Saving the CEO (49th Floor #1)(6)
“Can I bring you anything else?” Cassie’s appearance pulled him back to the present. The bar was empty. The din he’d noticed earlier had fallen off dramatically. He glanced down at his watch. Nearly eleven thirty—more time had passed than he’d realized.
“I’m not keeping you here, am I?” he asked. “But, no, because you just up and leave when you’re ready, right?” he teased, thinking of last night, when she’d left seemingly in the middle of a shift.
She looked embarrassed—she was easy to tease. “You’re referring to my untimely departure last night.” He dipped his head in acknowledgment. “I had a final exam this morning. I’d arranged with Edward to take off early last night. He’s good that way.”
Not a lifer. “What are you studying?”
“Math. At the University of Toronto.”
“Ah, the ants.” Damn. A mathematician. A hot mathematician. Rules, he reminded himself.
“Yeah! Well, at the rate I’m going, I feel like an ant myself.”
He raised his eyebrows, hoping to encourage her to continue.
“Let’s just say it’s taking me a long time to get through school. I can only go part time. Extremely part time. I’m practically a senior citizen compared to some of my classmates.”
She didn’t seem that old to him. Not an eighteen-year-old fresh from high school, no, but she had an air of innocence about her he suspected most university students—even those younger than she—did not.
“Well, good for you.” He eyed her as he gathered up his papers. She did look tired. Not that she looked bad, far from it, just that more of her hair was out of her bun than in it, and her white shirt was stained. Disheveled was the word, really. She looked like she’d worked hard tonight, like she needed a foot rub and a stiff drink. An image flashed unbidden in front of his eyes—why did this keep happening?—of her reclining on his bed, eyes closed in ecstasy, sipping a scotch while he kneaded the soles of her feet.
He pushed the untouched second glass of scotch toward her. “Change your mind?”
She snapped her eyes to his, a little shocked, as if he had suggested something far, far wickeder. As if she could read his mind. They stared at each other in silence for a few heartbeats. Then he thought of that button, that straining button, and damned if his cock didn’t start to stir. He looked into her flashing eyes—flecked with blue, green and amber, they seemed to be made up of little splinters of every color imaginable—and told himself not to be a jerk.
He dropped his gaze. It was an * move, but he didn’t have control over himself, that f*cking button did. His eyes found it right away. It was just a plain, small, white button. Nothing special. It was the way it was pulled, so that instead of lying flat, the edge pointed toward him. She shifted a little, almost infinitesimally, and the button quivered. So did his cock. God, she was magnificent under there, wasn’t she?
The next thing he knew, a small hand inserted itself into his field of vision. Nicely shaped nails, fingers sprinkled with a few freckles. Did she have freckles everywhere?
The hand clasped around the sweating scotch glass and began lifting it.
He followed it with his eyes. She licked her lips. Slowly. Jesus. Then she tipped her head back and drank. For a moment he thought she was going to drain the whole glass in one swig. But, no, she was a lover of scotch. He watched her neck—she took two swallows. She kept her eyes closed as she righted her head and gave a low hum of appreciation that echoed in his chest.
Plunking the glass down on the bar, she looked at him and said, “I guess rules were made to be broken.”
…
The cold night air was a relief when it hit Cassie’s overheated face. She hadn’t buttoned up her coat, and after she got out of the immediate circle of light cast by the streetlamps outside Edward’s, she turned her head to the sky, looking for stars that the city lights and tall buildings always obscured. Why did she even try? In this city, the stars could all burn out and no one would notice.
As the wind hit her neck, she took a deep breath. Holy cannoli, what a night. If this thing with Ebenezer sitting at the bar was going to be a thing, life was going to get a heck of a lot more interesting. And more lucrative. She patted the pocket where she’d stuffed her tips—Ebenezer’s made up two-thirds of her take for the night.
There was no denying the guy was hot. Not her usual type maybe, but really, what was her usual type? Sensitive, stylish boys whose love of *NSYNC should have, in retrospect, been a red flag that they were complete closet cases? Jovial jocks who, though they were well meaning, probably scored higher in a hockey season than they did in IQ? Because that was the grand sum of her romantic experience. First had been Danny, the high school boyfriend, still her best friend now that he was comfortably out of the closet—but only because they both still loved *NSYNC. And then there was Mark, the only boyfriend she’d had in the approximately eight hundred million years she’d been at university. Set up by friends, she’d gone with the flow, and before she knew it she had a hockey star boyfriend who was…nice. She’d been surprised, then, when he dumped her, showing uncharacteristic signs of wisdom when he said they “just didn’t have that spark.” They’d vowed to stay friends, but without a shared devotion to a 1990s boy band to cement their relationship, they drifted apart.