Hot Water (11 page)

“Yes, I am.”

I can’t help but laugh. “I like your confidence,” I say. She’s hot, self-assured, a power-point whiz, and . . . and obviously not interested in carrying on a conversation, from the one-word answers she’s been giving. What the hell am I doing? Why am I entertaining any possibilities with her? It can’t happen. Shouldn’t, can’t,
won’t
happen, and I shouldn’t be pretending that it could. But what is it about her that makes me want it to? I’m ready to say good-bye when she comes back on.

 “What are you doing this weekend? Partying like a rock star again?”

 She
has
to be thinking about the limo. She has to be thinking about kissing me. Why else would she bring that night up? “That was a bachelor party,” I answer. “I am getting too old to do that on a regular basis.”

She laughs. “Oh, yes, you’re ancient. How old are you again? Twenty . . .”

“I’m thirty-four,” I say. “What? Do I look younger?”

There’s silence. “No, you look . . . fine.”

Fine. It’s such a dull word. Not exactly the type of compliment I’d hoped for from her. But, I remind myself, what does it matter what she thinks? This is all business. I don’t fucking need compliments from her.

 “Do you think you’d be able to stay late some days next week?” I ask. “It’s crunch time. Your mother understands, I’m sure.”

“Sure,” she says.

“You’ll be very well rewarded,” I say, though all the ways I can think of rewarding her would get me in major trouble. “Good-bye Miss Chase. Have a nice weekend.”

Chapter Twelve

Cicily

Weekends have always gone by too fast for me. But for some reason, this one seems to drag on and on. Probably because I spend most of the weekend, lying on my board in the smooth ocean, thinking things I shouldn’t be thinking. About how Mr. Williams would react if he saw my new tan lines. About him reaching behind my back and untying my bikini top, and what might have happened afterwards. I think about that, and more, until near madness.

And I shouldn’t. Because he’ s thirty-
four
. I am glad he couldn’t see me when he told me that because my jaw hung open and I felt like I was going to faint. I am . . . half his age. Not a few years younger. Not a decade younger.
Fifteen
years! Hell, my mother, at forty-five, is closer to his age than I am.

Maybe that’s why I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s so, so impossible.

“What’s wrong with you?’ Bow asks as I’m lying on my stomach, letting the sun bake my shoulders.

Everything
. “Nothing.”

“So you said you’d give me the scoop on Angry Guy. Is he really your boss?”

“He’s worse. He’s practically the owner of the company. His name is Caden Williams, of Williams and Williams.”

Her jaw drops. “Caden? Wow, even his name is sexy.”

“He’s thirty-four.”

Her eyes widen. “Whoa. Wait.” She picks up her phone and starts paging through it. “I knew I’d heard his name before. Look.”

I choke. She has the website for
New York
magazine up. Under
The Most Beautiful People Under 40
, there he is, looking extremely hot in his suit, staring at the camera with a very angry expression. “Number thirty-seven. Lovely.” I sigh, nearly throwing her phone back at her.

“Wow, you kissed one of the city’s most beautiful people,” she says. “How does it feel?”

“I feel like a tool,” I say. “And worse yet, he told all his friends I had sex with him. And one of them works there, so he keeps eyeing me like I’m a Big Mac and he hasn’t eaten in days. It’s very uncomfortable, to say the least.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Why would he do that? He probably has a line of girls waiting to do him.”

I shrug. “And the weird thing is, as much as I
hate
working there, I sort of can’t wait to get back.”

“You have a crush on a guy who told everyone he did you?” She laughs. “I mean, because wow. He sounds like a winner.”

“I just can’t explain it. It’s like, I know he’s a total dick for doing what he did. I know he’s completely unreachable because he’s so beautiful that it hurts to look at him. I know he’s off-limits because he’s not only my boss, but my mom’s boss, too. He’s a stiff, stuck-up, egotistical asshole who probably doesn’t even own one pair of jeans because he thinks no pair of jeans is good enough for his perfect ass . . . not to mention he’s fifteen years older than me. And yet . . . Bow. I can’t stop thinking about him. All I can think about when I see him is him kissing me, and how much I want him to do it again.” I pout miserably, then put my hands together, begging. “Help me.”

She studies the picture of him on her phone, tilting her head this way and that. Then she takes a deep breath and bursts out laughing. “I can’t believe it. Never in my life would I ever have thought someone like
him
was your type.”

“What can I say? I tasted a little, and he has a very nice flavor.”

“And one that will probably knock you on your ass if you have too much of it.” She thinks for a moment. “But all the yummiest things are like that, I guess. I say, go for it.”

“Are you crazy? I can’t. I just have to stop. My mom would kill me. I mean, he’s unreachable, so nothing’s going to happen. But I would be dead if she even knew I was
thinking
this. Because it’s the exact opposite of the professional she wants me to be. I’d beat out my dad as Screw-up Number One on her list. I have to learn to shut my stupid brain off and do my work.”

She grins. “Now what fun would that be?”

Caden

Andrea and I go to the beach house for the weekend.

When we drive down in the BMW, I hold her hand the whole way down. From the outside, we look like two people, very much in love. I try to pretend that the weekend is about us, about two lovers enjoying one another. That’s what I want it to be. I desperately want that to be true.

But it isn’t. The thing is, I don’t like the beach. I never have. Even she seems surprised when I ask. But for some reason, I need to be down there. I can’t stop thinking about it.

