The Secretary's Bossman Bargain

And she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe she wasn’t a little bit the fool for trusting him after all.

Predatorily, Marcos studied her profile, her nose, the untamed, unruly bounce of her curls. She bit her lip in nervousness. Where was he taking her?

Visions of a bedroom flicked across her mind, and her cheeks flamed hot.

He opened the last door for her, and Virginia entered the darkened room, shamed at her own quickening pulse.

“Your home office?” she asked.

“Yes.”

He flicked on the light switch, and the room burst to life. Bookshelves lined three of the four walls. A Turkish rug spread across the sitting area. Five glossy wood file cabinets formed a long, neat row behind his desk. No adornments. No picture frames. No distractions. As fine in taste as the rest of his apartment, with a state-of-the-art computer perched atop a massive desk, his office screamed two words: no nonsense.

“I like it.” She strode inside, the knowledge that this was his private, personal space making her blood bubble. Her fingers itched with the overwhelming urge to organize the stacks of papers on his desk.

“I know about your father, Miss Hollis.”

Dread sunk like a bowling ball in her stomach. “You do?”

She spun around, and when he stepped into the room, Marcos achieved the impossible: he made it shrink in size.

“You do not exist in the world I do without being cautious about everyone who comes into your inner circle. I have a dossier on everyone who works in close proximity with me, and I know every detail of their lives. Yes, I know about his problem.”

“Oh.”

What else did he know?

He passed her as he crossed the room, and she stifled a tremor as if he’d been a cool hurricane wind. “Why didn’t you come to me before?” he asked, matter of fact.

“I’m here now,” she whispered.

Halting behind his desk, he shoved the leather chair aside and leaned over the surface. His shirt stretched taut over his bunched shoulders and his eyebrows pulled low. “How bad is it?”

“It… The gambling comes and goes.” Flushing at his scrutiny, she turned to busy herself with the books on the shelves, and then said, as if he’d expertly unlatched a closed door which had been near bursting with secrets, “He’s out of control. He keeps betting more than what he has and more than I could possibly earn.”

“Is that the only reason you’re here?”

His voice grew so textured, a jolt of feminine heat rippled through her. She spun around—shocked by the question. Shocked by the answering flutter in her womb.

Her breath stopped.

His gaze. It was open. Raw. Revealed a galvanizing wildness, a primitive hunger lurking—lurking there—in the depths of his eyes, like a prowling beast.

Pent-up desire rushed through her bloodstream as he continued to stare. Stare at her in a way no man, ever, should look at a woman and expect her to survive. “Is that the only reason you’re here tonight? Virginia?”

As if in a trance, she moved forward on shaky legs, closer to his desk. “Y-yes.”

“You want nothing else? Just the money?”

How to talk? How to think? Breathe? Her heart felt ready to pop from the pressure of answering. “N-nothing.”

In the back of her mind, she vaguely realized how simple and unassuming her needs sounded as she voiced them. When they were not. They were tangled. They had grown fierce with his proximity. Out of reason, out of context, out of control.

“Will you help me,” she murmured as she reached the desk, and somehow the plea sounded as intimate as if she’d asked for a kiss.

“I will.” Deep and rough, the determination in his answer flooded her with relief.

He was going to help her.