Not eye up his damn PA. Right after he kissed her. At the Christmas party thrown by his company.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. That is seriously all the wrong fucking things to do. He found himself regretting the drinks he had. And the fact that come Monday, the regret wasn’t going to be strong enough to keep him from staring at Callie and figuring out just what shade those irises of hers truly were.
CHAPTER 5
Callie
By the time Monday morning rolled around, Callie’s Saturday morning hangover was long past. What wasn’t gone was the slightly foggy memory of kissing someone. She knew she’d done it. Which had been in part because she’d drank down all the gin and tonics Chantara kept handing her. The other part of her… she wasn’t sure what that was. She couldn’t say what came over her. Maybe it was the fact that she couldn’t actually see the guy.
No, wait. That made it worse.
Without her contacts or her glasses, Callie had no idea who she kissed. Her hands stayed on their clothes, which felt very much like a dress shirt only. Which gave her absolutely no clue to who it could have been since everyone was dressed formally. He was tall. Taller than her, but so were several guys. He tasted good. Like that really helps. His lips were so firm but so soft. Still doesn’t help. He kissed like a demon. Seriously that narrows it down not at all.
The worst part of it was that she knew it had to be someone from work. Really, the odds were completely against it being someone’s guest. No one wanted to go to boring office Christmas parties unless they actually worked there.
The guy was probably thirty to forty, but there were a lot of those too.
Callie arrived at work on Monday morning, hoping like hell no one would confront her about what happened Friday night. Maybe whoever she’d kissed had been drunk too and they couldn’t remember. Maybe they were embarrassed about it as well. It had kind of just happened.
There were a lot of things that night that just happened. After the DJ screwed up and there was no other alternate entertainment, people pretty much turned to the bar.
Callie made it through Monday without incident. Matt Hilbert, luckily enough, wasn’t in. He was away on business. She knew it because she booked his flight for Sunday. Obviously, he didn’t get drunk at the party. He had a five am flight to catch.
Tuesday wasn’t as easy for her. She got to work early and found a mysterious coffee cup waiting for her on her desk. She removed the lid and sniffed it. It smelled alright. The odds of someone bringing her coffee that had something in it, like something bad, were slim. She took a sip and winced.
Okay, maybe not slim enough.
It might not be drugs or poison, but whoever got her the coffee put a crapload of cream and sugar in it. As in, like, six sugars and half a container of cream.
She appreciated the thought but escaped to the lunchroom. When she was sure no one was there or watching her from the doorway, she dumped the coffee down the drain, rinsed eight inches of sugar out of the bottom of the paper cup, and filled it with the subpar work java. She added a splash of cream and put the lid back on.
There. Whoever brought it will never know I didn’t drink it. She still wasn’t sure who could have done it. It really could have been anyone. There were always things showing up at work. Doughnuts, fruit, gift baskets. She’d never actually got something before, but she had only been there for a month.
She’d just sat down at her desk when Matt Hilbert walked into the office. He was wearing his usual immaculate black suit and tie combo. He strolled up to her desk and stopped putting his briefcase down by her desk. She halted, coffee cup still in hand. She frowned. Why is he looking at me like that? He definitely was- staring at her. There really wasn’t another word for it.
He’d never done that before. Callie cleared her throat. “Uh… I have your emails sorted out, Mr. Hilbert. All your urgent messages are on your desk. I ordered them from most urgent to least, not by date. Uh- I guess- I guess that’s it for now.”
He kept staring at her, his face so close that she could smell his aftershave. Or deodorant. Or shampoo. Hair gel? She could smell something, and she was ashamed to say, she liked it.
What the hell? First, I kiss someone, a guy I couldn’t even freaking see and now I actually like the scent of Matt Hilbert?
She wasn’t about guys. She wasn’t about much of anything since her whole life came to a standstill a year and a half ago. She was lucky enough Chantara let her move in to lick her wounds. A year and a half later, she was still there, still licking away. They might not have been so fresh or so deep, but those wounds were still there. Common sense told her that people were untrustworthy. Ben had taught her not to let anyone in. It hurt a lot less being by herself, even if it was lonely.