Boss with Benefits_An Office Romance Read online

  I turned on my heel and strode back into my office. Miranda and Paul were still hard at work, and luckily, my sound-proof walls had done the trick; they hadn’t heard a thing. Still, that didn’t make getting back to work any easier. Just when I started to concentrate, a scene from the past twenty-four hours swirled in my head: Alisha’s hand dropping mine, McKenzie storming away, my arm around Alisha at the hospital.

  As the hours dragged on, Helen returned with some ham and cheese sandwiches, which we gobbled down before getting back to work. Alisha hadn’t texted, but when I sent a text asking for an update, she replied.

  “Nana is still stable. I’ve taken Christian home to get some sleep. Will be back there very early tomorrow, like five, so I’ll be there when Nana wakes up.”

  I stared at the text, my gaze flicking to the time in the corner of my phone: four in the morning. Hell, no wonder I was tired.

  Casting a weary glance over at Miranda and Paul didn’t help matters. Miranda looked like she was seconds away from a cardiac arrest, gulping down coffee in one bony-fingered hand while scribbling furiously on papers with the other. Paul, in contrast, looked about ready to keel over and fall asleep entirely, his pen moving slowly and painstakingly across the page, with his gray eyes fluttering open and closed. I sighed, returning my gaze to my phone. These may have been my top senior accountants, but even together, they had nothing on Alisha. If she’d been here, we’d have been finished long ago, probably curled up in my back room, sharing the bed.

  I jumped up and stormed out of the room. The whole floor was empty, of course. I paced the hallways between the cubicles, going from one to another, looking for what, I didn’t know. When my feet stopped in front of the tidy cubicle with the picture of the all-too-familiar family, I knew. Alisha, that’s who I was looking for.

  Although she certainly wasn’t in her cubicle now. It was orderly to perfection and fairly bare, with the exception of a silver-framed picture of the three of them: her, Christian, and Nana, all of them smiling. I stared at the picture, trying to make sense of it, of this, of me. How many times had I strode by here, hardly noticing Alisha, let alone that picture?

  To think that in just a few days everything had changed.

  I took out my phone and stared at Alisha’s message again. I needed to make a decision. Now. Either turn off my phone, work through the night and finish this acquisition paperwork, or—

  Or what? Was I actually considering going to the hospital, trying to meet them there again?

  I sat down on Alisha’s blue office chair and swiveled myself around once. My heart and head were warring, and it felt like no matter which won, I would lose.

  I closed my eyes. Concentrate Seth: what do you want? I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. When I stood up, I knew what to do.

  Chapter 32

  Alisha

  Here goes nothing. I took a deep breath, steadying my gaze on the view ahead of me. I just had to make it to the hospital without crashing the car or falling asleep—that was all. If I did that, then everything would be okay. Maybe. Hopefully.

  Christian’s sleepy voice sounded from the back, “Mom?”

  “Yeah?” I replied.

  “You think Seth will come visit again?” he asked.

  My jaw tightened. “No, bud. I’m sorry, he’s got a big acquisition to do. He doesn’t have the time.”

  And never will, I added silently in my head.

  Christian said nothing, so I was left to my harried thoughts as I neared the hospital. Part of me, for some strange, stupid reason, thought Seth would actually come.

  Inside the hospital, seeing Nana calmed my nerves. She was in her own room now. Groggy, but awake.

  “Now, don’t you look at me like that,” she chided me with a familiar twinkle in her eye. “I’ll be as fit as a fiddle and out of here before you know it.”

  She clasped my hand in hers. Maybe it was just my imagination, but those fragile fingers of hers seemed limper than I remembered.

  The nurse lingering by the hospital bed explained the situation with a voice full of feeling. “That was a bad fall your grandmother had. She’s got a broken hip and leg, which are some pretty severe injuries for someone her age. Although we have high hopes for the surgery and getting the bones in a position to mend, her mobility will still likely be severely limited from now on.”

