat entertaining, enough so to gamely shout at the redhead to come back.
She seemed the more easygoing of the two.
She came back smiling. “Can I get you something? I’m making eggs for you. And coffee. Devereux, would you like some?”
“No, but thank you, Jennifer,” Devereux replied politely.
“How sweet of you,” I told Red, “but before you get back to it, we had a question for you. Actually, she did. Ask away, Glasses.”
“Do you know his name?” Devereux asked her.
Red grinned wickedly. “His real name or the one we gave him? We’d heard he likes nicknames.”
Devereux shot me a look that tickled me. She didn’t have to roll her eyes for me to see that she wanted to.
“His real one,” Devereux answered.
“I’d like to hear the one you gave me,” I answered at the same time.
Red was sweet enough to answer me first. “Tall boy.”
I caught the reference the second she said it, but Devereux seemed confused to the point that Red felt the need to explain it to her. “You know, like a tall can of beer,” as she spoke she gestured comprehensively, and obscenely, with her hands.
Devereux blushed. Blushed.
I felt myself getting hard.
That was my first inkling that we might have a problem.
I went and sat behind my desk.
“What about my real name?” I asked Red, an attempt at changing the subject, and my current, unproductive, filthy thought process.
“Turner Thorn,” Red spouted out promptly and cheerfully.
Well, dammit. I hadn’t even proven my point.
“Thanks, Red. I like my eggs fried.”
“How many do you want?”
“Three, please and thank you. Now back to these emails, Glasses.”
“No,” my new assistant said firmly, hands on her hips, trying to look intimidating, all five foot three inches of her. “You’re not doing that. It’s dehumanizing. I have a name.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine, whatever, Dev.”
“Devereux. I don’t like Dev, either.”
“Who has a name like that, and doesn’t shorten it? And you won’t let me give you a nickname?” I didn’t look at her as I spoke, eyes on my computer.
“If you need to shorten it, call me Ro. Dev is trite.” The first few sentences were said in a deadpan tone, but when she got to the Dev is trite line, I could hear the clear amusement in her voice.
My eyes shot to her and widened. God, she tickled me, like every word out of her mouth was designed for my specific entertainment.
Oh, this is going to be fun, I thought with wicked glee.
That was my second inkling that we might have a problem.
I shook it off, forcing myself to be professional.
As professional as a guy could be while wearing nothing but a towel and calming down a hard-on.
“Dair told me you had management experience that qualified you for all of the random duties attached to this job,” I told her, “but that you wanted this job because you wanted to shift fields. What field was your management experience in?”
She blinked at me in a way that seemed to imply she thought I was possibly insane. “You didn’t ask him what the experience was?”
“I didn’t care then. Dair’s a close friend and colleague with a good brain, and I trusted him to make a solid recommendation, but I’m curious now.”
“I helped manage a nursing home.”
I laughed, and laughed, and laughed. When I finally caught my breath, I couldn’t hold in one snarky comment. “Well, that explains your wardrobe.”
I got a glare for that, but it seemed half-hearted to me. She had to know she was a terrible dresser.
As we began to work, I quickly realized that I’d need to rearrange my office. I’d become too accustomed to working alone. “I’ll get a corner in here cleared out for when we need to work together sometime today, but in the meantime, let me show you your office, where you’ll spend most of your time.”
She simply nodded and followed, but I got the distinct feeling that she was actually paying attention, listening to and absorbing what I said.
Taking me seriously.
I was encouraged.
It was a new experience. Usually my assistants were too busy putting on makeup or taking selfies to ever acknowledge that there was a real job to be done. I, of course, took full responsibility for that, as in the past I’d tended to hire women with all of the wrong qualifications, and all of the right measurements.
The second office was directly next to mine. It was smaller, but still large, and its current state was one of mayhem.
“What on earth happened in here?” she asked, sounding more judgmental than worried, which perversely made me happy.
I scratched my chin, looking at the bastard stepchild office. It was stacked floor to ceiling with boxes full of who knew what work crap to the point that I couldn’t even see the furniture that I was fairly certain the room contained. “I don’t really know. I haven’t had an assistant for a while, and I guess this room just got away from me. There are bookshelves, a desk, chair, and a computer in here somewhere. Hell, I’m pretty sure there’s even a sofa and a TV.”
