She laughed, shaking her head.
“Of course, you wouldn’t,” she said gently. “You never judge, do you?”
“Not unless somebody really deserves it.”
“Well, then I guess it’s settled. I’ll try to work up the nerve, and hopefully the person I’m interested in will be as clever as you seem to think they will be.”
“They’ve got to be,” Christopher said confidently. “Otherwise, they’d be a fool.”
He reached for his food again and took another bite, diverting his gaze from Allison. Even though their conversation was pretty light and breezy, there was a part of him that wondered what would happen if he asked Allison.
What would she think if a guy like Christopher asked her to the party?
And why did it bother him so much that she wanted to go with someone else?
Chapter 2
"Nice going, dumbass.” Allison stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, wondering why she couldn’t pull herself together. The woman looking back at her glared.
She’d been that close.
Too close.
She’d been right on the brink of asking Christopher if he’d be her date for the party, but she’d chickened out. It had been right there on the tip of her tongue. She’d been thinking about asking him for weeks, and that had been the perfect opportunity. She could have just blurted it out. How hard would it have been?
“Hey, I was thinking, what if we go together?”
“Hey, handsome man, would you like to go with me to the party?”
“I don’t have a date, and you don’t have a date, so what if we don’t have dates together?”
Ugh.
Everything she thought of sounded so stupid and lame, but it still wasn’t as lame as just not asking him at all. What was wrong with Allison? How had she turned into such a lame little chicken?
Christopher had been so charming at lunch. He’d been funny and chatty and so fucking sexy. She thought about him all the time. She thought about what he’d be like in bed and whether he’d be rough and tumble or soft and gentle. She’d been thinking about him today, too. When they were having lunch, it was so hard not to just walk around the desk and climb onto his lap.
She didn’t really know what had come over her. It had just hit her, really. All of a sudden, she’d just wanted to kiss him.
No, it had been more than that.
She’d needed to kiss him.
Then Christopher had gone and said all that stuff about her being a good person and he’d promised anyone would be lucky to go with her. He’d said she would definitely be able to find a date. Christopher seemed to think that Allison was marketable when it came to finding a holiday date, and that anyone she chose would be lucky to get to be by her side.
Well, that was the entire issue, wasn’t it?
She didn’t want anyone.
She wanted him.
She wanted the boss.
Nobody in the entire world came close to comparing to Christopher Monster, and if Allison couldn’t have him, then she didn’t want anyone. That was childish and naïve and a little bit stupid, but she didn’t care.
“Pull yourself together,” she told herself.
It was a stupid little crush, she knew. After all, Christopher was the owner of an incredible company. Oh, his brothers owned it with him, of course, but that didn’t matter. Christopher was the one she cared about. He was the one she was wild about, and she was so, so crazy about him.