  Her kindly words hit me like a punch to the gut. “Severely limited mobility?” In a two-story townhouse? I was still scraping up payments on the mortgage every month, and we were in no position to move somewhere more suitable.

  Seeing Nana glancing at me carefully, I mustered up a smile. “What’s important is that you’re okay,” I told her.

  Eyes already half-open, Nana gave a dopey sort of nod.

  “Yes, yes, exactly. Now, if you’ll just excuse me—”

  The next second, her head was flopped to the side of her pillow, her mouth lolling open in sleep.

  “I’ll be back to wheel her out for surgery in another five minutes,” the nurse said, and then she left.

  A glance to the corner of the room found that Christian was fast asleep in an ugly orange chair. I jealously took in his serenely oblivious face.

  Seated on the bed, I took Nana’s hand, my pointer finger running over its entire creased surface, as if reading a book I knew and loved well. That delicate lined skin, with its slight rose scent—the same one from when I was a kid. All my memories of Nana were tinged with it, the two of us coloring away at the kitchen table, opening my present of a brand-new doll, burying my face in her chest for one of her famous hugs.

  God, I couldn’t imagine life without Nana.

  For a minute, I savored right now for what it was. Christian and Nana happily asleep, me watching over my haphazard, loving family. All of us safe, together, maybe for the last time.

  “Ms. Townsend?”

  It was the nurse from before, at the door with another male nurse, who had a dull sort of expression I didn’t much like.

  “It’s time,” she said.

  I rose, still holding Nana’s hand. They stood at the door awkwardly.

  “We have a gurney,” the nurse explained.

  “Oh, of course,” I said.

  I moved out of the way, over by Christian’s chair. Standing there, I watched in silence as they wheeled Nana out.

  She was still fast asleep, looking just as peaceful as Christian did. Only I truly grasped what was at stake here. Neither the doctor nor nurse had admitted it, but they didn’t need to. The truth was written all over their faces, evident in the situation itself: a major surgery at Nana’s age was always risky.

  Please be okay, please, I begged in my head as they wheeled her away.

  Then she was gone, out the door and down the hallway, the sound of the gurney’s wheels growing quieter and quieter.

  I slumped back onto the bed. A glance over my shoulder had my gaze riveted on the depression on the sheets where Nana’s body had been.

  The sound of the door woke me up. It was Seth. His dark, wavy hair was thrown askew, his blue pinstriped suit buttoned up all wrong. His stormy eyes were locked on me.

  “Alisha.”

  Seconds later, he’d swept me up in his arms. Before I could even think to protest, he had lifted me right up to his lips and kissed me like that, with my legs dangling down like a doll.

  “Seth, what are you doing here? What are you doing?” I asked when we separated.

  His face lit up with the biggest grin I’d ever seen him have, while his hands only pressed me to his chest even tighter.

  “Shhh. Please, let me have this moment, this second. Please.”

  I did, though it wasn’t just for him. Even now that I was on my feet, with my face buried in his chest, it felt good here. So protected. Like it was just him and me. With his arms surrounding me like a suit of armor, he spoke.

  “Alisha, my darling. You scared me today. The thought of you being gone, being hurt… I… promise me we’ll never be separated.�
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  My mind was brimming with excuses, but I couldn’t seem to voice any. They were the things that didn’t seem real, not this phenomenal moment.

  “I was wrong, before, in the car,” he said, “I was afraid. But please, baby, don’t turn me away now. Not here. Not now.”

  Under his arm, I glanced at the orange chair where Christian had been. It was empty.

  Extricating myself, I took a step back. This didn’t make any sense.

  “Please,” Seth was saying with his lips, and his eyes too, “Please, just kiss me, Alisha.”

  He pushed me onto the bed, pinning me there with his taut form. But something wasn’t right about all this.

  Even as his firm lips found mine and his insistent hand started exploring my body, I couldn’t shake the feeling.

  “I don’t ever want you out of my sight again,” Seth said in between kisses.

  Now, he was unbuttoning my blue jeans, pulling them down to my ankles. Next, his hand latched on the pink waistband of my black and red panties.

