I glance over my shoulder and catch Reese staring straight at my behind.
“Eyes up here, Reese,” I warn. “Sit in my office. I’ll be there in a second.”
“Sure thing, Ms. Palmer,” he says, stretching out my last name like it’s an invitation.
I roll my eyes, but there’s no real heat behind it. This is Reese. Charming, confident, and just bold enough to test boundaries without crashing straight through them.
Reese and I went to North Kensington University together. Even though I was a few years ahead of him, we ran into each other frequently while we were both busy grinding our way through a program notorious for producing some of the sharpestminds in tech security. If you were lucky enough to get into that program, once you graduated, you could pretty much write your own ticket. Most of us did.
I went straight into corporate America. Reese didn’t have to. His family owns a sprawling empire that touches everything from media to cybersecurity, so his degree was more formality than necessity. A box checked before stepping into a legacy already waiting for him. And I never faulted him for that. If my last name came with an empire, I wouldn’t pretend otherwise either.
There aren’t enough Black nepo babies in this world, if you ask me.
What earned my respect last year was when he showed up in my office and asked for experience that wasn’t handed to him. He wanted to prove—to himself more than anyone—that he could stand on his own.
I said yes. Who wouldn’t?
Since then, he’s tried flirting a handful of times. Nothing aggressive. Just enough to let me know he noticed me. And every time, I’ve shut it down just as calmly, making it clear where the line lives and how firmly it stays in place.
Still, moments like this amuse me.
“Good boy,” I say, so only Timantha can hear.
She snorts, barely holding in her laughter as Reese disappears down the hall, obedient as ordered.
The man is pure chocolate and magically delicious, but I do not sit on the dick of men where I eat. Or however the saying goes.
“Girl, I know you’re mad there’s a company policy against climbing that tree,” Timantha says under her breath. “Because that man looks like he would gladly waste your time, ruin your good name, and insist you thank him for it.”
I glance toward the doorway even though Reese is already gone. “And I’d gladly let him. Then drop to my ashy knees and thank him properly.”
We both laugh some more.
“And he wears glasses?” she adds, fanning herself.
“I’d fog the fuck out of those lenses. You hear me?”
She gasps in mock outrage. “Maxine Palmer, you are so nasty.”
“Timantha Spellman, why do you act brand-new?”
She gets an email and uses her phone to check since I’m still messing around with her computer.
“Aww!” She squeals.
“What?”
“Well, they just put out the list of North America’s most eligible taste-makers, millionaires and billionaires, and Will Huntley was listed as the one that got away.”
I roll my eyes. “You two are maddeningly cute,” I say, because they are.
Timantha is the kind of woman who once had a very specific list of qualities she wanted in a man. Tall, extremely dark, devastatingly handsome. Instead, she married a tall, rich, devastatingly handsome…white man. A man who technically kidnapped her and somehow managed to turn it into the most romantic story any of us have ever heard.
And did I mention he is rich?
Timantha gasps dramatically. “And girl! There are—count them—not one, not two, butthreeBlack men on the list this year!”
I shoot her a look. Pure disbelief. Then I snatch the phone from her hand. “Let me see,” I say, because there is absolutely no way that’s true.
