Surrendering to Us

  “No, not really. Welcome to Clarke Enterprises.” I got another great handshake.

  “Thank you so much, I’m ecstatic to be here. Sorry, I’m a little nervous.” Bullshit. She didn’t look nervous in the least.

  I was about to ask her something else when the elevator opened and Lucah stepped off. He went directly for me.

  “Miss Clarke, you dropped your phone—” he abruptly cut off and stared at Violet. All of the color drained from his face, making his freckles stand out.

  “Vi?” he said.

  “Lucah?” she said with an equal mask of shock.

  What. The. FUCK.

  “You know each other?” I said and they both stared at me as if I spoke a foreign language.

  Neither of them answered for a second and then Violet started to laugh.

  “Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re here. I had no idea. How long has it been?” Her face went from white to red and Lucah’s did the same.

  “Uh,” Lucah said, clearly flummoxed. I waited for him to get his bearings. I’d never seen him so off balance before, except the time when he was confronted by an ex-girlfriend. “It’s been a really long time.”

  “Since high school,” she said, nearly finishing his sentence. Oh. Wow. She knew teenage Lucah. I’d gone through the photo album and there had been a few pictures of him as a gangly teenager (I still would have found him attractive, though), but apparently this girl had been there. Known him. How well? That was the ultimate question I was waiting for the answer to.

  “Uh, Ror-Miss Clarke, Violet and I went to high school together. We, ah, we were friends.” I almost felt bad for him, because clearly he was freaking out. I’d never seen Lucah freak out like this before.

  “Wow, small world,” I said.

  “Isn’t it?” Violet wasn’t looking at me when she said it. Then Mrs. Andrews cleared her throat and the spell over Lucah and Violet shattered and they came back from wherever they’d been. Memory lane?

  “Well, you two should catch up later, but I have to take you, Miss Cooper, down to see Dawn so she can get you all set up with your email and so forth.” Thank you, Mrs. Andrews. She hustled Violet down the stairs and I was left with a still-stunned Lucah.

  Until I knew the entire situation, I was reserving. So I waited.

  “Oh my God.” It seemed to be the only thing he could say. People kept walking by, and this wasn’t the kind of conversation we could have in the middle of a hallway. So I tugged on his sleeve and nodded toward my office. I could have a chat with my former assistant if I wanted to. And right now, I wanted to.

  “I just have to ask Mr. Blythe about a project we worked on a few months ago,” I said to Lilia as I opened my office door and he stepped in. I gave her a look that I hoped she understood meant “hold all my calls” and shut the door behind me.

  “Sit.” He sat. I poured a glass of water from the pitcher Lilia had set up on a little table. She also kept little snacks there and always had a fresh cup of coffee in my WORLD’S GREATEST BOSS mug. I handed him the glass and he sipped at it. His eyes were practically bugging out of his head.

  “Calm down,” I said. “Just breathe for a second. No pressure.” He nodded and gripped onto the glass. He was shaken up. Was it just the shock of seeing her? Or something more? Questions tumbled through my brain at a crazy rate, but I kept them to myself and waited for him to pull himself together.

  “We, um, we were friends in high school.” How close? I said in my head. Out loud, I said nothing. “She was one of my only friends. She lived in the same trailer park as us and we used to walk to school together. We got . . . we got really close, but when I bailed for college, I cut ties and never heard from her again. Until now. I . . . I really never thought I would see her again.” Clearly he didn’t.

  “Wow.” What else was there to say? “She seemed just as shocked to see you, too.” I hoped Violet said something to Mrs. Andrews so I could go and talk to Mrs. Andrews about it later and try to piece this together.

  Lucah coughed and drank more of the water.

  “She was my first girlfriend.” There it was. The thing I knew he was going to say, but that I hoped he wouldn’t say. I mean, I couldn’t be jealous of him dating a girl in high school. That was ridiculous. Right?

  “I never thought I’d see her again,” he said again. He looked off into space, as if waiting for some sort of revelation.

