Unfortunately, HR hired Colette without any other job experience, based on her crazy stellar portfolio. Colette Howard. God. Even her name was exotic. Blaze refused to use it on the basis of the way it rolled off his tongue like a caress. He loved the taste of her name on his tongue, just like he was pretty sure he’d love the taste of her. Instead of using her real name, he preferred to call her, Office Baby, rudely and like a wise ass, pointing out that she wasn’t just young and inexperienced, she was seriously young and inexperienced, and he made sure everyone knew it.
Because yeah, he was a dick like that.
She was also the only woman that he’d ever met who seemed completely immune to his considerable charms. Sure, it got annoying being panted at and fawned over, even pawed, pretty much wherever he went, but he had to admit it was a nice stroke to the ego to turn heads and melt panties in his wake. He could usually smell the lust on women in the same room with him.
Not on Office Baby. She’d never so much as given him a second glance. She barely looked at him unless she was speaking to him and she always kept it professional. She never went anywhere near his office, which was a damn good thing.
Matt told him to cut it out with the screwing chicks who worked for them. He didn’t want to get sued over and over. Blaze had taken that to heart. Employees might be off the table, but anyone else was definitely on. On his desk. Fucked up against the door. The walls. The floor.
His dates liked to take their lunch breaks and come for a little stress reliever. He never complained.
Okay, so he’d broken the rules once, with his secretary. He wanted to see what it felt like to be the ultimate cliché. The fact that Sue was six feet tall with double D’s, curvy hips, a tight ass, and legs that wrapped around his waist nearly twice- well, he wasn’t going to complain about that.
It was a big F you to Office Baby, if he was being honest. Because the whole office knew what he’d done, even if Sue hadn’t said a thing. The ten thousand dollars he’d paid her to keep her mouth shut assured that. He’d also made sure that enough noise came from his closed-in office to warrant suspicion.
He never said he was a nice guy.
Actually, he knew he wasn’t.
And no, he wasn’t big into being honest with himself either, so no, he preferred not to think about his deplorable behavior and temper tantrum over the fact that the one woman he couldn’t purge from his mind didn’t give two shits about him.
And no, he didn’t screw with the system so that her shitty tree planting (what kind of ridiculously boring idea was that anyway) had won. No, he definitely hadn’t done any such thing. He had not hired someone to hack in and fudge the sales so that her app, which surprisingly, had many downloads already, really smoked everyone. Astoundingly, she might have won even without his help, but he wasn’t going to let up on that chance.
He would have half an hour alone with her in his office.
Pathetic? Yes. Desperate. Definitely. Some payback’s a bitch? All the way, Office Baby.
Calm, cool, collected Colette was about to meet her match. Big time. And if he didn’t have her in his bed within the next twenty-four hours, he’d admit defeat and go back to charm school or hit the gym even harder, because no, he’d never failed before. Hell, he might even consider some kind of surgical enhancement. Not really. But it wasn’t entirely off the table.
Blaze gave up a long time ago trying to figure out what was wrong with him where Colette was concerned. He had no idea what his obsession was with her. Why he thought about her at night. When he was screwing other chicks. He’d fucked up and called two of his one night-stands Colette by mistake, when he was picturing driving into her and not whatever his nameless flavor of the night was. Yeah. To say they weren’t happy about it was the understatement of the century.
He was a self-admitted dick. A rick dick. With a nice dick. His reputation preceded him, and he was fine with that.
What he wasn’t fine with, was that Colette, no matter how many hints he’d dropped, no matter how many outright comments, no matter fucking what, didn’t seem to get the memo.
Either she was trying her damnest to ignore him, or he wasn’t being obvious enough. And he’d been pretty damn obvious at times.
Over the years, the challenge had grown. The mystery that was Colette needed to be solved. He wasn’t the kind of person who gave up. When he wanted something, he either took it or worked his ass off until he earned it.