Mid Life Love (Mid Life Love #1)(18)

“Fine.” He snatched the board back. “Well, at least go get the boards back from yesterday. I’ll come get them from you after the emergency meeting.” He definitely stressed the word ‘meeting’ to irk me since I wasn’t invited.

As soon as he left my office, I headed for the elevators. I told myself that after I picked up the artwork, I would take a second lunch break since the other directors were more important than I was.

Five more years and I can quit....Only five more years...

I boarded an empty elevator and hit thirty, but it went down to the basement. Then it went to level two. Then it went to level four.

I was about to step off and try another elevator, but Jonathan Statham stepped on.

Every nerve in my body ran wild. My heart started fluttering against my chest—I could literally hear it, and tingles started crawling up and down my spine.

He turned around and smiled at me, and like a teenage girl with a high school crush, I turned away from him. I didn’t want him to know that he was affecting me.

I kept my eyes focused on the golden buttons that lit up as we passed every floor: Ten...Eleven...Twelve...

The elevator came to a sudden halt.

I looked over and realized he’d hit the stop button.

“Your reason for not going out with me doesn’t make any sense.” He turned around to face me. “Tell me the truth.”

“Please do yourself a favor and move on with your life, Mr. Statham. I’m sure you have far more important things to do than harass a mid-level employee. I told you that I’m not attracted to you.”

“And I think you’re lying.” He stepped closer. “You are attracted to me.”

I’m well aware...

“Are you normally this cocky? Surely you can accept the fact that I’m just not attracted to boys.”

“Boys?” His eyes hardened.

“Yes...” My breath hitched. “That would make me a pedophile.”

“Going out with me would make you a pedophile?”

“Going out with you would make my life a little more complicated than I need it to be. You clearly can’t handle rejection, probably lack emotional maturity, and are definitely more compatible with some vapid twenty year old who still doesn’t know the difference between emotions and—”

He pushed me against the wall and kissed me—forcing my lips apart, trying to control my tongue with his.

I tried to push him away, tried to shut my lips back together and act like this wasn’t turning me on, but once I felt his arms slipping around my waist, I slowly gave in and kissed him back.

I pressed myself back against him, stifling a moan as he bit my bottom lip, as he pinned me against the wall with his hips.

“Wait...Stop...” I pulled away from him. “I should get back to work.”

“Tell me the truth.” He stepped back. “Tell me that you do want to go out with me.”

“Maybe I do, but...”

“Pick the place.”

“I’m not sure if that would be very appropri—”

He pulled me back into his arms and kissed me harder than before, leaving me utterly breathless. “Pick. The. Place.”

“I...” I sucked in a breath. “I can’t go on Friday...What about Saturday?”

“Why can’t you go out on Friday?” He tightened his arms around me.

“It’s my birthday...My friends have a table reserved for me at Havana.”

“Interesting. Can I come?”

What? Why?

“If you want to...Sure...”

“Okay.” He released me and hit the start button. “I’ll see you Friday. We can discuss our date for Saturday then.” He kept his eyes on me as he moved to the other side of the elevator.

I leaned against the wall and inhaled several times to bring my breathing back to normal. “I know you don’t work in HR or anything, but I was the only director who wasn’t invited to the mock-up meeting this afternoon. You said no one was losing their job but...Am I being let go? Are you trying to soften the blow by being nice to me during my last week here?”

“What? Why would you even think—Of course not.” He laughed. “How else was I supposed to get you alone?”

The doors opened on twenty four and he stepped off.

“Oh, and Miss Gracen?” He turned around and held the doors open. “Before I forget...When you were thirty and expanding your marketing career, I was nineteen, but I wasn’t picking out my major. I was dropping out and starting my own software company, the very company you hate working for today.” He moved his hands from the doors and they closed on his seductive smile.

I went back down to my office and changed my panties in the bathroom for the second time this week. I knew my stash of emergency panties would come in handy at some point, but I was thinking more along the lines of wasting coffee on my pants, not getting aroused as soon as I looked at Jonathan Statham.

This is not good...This is not good...

Chapter 4

Jonathan

I walked into human resources and pulled Claire’s file. Her resume was impeccable. She had a Business degree from the University of Pittsburgh, a master’s in marketing from Carnegie Mellon, and she’d worked on several high profile ad campaigns—Ralph Lauren, Versace, Microsoft, Google. Before coming to work for me, she’d spent four years directing projects at Cole and Hillman Associates in Pittsburgh, the largest advertising firm on the East Coast.