  “She looks exactly the same,” he said in the same shocked tone. I almost snapped my fingers in front of his face, but I waited. I waited for him to pull himself out of it.

  I didn’t have to wait much longer. He shook his head once and stared up at me.

  “Oh God, Rory. I’m so sorry.” Why was he sorry? Hell, I hadn’t told him the entirety of my dating history either. There were some things that were better left unsaid. But I couldn’t help that little bitty twinge of jealousy and hurt that he hadn’t told me, irrational as it was.

  “For what? For not telling me every single detail of your life? It’s not your fault that through some weird twist of fate she ended up here. That’s life. Unless you have control over the universe, then there’s nothing to be sorry for.” Wow, I sounded calm and collected and almost wise. Where the hell had that come from?

  “We’ll handle it, like we’ve handled everything else. Okay?” I got up and got on my knees and took his hands in mine. “And there’s nothing really to handle. Isn’t this a good thing? Connecting with an old friend?” I didn’t say anything about the ex-girlfriend part. I was going to avoid that as much as I possibly could. Wait and see, again.

  “I have to get back to work. We can’t be alone in your office. How long have we been in here?” He got up in a rush and went to the door.

  “Lucah. Calm down.” My voice was sharp. The voice I used when something I’d asked to be fixed wasn’t after the third time of asking. “We’ll talk later. Call me if you need anything. And if you need to leave, then go. Whatever you need to do, that’s what we’ll do.” What a strange role reversal where I was the calm one, and he was the one losing his shit. It was good to know that when I had to be the strong one, I could be. It was also good to know that Lucah, like me, could freak out sometimes. It made him more human. And made me love him more. Everything he did made me love him more.

  “I love you,” I said, even though it was strictly forbidden to say such things in the office.

  “I love you.” I got a tight and unconvincing smile as he opened the door and headed back downstairs.

  Lilia stared after him and I could tell she was dying to know what was going on.

  “Just checking up on a project,” I said, smiling at her, and trying to channel my mother.

  “Uh huh,” she said, not even bothering to pretend that she didn’t believe me.

  I went back into my office and closed the door. I needed a moment. I grabbed Lucah’s discarded water and tossed the rest of it back.

  Sure, she was probably the first girl he’d ever loved and she’d probably taken his virginity and she was here now, stirring up all those memories, and she was gorgeous AND she had the red hair so she was one of his own kind . . .

  No, I wasn’t going to let myself go there. Lucah loved me. If I wasn’t sure of ANYTHING else, I knew that. I could hold onto that. And I loved him. So much.

  I could almost hear his voice in my head, telling me I was crazy, I had nothing to worry about, he loved me, my ass, etc. And then he would probably try to convince me again to head to the supply closet.

  That made me smile. He always made me smile. There was a knock at the door, and I opened it. Mrs. Andrews.

  “Oh, hello, dear. I just thought I would, ah, check on you. That was quite a shock, wasn’t it?” I let her in my office and shut the door behind her again.

  “I’m fine,” I said, my voice going up several octaves.

  “Of course you are, because that boy loves you, and if he still loved her, then he would be with her. But he’s with you, because he’s meant to be wi
th you.” She made it sound so simple. I liked it.

  I nodded and she patted me on the shoulder.

  “Besides, she’s definitely too thin. I want to take her out for lunch and feed her.” She giggled and gave me a wink before leaving.

  I would deal with that later. Now, I had work to do. Glorious work that didn’t make me think of Lucah and his ex and her red hair and long legs at all.

  My phone rang at eleven thirty, and it was Lucah. I took a breath before I answered.

  “Hey,” I said. He breathed for a second before he responded with, “Hey.”

  “You recovered? Everything okay?” I tried to keep my voice level and calm.

  “I think so. I’ve, uh, I’ve been hiding in my office.” His office was a lot smaller than mine, and the walls were a lot thinner.

  “From Violet?”

