“Thank you,” she says. “And I’ll give you one little compliment because I’m being nice and I’m tired.”
“What’s that?”
“You didn’t look half bad yourself in your blue suit.”
“Oh, so you do think I’m hot.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I said you didn’t look half bad. It’s not like I called you Brad Pitt.”
“I think Brad Pitt would like to be called Jack Heathcliff.”
She bursts out laughing. “You’ve got an ego the size of Neptune.”
“I always thought it was the size of Mars, but hey, you know better than me.”
“I’m going to go now, Jack.”
“Okay. Sweet dreams, Katherine.”
“You too, Jack.”
She hangs up, and I just lie there feeling warm and hard. I put the phone down and smile to myself. “So she’s single.” I whisper, thinking about all the sensual things I want to do to her and how I wish she were with me in bed at that very moment. I think about how I’d slide her dress off, how I’d run my fingers up her thigh, kiss the side of her neck, play with her hair, have her bouncing up and down on my hard cock.
“Fuck it,” I groan, closing my eyes. I just need to go to sleep.
I cannot think about Katherine Jenkins this way. She and I will never be more than employee and boss, and that’s how it has to stay. My hand reaches down the front of my boxers and as I grab my cock, I picture Katherine’s face in my mind.
“Take me big boy.” She whispers and I groan loudly as my hand pumps back and forth furiously.
Chapter Thirteen
Katherine
I’ve never been an athlete, so I’ve never known what it was like to come first in a race or have people cheering for me at a finish line. But as I walk into the office on Monday morning, I feel like I’ve just come first place in the New York Marathon or the hundred-meter sprint at the Olympics.
“She’s here! Our savior is here!” Marina explains dramatically as she, Cora and Xander rush toward me, smiles of gratitude on their faces as they approach me in glee. Xander is holding a bouquet of red fragrant roses, and Cora is holding a big box of chocolates with a purple velvet bow.
“Are these for me?” I feel choked up at the sight of the gifts.
“What can I say, darling?” Cora grabs my hands like I’m her long-lost granddaughter and beams at me as she brings me in for a strong hug. I let her envelop me and hold me close. The feeling is nice. Makes me feel cocooned for a few moments. She grabs my arms and smiles warmly at me. “You saved us. You are a martyr. You died on the sword for us.”
“I would go that far,” I say, shaking my head. I am grateful they are appreciative but it’s not like I went to war for them. “Thank you for the roses and the chocolates and for being so sweet, but obviously I’m still alive, so I didn’t die. I’m not a martyr. And while I took one for the team, I know any one of you guys would’ve done it if it had been for me.” I say the words graciously, even though we all know that’s not true, because none of them had said anything to Jack when he threatened to fire me. “Anyway, I’m just still unsure as to what happened.” I look at him. “How did those files end up playing for the world to see?”
“It was my fault,” Cora says, looking ashamed and all of her sixty or seventy years. “I thought I had deleted the files, but I accidentally attached them to the email that was sent to the IT department to put up for the PowerPoint presentation. I think I must’ve just been so tired and well…” She shakes her head. “I’m a little bit old, and it gets confusing when you’re sending multiple emails and whatnot.”
I stare at her for a couple of seconds and nod slowly. “I get it. I mean, we all partook in writing the fake profiles, so really we all should have made sure that it was deleted instead of leaving it to you.”
“Oh, Katherine, you know who you remind me of?” Marina says, her eyes bright as she gazes at me like I’m some sort of movie star. “Katharine Hepburn. Dignified, gracious, beautiful. She was an actress back in the day. She starred in this movie with Humphrey Bogart, I think it was called The African Queen and some other movies. Let me check IMDb. But she was one of my favorite actresses. I loved all her movies.”
“She’s one of your favorite actresses and you only remember the name of one of her movies?” Xander asks.
“Well, I have many favorite movies,” she says. “I can’t remember the names of all of them.”
“But then they wouldn’t be your favorite, would they?” Xander wrinkles his nose. “Also, how can you have multiple favorite movies? That’s kind of like when people say they have multiple best friends. It doesn’t make sense. Best means best—like the only one.”
“It’s fine, don’t get excited Xander,” Cora says, looking at him and then Marina. “Keep your voices down. We don’t want to attract everyone in the building to see what’s going on here.”
“Exactly,” I say, having a seat. “So, how was everyone’s weekend?”I ask because I don’t need to hear Xander and Marina arguing about nonsensical stuff as they do every day. Not when I just want to relax and get to work.