“I won’t need a sofa or a TV,” she said briskly, pulling up the sleeves of her hideous, oversized blazer.
I liked the determination in her eyes. It made me think, before I ever had any evidence, that she might be up to any task she set her mind to.
“Obviously, this needs to be my priority,” she stated in a no-nonsense tone.
“Sounds good to me. I’ll hire some guys to help you move this stuff around.”
She sent me a look of pure affront. “Not necessary. I can move some boxes on my own. You go back to work. I’ve got this. When I finish, we’ll touch base on what I should make my next priority.”
“I’m almost certain that most of those boxes are full of books and very heavy.”
“I’ll handle it,” she said mulishly.
“You’re tiny. I didn’t hire you to do any heavy lifting; I hired you to make phone calls and work on a computer—”
“You hired me to handle the things that need to be handled so you can finish your work in progress. Go work on that book, Mr. Thorn. Like I said, I’ll handle this.”
And just like that, I was dismissed.
I took it with good grace. No way could she handle that disaster of a room on her own. When she figured it out, she’d come to me and ask for the help she so obviously needed. I was content to wait her out.
“Suit yourself,” I said blandly and walked away. “If you have any questions, I’ll be in my office, racking up some word count.”
“Good luck,” she said in a tone that implied I’d need it more than she would.
She was a stubborn one. That suited me just fine. It would make it all the sweeter when she realized that I was right and she was wrong.
I got dressed (even I couldn’t wear a towel all day) and tried to get back to writing, but I felt almost antsy with delight. I couldn’t say why, but I was really looking forward to the moment when she caved in to the overwhelming impossibility of tackling that office on her own and came to ask me for help.
I blamed my penchant for instant gratification, but three hours later I was nearly out of patience.
Red and Blondie had long since left, gamely feeding me an abundant breakfast first. Red had prepared me eggs, coffee, and sausage. Blondie had attempted bacon, fresh squeezed orange juice, and toast.
They’d done it almost competitively, as though I’d pick a favorite between the two based on what they prepared. It was nearly charming, even after realizing after a few bites that they were both beyond dismal cooks.
Still, I’d eaten every bite of the undercooked bacon, overcooked, unseasoned eggs, lukewarm sausage, burnt toast, weak coffee, and pulpy orange juice as they both looked on with varying degrees of satisfaction, making a lot of noises about how delicious it all was.
It was the least I could do.
I politely walked them both out after I was done, but only because I wasn’t sure they’d leave unless I saw to it firsthand.
After that I felt very in control as I passed by the stepchild office without so much as glancing inside. All in good time.
But it wasn’t long before smug anticipation had turned to impatient irritation.
What the hell was she doing? Was she still working on that damned office? Did she really think she could move all of those boxes on her own? Some of them were heavy, and sassy as hell Ro had to be more than a foot shorter than me and small-framed to boot.
The thought made me unreasonably irritable, enough so that I’d risen from my chair more than once to confront her before I’d realized what I was doing and made myself move to the pull up bar mounted into the wall in the corner to do a grueling round of reps before sitting back down.
No. She’d already decided to engage me in our first battle of wills, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one to cave.
A few more hours ticked slowly by, my word count sluggish but determined, my mind more than halfway directed at the new girl and what she was doing with the room next door.
I went through three cups of coffee from the Keurig machine in my office. It wasn’t my favorite way to caffeinate, but the espresso machine in the kitchen went too temptingly past the room I was so resolute to ignore.
CHAPTER TWO
I was mid round of pull-ups when my new assistant finally appeared in my office doorway.
It was after five p.m.
She looked exactly as she had before, completely composed, not a hair out of place, so I deduced right away that she couldn’t have gotten much accomplished in her new disaster of an office.
I lowered myself back down to the ground and smiled blandly at her. “Give up yet?”
One of her eyebrows shot up. “Of course not. It’s just one room, and it’s coming along nicely. Though I realized I should get a tour of this house . . . And figure out where to put my suitcases. I still haven’t unpacked my car.”
I’d forgotten about all that, nearly forgotten that she’d be staying at the house.