  “I don’t know. From everything. You wonder why I don’t talk about my past and part of it is because of my parents and part of it is that, I don’t know, I’m not ashamed of the way I grew up, but I’m afraid it’s going to taint what I have now.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m just glad to know that you’re as ridiculous as I am about some things. I was beginning to wonder.” I almost started laughing. I got a sick thrill out of knowing that Lucah could get worked up about things.

  “Can we have lunch? And by lunch I mean coffee? I need you.” His voice changed from a regular whisper to a sexy whisper and I immediately felt my own needs in some key areas. Lunchtime sex? Yes, please.

  “Where?”

  “My desk?” He wasn’t serious. I waited. “Okay, okay, how about, ah, the hotel around the corner. I hear they have excellent . . . coffee cups. That didn’t come out the way I wanted it to.” Now that made me laugh.

  “A hotel? How illicit. I’m game. Meet you out in front at twelve?”

  “Absolutely.” He hung up and I decided that this day had gone from potentially awful to pretty damn good.

  I counted down the minutes until noon and I was praying that no one asked me for anything so I could get out of the office without incident. Fate was in my favor as I grabbed my coat and my purse and nearly skipped to the elevator.

  And then my glee was brought to a screeching halt as I nearly crashed right into Violet. Buzz, gone.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said as we tried to get around each other and did a little dance.

  “No, no, my fault.” We both sort of laughed and I finally made my way to the elevator. I’d gone from thinking she could be my new best work friend to trying not to imagine her getting hit by a taxi. I shoved her aside in my head and tried to think just about Lucah. Mmmm, coffee with Lucah at a hotel. Yum.

  He beat me to the front of the building and was standing there, waiting for me when I came out, a huge grin on his face. That pushed every thought about the redhead upstairs (what was her name again?) aside as I walked slowly toward him.

  “Are you ready for coffee?” I said, stopping with a few feet of space between us.

  “Yes, Miss Clarke, I believe I am.” He held his hand out and I took it. We were both eager, so instead of strolling, we picked up the pace. I almost suggested taking a cab, but it was literally only two blocks, so it would have been crazy to do that.

  I made Lucah get the room, because I knew what they were going to think. He came back, waving the key card in the air.

  “I got it for two days so they wouldn’t think you were a call girl.”

  “Well, I think our lack of luggage is going to send up a red flag.”

  “Or, maybe, we could come back tonight. Have dinner and coffee afterward.” Ooohhh, I hadn’t thought of that. Plus, we could order breakfast in the morning and someone else would wash the dishes. Why hadn’t we thought of this before?

  “What a brilliant idea, Mr. Blythe.”

  “I have my moments, Miss Clarke. Shall we?” He held his arm out and I took it as we walked to the elevator and rode it all the way up.

  “The penthouse?” I’d never stayed in a penthouse before. When I went on business trips I always picked the cheapest room because the company was paying for it, and I didn’t think they should have to foot the bill for something I didn’t really need.

  “I’ve never stayed in one, and now hopefully they’ll think you’re a classy call girl. You know, like Julia Roberts.” Yes, I had forced him to watch Pretty Woman during one of our movie marathons. I kind of felt like her at the moment. Without the hooker part, obviously.

  The room was gorgeous. Even better than I thought it would be. I had the sudden urge to run and throw myself on the bed and jump up and down on it like a little kid. But then Lucah came up behind me and pressed my ass against the hardness in his pants and I forgot all about jumping on the bed.

  He swayed my hips back and forth, rubbing against me.

  “We could always pretend you were a call girl and I was a rich businessman who hired you purely for his own pleasure. Or I could be your call boy and you could be the rich businesswoman,” he said in my ear.

  “Are there call boys? That just sounds wrong.”

  “I’ll be whatever you want me to be.”

  I turned around to face him, putting my arms around his neck.

  “You. I just want you to be you.”

  “I could be me. As long as you get to be you.” He rolled his hips again, and my hands moved down to undo his tie. I made quick work of it, getting it loosened and over his head.

