“Sounds romantic. Why did you get married then?”
“She was pregnant,” he said matter of factly.
“Oh. I wasn’t aware you had a child.”
“I don’t.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling bad for prying.
“Thank you. We had been together for a few months, and she was pregnant so we went to the courthouse. There was a miscarriage, but we decided to stay together. On my part, I didn’t want to be a quitter. I didn’t want her to feel like losing the baby was some kind of failure of hers or that she’d lose me over it. Although she never had me, not really so I married her for bad reasons. Then she found other men to pay attention to her when I was gone too much. It isn’t even an original story.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, “about your child.”
“Thanks. I haven’t told that story very often. My friend Malcolm knows. And now you know. An employee I just met,” he shook his head ruefully.
“Hopefully I’m more than just an employee,” I said robustly.
“Friends?”
“Yes. Brent,” I said, speaking his name to make him smile a little. “See, first name basis. Plus we held hands and we talked about our personal lives. So that’s friendship.”
“It is?”
“Why? What do you think it is?”
“Answer something for me, before I agree to being friends.”
“All right.”
“If you didn’t work for me, would you consider going home with me?”
Again, I was caught off guard. “I’m not sure. I don’t have a blueprint for this. I haven’t found myself in this situation often enough to deal with it gracefully. The work thing is part of it, but another part of it is shame, feeling like I haven’t known you long enough, we’re not seriously dating one another, so I’m not supposed to go back to go home with you, so to speak.”
“Supposed to? How disappointing. Just when I had you pegged for a divergent thinker, you’ve fallen for the oppressive system of shame and judging a woman’s value by her purported innocence. Here’s the truth, adult men don’t want to sleep with virgins. We want women who know what they like. Women who say what they mean, and know their way around our bodies as well.”
“If you have a dating seminar, sign me up,” I said.
“I might give private lessons,” he said, his voice low.
“You can just turn anything into a proposition, can’t you?” I laughed. “Is that how you got ahead in business?”
“Yes. A very large number of sexual favors. The secret to my success,” he deadpanned.
I grinned. Talking with him was exhilarating and intimate. I felt fizzy inside from all the flirting and teasing, and I felt confident, powerful. Like I was singled out as interesting and worth his time. I gave him a smile and sipped my wine. There was a lot left in the glass, so the buzz in my head had nothing to do with alcohol. It was all Brent Waltham.
“I have your Forbes cover. At my apartment. It has moved with me since I lived in a dorm.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“Why did you save it?”
I stared at him. I should not have started this line of conversation.
“I read it for the articles,” I said archly.
“Oh, really? So I am your George Clooney?”
“If I admitted such a ridiculous thing, it would give you far too much power,” I said evasively.
“Just about enough power, I’d say. That would be if it were hypothetically true, the single most flattering thing anyone has ever said to me. That a gorgeous young girl has kept my magazine cover because she likes to—”
“Read the articles, like I said,” I gave him a sly smile.
“So how often do you read those articles?” he teased.
“Well, let’s see, I read them last night until I was worn out. And when I woke up this morning, I couldn’t resist reading them again really quickly.”
“Really? Twice in twelve hours. You must enjoy that issue.”
“No one has ever enjoyed a back issue of Forbes more than me,” I said with a smile.
8
Brent
I met with legal, took their more conservative advice reluctantly. Kim had been right of course—a rash action would reflect poorly on the company. Maxwell would be well and truly punished and the victim would be supported and taken care of.
All through that meeting, I had difficulty focusing, which was unusual for me, but my thoughts kept drifting back to my long lunch with Cat. Not just her ideas, but the way it felt when she gripped my fingers, the honest way she shared her thoughts. The way her mind worked and how she had been so responsive to my every suggestion. Riding the elevator to my office had elicited a sharp intake of breath on my part. I could imagine it so clearly, lying naked with Cat in the bedroom. She would be lying on my bare chest, and I would be toying with her nipple—those nipples that had poked so sharply through her silky blouse at lunch, hardening whenever I mentioned anything suggestive. How they would feel in my mouth, how enticing it would be to have her come to me and say she had changed her mind. She would slowly open one button after another, starting at her throat. I would suck her neck there where she revealed bare skin, and then her collarbone, the valley between her breasts, the curve of her stomach. I was sweating. One of the lawyers was talking, and I broke out in a sweat from the fantasy I was letting unfold during a meeting.
I got a glass of water and drained it to cool myself down. In the span of that lunch we shared, she had risen in my estimation from an articulate young hire in HR to a woman I’d told secrets to. A woman I was so attracted to that I had begun to trust her because my lust for her was so powerful it clouded my thinking. She knew that I had only gotten married because of a pregnancy and that a part of me still mourned that lost child. And that I was willing to joke around and flirt during a serious discussion of evolving sexual harassment policies. I took a lot of risks with her. I told her things she could take to a tabloid and have a million dollars in her account before midnight. I propositioned her openly and admitted to it. She could sue me and the company for soliciting sexual favors from her.
I had given her far more power to ruin my reputation than I could have imagined. Scorching lust made me careless. Somehow it had been so long since I’d wanted anyone so much, that the experience, just the core physical reaction I had to her made me reckless. I had said all manner of inappropriate things to her. I had stroked her knuckles in a way that I wanted to stroke between her legs, imagining how my thumb could drag slowly across every plump, wet fold, parting her. It was excruciating.
After I finished with legal and PR came in with the statement they’d developed for a press release, I left to go home. I had Millie cancel the dinner I was scheduled to attend. I needed time to myself, to think. I had stupidly risked my career, the career I’d spent decades building, by saying indiscreet things to a new hire. I wanted to call her in a panic and demand that she does not tell a soul, but if she hadn’t thought of the money she stood to make off of the conversation at lunch, I didn’t want to tip her off by giving her the idea. Not that Cat wasn’t clever enough to come up with a hustle on her own. I just hoped that she was sincerely interested in me that her biological reaction could be developed into more than that, into a full-fledged love affair. I hadn’t had a lover in two months since I broke it off with Riley, who thought we should take our relationship public.