Daphne Vs. Daddy

“I’ve called this emergency meeting today so we can do some research,” I finally spit out. Everyone just stares at me. I might as well have said, “I would like to make a critical announcement – you must breathe in order to live!”

Plunging on, I say, “Brittney Bartlett. We need to research her.” Well, I at least got the words out. I mentally pat myself on the back.

“The investment analyst from Carter Jeffries?” Tom asks, looking confused.

“What?” I say reflexively.

“She’s an investment analyst over at Carter,” Tom repeats, looking at me quizzically. He fears me enough – at least someone does around here, Gweny – not to ask the question on everyone’s mind: Why am I asking to research someone I know so little about?

All right, fine. Truth time.

“Truth is, I just met her and I need to impress her.”

First, it was just a twitch of the lips, which quickly escalated into a full-blown belly laugh. “You want to pick up on this chick?” Hansen yells, and doubles over laughing again.

“Hell yes,” I admit with a chagrined smile. “Have you seen her legs?”

“Not close enough,” Tom says with a huge grin. I send him the death glare. He withers down in his seat, suddenly quiet. I mean, I’ll laugh with the best of them, but Brittney is my girl. No making jokes about fucking her.

When did she become your girl?

I brush the thought away. Soon. She’ll be my girl soon.

“I need to know everything about her,” I say, striding around the room. “Favorite color. Where she graduated from high school. Favorite restaurant. Favorite book.”

“She reads?” Hansen pipes up, surprised.

“Yes, she reads. Like most literate human beings,” I say drily. Everyone laughs. “I need to know what author she’s obsessed with. I need to know if she’d rather go skydiving or snorkeling on a date. If she sneezed last week, I need to know about it.”

Finally realizing that I’m serious about this, my crack research team bends over their laptops and start their searches. I know that soon, I’ll know everything I ever wanted to know about Brittney. I’ll know if she slept with a teddy bear at night as a child...

And I’ll know if she wants to sleep with me now. Because as fun as the fuck on my desk was, it wasn’t enough. I need more. I haven’t slated my thirst for her yet, not by a long shot.

78

Brittney

Okay, so it’s been three weeks, and I’m not above admitting that it feels like for-fucking-ever. When I left Kaden in his office, his pants hanging off the filing cabinet in the corner where I’d shucked them in the middle of our fuck-a-thon, I’d thought he’d, you know, come after me. Maybe not that day, but soon afterward. I wasn’t used to fucking a guy, and then not having him chase me. The chase was most of the fun.

But…Kaden somehow didn’t get the memo. How was it that he wasn’t calling me? He hadn’t even added me as a friend on Facebook yet. For being a stalker, he sure was falling down on the job.

Maybe he’d gotten me out of his system. Maybe he’d just wanted a quick fuck and then he was ready to move on. Maybe I’d somehow gotten more attached to him than he’d gotten to me.

The thought makes me uber depressed and I decide to eat a pint of ice cream when I get home tonight. There’s this chocolate gelatino that is to die for that I’ve been hiding in the back of the freezer for just this kind of occasion. I can wear my Donald Duck PJs and my floppy pink bunny slippers that even my sister doesn’t know I own, and just eat ice cream while watching reruns of Gilmore Girls on TV. That sounds suitably cliché enough. I might even dig out my copy of Pride and Prejudice and get my Austen on.

“What’s a beautiful lady doing in a place like this?”

I hear his voice before I see him, and I whirl around in my office chair in surprise, almost falling out of it in the process. Like summoning a genie in a bottle, here’s fucking sexy Kaden Charles himself.

“Oh hi!” I squeak out. I clear my throat and try that again. “Hi.” I lean back in my chair casually, trying to act as if I had not just been mentally drooling over the very thought of him, but I let my eyes rake over him, taking in his dark blond hair, and curling over his forehead, down past his Salvatore Ferragamo shirt and tie all the way down to his Sutor Mantellassi shoes. He’s looking good, real good, and I mentally forgive him for taking three weeks to finally contact me.

Although, I am surprised he just waltzed in here like this. How did he even get back to my desk? Usually security doesn’t allow people in back here. He must’ve greased some palms.

“So I’m buying Atlantic Trading Group,” he says, leaning against my desk. I have to crane my neck back to stare up at him, and I wonder for a moment about telling him that he has to sit on the floor so I don’t get a crick in my neck. But I decide to let it go for the moment. Some things are worth suffering through, know what I mean?

“Yeah, I saw that deal come through. And you just happen to be using Carter Jeffries to help you put the deal together?”

He grins, unashamed. “Well, I thought I’d use the best. I’ve heard at CJ, there’s this brilliant investment analyst who knows it all, so I figured why not use her services, right?”