He might just lose his damned mind.
Chapter Two
The following day, his new secretary shot up the second Brooks Adams approached his office. She held a wad of crinkled papers in her outstretched hand and a nervous smile was plastered on her face. "There've been a lot of calls. And, um, there was something else."
She stooped over her desk and moved around papers—some of which looked like clippings from magazines—but he knocked the wooden surface with his knuckle.
"It's okay, Eliza. I'm sure it will come to you. I'm going to sort through these, all right?"
The little frown between her eyebrows softened and she plopped into her desk chair again. "You got it."
He nodded, thanked her, and then walked into his office. She was a good kid. A terrible secretary, but then, he'd gotten used to lots of terrible secretaries. At least she tried.
Besides, distracted as he was, it might be nice to have an equally distracted secretary. She wouldn’t notice his unusual behavior or pepper him with questions about what he was doing. Like, for example, why he’d spent the rest of yesterday afternoon scrawling out a list of all the women he’d seduced and how he’d seduced them.
It was official. No one he’d ever been with was like Natalie Gains. They’d all been easy to deal with, talk to, and manage. He had one of three moves that worked every single time.
1. Saying hello
2. Playful teasing
3. Ignoring them completely
All his life, the system had been fool-proof. But now?
He shook his head. Maybe he hadn’t been ignoring Natalie enough. Whatever the case, he had to figure out something and fast. Every day, it felt like her skirts were shorter than the last and the amount of time he spent wondering what was underneath was quickly outweighing the amount of time he actually spent working.
Come on, Brooks, think.
He'd tried everything.
Everything in his power to get her to go out with him. Nothing came to him except old movies where a sharecropper’s daughter would get kidnapped and blackmailed and the like. It might be effective, but it wasn’t exactly his scene. Too Beauty and the Beast.
He glanced at the wad of papers on his desk. Maybe if he made his calls, something would come to him out of the blue. At the very least, he’d be able to finally get some work done.
He unwrinkled a few of the papers, but before he got the chance to read any of them, his door shot open again.
"I'm so sorry. I forgot your newspaper. It's here." She flopped the Gazette onto his desk, then rubbed her hands together. "I'm going to grab your coffee now."
"That's okay—“ He started.
"Right. Okay." She marched through the door and left it wide open.
One day. One day she'd get it right, but that day was probably not going to be here any time soon.
He crossed the room quickly, but when his fingers met the doorknob, he caught a glimpse of Natalie. She was staring at him, a fresh bouquet of roses already overcrowding her desk.
He should have outlawed the damn things. Maybe then everyone in the office wouldn't have to be taunted by them. Or, at least, he wouldn't be.
It had been going on for weeks, and she still wouldn't mutter a word about them, no matter how he antagonized her. Worse still, those flowers weren't even the tip of the iceberg where the mystery of Natalie Gains was concerned.
He clicked the door closed, then leaned against the wood for a minute before returning to his wide, mahogany desk.
He'd figure Natalie out. Just because he hadn't succeeded yet didn't mean he never would. It had only been a couple of months, after all. Longer than any other seduction he'd tried, but not a lost cause.
He just had to try a new route.
Again.