“What?” Emerson straightened and looked at me over her shoulder.
My eyes darted back to my computer just in time, so she didn’t catch my stare. “Nothing.”
She turned back to what she was doing.
I closed my eyes and dragged my hands down my face. Jesus Christ, what the fuck was that?
I wished I hadn’t seen her at dinner in that backless dress with that dark lipstick.
I had always been aware of her attractiveness, but it never registered on my brain in a lustful way. Now, it consumed me, distracted me. Even when she didn’t wear a short dress or heavy makeup, that attraction was still there. I appreciated her beauty even more, because she actually tried to downplay her appearance because she was that stunning.
How did I not notice it before?
Emerson carried everything to the table and set it up. “Something wrong with the food?”
“No…why?”
She turned around and took a seat beside me as she pulled her chair in. Today, her hair was up in a tight ponytail, completely out of her face so the sharp curve of her jawline was noticeable, the angles of her cheekbones, her bright eyes that really stood out in contrast to her dark hair. And those freckles…beautiful. “Because you usually eat right away.”
She noticed every little thing about me. “Just had to finish an email.” I opened the container and started to eat.
She opened her laptop and worked while she ate. “So, I contacted your assistant Ruth and made a checklist of all the things you need to do at the office.” She pulled the paper from a folder and placed it on the table beside me. “She also gave me dates of when these things are due. If you’re comfortable, I can organize these items in your office and retrieve them for you, so you don’t even have to go in there. Or better yet, I can do everything myself and then give it to you for approval. Ruth will then check my work on the back end to make sure I didn’t submit something I shouldn’t. That way, you know I’m not doing anything behind your back.”
“You don’t know anything about running a company.”
“No. But you can take the time to show me. I know it’ll be a pain, but it’ll save you time in the long run. All the executive decisions can be left to you.”
We’d been working together for six weeks now, and a lot of progress had been made. But I didn’t believe I would ever get to a place where I could really trust anyone to do anything substantial for me. My company was the most important thing to me, and I couldn’t afford to gamble it by letting someone else have any involvement at all. I’d thought I could leave my phone unlocked in front of the woman I was fucking, but she totally took me for a ride—and taught me a hard lesson. “Let’s make a schedule, and you can organize everything and pester me to do it.”
If Emerson was disappointed, she didn’t show it. “Got it.”
I continued to eat.
“I’ll break down what’s left of the outline so you can eat.” She grabbed the marker and started making notes on the board, keeping track of every storyline, character arc, and the path we would take to get to our significant events in the plot.
I continued to eat as I listened, like I was a student in her class. It got my brain working, got me to stop thinking about all the shit I still had to do. Time passed so quickly, and no matter how hard I worked, I was always behind. It certainly helped that I literally had no chores at the house anymore, didn’t even have to wash a single dish or cook anything, because someone else did that. My laundry was always done; my mail was delivered. It made me feel like I lived in a hotel rather than my actual home.
When I was finished eating, I closed out of my email and went to my document.
The last thing I had opened was my erotic story, so I quickly closed out of it even though she couldn’t see my screen.
I was never ashamed of my sexuality, pretty upfront about it whenever I was out on the town, but this was a totally different situation—and I’d never written a goddamn porno before. And the star of my fantasy was the woman I saw on a daily basis…my fucking assistant.
It was the most inappropriate thing I’d ever done.
I opened the right document and got to work.
At the end of my writing session, Emerson had my lecture ready for tomorrow, finished up some projects for my lab, and organized all my data I had compiled into the Excel sheet but hadn’t sorted.
“How’d do you do?”
“Got a lot done.”