very uncomfortable couch digging into my butt through my black slacks, grounding me, and reminding me of what I know above all else: I cannot date my boss. I need to resign.
But instead, I find myself smiling and saying in a throaty voice that sounds anything but businesslike, “I like everything you do.”
Chapter Three
Gavin
I like everything you do.
Zoey’s words are still playing on repeat in my head at lunch while I wait for Thayden. After two years of keeping myself reined in and bound up tight, today the tiniest bit of my restraint slipped. And now it’s all spinning out of control. I’m spinning out of control.
My intention was to begin preparing her for the new position I want to create before I finally leave Morgan-Beckwith. My parting gift to her. Instead, I said I wanted to groom her, a comment that made me want to punch myself in the face.
Then, I didn’t just step over the professional line I’ve kept so carefully drawn but pole vaulted over it with my flirty remark.
But she flirted back.
For one second. One line. One sentence. And then she closed up and the being perfect professional returned. The Zoey who seems frustratingly immune to my looks, to my money, to me.
It’s hard not to take it a little personally sometimes. Is that what makes her so irresistible—the fact that I can’t have her?
I’m just some old guy with an inappropriate crush on a woman who is much too young for me. Not that forty-three is that old, but compared to Zoey’s fresh face, just a few years out of college, I’m practically in a retirement home eating sliced peaches from a can and looking for my dentures.
I could find another woman if I wanted. Someone more age-appropriate who doesn’t work for me. Two women have approached me since I walked into the bar tonight. They made their intentions clear and gave me a free pass for drinks. Or more.
And I wasn’t tempted in the slightest.
My first wife was beautiful and look where that ended up—with me paying alimony every month and never wanting to settle down again.
So, it’s not Zoey’s blonde hair or those big blue eyes or the way the apples of her cheeks burn red when she’s flustered.
Nope. I hardly even notice any of that.
The thing about Zoey is that she’s so bright. Not just book smart or marketing smart, but wise. Way beyond her years.
Like the way she handled Roxana’s idea today. I was going to shoot the whole thing down. It was a subpar proposal, surprising for Roxana, who was also in rare form. I honestly considered how easy it would be to fire or demote her, both for the way her work has started to slide lately and the brazen flirting.
But Zoey found a way to tweak the idea into something that worked. Brilliant. Her mind is like the blade of a chef’s knife. She knows how to cut away what doesn’t need to be said.
I want to know what’s behind her calm, controlled exterior. I want the woman underneath, because I know there’s more. I see the way she carefully weighs her words, and every so often, I’ve seen her mask of control slip. I want to know the whole Zoey. I want to see the words she holds back, the ones that turn the wheels in her head. I want to see her with her hair down. I want to take her hair down.
Yeah. I’ve got it bad.
And, as Ella Fitzgerald would tell me, that ain’t good.
“Why the long face? Tough morning at the office pining after your hot assistant?”
Thayden claps a hand over my shoulder and slides into the seat next to mine, holding up a hand to a nearby server as he does.
We’ve been round and round this conversation before. Have we even had other conversations over the last two years? I wish I had something else to say than I think I’m in love with my executive assistant.
Not that I’d ever even mention the L-word to Thayden. He’s got an acute allergy to that emotion. And I have an aversion to commitment, so I need to keep telling myself it’s just attraction. A crush. No big deal.
Thayden rolls his eyes. “Ah. There’s a cure for this, you know. Many cures. Blonde cures, dark-haired cures—there’s a cute redheaded cure looking this way right now.”
I glance up, the response due to curiosity and not because I want to see what woman Thayden means. The redhead at