How would she? She couldn’t drive and had no work experience. She was good with computers and had aced accounting. She liked working with people. But apparently none of that counted for much unless she would be content making minimum wage flipping burgers. That was before she divulged her medical issues.
“No,” she admitted quietly.
“I might have one, if you have some time for a quick interview.”
“Now?”
“The sooner the better.”
London pulled her shirt from her sticky skin and grimaced. “I need to shower and change clothes and—” Putting on makeup might be a nice idea. Maybe taming her hair into something that looked remotely professional. Trying not to look like a woman who’d had her first orgasm today. “Can you pick me up at Alyssa and Luc’s house in forty-five minutes?”
“Sure. I think this will be a good fit for you, hon.” Kata hung up.
And it occurred to London that she hadn’t asked the other woman what sort of job she’d be interviewing for. If it was something like shoveling gator poop in the swamps, that wasn’t what she had in mind.
She stepped into the house. The stillness told her that she was alone, which fit, given the text Alyssa had sent her earlier about taking her daughter to the doctor. Then she sent Luc a quick message asking him to lock up Sirens since she’d “forgotten.” The truth was, she’d been too frazzled by Xander.
Rolling her eyes at her own stupidity, she marched up the stairs, got clean, and dolled up as much as she could in the time remaining. And still, even as her body tingled, she tried not to think about Xander. In the end, he’d be happy not to have to deal with her.
A horn honked outside the house, and London jolted. Time to stop woolgathering.
Racing to her closet, she hopped into a sedate gray skirt and a soft pink blouse with a scalloped neckline and gentle gathers at the waist. It flattered her, she supposed, as she looked in the mirror. But it looked a bit like something her grandmother would have worn.
The horn sounded impatiently again, and London slipped into a pair of supple black leather peep-toes—one of her few indulgences—grabbed the big claw clip from the dresser and rolled her hair into a French twist before jogging down the stairs.
Locking the door behind her quickly, she dashed to Kata’s car and climbed into the roaring Mustang with sleek leather seats and a blast of air-conditioning that made her sigh gratefully. “Thanks for doing this. I know it’s the middle of your workday.”
“I’ve put in some killer hours lately. They owe me a little comp time.” The beautiful Latina smiled.
London fidgeted nervously. “What should I know about this job?”
Kata hesitated, then shook her head. “Go into this as a blank slate with an open mind. You might be a bit surprised, but don’t show it. We’ll talk afterward, okay?”
“Surprised? What kind of work is this?”
“Secretarial. He’s an executive who desperately needs an assistant. You can do this. Forget your preconceived notions. Your boss might be a bit grouchy . . . but you’re sweet as pie. It should balance out.”
She frowned. Kata wasn’t telling her something. A big something. But before London could protest, the other woman turned off the road, into a parking lot, and whipped the car into an empty space up front.
“Take the elevator to suite four twenty.”
“Who—?”
“Go!” Kata all but shoved her out of the car. “He’s expecting you now.”
With a sigh, London pushed the car door open and made her way into the comfortably cooled building. Muzak hummed softly in the lobby. Lush plants dotted two sleek planters made of some shiny black stone with a water feature between them. A granite bench lined the front. The elevator dinged just beyond.
As it opened and a family poured out, London wiped damp palms on her skirt and wandered inside, her stomach a ball of nerves. She could do this. Smile. Be nice. Focus on your education. Stay calm. Show that you can be helpful.
When she reached the door to suite four-twenty, she stood in front of it. Barge in? Or knock? It was a public place . . . sort of.
As she stood there nibbling on her lip, the door tore open so quickly, she was surprised it didn’t come off its hinges. A scowling man towered over her, focusing in on her with narrowed blue eyes in a swarthy face. Dark hair stuck up at every angle, looking like he’d run his hands through it all day long. The pungent smell of alcohol wafted off of him.
“Who are you?” he barked.
She pressed her lips together to smother a gasp. She was going to kill Kata. This was the hunk who’d been sleeping off his hangover in Kata’s guest room. The one reeling with grief over his late wife. The one who had made her instantly weak-kneed. Xander’s brother, Javier.
“London McLane, sir. I was told you were expecting me.”
JAVIER clutched the last of the vodka in his hand, the bottle hidden by the door, and stared at the curvaceous blonde. Sir? Yes, he liked that coming from her pretty mouth. His first instinct was to shove her against the wall, bury her lips under his, and kiss her until she begged for more.
She blinked up at him with big blue eyes, looking as if she smothered the shock of surprise. Yeah, he supposed no one expected their prospective boss to be well sauced by early afternoon.
He stared back at the woman. Fuck, what fair skin. She’d turn rosy when she flushed with arousal, when he rubbed his stubble over her cheeks, down her neck, between her thighs as he ate her sweet pussy.
For the first time in weeks, his cock filled and lengthened, as if rising to greet her. With a scowl, he turned away and took refuge in the interior office, behind his desk. He hoped to hell she followed. He couldn’t turn back toward her without embarrassing himself.
As he plopped back in his chair and settled his crotch under the desk, Javier was gratified to see that . . . what was her name—Lauren? Lacey? He couldn’t remember—had followed and perched herself in the sturdy chair on the other side of his rented desk that had seen better days.
“Résumé?”
She swallowed nervously, then reached inside her big purse to extract a manila folder. Opening it with delicate fingers, she withdrew it and handed it to him. Her scent came with it, something tart and sweet at once. It had a hint of something intriguing. In fact, that described everything about her, especially her eyes with their long lashes and gentle tilt. They had a secret language all their own.
Javier wanted to fuck her.