The assistants had always been live-in since I worked all hours of the day and night, and my place was huge. They stayed out of my wing when I wanted a break from company or needed privacy for whatever reason.
It had been so long since I’d filled the position that I’d forgotten to bother showing her where she’d be sleeping.
“Of course,” I told her, and began to lead her to what was now her side of the house.
I couldn’t help but steal a peek into the stepchild office as we passed it.
I stopped in my tracks, swiveled on a heel, and leaned into the room, eyeing every corner.
“How the fuck did you do this?” I asked her, tilting my head around and down to get a proper look at her smug face.
“It’s just a room. And you were right. Most of the boxes were full of books, and every wall is lined with bookshelves. It wasn’t hard to do the math.”
I looked back at the nearly cleared space. The walls were a nice pale blue color, the built-in bookshelves a soft gray. It had been so long since I’d seen them that I’d forgotten. Nearly every shelf was lined with books now, most of them mine. The room was brighter, windows uncovered now, blinds opened wide to let in the sun.
I glanced down at the floor. It was a dark gray wood, like the majority of the house, but I hadn’t seen it in so long that it was startling.
“I guess I was wrong about the TV and the sofa,” I mused, still taking it all in. “Just a chair and desk. Hmm. Don’t worry, I’ll have that fixed by tomorrow.”
“Don’t bother. I don’t want a sofa, or a TV. I don’t plan to do anything but work in here. I will, however, need some kind of computer.”
“Of course,” I murmured, back to studying her. She was a determined little thing. I decided that I found that endearing. “What did you do with all of the empty boxes?” I asked her.
She curled her pouty upper lip, and I could tell I’d offended her. “I broke them down and put them in your garage. It wasn’t hard to find, and I’m fairly confident I’ll be able to successfully navigate any future recycling. How about that tour?”
I thought about reminding her who the boss was here, but decided against it.
For the moment.
“Right this way,” I told her blandly, leading her to her side of the house.
I took her to her room first. Or rather, rooms.
It was set far away from the center of the house, on the second floor, for optimum privacy, and it was designed as a master, almost as large as mine. She had her own sitting room, mini-kitchen, a king-sized, four-poster bed, and a closet that belonged on Cribs. Her ensuite bath was obscenely huge, with a Jacuzzi tub, all the amenities, and marble everywhere you looked.
Frankly, I expected some reaction. It was a hell of an assistants’ pad.
Her response was less than gratifying. “Hmm,” she hummed after I’d shown her everything. “It’s a bit large. I have no idea what anyone could ever do with all this space.”
I’d had no intention of giving her a detailed tour, I knew she could explore her way around, but the way she was so obviously unimpressed had me showing her every detail of my house.
Every room, every piece of art, every expensive toy.
Perversity had always been a good fit for me.
I was nearly finished not impressing her with her wing of the house when I noticed the expression on her face.
She wasn’t just unimpressed. She was bored.
Now that, I could fix.
I showed her my wing of the house, starting with my favorite part.
It was near the front door, for obvious reasons.
“This is the sex room,” I explained, waving my hand around at the twelve hundred square feet of hedonistic delight. “Conveniently close to the kitchen and the front door, so no one goes hungry and no one gets lost on their way out.”
A giant bed dominated the space, but it wasn’t the beginning and end of the versatile room.
Several bookshelves lined the walls. They were full of every kind of sexual literature, from karma sutra to modern erotica. And of course there was no shortage of sex furniture, all attached to a bathroom with a shower most school gyms would envy in size.
“Your sex room?” she repeated back, but she didn’t look bored now.
She looked perturbed. Disgusted. Riled. So much so, she wasn’t even blushing.
“I don’t sleep where I fuck,” I explained. Reasonably, I thought.
“You won’t even let them into your real bedroom? I think you’ve taken your promiscuity to a disturbing level,” she said every word with quiet revulsion and with just enough conviction to make me feel suddenly uncomfortable.
“Perhaps. What does it matter, anyway?” I asked shrugging it off. “Whether I fuck my way around the world, or lock myself away, we’re all just dust in the wind. I may as well enjoy myself.”
“Self-absorbed nihilist,” she muttered under her breath as she walked away.
Well, hell.
