Bargaining with the Boss (Honeybrook Love, Inc. 2)

She glanced at the new plume of flowers on her desk and plucked one of the blooms from the stem, dropping the petals into her trash can one at a time.

Her only solace was that, as far as she could tell, nothing had been done to set her bargain into action. Franco hadn't been entered into the system and Brooks hadn't invited her to go ravish her somewhere or whatever his plan was. That was, if he decided to go with his plan after all.

And what was the deal with that?

For a man who'd hit on her every day for a year, he'd barely said anything to her in days. Or, at least he hadn't said anything unusual. Occasionally, he'd notice the flowers on her desk or ask if they were from husband

number three, but he didn't breathe a word about their deal.

Which, as it happened, only made her want to storm into his office and ask him what his malfunction was.

Ugh, men would be the death of her.

She culled another bloom from its stem then crushed it in her palm until her palm was red.

On the positive side, she'd be seeing less of Brooks any day now, bargain or no. Eliza was starting to catch on to office life and while she was still far from the best secretary who'd ever graced the earth, she could at least man the coffee pot without any fires breaking out.

Thank heaven for small miracles, Natalie supposed.

Still, whenever she was training Eliza, the girl would try to pepper her with questions about Brooks. How did Natalie know how he liked his coffee? Why had Natalie given up on dating him? Had she thought anymore about the suggestion he'd made?

On Thursday, they were in the break room, Eliza hovering over the sink while Natalie attempted to show her how to snake the drain. "If you just—" She jerked, and water from the counter splashed onto her blouse.

"Seriously, though, Natalie. Don't you think it'd be good to just try it? For curiosity's sake?"

If Eliza asked her that one more time, she was going to hang herself with the plumber's chain. "I'm not curious."

"Not at all?"

"What's there to be curious about?" She gave up working and rolled her sleeves back down. In a minute, the hour hand would land on that magical "five" and she'd be out of here. Then there would only be one more day. Just one more grueling twenty-four hours before Brooks had entire weekend to forget about her and chance some other woman with a much tighter, tinier skirt.

She told Eliza as much, but then a cough sounded from behind her and she rolled her eyes, already knowing who would be standing there.

"I think it'd be a tough job to find a woman in a tinier skirt than yours today. Scouting for husband number twelve?"

"I don't know, are you cruising for a bruising?" She wanted to swallow her tongue the second the words were out of her mouth.

Cruising for a bruising? What was next? At the end of their talk, would she say "after a while, crocodile?"

He chuckled, and then moved past her to grab a bottle of water from the fridge.

She always forgot how tall he was until he was near like this, and it made her fume that she had to crane her neck to look up at him.

"The skirt's not a bad thing. You're looking good today. Even with the run in the back of your stockings." She watched his Adam's apple bobbed as he sipped from the bottle.

"I'm looking good everyday." She shot back.

Just as lamely as her previous retort.

"Meet me at the Gold Room at eight."

"But—"

"See you then." He turned on his heel and then he was gone, past the rows of quickly emptying cubicles. She stared after him, thinking again about how he always did that. Why he always did that. And why, this time, it made her heart skip a beat.

"You're right. You've got no curiosity. You are stone cold." Eliza bumped her with her hip, and Natalie shook her head.

There must have been something that just clicked in her when she'd remembered how long it had been since she'd been intimate with a man. That was all. It wasn't Brooks or anyone else. It was just...