“Sounds boring,” she replied, “Here’s my water glass.” She sent him a picture of a glass of water on a table.
“Why do ppl do that? Take pics of food and drinks?” he asked.
“To inspire envy and prove they are fabulous,” Paige replied.
“Your foot is fabulous. Sushi from days ago...not so much,” Luke found himself typing.
She sent him a laughing emoji, then a meme that said ‘No one cares what your sad salad looks like. Quit posting.’ Luke laughed aloud at that and told her so.
“RU on a date? Should I stop the msgs?” he asked.
“Nah. Out with Gina and girls.”
“Tell her u love the shoes, she helped with size.”
“What????”
He was impressed that Gina took her confidentiality agreement seriously enough not to spill that she helped him shop for Paige. “Tell her she can talk to you,” was all he replied.
A few minutes later, he found himself holding his phone, waiting for a message from Paige. When nothing ever came, he went back to work and double checked the Johnson projections. Later, he took a break and got a water from the refrigerator. The same one that had drawn her out of Gina’s office, barefoot and too curious that night. He held the bottle of water in his hand and grinned as he got an idea.
The next day, he sent an intern down to Paige’s desk with a bottle of water from the executive floor refrigerator labeled ‘contraband.’ An hour later, he had a bottle of Rosé delivered to her office with a note that read ‘We could turn the water into wine.’ That afternoon, he had one of the IT department guys take Paige an optical drive with a message attached about teaching her to do a hot swap. He wondered if she knew what it meant and hoped she didn’t—hoped she only saw the double entendre there, the innuendo.
When he got no response, no interoffice email or text message, he went looking for her. Yes, he’d gotten work done that day, but he’d been preoccupied with getting Paige to think about him, reconsider accepting his proposal to join him in a mutually profitable fake marriage.
Luke pressed the button to call the elevator. When the doors slid open, Paige was in the elevator. He stepped in and closed the doors, smiling.
“What are you doing all the way up here? Stalker,” he said.
He stepped closer to her. He couldn’t help it. The vanilla smell of her hair, the way he remembered how she felt when he held her. His whole body was alive with wanting her, with reaching for her, a powerful drive to close the space between them instantly.
“I was looking for you. You weren’t lurking near my office like I expected.”
“And you weren’t lurking in conference room doorways like I’d hoped,” he returned.
Paige licked her lips. She was wearing a yellow blouse, a tight skirt. She wasn’t wearing the pink shoes. Her hair was pinned up. It would be so much fun to take her hair down right here and let it loose to fill his hands. She was looking right at him. Not acting shy or turning away. His gaze settled on her mouth. Her lips were beautiful, rose pink and lush, a full soft curve. Luke felt the ache low in his belly, the tightening of want as his pulse sped up, his skin heated. He wanted to take possession of her lips, of her body, claim her, and fuck her senseless. His imagination ran wild with anticipation of what he was going to do to her.
“You could be a bad decision for me,” Paige said.
“But don’t bad decisions make for good stories?” he retorted.
Luke put out his hand to touch the curve of her cheek. She moved in toward him, closing those last inches between them. He could feel the warmth and softness of her body at the places where her chest, her leg grazed against his. He felt alive, electrified at those points, at the faint brush of her. He paused to look into those melting dark eyes, to slant his mouth over hers. He was going to savor this. He’d been after her for days, thoughts of her crowding into his normally productive routine and invading his dreams at night. This was going to be the beginning of something, Luke thought, and it was going to be delicious.
He saw the dark smudge of her eyelashes fan across her cheek as she let her eyes drop shut, ready to be kissed by him. A surge of victory, possessiveness coursed through him as he leaned closer to claim her lips. Her breath was soft and warm against his mouth as his lips brushed hers. They were soft as rose petals. He ached to part them and slide his tongue inside. Her fingers went to his chest, her fingertips pressing against his shirt.
The line had been officially crossed.
The elevator door slid open suddenly. They sprang apart, hearts pounding. She leaped to the other side of the elevator and pretended to study the buttons as if deciding on a floor. Luke pushed back his cuff to look at his activity tracker as the COO stepped into the elevator.
“I thought something was wrong. The car wasn’t moving. But when I pressed the button the doors came open. Everything all right?” she asked.
“Fine,” Luke said, cursing the day he’d ever promoted her and created the top administrative position in the company. Cursed, perhaps, the day she’d been born, because nothing she did to improve efficiency in this corporation could atone for the fact that she’d just interrupted the kiss of a lifetime.
Chapter 7
PAIGE PRESSED THE BUTTON for her own floor and got out of the elevator there, heart pounding wildly. They’d almost kissed. He’d barely kissed her. She could still feel it, like the afterburn when she’d scalded her hand on boiling water—a sting that persisted. In the seconds before they’d been interrupted, Paige had had two thoughts. One, that her heart was going to burst out of her chest from beating so hard. Two, that every man she’d ever kissed up until now had been doing it wrong.
She felt giddy and foolish as she went back to her office. All she wanted to do was run and find him, kiss him more, if only to see what it would really be like. Because if her body’s reaction to three seconds of kissing was any indication, there was no way she’d survive having sex with this man. And why had she thought of that at all? He was the CEO of the company where she was a secretary making minimum wage.