  “Nice stripes,” he said, just as he yanked it down.

  My gaze flicked to the door, which was closed.

  “Don’t worry, I locked the door,” he said as if reading my thoughts. “And yes, this is real,” he added, again answering a question I hadn’t even thought to ask yet.

  Trying to steady myself with deep breaths, I strained in vain to keep my eyes open. But it was impossible against this overpowering feeling, this full-body pleasure. His hands were twining in me, and already I could feel myself slipping away.

  “Seth,” I murmured, but he didn’t seem to hear me. “Seth,” I said, “We have to—”

  And that was when he slid his member into me. As soon as I felt its smooth hardness enter into me, I gave up resisting. The pleasure was too intense, too all-encompassing. There was no resisting this. Already the hospital bed was creaking along with Seth’s skillful thrusts, every one sending a secondary tremor of glory through my limbs. His hand ran across my face and up and over my lips.

  “So beautiful,” he growled, “So fucking beautiful.”

  And that was when the knock sounded on the door.

  “Fuck,” we swore together.

  My alarmed eyes snapped open, and his determined gaze met mine.

  “We can’t,” I said.

  “We have to,” he answered.

  As he amped his pace to a hundred, my body knew that he was right. This tremoring overtaking me, there was no resisting it. This was an urge that had to be satiated. Even as the door reverberated with louder and louder knocks, even as my own head rang with pleading for me to stop, please stop, I knew that none of that mattered. Right now, this was what I needed.

  Now, Seth was jackhammering me as hard and fast as he could, and I was on the edge. The door opened just as I came, crying out with the orgasm, the realization.

  “This is a dream,” I said.

  Seth paused, his features clouded by an overwhelming sorrow. My eyes closed uncontrollably, and when they opened, I was alone on the hospital bed, pants on. The door was open. Christian was still curled up on the ugly orange chair, fast asleep. It had been a dream. A horrible, wonderful dream.

  I stumbled upright.

  Looking around only made the off-white walls close in more. I sucked in a deep breath, but that didn’t help. Nothing less than getting out of this room would do it.

  I glanced at Christian. Judging by his softly snoring face, the odds were that he wouldn’t be waking up for a good while. I was good to go.

  This time as I made my way down the hallway, I took in everything I’d passed earlier in an unseeing panic. The never-ending signs from everywhere to everywhere, the ashen-faced patients, the waiting rooms, all looking like ours did. I had almost reached the elevators when my name was called.

  “Alisha!”

  I paused. That had sounded like, and yet it couldn’t be—

  “Alisha,” Seth said again, beside me now. He was wearing the same navy suit he’d been wearing when he’d left me last night, and the dark circles that rimmed his eyes suggested that he’d slept just as little as I had.

  I gaped at him stupidly, speechless. It seemed incredible that my dream was actually, literally coming true.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, after a few seconds.

  “I tried going to your Nana’s room,” Seth said, “Explained that I wasn’t exactly family per se, but I was almost, but the nurse in charge had a stick up her ass and wouldn’t go for it. She stuck me in the waiting room and wouldn’t even agree to let you know I was here.”

  A frown twisted his mouth as he shook his head.

  “And, after all that, she wouldn’t even take a bribe.”

  I eyed him incredulously, unsure whether to throw my head back in laughter or throw my arms around him in joy.

  Chapter 33

  Seth

  Overwhelmed. That was how Alisha looked. Like she wanted to cry. I’d better be careful—if I pushed it, she’d try to kick me out like before.

  “How’s Nana?” I asked.

  She lifted her thumb to her lips and chewed on her fingernail. “Good. Well, okay.” She shook her head miserably, “I don’t know. They said she’ll probably be fine. But everyone knows there are no certainties in a surgery like this.”

  I put my hand on hers.

  “The doctors are probably right, but I can see why you’d be worried. That’s one hell of a good grandma you have there.”

  She nodded, moving her hand away. “Thanks. I’ve been holding in how scared I am, but saying it is just a relief. I didn’t want to scare Christian with my worrying—he’s been through enough as it is.”