  I’d thought we would take this slow, since we had a whole hour, but maybe there was something in the air in the penthouse, because I decided to skip the shirt and just go for the pants. Lucah seemed to have the same idea as he went for my skirt, panties and nylons all at once, so I was naked from the waist down. I shoved his pants over his hips and then he was backing me up against the bed and thrusting inside me with one smooth motion. And then he somehow flipped onto his back so I was on top.

  I slid up and down on his length and watched his face as he watched me. I reached back and undid my hair so it fell all around me and I felt myself getting close already. I shifted just a bit so he was stroking me where I needed it most, hitting my piercing just right.

  “Oh, fuck Lucah.”

  “I know, I know. Oh, shit.” And we both came at the exact same time, which had only happened only once before. I leaned down and kissed him while he was still inside me.

  “I wouldn’t want to be anyone else right now,” I said.

  “Agreed, Miss Clarke.”

  We had coffee once more with him on top, sans clothes, before getting dressed.

  “How’s my hair?” I said as Lucah held my shoe while I slid my foot in. I was fucking Cinderella.

  “Perfectly fucked, but we can fix that.” He always knew how to fix my hair after sex. He fixed my hair while I got to work on my makeup and then slicked on some deodorant and perfume. I wished I’d had time for a shower, but you can’t always get what you want.

  Lucah put the finishing touches on my hair and I turned to adjust his tie so it was even.

  “Look at us. Afternoon delight and we still have time to get back to the office.” Lucah held his fist up and I bumped it with mine.

  And then he grabbed my ass and used it to pull me toward him for a kiss. Because he was Lucah, and he was mine.

  I wanted to make lunchtime sex a regular thing, because the aftermath carried over to my work and I felt fantastic about everything.

  Until I ran into Violet. Again.

  I needed coffee since I hadn’t actually eaten anything during my lunch and my stomach was growling. I was just waiting for my cup to brew when someone cleared her throat behind me.

  I had a feeling I knew who it was, and my feeling was confirmed when I turned around and Violet was standing there, looking as if she very much needed to get something off her tight and perky chest.

  “Violet, hi. How’s your first day going?” That was nice, right? I didn’t sound like I wanted to thr
ow my coffee in her face?

  “Oh, it’s good. I’m so happy to be here.” The confident girl from the interview had been replaced by a much less assured girl who looked as if she was afraid I was going to leap across the room and throttle her.

  “Great,” I said, wondering where this was ultimately going to go. As far as I knew, no one had told her that Lucah and I were together, unless she’d noticed how obvious it was when he’d introduced her to me. The village idiot would have seen that.

  “Um, if there’s anything you want to know, or anything I can help you out with, don’t be afraid to ask. My door is always open.” I tried to smile, but it wasn’t that easy.

  “Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Maybe we could have a chat this afternoon?” I didn’t need multiple guesses to know what she was going to talk about. But maybe I was just being paranoid. She probably did just want to talk about work.

  “Absolutely. Come by anytime.” I grabbed my coffee and left before I broke my smile, or said something I shouldn’t.

  Oh, this was going to be fun.

  I waited in my office for the fateful meeting with Violet. I thought about calling Lucah, but what if she really just wanted to talk about work? Then I’d feel like an idiot.

  So I waited and drank too much coffee, which only got me more worked up. Even Lilia came in and asked what was wrong and if she could do anything for me. I assured her I was fine, just stressed about a project getting done when it needed to be, and she pretended to buy it. I almost opened my mouth and spilled the whole thing to her, but that would have crossed some sort of boundary that I didn’t think I should cross with my assistant. I’d crossed too many with my last one.

  I chewed nearly all the skin off my bottom lip and almost wore a hole through the floor because I kept tapping my heel over and over.

  When Violet finally came and knocked on my door, I almost wanted to hug her in relief.

  “Are you busy?” she said in a low voice, as if she was in a library. I was in the middle of something, but I’d been so busy waiting for her that I hadn’t gotten much done.