Filthy Rich (Filthy Rich 1)

Aidan had said he would take the day off, too, to visit family. But he’d gone back to New York instead. I wondered why—but that was none of my business.

As the plane taxied toward the terminal, I pulled my wrap around me and tried to push down the flutter of unease in my stomach. My migraine was long gone now, but there was no doubt it had been a weird moment between Aidan and me. I remembered the way it had felt when he put his arms around me—the texture of his fine wool suit against my thin T-shirt, the warmth of his body underneath. I remembered how he had smelled, the line of his clean-shaven jaw. I’d never been that close to him before. In the moment, I’d been afraid of throwing up, but thinking back on it, I could remember the details now that I wasn’t under a fog of pain and humiliation.

He’d put me in bed. He’d rubbed my neck. I’d put my hand on his wrist.

And he’d come back to my room sometime when I was sleeping and left his copy of my key on the table.

All of it made things awkward now, to say the least. How were we supposed to work face-to-face?

Maybe we would just move on, ignore what had happened. That was probably best. We were boss and employee. The neck massage while I was wearing nothing but panties and a T-shirt could fade into the past where it would hopefully be forgotten.

I winced to myself, standing up to grab my bag from the overhead. There was no way I was forgetting that, even if Aidan did. I’d remember the feel of his fingers massaging my neck forever. Talk about embarrassing.

You’re a professional, Samantha. Act like one.

I could. I would.

And if I wanted my boss’s hands all over me, rubbing more than just my neck, then I’d just have to suffer.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about how Aidan and I would work together. Because he was avoiding me.

He had back-to-back meetings out of the office the first day I was back. Then he flew to Atlanta for a meeting. Everything was done by email and text, the messages concise and impersonal. Polite. He flew to Denver for another meeting. A week in, I got the idea. We were going to pretend that Chicago never happened, and we were going to do it by never being in the same room again.

It was exactly like the time after the meeting with the Egerton brothers. Obviously the Man in Black had some hang-ups when it came to talking to his assistant directly. Okay, last time I’d avoided him a little bit, too. And maybe I had been letting it slide for a week because it was easier. But it still made me angry. I hadn’t done anything wrong in Chicago, and neither had he. We hadn’t done anything together. Nothing at all.

Absolutely nothing, when I wanted to do so much.

Another week passed, and I didn’t see my boss. He took meetings in New Jersey and Washington, and when he was in Manhattan he came in to the office at some ungodly hour and left before I got in. Then—I realized when I saw the timestamps on his emails—he’d come in again after I left for the day, and he worked into the evening. All so that he wouldn’t have to be in the same room with me.

It was ridiculous. It didn’t matter that the work of Tower VC got done just as efficiently as it ever had; it was still stupid. It had to stop.

So one Friday night, I left work at six. I pretended I was going home, but instead I went down the street to the bookstore and browsed for an hour, picking out a novel to read and buying it. Then I walked back to the Tower VC offices and let myself in.

The office was dark and empty except for a beam of light coming from Aidan’s office. His door was ajar and his desk lamp was on. I crossed the open office space and stood in his doorway.

Aidan was sitting at his desk, his laptop open in front of him. He was wearing his customary black, though his jacket was flung over a chair, his tie was loosened, and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone. He heard me coming, and his dark gaze fixed on me.

There was a second of vertigo as I looked at him. He looked good, but he wasn’t as put together as usual. His hair was mussed slightly, and there was a shadow of beard on his jaw, as if he hadn’t shaved in a few days. The cuffs of his sleeves were roughly rolled up. The effect was so hot it made my knees weak. I did my best not to let on.

“Good evening,” I said to him.

What was Aidan’s expression as he looked at me? Anger? Annoyance? Something else? He wasn’t happy to see me, and he didn’t pretend otherwise. “Samantha, what are you doing here?” he asked bluntly. “It’s seven o’clock on Friday night.”

I crossed my arms. I was still wearing my trench coat, my purse and the bookstore bag slung over my shoulder. “It seems this is the only time I can get a meeting with my boss.”

He scowled. “If you needed a meeting with me, you should have scheduled one.”

“Would you have come?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“Come on, Aidan. Ever since Chicago, we’ve been acting like two divorced parents who have to trade off the kids every weekend.”

A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Nothing happened in Chicago.”

There was a second of silence, heavy and thick. I pictured his hand on the back of my neck, his fingers moving over my skin. I knew he was picturing the same thing.

“I agree,” I said. “Nothing happened in Chicago.”