“You don’t know me well enough to get me this much.” Her insults were possibly my favorite thing about her so far. She was just too spot on accurate, and the delivery was the chef’s kiss on top.
I shook it off, showing her the ensuite bathroom, or as I’d more appropriately named it, the bath hall.
“There’s the orgy shower,” I pointed out, watching her face. If anything in here was going to get another blush out of her, I figured that was it.
It worked. Her face flashed bright pink at the cheeks, the corners of her mouth went down, and she turned on her heel, her small form pacing out of the bathroom, and then the sex room, in record time.
I grinned. This was going to be fun.
“I feel sorry for them,” she said quietly when I joined her. She wasn’t looking at me, but I was studying her like a scientist would study a particularly odd specimen.
I was offended, I realized. That was hard to do. But I wasn’t accustomed or prepared for a female that felt sorry for the women I hooked up with. In general, I tended to encounter an opposite reaction.
“You shouldn’t feel sorry for any of the women I fuck. Trust me, they know the score, and I take good care of them.”
She just met my eyes, and shook her head, her expression managing to convey both condescension and pity.
The deluded girl thought I was the clueless one.
It was a bit infuriating, but I shrugged it all off.
It’s for the best, I told myself. Because of course it was. A prudish, judgmental girl that looked down on my unrepentant debauchery was hardly likely to tempt a guy like me, which was just what I’d been looking for in an assistant.
I showed her the kitchen next, though it was in the center of the house, impossible to miss, so I didn’t really need to. Still, I gave her thorough instructions on how best to make my coffee, because nothing’s more important to a writer on a deadline than caffeine, and I was very picky about just how I liked to take mine.
“I like to start the day with a cappuccino. After that, I tend to stick to espresso shots, usually doubles, though some days that varies with my mood. Pay very close attention to these measurements,” I said, pouring milk into the steamer. “A writer’s best weapon is a perfect cup of coffee, and the first cup of the day is the most critical.”
“Got it,” she said with confidence.
I nearly rolled my eyes. Everyone seemed to think coffee was so easy to get right, but I’d never had an assistant that didn’t botch it to the point that I ended up making it myself more often than not. Still, this one seemed more competent than my usual, so I’d give her the initial benefit of the doubt.
I showed her the outside of the property, as well. I never missed a good opportunity to show off the things I had earned for myself.
I showed her the pool, which was massive. It was closer to three pools, really, with a slide, diving board, and hidden grotto. It was made for parties, lined top to bottom with glass tiles that sparkled in the sun.
She didn’t seem impressed, so I just kept going, showing her my oversized garage full of cars and motorcycles.
That didn’t get a reaction, so I took her along my property line, letting her get the full scale of just how much land I owned.
“Those are some high walls,” she stated mildly as she followed me around the perimeter of the estate.
“I like privacy. If I want to take a walk naked on my own land, it’s my prerogative. One of the perks of having money.”
She snorted and it made me smile. “Yeah . . . walking. I’m sure that’s the naked activity that you were thinking about when you built this place.”
She was a wiseass. Thank God. We’d be spending a lot of time together, and it would have been torture if she didn’t have a personality.
After a much more extensive tour than I’d planned, we moved her into the house. She didn’t like it, but I insisted on carrying her things in from her car.
I was shocked to find that she only had two suitcases.
“Didn’t you come from Kansas?” I asked her. “Is a moving company sending the rest? Let me know the cost of that. I’ll reimburse you for all of your moving expenses, just like we agreed on—”
“This is everything. I’m a minimalist. I’ve never needed much.”
I just stared at her for a beat, wondering if she was messing with me, then shrugged it off and took her things inside.
CHAPTER THREE
“Another one of your duties is attempting to help me stay on task,” I told Ro as she brought me my morning coffee the next day.
“Got it,” she said instantly. “How do you propose I do that?”
“Well, I have a deadline right around the corner, a few short months away. I need to complete 2k words a day between now and then. I need you to remind me of this often, and every time you see me, I’d like you to ask me what my word count is for the day. Also, if you see me doing anything other than staring off into space, deep in thought, or actively writing, I want you put me in check.”
“How do I put you in check?” she asked reasonably.
“Bribery. Coercion. Threats.”
