Except I don’t get to have more.
Good guys don’t kiss their business partners.
Smart guys definitely don’t. I don’t need an HR presentation to tell me what the right thing to do is here.
In the morning, I’ll figure this out. I’ll figure out how to erase the last hour, when I put my hands on Hazel and I kissed her and she kissed me back. I’ll figure out how to forget her hum of surprise and then the rougher, greedier sound she made as she opened for me. But tonight, it’s me and the frigid ocean water, which slowly freezes my dick back into the state I need it in.
CHAPTER THREE
THIRTY-SIX HOURS AND two cold showers do not erase my memory of how Hazel’s mouth felt beneath—and over—mine. The plush, slick warmth, the way she opened up for me and then the way she gave as good as she got, her mouth devouring mine as if she couldn’t get enough of me. Hazel wants me. She wants all of me. So, of course, my brain freeze-frames, reliving each second of our kiss over and over.
And over.
I ran five miles this morning, swam and took an icy shower, but here I am: going to work with a hard-on for Hazel. I park my BMW in the first spot I find. Parking is tight for our building and I have a reserved spot by the door—the perks of being the boss—but Hazel’s Volvo is already parked in her spot next to mine. She’s crooked, I tell myself, so parking next to her would put my paint job at greater risk than normal. I’m safer with the length of the lot between us.
There must be something more awkward than drunk-kissing your business partner, but right now I’m drawing a blank.
I need a plan. There has to be a way to get past making out with the wrong person. The important thing is to figure out the first step. Then I’ll figure out the second step. And then the third. Numbers are a beautiful thing. One precedes two, two precedes three and there’s no confusion about how things go. You can’t screw up math.
Okay. Step one. I drum my fingers on the steering wheel. Do I acknowledge the kiss, or do I wait for Hazel to say something? She didn’t call or text after I hightailed it out of my own house, so I’m voting for ignore as a strategy. I won’t say anything.
Step two? No alone time. We need group hangouts only. Lots and lots of people around us. Unless Hazel has a well-hidden interest in group sex, this should safely move us past Saturday’s kiss.
Step three.
Act normal.
That’s all I have to do.
I run through the steps as I get out of my car. Fake it until you make it, right? I stride into the building as if I have nothing more on my mind than counting my billions.
Robert, our receptionist, greets me cheerfully. His weekend has clearly gone much better than mine. His face has that relaxed glow that no amount of sunshine or spa time can bestow. Nope. Robert’s clearly gotten laid and is feeling good about it. I gamble that he’s too distracted by his weekend memories to notice I’m ever so slightly off my game today.
“Is Hazel in?”
I think I sound suitably nonchalant, but Robert gives me a long look before deciding that my question is actually serious.
“She has a breakfast meeting,” he says. “The two of you thumb-wrestled in the kitchen to decide who had to sit through it.”
I’m sure he assumes I’m crazy or had a stroke in the parking lot. I don’t forget details like this.
“Great.” I think I’m smiling too widely. “I’ll catch up with her later.”
It turns out, however, that Hazel’s badly parked Volvo is the most I see of her because she Ubered to her breakfast meeting and then hopscotched from there to four more. We try to not both be out of the office on the same day, and if I’d been less rattled after our kiss, I might have remembered that Hazel had called dibs on Monday.
Tuesday is my day to take off-site meetings, but I have to swing by the office to grab some files that no one can email to me for inexplicable reasons. Hazel is bent over her desk, typing away furiously on her laptop. Based on the staccato beat of her fingers on the keys, she’s either pissed off at someone or has had what she refers to as “an evil-genius breakthrough.”
She’s dressed formally in a dark jacket, suit pants and a soft, silky blouse with a loopy bow that rests on top of the boobs I am absolutely not looking at. There’s a gold necklace nestled in the hollow of her throat. I squint, but I can’t quite make out what it says. All of Hazel’s necklaces have messages, like mini billboards for her upcoming week. An elephant for good luck. A lightning bolt when she wants to “strike ’em dead.” A cactus for exploring new frontiers and ideas. At least this one isn’t an ax or a gun or some other murder weapon. Maybe she doesn’t want to kill me dead.
She looks up as I saunter past her office because I’m going to pretend everything is normal up until she tells me that it’s not. I can’t tell if she’s staring off into space or if she’s ignoring me. I’ll just have to fix this. Somehow.
This is the first time I’ve seen her since our kiss. Given we have an office full
