needed her. But I didn’t want to show any interest yet. She’d just met me. I was the boss. She was an intern. She wanted to get her bearings first and meet her co-workers, find out what her job entailed, and then get comfortable with that.
And besides, I really didn’t want to date someone who worked for me again. I’d done it a few times in the past and then when it didn’t work out and we broke up, the tension around the office was just weird. I hated that. I didn’t want to experience that with Julie.
For now, I was just going to play things a bit cool. But I knew that no matter how much I fought it, I was damn hard attracted to that woman. I lusted for her. I was still thinking about her when I got back to my office. I checked the time and decided it should have been late enough in the morning for a drink, but I decided to be sober and just consume crazy amounts of coffee instead. I filled up a large mug and then went to my office to relax a moment and prepare for my next meeting.
I was fired up about that. If it went well, then I would be consuming one of my competitors and I would continue to grow my family’s fortune. At this point the money was more about keeping score than anything. It was all fun and games it would seem. The sport of my choice was business. It was a game that I happened to excel at. My father had taught me well.
I found myself thinking about the Christmas party as I looked out the window of the twelfth floor and peered out. Even without the snow and the colder temps, the Los Angeles area still knew how to celebrate a great holiday. For the next several weeks it would look like one big party going on everywhere you turned.
I loved this time of the year. I wished I could truly get out and celebrate it more, but this also happened to be the time of year when everyone was doing their best to make a buck and business was booming.
As I stood there watching the city, I wished that Julie was right there with me to celebrate the season. I was already having a hard time getting her off my mind. And something told me that it was going to get even harder.
4
Julie
I couldn’t believe those words had come out of my mouth. I had actually demanded an apology from Tony Caplan for making me wait. What the fuck was I thinking? I wanted to crawl under the chair I was sitting in. I wasn’t sure what was going on in Tony’s mind. I could imagine him wondering how this new intern dare have the guts to say something like that to him. But he laughed it off and embraced me anyway.
Tony was so nice. He was cocky and arrogant for sure, but I expected that mostly from his reputation and the fact he’d been raised so privileged. His father had started this huge global company before Tony was even born. That sort of thing was just in him for the long haul.
The conversation between us picked up right after that. Tony was so easy going when he spoke to me. It was like we were old friends playing catch up or something. We seemed to have a lot in common, or I was just picking up on things because I was so nervous. I could hardly remember everything that was said, but I knew that I felt really comfortable with Tony.
And it didn’t hurt that I found him irresistibly attractive. The man just oozed sex appeal. The moment I saw him sitting there as I walked into his office, my knees wanted to melt into the floor. I could hardly stand and walk. All of those nerves and fears I’d been feeling earlier came back right then and they were amplified now. I could hardly hold myself together when I was answering his questions.
But little by little the meeting went better and better. And now I was sitting at my desk working on coming up with a marketing strategy for the new software launch. I was working on the beta version. The rest of the team was working on the alpha version. We were going to see which one turned out to be more profitable where people would spend more money