“The music is in my mind. Can you hear it?” Samantha pretended to be listening to imaginary music coming from outside the window.
Ella played along and pulled out her ears, giggling. “I can hear it, Mom.” She also started dancing; both of them danced, holding each other’s hands through the kitchen to the sitting room. Her dad was sitting on the sofa, but he ignored them and burrowed himself deeper into the book he was reading.
Ella wouldn’t leave him out of the fun. “Grandpa, can you hear the music?”
The man just made a grunting sound and returned to his reading. Things were beginning to look up, and Samantha liked every bit of it.
Samantha had set an appointment with Mr. Phillips, and as she approached his office, she still could not bring herself to even think about calling him anything else. This was the big kahuna, the big client. She had to keep her mouth shut, not be defensive, and do whatever he wanted.
Oh god, I hope he’s not a Ramsey, she thought.
Samantha was genuinely scared. She was so nervous that she kept her head in a kind of bow as she responded to Phillips’s invitation to enter his office following her light knock.
“Please, Ms. Parker, come in.”
“You can call me…oh, anything you like.”
She could not believe she was in the office of the CEO of Phillips Corp. Everything was exquisite, not in an outlandish way, but simple and modern. She was sure the office had been fitted to his taste. It somehow reflected the man, who had an intense aura around him.
Focus, Samantha, she told herself.
Gordon noticed she was a bit lost and decided to break the silence. “Well, how about we start on professional grounds. If you won’t call me by my first name, then I won’t call you by yours.”
“That sounds…fair.”
“Great, shall I…strip down?”
“Yes, just to your underpants. That’ll be sufficient. I’ll turn around. And you can put the towel around your…lower half.”
“Great. No problem.”
As Samantha turned away, Gordon considered Ms. Parker’s appearance. There was something about it that he couldn’t put together, something about her face. It reminded him of that woman in Stockholm. But that couldn’t be it. There’s had to be more to it than that. The color of her hair? Yes, like the Stockholm woman. Slightly larger eyes? Yes, like…
Oh. My. God, he thought.
Ms. Parker is Samantha Parker, which could be Sammy, which would be Sammy Parker. Sammy fucking Parker! That girl he left hanging in college.
She had flashed in his mind a few days before, and he wondered why he would think about her after so long. What were the odds? That girl he never got back too. Three months of intense passion. A passion so overwhelming, when he had to go away for the summer, he couldn’t deal with it. Not with that and competing with his brother for his dad’s attention, for a chance to take over from his dad when his cancer got too bad. It was a back-breaking, stressful summer. So much so that he didn’t even call her.
That was a really shitty thing you did, Phillips, he thought. Forcing your own shit on to other people like that. And now she’s here, and she has full access to your spinal cord.
She hadn’t said anything. Why hadn’t she said anything?
She seemed nervous, but she was nervous around him the same way everyone was nervous around him. Rich-People nervous. Not, Why-Do-I-Have-to-Deal-With-This-Asshole nervous. Which meant, she probably didn’t know, didn’t realize.
Should he tell her?
She seemed to be feeling uncomfortable enough after Jimmy’s stupid antics. He didn’t want to scare her into throwing away what was probably her biggest client.
She had a kid, too. Sammy Parker had a kid. He wondered where the sperm donor was in her story. The guy must have taken a hike. Or maybe the guy would come back around and beat the shit out of Gordon. Except, Gordon had security, and the only person who he would ever let beat the shit out of him was his brother.
He thought her ass really did look great in her yoga pants.
Oh my god, Samantha thought, he’s looking at me. Maybe he’s noticed I’m too fat for these pants.
Well, she could afford new ones now. She pretended to read the contract, trying to ignore how uncomfortable she was feeling. She hoped this session would be a little more successful than the last one that happened in this building.
He was ready, so she moved over to start. She put her hand on his back and concentrated on doing some light rubbing so he could get used to the feel of her touch. Then, she gently worked her way up his spine. As she prodded his muscles, she realized he was much more toned than she had expected, and she was impressed. His back was well-toned, and she found herself realizing that she was thinking about more than just the massage.
I might think about finding him hot if this wasn’t the last place I wanted to think about sex right now, she thought.
As she worked her way to his shoulders, she realized his muscles there were unusually tight. She thought she’d better go easy on them. It seemed that something was definitely up with this Mr. Phillips. Probably some kind of big business stresses that were far out of her paygrade. She had other things to think about, anyway, like how to work the knots out of those shoulders.
“Mr. Phillips, your shoulder muscles are so bunched up. They’re like Christmas tree lights.”
“Are they going to live?” Phillips started, exaggerating despair. “Are you gonna have to take the arms off?”
She couldn’t help herself. She giggled. “Yep. Your arms are a goner. The neck and head might have to be tossed out, too, but I think I can save the rest.”
“Not the face! Not my beautiful face!”
He looked at her, and she could swear she saw a twinkle in his eye. More than that, there was something so familiar about his smile. The look in his eyes, the smile, maybe it was just déjà vu or something. Either that, or she was so starved for affection that she took that joke a little too seriously.
“Let me know if the next bit hurts, Mr. Phillips. I’ll pull back.”
“Sure. No problem. I can handle it.”
Is that right? It's elbow time, she thought.
As soon as she put pressure on him with her elbow, he grunted. She had to stifle another giggle.
“Relax, Mr. Phillips. Breathe. You need to breathe.” Just a little more weight into the elbow, and the yelling starts, she thought. “I can move on. But I think it’ll take a couple more sessions to really clear this up.”
Gordon said through clenched teeth, “No…it’s…fine…I can…barely…feel it.”
“That may be the case, Mr. Phillips, but your muscles are struggling. And if I push them too hard, I will damage them. So I really think we should have another appointment soon.” Samantha smiled, looking down at the relieved face, his chiseled back facing her. She wanted to do more to him, explore more, but only in her imaginations, and she intended to keep it that way.
“Yeah, no problem, I’ll sort it out with my secretary.”
“That nasty woman on the front desk?” Oh shit, think before you speak, Sammy!
“There’s a nasty woman on the front desk? I wouldn’t know. I’ll look into that.”
She didn’t want to get the poor woman fired. But then again, the woman did work at the front desk. If she couldn’t get her shit together and smile, then she did need to go work somewhere else. If Samantha did a shitty job, she lost clients, or worse, she hurt someone. If that woman at the front desk couldn’t get the basics of her job down, Samantha was sure someone else could.