  I nodded, and she continued, “You really didn’t have to come here.”

  “I wanted to. Where are you going?” I asked. “Cafeteria? I’m starving too.”

  Inside the elevator, the chrome metal doors gave us a distended view of our reflections when they closed.

  “Seriously though, why aren’t you at work?” Alisha’s horribly elongated head asked me. “Don’t you have to turn in the offer tonight?”

  “Yep,” I confirmed.

  “You must’ve finished the analysis last night then,” she concluded.

  I shook my head. “This seemed more important.”

  The elevator doors opened. Alisha made to walk out, but I grabbed her hand, pulling her to me so that we were face to face.

  “This is more important,” I said.

  She broke eye contact, looking away.

  “Seth,” she said, in a small voice.

  “Don’t Alisha. I couldn’t leave you alone at a time like this. Can’t you see that?”

  The elevator doors had closed again, though I hardly noticed. Alisha’s tired gaze was still averted, as if she wanted to believe me but couldn’t afford to.

  “Christian and Nana are your whole world. You’ve been supporting them for years,” I continued, “Now it’s time for someone to support you.”

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized that they could be taken two ways. For this situation, her and now, and in general.

  I squeezed Alisha’s hands again. Fuck what the words really meant, all I knew was that right now being here with Alisha’s hand in mine, it was right.

  The elevator dinged. Alisha and I exchanged a look and laughed.

  No one came on, and the elevator closed its doors again. After pressing the first-floor button, I turned to Alisha.

  “So whaddya say to a chocolate dip donut?”

  A surprised blush tinged Alisha’s cheeks.

  “You’ve been spying on me.”

  “Okay, so maybe I’ve been keeping an eye out for you at the office. I always did think you were hot,” I admitted, “Although there was a time when I was smart enough to resist it.”

  Alisha chuckled, a light still in her eyes. “The good old days.”

  Just then, the elevator doors opened. I took her arm, and we set out into the cafeteria.
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br />   Inside, the large place was reminiscent of a mall food court—an empty one at that. Although that was hardly surprising, considering it was only six. As we made our way into the self-service area, Alisha refused all offers but the chocolate donut. After some determined coaxing, I got her to agree to an entire box of them.

  “You’ll be the death of me, I swear,” she murmured as I placed chocolatey donut after donut into the cardboard box.

  “These aren’t all for us; come now,” I scoffed, winking at her.

  “We’ll cut one in half for Nana and Christian to share.”

  Eyes gleaming, Alisha gave me a playful whack. “You’re terrible.”

  “You like it,” I replied, with a cocky smile.

  After I’d paid for the box of donuts, we found a place near the back to eat. When Alisha sat down, it was more like a graceful sort of collapsing, and I took her hand to steady her.

  “Careful now.”

  I raised the first donut, jelly-filled, and lifted it to her grim smile.

  “Now eat up, or I’m going to have to carry you back there myself.”

  Alisha bit down and chewed slowly, closing her eyes with gratification.

  “Mmm, right now, that wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

  As my hands closed around her waist, she peeked one eye open.

  “Kidding.”

  I released my grip, feeling a twinge of guilt at the arousal in her sleepy eyes.

  “Sorry,” I said, “Not the time.”

  Alisha looked too tired to argue, and only took a final bite of the donut, then said, “Another please.”

  This time, it was a Boston cream that I lifted to her lips. Bite after bite, she devoured it, getting quite a bit of cream on herself in the process.

  The next blueberry fritter, Alisha ate herself. By now, she was totally engrossed in eating. I watched her, strangely enrapt, thinking of her and yet not.

  Right now, as I sat here watching Alisha eat, the chances of me succeeding on the acquisition were dwindling to zero. There was still a lot of paperwork to be done, and whatever Miranda and Paul decided on, I’d have to give the okay to, right or wrong. I stood to either make a great deal of money if we got it, which was looking less and less likely with each passing hour.