“I’d be flattered, but I don’t know,” I say finally, trying to hide my unsteady heartbeat, while my hormones scream, Just say yes to Emmett! He can do you good!
She sighs. “That’s depressingly repressed. I’d totally do Thor.”
“What about Gage?” I quip.
“He can watch.” She laughs lightly, t
hen sobers. “Look, I know you and Emmett have this weird chemistry.” Her expression says I’m not fooling anybody.
“What?” My laughter is shaky, but I pray it just sounds light and dismissive to Sasha. “Girl, what are you talking about? Emmett and I aren’t… You’re being ridiculous. I was asking for somebody I know, not me. Geez, Sasha.”
She gives me a look. “Come on. Everyone at the firm knows. There’s a betting pool on when you guys are going to start going out.”
“A what?”
“You heard me. It’s been going on for over a year now.”
“Over a year?”
She spreads her hands. “It started about two or three months after we started. I thought you knew.”
“I had no idea! Oh my God! I can barely stand the man!” I didn’t, by chance, shoot him a come-hither look without meaning to…did I? Do people think I’m getting ahead by flirting with my boss? Being sexually suggestive? A betting pool means people think Emmett and I haven’t slept together, but that doesn’t mean they won’t speculate. Is that why Marion asked one too many questions about Emmett during the interview? Does he suspect—
“Uh-huh,” Sasha says. “All that palpable love-hate. It’s hard to hate a man with a face like that, so I understand. We all do.”
Obviously, since every time I look at Emmett I’m struck by how hot he is, even while I want to strangle him for torpedoing another of my evenings. Especially when I haven’t had much sleep for a while. God must’ve realized when He created Emmett to be such an asshole, He’d need to give the man something else to ensure his survival. I just wish God had chosen respect for his underlings’ private time and need for sleep as the survival-enabling feature. Awe-inspiring male beauty is a problem.
Don’t forget his magic orgasm penis, my mind whispers.
Shut the hell up!
Sasha puts a steadying hand out, like I’m a rabid dog frothing at the mouth. “Don’t worry. Nobody thinks you’re sleeping with him or anything. I mean, yet.”
“Yet? Yet? I’ll have—”
“Yeah, yeah, settle down. Everyone knows you’re where you are because you work your ass off. We all see the hours you put in, the deals you’ve executed. You’re also starting to manage and support our portfolio companies, so… You’re doing the work of somebody above you. And we saw the annual ranking.”
That’s a list of the top five performers the firm posts in the break room after the yearly evaluations are done. To make things fair, the grouping is done by rank and year, such as the top five first-year analysts, the top five second-year analysts and so on. The only people who aren’t ranked are partners. Probably because their egos couldn’t agree on who should be number one.
I was floored when I topped my list last year. Given that Emmett asks me to redo my work almost every day, I didn’t expect to see my name up there.
“Everyone at the firm knows you deserve the top spot,” Sasha says. “Actually, nobody will be surprised if you top the list again this June. A lot of people outside the firm know it, too. Venture capital is a small world, and people talk.”
Sasha would know. She goes to a lot of those get-togethers, unlike me. I wish I could, but I almost never have time off. At least people aren’t disparaging my work behind my back.
“You told me you planned to quit in two months,” she says.
“Yep. That hasn’t changed.”
“So… If you want to go for it…” Sasha winks.
“No, no, no.” My protest is too quick. So I add, “Even if I didn’t work for him anymore, running into him could be awkward if we slept together.”
You’re a damn liar. His dick in your vagina counts as “sleeping together.”
“But you kissed him,” Sasha says.
“It wasn’t me. It was this girl I know. I told you that already.” Dear lord, I’m turning into Emmett. Utterly shameless. At least I don’t have my hand over my bare crotch.