Page 45 of Saved By the CEO

I look up at him.

He seems different here. Not softer, exactly. Mr. Bennett probably doesn’t do soft. But the bedside lamp throws warm light across his face, and without the office around him, he looks less untouchable.

More human.

My gaze drifts past him, toward the nightstand. There’s a book there, facedown and half-read, with a pair of black reading glasses resting on top of it. Next to that sits a framed photograph of a building I don’t recognize. Red brick. Big windows. A small crowd gathered outside with balloons tied to the railing.

I nod toward it. “Is that one of yours?”

He follows my gaze. “One of our first housing projects. Eighteen families moved in that day.”

Oh.

I look at the photograph again. Really look this time. At the people on the steps. A little girl in a yellow coat holding someone’s hand. An older woman with both palms pressed to her mouth, like she’s trying not to cry. A man crouched beside a toddler, smiling so widely you can’t help but mirror it.

On the lower edge of the frame, a small plaque catches the light. I can’t read all of it from where I’m lying, but I can make out the project name and a date. Underneath, in smaller letters, someone has engraved: funded in part by the Langford Tower development.

Langford Tower.

Everyone knows that name. Forty-six floors of glass, private terraces, and impossible prices. The kind of building that gets featured in glossy magazines next to words like “visionary” and “exclusive.”

My eyes move back to the photograph.

“Is that why you do the big ugly ones?”

“They’re not all ugly.”

“You know what I mean.”

He looks at the photograph for a moment. “The smaller projects don’t fund themselves.”

That’s all he says.

But I can see it now. The line between the glass towers and the red brick building. Between the impossible budgets, the luxury contracts, the meetings where one wrong number probably makes three people cry in a bathroom, and those eighteen families standing on the steps with balloons tied to the railing.

Maybe that’s why he is the way he is. Or part of it, at least.

The thought stirs something in me, and I realize the man sitting beside me isn’t Mr. Bennett anymore. Not really.

Mr. Bennett is the man I built in my head over three years of passive-aggressive emails, impossible deadlines, and closed office doors. A man who only cares about money and shareholder value. Someone I can be annoyed with. Someone I can resent. Someone I can keep at a safe distance.

But this is Andrew.

Andrew, with a photograph of eighteen families by his bed. Andrew, who came when I needed him. Andrew, whose hand is resting carefully on my leg.

Oh no.

Not good.

I clear my throat and lean back against the pillows.

“So,” I say, aiming for casual and missing by a mile. “Want to get me off now?”

Andrew huffs a quiet laugh. “That’s probably a good idea.”

Then he starts moving the hand resting on my shin, tracing slowly along the inside of my leg. Up, up, up. My skin prickles beneath his touch.

When he reaches me, he starts stroking with careful, practiced pressure. I close my eyes as his other hand slips beneath my T-shirt and finds my breast. A pleased sigh escapes me.