Chapter 33
JEREMIAH
The city blurred by me at a speed that would probably earn me another arrest if a cop jumped out at me now. The Chiron purred, handling like a damn dream. I pushed down on the gas just a little more.
Soon I would hit rush-hour traffic and slow down to a crawl until I got to Stephanie’s. I wanted to take advantage of the speed while I could. It helped clear my head.
This was going to be a busy week, and I refused to start with my head up my ass. Or more accurately, thinking about Stephanie’s ass. After dinner on Friday, I dropped her off at home and got the hell out of there before I hauled her over my shoulder and carried her to her bedroom.
I hadn’t seen or heard from her since. I wondered if I took things too far. Between all the flirting on Friday, the heated looks, the brushed touches and the dinner at George’s, there was every possibility I’d overdone it.
All my best intentions of keeping my relationship with her strictly professional had shriveled up and died. There was something about Stephanie that had me making stupid decisions. The right thing to do would’ve been to stay away from her. Send Louis to get her and drive her around instead of doing it myself.
Instead, I was speeding to her apartment like a bat out of hell. Why I was doing it, I didn’t fucking know. She would’ve been safe with Louis too, but I wanted to do this myself. There was an annoying little voice in my head telling me she would be safe with Louis, but safer with me.
God knew why I thought that. I would never admit it, but Louis was a better driver than I was. Decades of experience and evasive driving maneuvers training would do that, and Louis had it all under his belt.
The truth was that he was perfectly capable of playing chauffeur to Stephanie. There was no reason for me to do it myself, but I was too selfish about any time I could get alone with her. Even if keeping my distance was what I should’ve been doing if I had any hope of getting back to the professionalism I promised myself I could maintain with her.
A thousand little things kept me from keeping my promise. Her charm, her wit, her curves. She was the perfect package. Throw in her intelligence, her dedication to doing a good job and working her way up in the world because it was what she wanted and not what was expected of her. Add a dash of her independence, her spirit and her understanding, gentle way of getting me to open up, and I was fucked. Unable to stay away.
At ten minutes to seven, I pulled up to her curb. She was already there, waiting under the faded awning outside her building. Smiling brightly when she saw me, she waved and walked over to my car.
That fucking smile was going to be the death of me. Another reason I wanted to drive her myself. When she smiled at me, I didn’t feel like the piece of shit I was. I didn’t feel like the spare, the disappointment or the tabloid’s favorite playboy.
I felt like she saw the better version I was trying to be. Like she was smiling at a guy so deep inside me not even I was sure he was in there most of the time. I’d heard people say they wanted to be better for others, but it wasn’t until she smiled at me like that that I really felt it.
As she neared the car, I hit the button for my hazards and jumped out, rounding the hood to get her door. “Good morning.”
“Good morning, boss. Have a good weekend?” Her gaze was soft on mine, caring.
“I did.” Except for yesterday’s golf game with my father. I really needed to get out of the Sunday afternoon golf tradition somehow. “You?”
“Same,” she said, lowering herself into the car. When I settled next to her, she turned in her seat. “You have any entertaining stories about the weekend antics of the rich and famous to entertain us on the way to work?”
I smirked. If she asked me that question a couple of years ago, I would’ve been able to fill a novel’s worth of pages about what Bart, Shawn, Tanner and I would’ve gotten up to over the weekend. “Nothing entertaining. Sorry. Turns out the lifestyles of the rich and famous also go through dips.”
She sat back in her seat. “Pity. Want to hear about my weekend then?”
“Sure.” It sounded much better than rehashing the party I went to with Shawn on Saturday or that Neil and I spent Sunday working until we had to go to the golf course. “Entertain away.”
“It’s not entertaining, really.” She launched into a description of her weekend, giving me a small peek at her life when she wasn’t with me or at the office.
Speaking in her easygoing manner, she told about coffee to catch up with some of her friends from college, fixing the dryer in their building—but not before she shrunk some of her clothes, and listening to some podcasts she thought I might find interesting by her former statistics professor.
“Do people actually listen to those things?” I asked her, trying to imagine why anyone would willingly sit through more hours of a lecturer droning on about stats.
She winked, shaking her head. “Nope. I was just checking to make sure you were listening to me. The podcasts I actually listened to were true crime stories by an investigative journalist.”
“Thank god,” I said, clutching my heart like she’d really scared me. “I thought I might have to have you institutionalized.”
Sticking out her tongue at me in a playful gesture that made me want to pull over and yank her into my arms, she laughed. “Nah, not necessary today. It might be by this afternoon though. We’ve both got busy days ahead.”
Seamlessly, she switched to her role as my secretary. She pulled up my calendar for the week on her phone and took the rest of the drive to update me on my meetings for the day. I was pulling into my parking spot at Williams Tower when she finished.
“Last but not least, someone named Bart wanted me to add drinks at Lucky’s and dinner at Tokiso to your schedule for tonight. The message came through early this morning. It’s at seven thirty. Do you want me to confirm?”
“Please.” Drinks at our local hangout and Japanese with the guys sounded great. Early as it was, the day loomed ahead of me. I would need a couple of beers by the time it was over, especially since one of my meetings was with a friend of Dad’s and one of our biggest investors.