Instead, he cleared his throat, leaned back in his sprawling leather office chair, and skimmed her résumé. London, that was her name. He set the bottle of vodka on the floor and gazed down the details of her life, reduced to a single, neatly typed piece of paper.
“Why did you get your GED, instead of graduating from high school?”
She raised her chin slightly and squared her shoulders. “I was injured as a sophomore. It required extensive hospitalization and therapy. By the time I recovered, I’d missed too much school to graduate with the rest of my class.”
Javier lifted his eyes from her résumé and studied her. So injured that she’d missed months of school? “It sounds serious.”
“It was. I’m mostly recovered now.”
Mostly. There was something she wasn’t telling him. Javier had been in business with sharks too long to fall for her guppy tale.
“Any residual issues that will affect your work performance?” Technically, he wasn’t allowed to ask that . . . and she probably had no idea.
“I have some new medication, so I’m hopeful there won’t be any problems.”
Not a precise answer, and he didn’t like it. But he wasn’t perfect, either. He should probably send her on her way now, but he’d had little luck keeping assistants. He needed one desperately. Morgan had recommended her.
“I don’t see any work experience here.” He glanced at the résumé again. It was either that or fuse his gaze to her large, pillowy breasts.
“I recently graduated from college. My schooling was delayed, due to my injuries.”
He glanced at her. A bit older than twenty-two, he guessed, but not by much. Christ, that made him feel old. After the year he’d had, he felt downright ancient.
Drawing in a centering breath, he scanned the page in his hand. “I’ve never heard of this university.”
She frowned, and he wished he would have kept his mouth shut. He didn’t have a lot of candidates, and none he’d liked so far. But his instinct told him she was different, maybe just what he needed—someone who would work hard, someone he could mold into the perfect assistant. Putting her on the spot was doing nothing but making her uncomfortable. He had to stop prodding her, demanding personal information. He hadn’t even asked about her typing abilities, computer skills, and salary requirements. He’d jumped straight to her.
“Due to my injuries, I attended a university online.”
Javier watched as she crossed her legs primly at the ankles and tucked them under her chair, then folded her hands in her lap. Under that annoying blouse, he saw a hint of her lace bra. She radiated innocence—something he hadn’t seen in more years than he could count. Everything about her fascinated him.
Yes, he definitely wanted to fuck her.
And the minute he hired her, that option would go out the window. The last thing a tanking, multibillion-dollar business with cutthroat competitors needed was a sexual harassment suit with its CEO at the center. Even if it annoyed him, he needed an assistant more than he needed a soft woman in his bed.
Forcing himself back to business, he dug through the mountain of papers on his desk that needed filing, then found a notepad. Flipping through the pages, he came to one that outlined the strategy for the prototype of a lighter tactical vehicle that had recently come from their research and development folks. The updated Humvee-style vehicle had ambulance capabilities, was lighter, and was able to travel more than 100 miles per hour, so it was much faster. If they played this right, S.I. Industries would reach the marketplace with this quickly. It wasn’t as exciting as the advanced tactical laser technology that Chad Brenner had once created for the company, which had made a fortune, but this new development would still make millions.
If S.I. Industries could get its shit together and release the vehicle before competitors like United Velocity flooded the market.
Javier grabbed the vodka and stood once more, tossing the notepad in her direction. “Everything I’ve worked on this week has been associated with what I call Project Recovery. Here’s how I’d like to organize all the information.”
She glanced at it, read mutely, then looked up at him with an efficient nod—and big eyes that made him hard all over again. What would it be like if she knelt for him? Would she look at him like that as she took his cock in her mouth?
Swallowing back his lust, he turned and headed for the door, more to hide his stiff dick than to leave her. “Do you have any questions about what’s on the page?”
“No, sir.”
Her reply jolted his bloodstream with even more lust. She probably thought of him as a boss or someone’s father, and spoke to him that way out of deference to his age. Sweet little London could have no idea that he itched to pull up her skirt, tear down her panties, and spank her pretty ass so he could see it turn red and to test whether that would make her wet.
“Good. I have an empty filing cabinet and a box of folders. Organize the papers on this desk according to what’s on this page. You have thirty minutes. When you’re done, the memo on the following two pages needs to be typed and e-mailed to the contact name on the bottom of the page. You’ll have an additional fifteen minutes for that. Then we’ll discuss your performance, and if it’s warranted, your salary requirements. Is anything I’ve said unclear?”
She glanced at the other pages in question, skimming quickly. Then she shook her head. “No, sir.”
“Excellent. I’ll leave you to it.”
In the next forty-five minutes, he could call the nearby liquor store and pay a ridiculous upcharge for another bottle of Cîroc. And on any other day, he would. Today . . . he didn’t want to miss a moment of watching her. Sure, he could lie to himself and say that he wanted to see if she was competent and completed both tasks on time—and he did. But mostly he just wanted to look at her. Something about her grace, her big blue eyes, those fucking luscious breasts, her sweetness . . .
As he let himself out the door to his office, he plopped his ass in the vacant assistant’s chair in the reception area and watched through the little vertical window with sightlines to the interior office he’d claimed. He hadn’t had sex with a woman since before Francesca’s death. Free time had been at a minimum for the past year, yes, but so had the drive. London had jump-started that.
It would be better for her if he let the urge die.
Still, he didn’t peel his gaze from her as she bustled around his desk, organizing everything. She quickly made folders corresponding to the subjects he’d indicated on the tablet and placed them in the filing cabinet. Efficiently, she grabbed all the papers and began sorting them into stacks, checking his notes for reference now and again. He didn’t think she’d actually finish on time; he’d left far too much shit for any one person to classify and file away that quickly.
