“You never suspected he was married?”
Sam shook her head. “I know it sounds ridiculous. But I swear to you he never mentioned her. He didn’t have a single photograph of his family in his office or a wedding ring on his hand. I had no reason to think he might be…” Her voice drifted off.
“Anyway, one day we were in his office and he had me pressed against the filing cabinet. We were just messing around—I would never have slept with him at work—but his wife came in and caught us. She blew a gasket. The next thing I knew, people were whispering as I went into the break room and I had become the woman that climbed the career ladder on her knees. I was laid off a few weeks later. Wouldn’t you know that the finance department determined that marketing was suddenly overstaffed?”
Brody’s jaw tightened as he listened to her tell her story. He seemed angry. Sam hoped it wasn’t at her for being so stupid and naive. “Didn’t anyone realize what was really going on?”
“If they did, they didn’t care. I was a home wrecker, out on my rear end, and couldn’t get a reference to save my soul. This job working for you is the first thing I’ve been able to land. And I only managed that because of Agnes, I’m sure.”
Brody leaned into her but didn’t reach for her. “What happened to you was terrible. That Luke guy should be strung up by his junk. But let me ask you something…do you really think I’m going to sleep with you and toss you out onto the street like he did?”
Sam felt a flush of embarrassment rise to her cheeks. “No…and yes. It’s a hard-learned lesson, Brody. I’m already a temporary employee. Easy to get rid of. And if you sleep with one boss, it’s a fluke. Twice…and it’s a bad habit. I don’t want to make the same mistakes.”
Brody’s hand came to rest heavily on her shoulder. His touch was warm and the massaging motion of his fingertips made her want to close her eyes and curl up in his lap.
“Sam, let me assure you first that I am not married. Not even close. No serious girlfriends or fiancées tucked away, either. I am very, very single. Two, I am not a sleaze. Please don’t think for a moment that I’m trying to use my position as your supervisor to pressure you into something you don’t want to do. I don’t ever want to make you uncomfortable. Here, or at work.”
“Thank you.” Sam knew what he was saying was true. She’d been telling herself that since the first buzz of attraction between them. She was just scared to get burned again.
“And finally…I want you to understand that I’m not the kind of guy that casually sleeps around with women. I really like you, Sam. You’re beautiful and smart and funny.” Brody reached out to caress her cheek. “You look at me—really look at me—when no one else does. I don’t think you truly understand how rare that is in my life. I don’t need coded doors and thumbprint scanners to keep people away. They stay away on their own.
“Since my accident, no one looks at me the way they did before. It was so hard, living my life every day and dealing with the stares and the reactions of people. I was just a kid, Sam. When I got old enough, I started my company and hid away because I didn’t want to deal with it anymore. It’s my choice to keep people away now. But in shutting away the bad, I shut away the good, too. It was probably a mistake. It has cost me so much of my personal life, but I did what I thought I had to do to protect myself.”
Sam’s heart ached listening to his story, but she didn’t quite grasp where he was headed with the conversation.
“It might be unheard of in this day and age, Sam, but…I’m still a virgin.”
* * *
Brody had never spoken those words aloud to another living soul. Not even his brothers knew the truth. They thought he’d lost it to a working girl they’d all chipped in and bought him after high school. And he let them believe it. It was easier than telling them that even their well-paid whore couldn’t look him in the eye when she touched him.
He’d walked away from her without regrets. Getting laid would be nice, but he wanted more. Call him a hopeless romantic, but it was true. He wanted companionship. Intimacy. Love. Until now, Brody hadn’t met a woman who might be interested in him for anything but his money. He hadn’t come across anyone who inspired him to open up and expose his demons to her.
Sam had come so close. He didn’t want her to walk away and he’d decided that telling her the truth might be the only thing to convince her he wasn’t like other men. But it may have backfired. He was pretty sure by the extended silence between them that he’d driven her away with his blunt confession instead.