No Kissing Allowed (No Kissing Allowed #1)(11)

Or if I hadn’t slept with him.

“Glad you picked up on the redundancy of the sweat idea. You’re right, it has been done.” He continued through my notes, each second growing more painful. I wondered what his expressions meant, why he nodded at times or his eyebrows threaded together at others. What did he see in my work? In me? I needed another drink to survive this. I needed fifty more drinks.

Finally, he returned my notebook to me and glanced up. “What I’m not seeing here are your ideas.”

I hesitated. “That’s because my ideas aren’t there. I keep them here.” I tapped my phone. “I want to be able to find them easily, make changes to them while I’m walking to work or in a cab or on the subway. It’s just easier.”

He waved to the waitress, who brought over his drink. “Anything else for you, Aidan?”

I did a double take at her using his first name. Clearly, he was a regular.

“No, thanks. Anything for you, Cameron?” I eyed my almost-empty drink and he grinned. “She’ll have another.”

“It’s okay. Really. I can—”

“She’ll have another,” he repeated to the waitress, who shrugged at me and went on back to the bar.

As soon as she was gone, Aidan leaned in close, his hair falling a bit over his eyes in that impossibly sexy way, and I expected him to launch into a tirade, a lesson, something that would make me feel even worse, when he said, “About today…”

“Yes?” I prepared myself for his epic apology for the no-dating comment. A declaration that he wished he could date me, wished I would have given him my number. That he wouldn’t have been able to wait twenty-four hours to call. The whole You’ve Got Mail scene played out right here. It would be sweet, endearing, would make me wish we could date, so I could find out which version of him was the real Aidan.

But instead he said, “I’m sorry if I seemed a little rough in the meeting. It’s a sink-or-swim business, and they were about to rip you apart. That’s how it’s done. Which was why it had to come from me. I’ve made every person in that room feel like an amateur at some point.”

I blinked. “Wait, what?”

“The morning meeting? Did you think I was going to say something else?”

“No, I just…no.”

He tilted his head, waiting, his lips twitching in their effort to keep from forming a half grin. “I’m listening.”

“I said it was nothing.”

“Yet, still here waiting.”

“Fine. I thought you might apologize for the no-dating thing.”

His expression turned playful, and he pushed out of his chair. “Nothing to apologize for there. I don’t date.”

It didn’t matter if he dated. It was that he assumed I wanted a date. I opened my mouth to say as much, when Lauren rushed up to our table, preventing me from going off on him properly. She was rambling about a fashion emergency at work, but I wasn’t listening. I was trying to rein in my emotions, or else I’d be searching for a job tomorrow. How could he have been so charming and funny on Saturday night and now be such an ass? And why did I get the feeling the jerk-Aidan wasn’t the real him?

“Here, take my seat,” he said to Lauren. “I was just leaving.”

I wanted to ask him to stay, to see if UT Guy would reappear, see if that connection I’d felt with him would return, but I couldn’t. Regardless of the casual persona he took on at the bar, he was my boss.

Our eyes met one last time, and in his I saw a change, if only slight, but it was there. A battle, a feeling, something. But then his gaze dropped, the connection lost, and he disappeared out the door without a backward glance.





Chapter Seven


“Okay. Explain,” Lauren said, her face engulfed in one of those spill it, girl smiles. She settled into Aidan’s chair and waited for me to speak. Her pin-straight hair was fastened back with a bronze peacock clip. Some new thing they’d ordered for Bergdorf’s that they were hoping would take off, but likely wouldn’t. “So?”

I sighed heavily, stalling. “Geez, take a breath before you fall over.”

“Forget breathing, Cammie. UT Guy was just sitting at your table, all in your space. Don’t even try to tell me that you’re not freaking out right now. And holy wow, up close he’s even hotter than I remembered. He’s like a dream. God.” She glanced back at the door.

“A dream? What are you, fifteen? Did you have a round on the walk over here or something? He isn’t a dream. He’s—” I shook my head. Who was I kidding? He was totally a dream, but I refused to admit that out loud. “And you have no idea how jacked-up this all became today. UT Guy? Yeah, he’s my boss.”

Lauren choked on her drink—well, my drink, which she’d taken the liberty of stealing—and began sputtering. “No effing way. UT Guy is your boss? How is that possible? He’s like twenty-eight tops, right?”

I filled her in on the full exchange from the morning. Even explaining the horrid situation made my cheeks flame. “It was beyond humiliating.”

“So, no banging in his office? I mean you’ve already gone there, so what’s the harm in a little more action?”

I smiled. Leave it to Lauren to make me laugh even after a day like this. “Yeah, no. Sorry to disappoint you. The company has a strict no-fraternizing policy, which according to our admin was created to keep Aidan away from innocent new hires like me.”