When we moved her from HQ into my house, I noticed tenfold how spunky, adorable, and blond she was. How she hums when she takes her first sip of coffee. How much she enjoys going to the post office to buy stamps. She always buys the LOVE ones with puppies or cartoons on them, but I don’t complain. Whenever she uses one, her gray eyes light up and a sweet smile spreads her mouth. Unfortunately, she’s not the kind of assistant you hire and then seduce. She’s practically family, though “family” takes on a broader meaning in the Owen family.
William and Lainey Owen have one child of their own. Archer Owen is three years older than me but not the eldest of the Owen sons. He’s the middle by a technicality. After they adopted me, they went and adopted a rough Chicago teen straight out of juvie. Nate is one year Archer’s senior. Ours is a patchwork family. I’ve heard Archer refer to Cris as our honorary sister, but I can’t agree with him there. She’s a lot of things to me, but sister? Yikes. I’ve admired far too many of her body parts for that not to be creepy.
And man, is she hard not to admire when she’s running ahead of me, her round ass jiggling enticingly every time her shoes hit the pavement. Dappled sunlight streams through the leaves on the trees and lights her curly blond hair. Her fair skin is what most would consider “tan” but given my bronze hue, I only see “fair.”
So there she is, a blond-haired, gray-eyed, petite, strong, smart woman with an ass that won’t quit…who works for me. As her boss I overlook her questionable professionalism—the aforementioned cutesy stamp fetish and her typical ensemble of Chuck Taylors and ripped jeans at the office. As her best friend I overlook her glaringly obvious hotness and wish I’d developed a fascination with her before hiring her. I could have asked her out in some neutral capacity back then. Now I have to settle for stolen glimpses and pretend not to notice her admirable attributes. Whenever we stretch side by side after a run, I glance at her bare legs, pale next to mine, and entertain what they might feel like wrapped around my waist while I roll my hips and give both of us the ride of a lifetime.
“Race you to the parking lot.” She interrupts the vision beginning to form, which is probably for the best considering it’s hard to run with a boner. She spins around and runs backwards, her curly hair bouncing with her every step. Now I have a view of another jiggling part of her, those incredible breasts I try to ignore every single day.
“Try and keep up.” I take off.
I reach the parking lot before she does, no surprise since I was half-killing myself to do it. I hate losing. Not as much as Archer, but still. I wait for her to catch up, bent in half, sucking air through my open mouth and balancing my palms on my knees. She’s not far behind.
She slows to a walk, arms heavy at her sides, cheeks pink and eyes dancing. “When will you learn”—she pauses to take a breath—“that I’m baiting you”—another pause, another breath—“when I say that?”
“Never.” I straighten, grinning. She grins back. My winning made her feel like she won and that is good for everyone.
“You clocked your steps for the day, I bet.” She nods at the watch on my wrist. It tracks a million things, the number of steps I take in a day included. Look at that. I just rolled over my goal. “Nice.”
“You’re welcome.” She winks.
I am welcome. She takes care of me, which I need. I have a tendency to lose myself in the numbers the way some might get lost in the woods after dark. I go into a deep, trancelike state when I’m thinking around, over, and through financials, rendering me unable to tend to my most basic needs. Like eating, drinking. Blinking, on occasion.
Cris happily refills my water, buzzes up the occasional smoothie in the high-powered blender, or delivers a takeout container filled with chicken and spring mix salad to my desk, lid off, fork stuck in it like a flag. Hell, she brought me vitamin C the other day because she heard me coughing and worried I might be coming down with a cold.
She does all of this while also managing my calendars (personal and business), preparing reports, interviewing candidates, spellchecking my letters, and traveling with me to a variety of affairs. She’s made reservations for dinner with the woman I happen to be seeing (whichever woman it is at the time) and has set up lunch dates so I can end the “seeing” part, which always happens no matter how great the woman I’m dating is.
She is Super Cris! More powerful than the Calendar app on your iPhone, able to leap tall deadlines in a single bound. I have no idea how I did my job before I hired her. I shudder to think what would happen if she left. Which is why I pay her an exorbitant amount of money to do what she does.
Her attentiveness to my needs escalated noticeably last fall when her youngest brother Timothy went away to college. It’s like she has empty-nest syndrome at only thirty years of age. Damn her mother. And damn Cris’s father and each of her brothers’ fathers for that matter. They stuck my chipper blond best friend with their adult responsibilities at a time when she should have had the luxury to learn more about herself. My parents would have never left me by choice. Not ever.
Without picking up her feet, Cris shuffles to the car and grabs our water bottles, insulated so the water stays ice cold. (She thinks of everything.) As we rehydrate I make my way to a bench and sit, watching people in the park run along the path in between admiring the sway of the trees against a blue sky.
Spring in Ohio. It’s my favorite season. There’s a whiff of newness in the air. I love the scent. It reminds me of a Monday, truly the best day of the week. Well, if you love what you do. I adore my lot in life. After all, I structured it.
She settles in next to me, her knee bumping mine, the innocent touch sending a blaze of heat up my thigh. Hers are not long legs, but they are toned and sexy—if I allowed myself to consider Cris “sexy” which I, of course, don’t.
“What are you looking at?” She examines her leg.
Unable to share that my thoughts have devolved into a visual of her back against the wall while I’m driving hard and deep into the heart of her, I shake my head. When she frowns, I think fast and poke a purplish splotch on the outside of her thigh.
“Ouch! Is that a bruise?”
“Appears to be,” I say. “How’d you do that? Are you a violent sleeper?”
“It’s my new WWE boyfriend.” She rolls her eyes. Wide, big, expressive. Innocent. There is a sweet, generous nature under the naiveté, but the naiveté is there all the same.
“If you have a boyfriend, WWE or otherwise, this better not be how I find out.” I suck down more water as a pleat forms between her pale eyebrows. It’s followed by a lip bite, and her eyes skitter away before landing on my face again. My Spidey senses tingle. She’s not the only superhero in this park.
“What was that about?” I can’t help asking. She shakes her head a little guiltily. I’m suddenly queasy and I don’t think I can blame it on exercising. “Tell me.”
“It’s just…” She seesaws her head back and forth twice before continuing. “I have a date tomorrow night.”
“A date.” I tried not to let that sound like an accusation. I’m not sure I was successful.
“I didn’t tell you because, well…” Her eyes are on her water bottle as she runs a thumbnail along the lid.