Claimed

The room that housed the analysts was nothing special. There were two vertical rows of desks, with cubicle half-walls separating one from the other to offer the illusion of privacy. James sat at his own much larger desk at the front, like a teacher in a classroom, though there was no chalk board behind him. He’d moved a more seasoned employee out of the front desk so he could place Kelsey there, and thus have an unobstructed view of her beautiful face, which he could observe in profile as she clicked away on her computer.

It wasn’t just her beauty that captivated him, though she was lovely by any measure, with her tumbling, shiny red-gold hair and pouty red-lipped mouth, not to mention her slender body, shapely legs, and the hint of luscious breasts beneath her suit jackets and high-collared blouses. It wasn’t just that deep, throaty voice—the voice of a jazz singer in a 1940s nightclub—or the way she seemed to pay such full and complete attention when he explained something to her, her clear green eyes fixed on his face as if nothing else in the world mattered but him. Yes, all those things contributed to his feelings, certainly, but it was something else—something that words couldn’t quite capture—that had drawn him so utterly to her.

It was as if the two of them spoke a secret, special language. A language that didn’t require words or prior knowledge to understand. While he knew it was corny in the extreme, he thought of it as a language of the heart. They were born for one another. She was his soul mate, and as odd as it sounded even to his own ears, he’d known that from the moment he’d laid eyes on her.

For the first time since his promotion to head of his team two years before, James regretted being in a position of authority. Kelsey, understandably, was hesitant to get involved with her boss, and while James agreed with this stance in theory, it chafed at him nonetheless. He had considered getting her transferred to another department as a way to open the door that kept him from her, but found he couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing her each and every day.

It had been hard to keep his emotions under wraps when she’d started having lunch with that asshole, Fowler Chandler, in accounting. What kind of stupid name was Fowler, anyway? Yeah, the guy was good-looking, James supposed, in an obvious, all-American dumb blond kind of way, but Kelsey deserved better.

She deserved James, and he deserved her.

Happily, she’d soon tired of Chandler, and ate lunch most of the time with Jenny and Sarah, the other two women on his team. When Steve Hardin started nosing around her a bit too persistently, James had been able to get the bastard assigned to an external audit, which got him out of the office for at least a few months. James had quietly seethed when Kelsey went out with the guy a few times after work, but she soon saw the error of her ways.

Meanwhile James bided his time as he contemplated when he’d make his move. For the time being, he contented himself with quietly, discreetly keeping his eye on Kelsey. Sometimes at work she would look up suddenly and their eyes would meet. Her shy smile radiated through him like liquid sunlight, and he would feel himself tumbling into her soul. That one moment of connection would be enough to see him through the day and to fuel his fantasies at night.

James had never taken the mid-morning break before Kelsey’s arrival, feeling that, since he was part of management, it showed a lack of professionalism. Since Kelsey had appeared, however, he had pushed these qualms aside, pulled into the break room by an invisible tether that bound Kelsey and him together. Though he rarely actively joined in his subordinates’ conversations during these breaks, he kept his ear cocked for Kelsey’s sexy, husky voice and drank in every word, no matter how mundane the topic.

One morning as James pretended to read his paper at a small table near the group, he was extremely annoyed by the way Frank Lease kept monopolizing Kelsey’s attention with pictures of his stupid new puppy. Talk about an obvious ploy. James was pleased to see that, while she was pleasant and polite as always, Kelsey didn’t seem terribly interested.

No—she was waiting for the right person.

She was waiting for James.

Just as he would wait for her, biding his time until the moment was right. As he lay in bed at night, cock in hand, Kelsey in his mind and heart, he thanked his lucky stars he hadn’t made the mistake of marrying Emily Brookes. Unlike Kelsey, Emily had been too superficial to appreciate what he’d offered her. She had lacked the vision or imagination to understand how powerful true love could be.