Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
“You’re Jack Carson, a media mogul worth tens of millions of dollars.” I shake my head in shock before I continue quoting something I heard a radio host announce this morning, “Seattle’s newest Hotshot Boss.”
I didn’t put two and two together until now. When all the pieces of the puzzle are slotted together, the disclosure of his identity makes sense, but when he introduces himself as Jack and instigates a fun, carefree day, I was missing more than a handful of pieces to his complex jigsaw.
“Why are you here? What interest do you have in this little old magazine?”
A gleam in his eyes answers my questions on his behalf.
He isn’t here for the magazine.
He is here for me.
Although flattered, I’m still shocked. “What were your intentions before we met?” The Jack Carson I’ve read about in the media doesn’t buy sinking ships to keep them afloat. He prefers admiring them from the ocean floor. The reason his companies do so well is because he wipes out the competition, then he offers the readers and viewers left floundering something better, newer, and fresher. “Jess was right. You were planning to close us down.”
“Not necessarily—”
I press my finger to his lip, stopping his lies before he can spill them. I’m meant to be mad or at the very least upset at my potential unemployment, but within a second of my skin touching Jack’s, I’ve forgotten the reason I’m meant to be mad.
With every second that ticks by, our connection grows, deepens, and becomes so overwhelming I not only forget that he’s my boss, but I also overlook all the horrible reasons we most likely can’t be together.
“Why?” I murmur more to myself than Jack.
Why me?
Why him?
Why us?
And last but not at all least, why does this have to be so fucking hard?
Before Jack can answer the stream of questions pumping out of me, we’re interrupted. “Are we ready for candidate number two?” Elaine asks with a soft note of amusement in her tone.
I understand her amusement. Jack and I are staring at each other, and the connection our locked gazes hold is intensively searing, even a nun couldn’t miss it.
“Yes,” Jack replies after briefly dragging the tip of his pinky across the inflamed skin on my wrist. It is the briefest touch, but it is detrimental to my sanity.
Mercifully, Mr. Kell’s arrival in Jack’s office takes care of any leftover buzz from his touch. He may not be skimming funds from the magazine, but his crimes are far worse.
I’ve never taken sexual harassment lightly, and it will become more perverse if it has any chance of negatively impacting the man sitting beside me.
CHAPTER 12
OCTAVIA
“You like him.” I choke on the ghastly thick coffee supplied in the office break room before spinning around to face Jess, my interrogator. “You said it was a one-night stand, but that isn’t what I’m seeing.” She wiggles her finger in front of my face, acting oblivious to my expression from the scalding hot coffee scorching my throat on the way to my stomach. “It’s a good look for you. You should wear it more often.”
“I don’t like him like him. I’m just in awe at the way he reads people. He read through Thomas’s bullshit within thirty seconds of meeting him. It took you even longer than that.” I bump her with my hip, smiling when my little knock sends her crashing into the kitchen cabinets. “I also appreciate that he’s not going to shut us down. You know how badly I need this job.”
“Oh... this is your I’m-so-grateful-to-be-employed face. My bad... I thought it was your please-fuck-me-until-my-legs-give-out face.”
I put more oomph into my hip bump this time around. “Shut up. I don’t have neither the I’m-so-grateful-to-be-employed nor please-fuck-me-until-my-legs-give-out face. Eat-me-until-your-hunger-is-sexually-sated, on the other hand, I’m reasonably sure I have one of them.”
Jess giggles like a schoolgirl. It’s a nice thing to hear after what she was subjected to in Jack’s office. He didn’t go hard on her, but with our ratio leaning more toward letting people go than keeping them on, even the most confident person would have been nervous.
Once Jess has rinsed her coffee cup in the sink and placed it on the drying rack, she shifts on her feet to face Jack. “I don’t know how you can’t feel it. There’s a huge sturdy wall between us and multiple cubicles, yet I can still feel the heat radiating between you two. It’s explosive.”
I know what she’s talking about. The bristling of energy between us has been intense for the past several hours, but you’d swear I’m the only one feeling it. The man I was wrestling with in the elevator this morning is not the man I’ve been sitting next to for the past three hours. It could be that Jack has his work hat on, but it feels more than that.