I hoped I wasn’t being so obvious.
Once introductions were through, everybody else scooted a little bit away from us and split into groups, leaving me and Jules mostly alone by the table of drinks.
“Have something to drink. Eat, too. I know you missed dinner,” I said.
Jules put a hand on her stomach, looking longingly at the food. “Would it be weird if I had a little bit of everything?”
“Make yourself comfortable,” I said. “I’m going to finish up something in my office. You know where to find me if you need me.”
“You’re bailing on your own party?” she asked with a slice of pizza in one hand and a piece of crusty naan bread in the other.
“I’ll be in the office. I just need to handle a couple things.”
Jules shook her head. “It’s not healthy to be that focused on work, you know. Everybody is scared of you. Maybe if they saw you relax and let loose a little they wouldn’t be so terrified.”
“It’s good that they’re scared. I’m their boss. It keeps them from thinking we can be friends. They do their work well and they keep their jobs. It’s simpler this way, and I don’t have to worry about my personal feelings clouding my judgment.”
“Right,” Jules said. She stared at her pizza and bread like she’d just had an incredible idea. I watched in distant horror as she folded the pizza inside the bread and took a bite, then nodded appreciatively. “It’s a good thing you’re so skilled at being professional with your employees. Imagine if you saw these people in their panties or went dress shopping for them, right?”
“I owe you an apology,” I said, even though I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth. I hadn’t been lying before. I didn’t apologize to employees. If they didn’t like it, they left. That was how it worked. So what the hell was I doing? “I crossed the line, and I won’t let it happen again.”
“Mr. White just apologized to me?” she put a hand to her chest in a show of mock amazement. Then she smoothed her expression and formed a small, pretty smile before locking those big blue eyes of hers on me. “I appreciate it. But I also think I like you better when you’re crossing lines. It’s an improvement over growling at me about all the calls I need to make for you or how full your inbox is. It makes you a little more human, and that’s not entirely bad.”
I hadn’t been planning on drinking, but I picked up a cup and filled it with a finger of tequila. With a shrug, I threw the drink back and gave Jules a shrug. “Maybe it would be good for productivity if I appeared to enjoy myself.”
“See?” she said, raising her naan and pizza abomination for a toast. “Fun can be good.”
I gave her a reluctant smirk, poured another shot in my cup, then raised it to meet her toast. “To appearing to have fun.”
“No,” she said. “To forgetting about appearances.”
A healthy intake of alcohol helped me begin to do exactly that. As the minutes rolled on and the alcohol took effect, it suddenly didn’t seem as important to always be a hardass in front of my employees. They were having fun once I showed them it was okay to let loose, and there was an infectious quality to Jules. The others were still keeping their distance from us, but Jules was going into painful detail about her favorite book series.
I was doing my best to listen as she told me about how all the men could turn into dragons and the women were fairy creatures, but she was utterly distracting. Her lips were hypnotic, and her mannerisms were adorable. She had a way of getting unusually close when she talked until her breasts were in danger of pressing against me with every wild waving hand gesture she made.
“And of course,” she said, speech just beginning to slur slightly from the drinks she’d had. “Every dragon man is extremely well endowed. It’s only natural.”
“Do these fairy women sleep with the men while they are in dragon form? That seems… logistically difficult.”
“Leave it to you to worry about logistics,” she said. “No. When they get sexually aroused, they turn into humans. But the fairy girls are so tempting the dragon guys are almost always in human form when the girls are around. But when they’re in human form, they’re kinda ready to go, if you know what I mean. Not a lot gets done in these communities, as you can imagine.”
“It sounds like the fairy women get done quite a bit.”
Jules pulled her chin back, raising her eyebrows and then laughing. “Mr. White. Did you just make a joke? Has humor been hiding in there this whole time? If I’d known a little alcohol would get you to loosen up, I would’ve been spiking your coffee from day one.”
“I try my best to keep work and my personal life separate. It’s simpler that way.”
“You can be personable without getting personal,” Jules said.
“In some cases, maybe. But in other cases, I think it might be unwise for me to get too personable. It could send the wrong message.”
Jules had been standing close, but now she seemed far too close. If I’d been more sober, I would’ve done the smart thing and stepped back, because I could feel the soft pressure of her breasts against my stomach. I also should’ve been far more aware of how easily my employees could’ve looked at us and seen what was going on.
But I wasn’t sober. And Jules wasn’t just tempting to me. She was addictive. She was like a taste of hard drugs to a recovering addict, and I could feel myself in very real danger of slipping down a dark, unforgiving slope with her.
“What sort of messages are you worried about sending?” she whispered.
That I want to fuck my personal assistant, even if it risks destroying everything my partners and I have worked for over the past ten years. I closed my eyes, because it was the only way I could focus. I couldn’t look into her face and say what I needed to say. Some part of me clawed its way through the haze of alcohol and said the right thing. “I think I’ve made a good enough show of having fun. You may want to turn in soon. I need you here bright and early tomorrow morning.”
Jules was still standing too close, so I took a step back, then pursed my lips in something approximating a smile.
I lowered my voice to a bare whisper. “Letting go like this only makes it harder to go back to the way things have to be. Tomorrow, I’ve still got to be Mr. White. I’ve still got to run this company and pursue my goals. And tomorrow, I’ll still need you to just be my personal assistant.”
“We’re both adults,” Jules said. “I can be friendly with my boss and still do my job. And you can speak your mind around me if you want to. If you cross any lines, I’ll tell you. It’s like I said. I’m a big girl and I can handle myself.”
“I know you can. And I respect you for it. Have a good night, Jules. I’ll see you in the morning.”
9
Jules
Mr. White liked buzzing my desk and gruffly demanding to see me in his office. I was convinced of that. I could almost picture him in there with a smug grin on his face as he waited for me to make the walk.
I got up, making a point of taking my sweet time just to be ornery. I also still had a lingering heaviness in my head from the drinking at last night’s party and today’s early start. Mr. White hadn’t been kidding about needing me first thing. He’d sent Harvey again to pick me up and swing by to gather his black coffee and pick up the shirt I’d sprayed yesterday.