“I think I could get on board with the threat part.”
“Of course you could.”
“One problem. I don’t know you well enough to know what to threaten you with.”
“You’ll think of something.”
“You know, you’re not exactly the tyrant I’ve been made to believe. Tyrants don’t usually ask their assistants to threaten them.”
“Oh just you wait, little girl. See what happens the first time you try.”
She bit her lip to keep from smiling.
It was at that moment that I realized two things, neither one of them good for my peace of mind.
One: Ro had about the sexiest mouth I’d ever seen. Just my motherfucking luck.
Two: She was growing on me fast.
“Go get yourself some breakfast,” I told her almost affectionately, “We’re going to run some errands in a bit.”
“What errands?”
“I like to go to Office Max about once a week,” I explained. “I know, I know. I can get all of this stuff online, but I enjoy browsing office supplies.”
“You enjoy browsing office supplies?”
“I’m always trying to reinvent my office. Think of it as a brainstorming session for that. I feel like, if I tweaked this office just a bit, it would make me write faster.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be writing all day?” she asked pointedly.
“Hush,” I said, “don’t talk back, and go eat some eggs.”
I was ready to go when I tracked her down in the kitchen.
She was chatting with my hook-up from the night before. Real friendly like.
I did not like that.
First of all, I’d forgotten that I had company. Veronica was a regular, a tall, busty, insatiable redhead who was down for any damn thing, and she’d shown up the night before (without invitation) at booty call hours. I’d accommodated her, because I was an accommodating kind of guy, but I was surprised to see her still at the house. She usually didn’t stick around after.
And I didn’t like the way she was looking at Ro, like she thought Ro might be a particularly delectable dessert.
No. Uh uh. Ro was off-limits, for me and especially everyone else. I realized right then that I might have to readjust some of my patterns for her. I’d never shared a house with anyone who wasn’t cut from the same cloth as me.
“Let’s go, Ro,” I said impatiently. “Have a good one, Veronica. I trust you can find your way out.”
Ro started moving toward the door.
Veronica just smiled, not moving an inch from her perch on the counter, so I decided to leave her to it. Sometimes women came and decided not to leave for a bit. My policy on this had always been to ignore the issue until it went away. I figured she’d be gone by the time we got back, and if she wasn’t, we’d just go about our business as usual until she did.
We took my Harley, just to shake up Ro’s composure a bit.
She didn’t like it.
“I’ll follow you in my car.”
“That’s silly. Hop on.” I handed her a helmet.
She wasn’t happy about it, but she did it, pushing the helmet on and straddling the bike awkwardly in her too-long skirt.
She thought she could hang on by barely touching my shoulders, but the second we started moving her little arms snaked around my waist and held on for dear life.
I felt the problem right away, or should I say problems.
It was one thing to speculate about nice breasts under a thick, ugly, unflattering shirt. It was another thing entirely to feel them pressed firmly against your back.
Yep, her tits were nice. I could tell for sure. Soft and pliant. Big and bouncy.
And her shapely little thighs gripping my hips were almost as distracting.
Fuck.
I spent way too much time in Office Max. I was on deadline, so of course I was going deep into procrastination mode.
And the fact that I couldn’t glance at Ro without my eyes dropping to her tits after that ride was not helping me to be one bit faster.
I’d swear I could picture just exactly what they looked like after that ride, but it didn’t stop me from wanting to see her body firsthand.
On the contrary.
“So this is how you shop for office supplies?” she asked me after about a half an hour of aimless wandering. “You didn’t even bring a list?”
I shrugged. “I’ll know it when I see it.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be writing right now? This feels like a colossal waste of time.”
“Hush. Procrastination is a key component to the writing process.”
“Your process maybe.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I meant.”
“Didn’t you tell me that part of my job was to keep you on task? This is the opposite of on task.”
“Hush,” I said absently, playing with a random pen. “Look at this pen.” I was drawing on the display I’d pulled it out of. “Isn’t it cool? I’m pretty sure I need a pen exactly like this.”
“It’s a pen,” she said flatly. “Are you messing with me?”
I kind of was. Also, I was trying not to look at, or obsess about, her tits. “Define messing?” I asked, still drawing on the display.
