“Let me guess. Slip ’N Slide?” His lens-magnified eyes go from the puddle on the floor to Sunny’s top. “Oooooh, wet T-shirt contest? Yes! I’m in. Hose me down, boss man, and may the best contestant win.”
“How about you help us out here by grabbing the mop?” I grit out before the big guy does something dangerous, like upend an entire plastic water barrel over his own head.
“Fine.” He sighs heavily. “Where’s the mop?”
“Door behind you.”
He mutters something that sounds an awful lot like “Work Dad’s no fun” and marches over to the supply closet.
Meanwhile, my unbearably perky colleague has disappeared into our office, only to reappear seconds later, wet shirt, Mary Poppins bag, empty plastic bin, and all. With a mumbled goodbye, she heads out into the night.
I want to stop her, make her take that damp thing off, and put the sweater on, instead of holding it in front of her like that. I want her warm and safe and not out in the cool night air in that farce of a top.
It is with great difficulty that I hold my tongue.
The second the door slams behind her, I can breathe again.
After mopping up the water and seeing Klaus out, I take a quick spin around the office, which is now entirely empty. Good. I’m alone. I can finally get some work done without the distraction of that woman sitting across from me, not to mention the staff’s eight million little interruptions. Data, unlike humans, has a soothing regularity one can depend on. And, contrary to buxom, redheaded submissives with a very obvious bratty streak, they do precisely what I tell them.
Did I really demand that she remove that shirt just now? Out loud?
What the hell was that? I’ve never—not once in my entire life—crossed that line. And I do not plan to start now. Whatever Dorothy’s put in the Kool-Aid here at Sugar, I will have no part of it whatsoever.
After fifteen minutes of staring at the screen, I give up. I’ll work from home, where there’s no lingering smell of her tempting brew of flowers and baked goods and that scent from the club the other night. If I close my eyes, I’ll see her pale neck, feel the warmth of her skin, her goose bumps every time I hit a good spot. The swell of her deep, luxuriant breaths and those whimsical freckles, leading down like a fairy-tale woodland path straight to nipples that I can now—
“Dammit!”
I’m up, my hands fisted, my stomach rock-hard, along with parts farther south. I’ve never once let myself even think of sex at work, much less permitted my body to get involved.
I’m nipping this in the bud. Now. Tonight. Well, tomorrow.
No, actually. Now.
This requires rules. Clear-cut ones.
The second I open a fresh document and start typing, the tension flows out of me. Rules, like data, fix everything. Black and white. Yes and no. Ones and zeros. Those are the things that make sense to me, along with hammering nails into good, solid wood.
Once I’m done, I print the page out and set it on her desk, relieved at the sense of closure it gives me.
I then grab my computer, lock our shared office, double-check that the exterior doors are fully secure, and take off for home.
It’s a moonless night. In Richmond’s Fan District, where I live, the only light comes from sparsely scattered streetlamps and the warm glow from the front windows of the row houses on both sides of the tree-lined streets.
I didn’t think to turn my exterior light on this morning, which is why I feel rather than see the squish of something disgustingunder my shoe. Smack in the middle of my welcome mat. Or where the welcome mat would be if I hadn’t trashed it after stepping on last night’s batch of animal crap.
I let my head thunk against the thick wood of my front door. “Are you messing with me?”
Someone snickers next door. “Cat shit on your doorstep again?” Dorothy’s voice wafts over, along with the scent of whatever new strain of weed she’s been growing in the greenhouse I helped her wife build out back last year. Ostensibly for orchids, though by this point I’m pretty sure the entire neighborhood knows better.
“Did you see it?”
“It? You mean the poor little stray that keeps leaving you presents? Pretty sureitis a she.”
“Of course it is,” I whisper. “Next time, could you catch it, please? So I can take it to the SPCA?”
She snorts. “Not on your life. That cat’s courting you.”
“With turds?”
