Playing Dirty (Risky Business, #2)(3)

The corners of her lips lifted slightly in an almost smile. It entranced him. Then he found he was staring at her mouth and jerked his gaze away.

She swallowed, her next words seeming to take an effort to get out. “I need this job. I have bills to pay. Please, Mr. Anderson. Give me a chance. I won’t disappoint you.”

Considering her background, it was odd that she’d need a job quite that badly. Had her parents fallen on hard times? Maybe they’d disowned her? He felt a pang of sympathy at the thought—uncharacteristic for him—and he frowned, which was the wrong thing to do because her face immediately fell as she misinterpreted his response.

She shot to her feet. “I’m sorry for wasting your time,” she blurted. “I’ll just go.” She looked near tears, which was the proverbial final straw. He mentally cursed his weakness for tears on a pretty girl.

“Wait,” he called, halting her on her way out the door. She turned back. “This job won’t be easy and you’ll probably be working more than forty hours a week,” he cautioned, wondering if he was out of his mind. Not only was she inexperienced, he didn’t know if he could trust himself around her. And he refused to be the cliché boss screwing his secretary.

Administrative Assistant.

Fuck.

“I can do that,” she said, hope lighting up in her eyes.

“If you don’t cut it, then you’ll be let go,” he warned.

“I understand.”

Coming out from behind his desk, Parker approached her, noting the subtle scent of her perfume as he drew closer. Holding out his hand, he said, “When can you start?”

Her smile was blinding as she placed her hand in his, and Parker knew he’d made a huge mistake the minute their skin touched. He’d just consigned himself to God only knew how much torture. If he hadn’t hired her, he could’ve asked her out, taken her to dinner … then to bed. All of which was utterly out of the question now.

“Thank you so much, sir,” she enthused. “I won’t let you down. I promise.”

Parker’s expression was grim, he knew, so he mustered a faint smile. “See you tomorrow morning, Sage. Seven-thirty.”

“Absolutely.” She’d nodded, still smiling, then turned and left. Her scent had lingered in the air of his office. He’d scrubbed a hand over his face in frustrated resignation. He’d made his bed. Now he had to lie in it. If he had any luck at all, she’d hate the job and quit.

But she hadn’t hated the job. She’d taken to being his assistant like she’d been born to it, their communication clicking immediately into place. Somehow, she’d understood him, the job, and what he needed almost without trying. In a frighteningly short amount of time, she’d become indispensable to him.

And he’d liked her. Besides being so attracted to her it made concentrating difficult sometimes when she was in his office—like when she was crawling around on the floor in her skirt and bare feet, emptying box after box of documents—he enjoyed her personality. Funny, a bit quirky, almost always lighthearted and positive, she was his own personal breath of fresh air in the stale business environment that sometimes felt suffocating.

In the end he was glad he’d hired her, even though it ruled out anything physical between them, because it meant their relationship could continue. Because if he hadn’t hired her and had dated her instead, he had no doubt it would have been short-lived. He didn’t do relationships. Not even with Sage. Especially not with Sage.

Watching her date other men had been hard, and if someone were to ask him if he’d deliberately sabotaged those short-lived relationships, he’d deny it. But deep down, he knew that jealousy had played a factor in how often he called her when he knew she was out with another man. Was it fair to either of them? No. Yet he hadn’t been able to stop himself.

And now she’d chosen to go from his bed to Ryker’s. Jealousy was too pale of a word to describe how that made him feel, but if the last couple of weeks had shown him anything, it was that he needed to let it go. He’d flat-out turned her down, which had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. To know, definitively and not just as a guess, that Sage wanted him had been a heady thing. The feel of her in his arms, the press of her lips against his … the sight of her naked in that bathtub, her soap-slickened hands touching her breasts, her stomach—

Parker tossed back the rest of the scotch in one swallow, forcing the images from his mind. He had to stop obsessing, and stop sabotaging her. It wasn’t fair to Sage, and it was just his own f*cking bad luck that he had to figure this out now, when she was with Ryker, than before when she’d been dating what’s-his-name. The guy she’d said had been bad in bed.

His lips twisted at that. She’d been so adorably embarrassed when she’d blurted that out he’d had a hard time not laughing outright, until he’d realized that she’d only know that because she’d slept with him. Then the green monster had dug into his gut and he’d been viciously glad to have interrupted her date the night before.

But not anymore. Enough. It was done. Parker would exercise self-control and ignore the jealousy, because otherwise he’d never let Sage find someone, and she deserved to be happy.

Even if it was with Ryker, the closest friend he’d ever had, who now hated him beyond all reason.