With a sigh, she grabbed a pen and started drawing with me.
After a while, I had a very shitty looking stick figure with big boobs. I looked over at hers.
She’d drawn a small, detailed unicorn, and it was actually quite good.
“These pens are cool,” she said, still drawing. “We should get some.”
I threw a handful of them in the cart.
“So I have a question for you,” I asked her abruptly, trying and failing to make it sound casual.
She straightened, studying my face. She caught on right away that what I was about to ask was going to be awkward for us both.
I cleared my throat. “I was told, erm, I mean, I heard that you’re, um, wholesome. Can you tell me exactly what that means?”
She blushed. Flat out blushed bright pink.
It was not helpful. I wasn’t sure why, but seeing her blush got me hard at a glance.
She fidgeted, looking down at her feet.
That also did not help.
“I, um,” she started, sounding as uncomfortable as I felt. “I’m not like you. I’m not experienced. I don’t take sex lightly.”
“What exactly does that mean?”
“Well, for example, all of the women coming and going from your sex room is nothing I’ve ever been exposed to before. As a matter of fact, the idea of a separate room for sleep and sex isn’t something I’ve ever even heard of. I’m not completely ignorant about that stuff, but I guess you could say I’m somewhat innocent.”
She’d said somewhat innocent. I found this encouraging, because it meant that she wasn’t completely innocent.
And those weren’t the only words she’d spoken that had gotten through.
“I’ll try to keep that stuff away from you,” I said solemnly. I could work out other arrangements that didn’t involve Ro having to entertain a parade of new women in my kitchen every morning.
Because, all jokes aside, I hated to think that my dissolute bed habits might negatively affect her.
Corrupting Ro was not on my agenda. Ever.
I intended to keep repeating that to myself until my dick got the message.
I wasted another half hour looking at office supplies before we headed home.
I grinned when I saw the cars parked in my driveway upon our return. I didn’t recognize all of them, but I spotted Dair’s Tesla right off the bat.
He got out of his car and waved at us as I parked my Harley and helped Ro get off.
She looked as terrified from the return trip as she had on the one going. Motorcycles weren’t for everyone.
I gently took off her helmet and patted her on her cute little head. “Chin up, Ro. We lived.”
She glared at me, but the glare turned to a smile when Dair greeted her.
“How are you settling in?” he asked her.
“It’s an adjustment, but it’s going well, all things considered.” At the all things considered, she sent me a less than friendly look.
Dair grinned. “Have time to sit down and talk some shop?” he asked me. “I’d like to shoot some ideas off you.”
“Always,” I replied. Dair was another author, and had been one of my heroes since I was a teenager. He was a decade and some change older than me, and he was one of the reasons I’d started writing in the first place. I considered his friendship to be a privilege. Growing up, I’d never dreamed I’d one day become his colleague. We usually had a coffee and book talk session at least twice a week.
Ro coughed, staring pointedly at me. “Remember telling me something about staying on task today?”
“Hush,” I said, patting her on the head again. It seemed to drive her crazy when I did this, and I got a kick out of that.
We went to grab coffee first. The good kind, not the basic stuff in my office.
The three of us walked into the kitchen and stopped dead.
Two naked women, Blondie and Red from the day before, were sixty-nine-ing each other on my kitchen counter.
CHAPTER FOUR
“What the fuck, Thorn?” Dair burst out, sounding disgusted.
“What?” I shot back, sarcasm coming out on auto-pilot. “Look how generous they’re being with each other.”
And then I remembered Ro.
My hands clapped over both of her eyes exactly one second later.
Fuck. I was doing a hell of a job of not corrupting Ro.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
With my hands still over her eyes, I guided her away from the kitchen down, down, down the hallway and into my office.
Dair was hot on my heels like he couldn’t get away from the flexible nymphos fast enough. Which was fair, since he had a smokin’ hot wife at home that put both of those women to shame.
“I apologize for this unfortunate incident,” I told them both solemnly, and for some reason I had a hard time so much as looking at a blushing Ro as I said it. “I’m not sure what’s going on in there, but I’ll see to it right away.”
I started to leave and noticed Ro was following me.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“Don’t you need help?” she asked back.
