Page 70 of The Devil In Denim
“It’s just that I’ve got all the downside here. If this goes wrong.”
“How?”
“You’re my boss. If this gets out, I’ll be the one who’s sleeping with her new boss, desperate to hang on to her job. You’ll still be the rich guy who scores the hot chicks. I’ll be the loser. And if we break up then … I’ll be the loser who was dumb enough to sleep with her boss to try and hold on to her job and lost them both.”
“I’m not going to fire you if we stop sleeping together.”
“No. Maybe not. But it’s not going to be pretty. I don’t take this … lightly.” She made a frustrated gesture between them. “It feels…”
“Important?”
“Maybe.”
“Maggie, you’re not the only one with downside here. If I screw this up, then I’ll lose you.”
“You’re only worried about losing your secret weapon.”
“No. No. I’m not.” He leaned forward. “The way I see it, we have two choices here. We do or we don’t. At least tonight. So tell me. What do you want? If you want me to walk you up to your door, kiss you good night, and then go, then that’s fine. Well, not fine exactly, I’ll probably spend the night in a cold shower, but it’s okay if that’s what you want. Or else I can walk you up to your door, you can let me in, and then we can see what happens.”
Maggie caught her breath at the thought of it. Alex in her apartment again. Alex in her bed. Naked. Waiting for her.
“Personally, I vote for option two. Let’s see what happens. So what say you, Jameson? Want to take me upstairs and show me your etchings?”
“I don’t have any etchings.”
His smile was slow, his eyes not leaving her face. “I’m sure you have something that could hold my attention.”
“I have fifty-year-old Scotch.” It had been a graduation present from one of Tom’s friends. She’d have to write him another thank-you note.
“That’s a start.”
“You want something else?”
“You know what I want. You read the texts. So tell you what. Why don’t you take me upstairs, pour me a glass of Scotch, and you can read some of those again … see if anything catches your interest?”
Her cheeks went hot as she remembered exactly what he’d written in those damned texts. Thought about him actually doing some of them to her. Knew that as much she wanted to be the smart girl in this situation and keep him at arm’s length, she just wasn’t going to be. Because sometimes there was no way to avoid doing the dumb thing.
“If you come upstairs, you know I reserve the right to send you home with nothing more than a drink, right?”
“Maggie, any guy who doesn’t know that is a grade one asshole. I know you don’t always like me that much but I’d like to think I’m not a douche. If Scotch is all I get, then so be it.” He smiled at her. “Though I hope you won’t hold it against me if I hope that it’s not.”
“I still don’t understand this,” she said, waving her hand as though she could describe the space between them and the weird pull of it with the gesture.
“Sometimes there’s nothing to understand. Some things just are. No point fighting them.”
“That doesn’t sound like an Alex Winters philosophy.”
He tilted his head. “You haven’t known me long enough to know everything about me. Maybe you can grill me over the Scotch.” He nodded his head toward the building. “Are you going to ask me up so I can turn off the engine before I run out of gas?”
She hadn’t even noticed he’d left the car running so that they still had heat. How long exactly had they been sitting here, having this strange conversation? She didn’t know. She never really knew when it came to Alex. Talking to him was easy somehow.
Maybe he really was the devil. Luring her in, letting her damn herself. Well, if he was, then so be it. Damnation it was. And at least she had the satisfaction of some fun before she had to deal with the pitchforks and recriminations. She slid free of her seat belt and put her hand on the door handle. “So,” she said, trying for her best sultry voice. “Do you want to come up?”
“Hell, yes,” Alex said.
He didn’t kiss her in the elevator. He stood a gentlemanly foot or so away and watched her. Watched her very intently with very green eyes. It made her toes curl, as though he was slowly peeling off her clothes with his gaze and doing all the things that she’d been thinking about. Somehow it was even hotter—and more unnerving—than if he had actually kissed her.
He didn’t kiss her when they got inside her apartment either. No, he merely shrugged out of his coat, and his jacket, and rolled his cuffs back a few times before he wandered into her living room and sank onto her couch. Her very long, very soft leather couch. Plenty of room for her to sit next to him.
