Page 13 of Not Safe for Work
“I thought they did it pretty easily before now.”
“They were all fools. I see you. I want to see you. Often.”
Silence fell after his words, in part because she’d just dissolved into a puddle. But there was another thing that kept her quiet. The thing they were going to have to talk about, now. Or at least, the thing they were going to have to talk about after a minute of just basking in the soft, reverent touch of his fingertips.
One more minute, and then, “There might be a slight problem with that.”
“You don’t want to see me? You don’t imagine this going beyond crazy sex?”
“To be honest I feel like it already is going beyond crazy sex. Or maybe crazy sex is turning it into something else. I don’t know. It’s too early to tell. But the thing is . . . you know . . . the Hartford thing.”
“Hartford won’t be an issue. He doesn’t even have to know yet, if you’d prefer it.”
Now it was shock that made her pause.
He had no idea about Hartford and the recording.
“Oh god, you don’t know. He hasn’t said anything to you.”
“Said anything to me about what?”
She winced, and looked away from him. It was easier, when she was looking away from him. “Okay, maybe you should brace yourself here.”
“I’m already bracing myself. Mostly for whatever rude thing he’s done now.”
“It was more the rude thing that we did, to be honest.”
“Ah, so someone told him we had sex.”
“No one told him.”
“Then how on earth did—”
He stopped in the middle of his own sentence, and she glanced back at him just in time to see his gaze going hazy and far away. Realization was dawning all over his face, and it finished with him looking both mad and rueful. “He had video surveillance installed in my office,” he said, finally.
“To be fair, he has video surveillance everywhere. I don’t think he specifically didn’t trust you.”
“No, I don’t believe he wouldn’t trust me. I do, however, believe that he is supremely irritating.”
“Well, that goes without saying.”
“How awful was he?”
“He wasn’t great. I had to sit through a play-by-play,” she said, and winced again.
It was a good one this time, though. A lighter one, that ended with him groaning and commiserating.
“Oh man, I’m sorry, honey.”
“Then he implied I corrupted you.”
“That you corrupted me?”
“Yeah, I thought that was strange at the time.”
She paused there, studying him. He didn’t seem too bothered by the whole thing. If anything, he seemed more concerned about her. And he definitely didn’t agree that she was at fault.
So it seemed safe to get into the thing she’d been dying to share.