My eyes tried to bug out of my head. “You should have never seen that. I’m very sorry that you did, and I don’t want you to see any more, okay? So sit tight. I’m going to ask them very nicely to leave, and then I’ll be right back.”
She didn’t try to follow me when I left that time, and I did exactly as I said I would.
The naked women, predictably, tried to talk me into joining them.
For some reason I wasn’t even tempted. Perhaps because I was a bit mortified by what my house had turned into, and how it made me look in front of Dair and my new assistant.
I couldn’t even blame this on these random women. I had no idea why or how they were there, but it was a fact that I’d fucked both of them together and separately, and they had every reason to believe I’d enjoy the little show they’d staged for me.
When they realized that I wasn’t going to play today, they left with reasonably good grace, even getting dressed first.
I walked them politely to the door, waving goodbye.
“How did you get in here?” I asked their backs.
“Veronica let us in before she left,” one of them said. Their backs were to me and I couldn’t even tell which one.
Good to know. So I didn’t need to change the locks. I just needed to quit letting random women come inside in the first place. Noted.
I made a quick call to my housekeeper, and she agreed to come sanitize the kitchen as soon as humanly possible.
No one should have to eat in there after that, particularly Ro.
“They’re gone, and the kitchen is going to get a good scrubbing,” I told Dair and Ro as I re-entered my office.
“That’s reassuring,” Dair said dryly.
Ro was behind my desk, sitting in my chair like she owned the place. Dair was lounging in one of my comfy leather chairs. I sprawled out on the room’s biggest sofa.
“Sorry Ro, I hope you don’t quit on me now,” I said with mock solemnity. “I’ll do better, I swear.”
“I find you exceptionable for too many reasons to list,” she said flatly, not looking up, “but I’m not quitting.”
“That’s not even a word!” I told her.
That clearly tickled her. She looked at me and smirked. “I’m sorry to burst your bubble there, English boy, but perhaps your command of the language isn’t what you thought it was.”
I shook my head. “Nope. Not a word.”
She grinned. “Look it up.”
“I don’t need to look it up. I know.”
“If you’re so certain, look it up.”
I looked at Dair. “Back me up, man.”
He shook his head. “I can’t. Look it up.”
With a sigh, I did.
“Oh, now I recall,” I said as my search quickly proved her right. “It was the way you pronounced it that threw me off.”
“You’re full of it,” she said smugly.
I pointed at Ro. “Look at her, Dair. She already thinks she runs this place. This isn’t even her office. That’s my desk.”
Ro, working busily on my computer, looked up at that, arching a brow. “You know you asked me to work on your emails, right? And my office doesn’t have a computer yet.”
I cursed. All the ways I’d been goofing off today, and I’d completely forgotten to get another computer. “Do you want a desktop or a laptop?” I asked her.
She appeared pensive for a moment before answering. “Let me look online. I’ll find something, and you can tell me if it’ll work.”
I shrugged. “Whatever you want. In the meantime you can work there, and I’ll work on my laptop over here.”
Ro went back to work, and I turned my attention to Dair.
He waved a hand between me and Ro. “This seems to be going well. It’s already the most productive working relationship I’ve ever seen you in.
I realized he was right. Hands down, Ro was killing it compared to her predecessors.
“I could do with less naked people having sex on counters,” Ro piped in.
Unhelpfully, I thought.
“I said I was sorry,” I told her sullenly. Saying sorry was hard enough. I hated repeating it.
“Hostile work environment,” she muttered, not looking up from the computer.
“I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again!” I told her.
Dair was shaking his head at me. “How do you not get sued more?” he asked me, sounding like an exasperated parent.
“Fuck if I know. Ro, are you going to sue me?” I asked her.
“Not today,” she replied.
I sent her an affectionate smile that she didn’t look up to appreciate.
When I turned back to Dair, he was studying me with an odd look, like I’d done something out of character. I ignored it. “So tell me about your WIP,” I said, staring up the ceiling. “Shoot some ideas off me.”
We brainstormed for about an hour. I watched Ro while we worked, but she never glanced up once. Little miss professional.
I started sharing some detailed, juicy, shocking gossip with Dair just to get her to react. “They have to go to strip clubs so he can get hard enough to fuck her,” I finished telling him a random story about a dysfunctional couple I knew.
Dair was shaking his head as I watched Ro for a proper reaction.
Fourteen seconds passed while she completely ignored me.
Yes, fourteen. I counted.
When she finally looked at me, I could see her internal struggle not to say something.
“Yes?” I asked her with an innocent smile.
She shook her head and went back to work.
“You look at me like you’ve thought of the worst insult possible and you’re just choosing not to say it,” I observed.
She smiled blandly. “Self-control is easier for some than others,” she noted.
I studied her. “What does that mean? Is it just me, Dair, or is she plotting my murder? Behave yourself, Ro.”
“Perish the thought,” she returned without missing a beat.
I grinned.
My phone dinged a text at me. It was a video sent from me, from my laptop messages to my phone messages.
I squinted my eyes at her. “Did you just send me a video from my own computer?”
“It’s very important; you should watch it right away.”
I played the video. It was of a gray cat with folded ears hugging a stuffed pink bunny.
Aww. Wasn’t that sweet. How strange and random. Why would she send me something sweet right now?
Aha! There it was. As the video kept playing, the cat’s hugging turned into a solid maul. I watched, bemused, as it proceeded to tear the pink bunny’s head clean off.
“Tell me how you really feel,” I told her.
We shared a smile.
Oh, she was just too much fun. I was tickled.
Dair was looking at me strangely, and I ignored it.
Nothing to see here.
When he left, I hit my home gym. I made Ro work out with me, staying close to take notes if I thought of anything.
“You know you can get voice to text software for this, right?” she asked. “You don’t need an actual extra human here to jot things down for you.”
I waved off that bit of sass. “Don’t mess with my process. Your workout gear is the most hideous clothing I’ve ever seen, by the way.
She was on the bike beside my treadmill, plodding along sedately while I busted my ass.
She glanced down at herself. Her oversized gray sweatshirt and sweatpants made her look like she’d gained fifty pounds instantly. Even her shoes were hideous, dingy white and clunking. “I got a really good deal on them. Five dollars for everything I’m wearing, can you believe it? I’m a sucker for a bargain.”
I cringed. I couldn’t. I honestly couldn’t believe that she thought that atrocious ensemble was worth five dollars. “Oh my God,” I burst out. “Well, stop it. I’ll give you a clothing allowance if you’ll just burn everything you own in a fire.”
She laughed.
It was a very nice laugh, rich and bright. Something in my chest grew warm at the sound.
“I don’t mind my clothes,” she finally answered, “but I do mind being wasteful, so no thank you.”
I was onto weights when my workout brainstorming finally bore fruit.
“Sanguine,” I told Ro.
“Sanguine?” she repeated back.
“Yeah. Just write down that word. It will trigger the rest of the idea I just had.”
“Are you sure?” she asked me. “Want to give me a few more details?”
“Nope. Sanguine.”
“You don’t want me to write anything except for the word sanguine?”
“Trust me,” I said with complete confidence.
It was a few hours later, and I was shooting hoops in my indoor basketball court when I asked Ro to read my brainstorming notes back to me.
“You only had one,” she told me.
“Okay. Read it.”
“Sanguine.”
“Sanguine?” I stopped dribbling the ball. “What the fuck does that even mean?”
Her reply was expressionless and absolutely perfect. “I guess you were pretty sanguine about only having me jot down this one word note.”
“Smart ass,” I muttered, but I couldn’t stop smiling.
It was a few hours later, and I was swimming laps while she watched me, her hands on her hips.
“You know,” she laid into me when I came up for air, “the first thing you said to me today was that you weren’t supposed to be doing anything but writing, and everything we’ve done today has had nothing to do with writing.”
“That’s not true. I brainstormed with Dair, and again when we worked out.”
“That’s right. I forgot about sanguine. I’m pretty sure we’ve reached the part of the day where you’ve procrastinated enough that I’m supposed to be putting you in check, right? With threats and such?”
I was intrigued. I tilted my head back to look at her straight on. “Yeah, probably. Whatcha got?
“If you don’t get five hundred words written in the next half hour, I’m going to make you watch an entire episode of Fuller House.”
Oh, she was good.