The house is right on our private beach. It’s been in our family for decades. I don’t touch the sand. Gritty shit gets everywhere, sticks to everything. Seagulls cry like they’re in pain. The waves crash and disappear, a constant reminder that nothing good ever stays. I sit on the deck, my earbuds in, listening to Mussorgsky’s
Pictures at an Exhibition
. I look as far as I can, down the shoreline. Miles and miles away, I know that Cicily is there. I wonder how she looks when she rides a wave. I imagine it’s beautiful. Fuck, she probably looks beautiful taking out the garbage.

Andrea comes outside with two glasses of Sangria, which I hate, but I’ve always drunk the fruity stuff with her and if I turned it down now she’d ask me what’s wrong. Like it isn’t obvious, like me being in a bad mood is all my own doing. She is wearing big sunglasses and has a magazine under her arm. She sets the glasses down and immediately delves her hands under my shorts. My dick springs to life, so she pulls off my shorts and shrugs off her robe. She straddles me on the lounge chair, sinking down onto me, and I hold her hips, letting her do all the work as she grinds against me.

A few weeks ago, this was enough. Enough to keep me content.

But now . . .

Her little tits bounce around in the blinding sunlight as the music in my earbuds grows to an ear-shattering crescendo. She tilts her head toward the sky as the ocean crashes beneath us.

Nothing good ever stays.

We are lovers, acting like we’re the only two people in the world.

And yet, I don’t come until I think of Cicily.

Chapter Thirteen

Cicily

I never find a way to shut my stupid brain off. After I speak to Bow, my thoughts begin to spiral out from there.

My mother would despise me.

Monday comes slowly, and though I was eager to get back to work for Caden, I also feel completely mortified about the things I’d thought. When I knock on his door to get his directions for the day, he opens it immediately as if he’d been about to leave, and I come face to face with him—so close that my nose almost touches his chin. “Miss Chase,” he says, and I can feel his breath on my forehead— warm, inviting, the perfect invitation to kiss him again. “Good. I was just thinking about you.”

I avert my eyes, blushing. If only he knew what I was thinking about him.

But unfortunately, the only thing he’s been thinking about me is what a great Presentation Slave I make. He piles about fourteen discs into my arms and says, “These have good graphics in them. You can use these for Presentation Three. See me if you have trouble.”

“Yes, sir.”

He goes to close his door and then, as I’m feeling the beginnings of deflation, says, “You got color. Have fun surfing?”

I touch my face, wondering how much of the color is from the sun and how much of it is blush. “Yes.”

Then the door clicks closed, leaving me standing alone outside his office, feeling stupid for wanting more. There’s a small window next to his office door, right by the secretary’s desk, and I can see his silhouette through the blinds, already sitting at his desk, moving on to more important, business things. All those fantasies I’d had go poof in my head, leaving me wanting a giant Mocha-Caramel-Something.

At the interns’ cubicles, Dax is doling out coffees and muffins. I take a big chocolate chip one. I’m going to need it.

Charlotte looks over the side of her cubicle. “You have a great tan.”

“Yeah, I went to the beach,” I tell her. And then I tell her about how I’d spent the weekend with my dad, and how I’d surfed most of the time away. By then, Jacinta and Violet are listening in.

“Wow, you surf?” Jacinta drawls. “That’s impressive. I suck at sports. I have no sense of balance at all.”

“It would help if you laid off the Grey Goose,” Violet points out.

She nods. “True.”

I shrug at this attention they’re giving me. They ask me all the usual, how long I’ve been doing it, what beach I go to . . . somehow it’s not as exciting as talking about it to Caden. Then, I’d wanted to impress him. Now, as nice as these people are, I don’t really care what they think of me and my surfing abilities. But Caden? I want to tell him everything special or interesting about me, so that maybe, he’ll see me as more than just his stupid intern.

Oh, why am I torturing myself?

But then the conversation turns to something else I’d rather not talk about. “So what is this big project you’re doing for Mr. Williams?” Violet asks.

“My mom made me do it,” I sigh, putting an annoyed edge on my voice so they won’t realize how much I relish the idea of working with him, how much I’ve fantasized about what our “working together” could turn into. I know I sound like a little kid, but I’d rather be that than have them thinking we’re doing anything inappropriate. “It sucks. He’s demanding.”

Jacinta laughs. “I’d give him
anything
he demands.”

Charlotte tsks at her. “Stop it, Jacinta. He’s three weeks away from marrying the world’s most perfect woman. Like he would want a horndog like you.”

I snap my eyes to Charlotte. “What?”

“Oh, you didn’t know he’s engaged?” Violet asks.

Jacinta moves me aside and types something in on my internet browser, pulling up a webpage. It flashes to a picture of the most incredible looking woman—she’s wearing a professional red business-suit and yet still manages to look both sexy and wholesome. Her white-blonde hair falls down in perfect coils over her shoulders. Her teeth are toothpaste-commercial white. Her skin pale and flawless. She’s leaning against a cut-out of her name. It says Andrea Finch, NYT Bestseller and World’s Most Celebrated Corporate Motivator. Underneath is a bio, listing line after line of all of her accomplishments. She went to Vassar, she consults regularly with the President. She crusades for animal rights. She even has a really nice website. She is practically inhuman.

Of course. Of
fucking
course. I suck in my lips, thinking that all those hours on my board, fantasizing about him, were a complete waste. I mean, before, I knew nothing could happen between us. But this news is just like a punctuation mark on the sentence. Nothing can happen, triple-exclamation-point. End of story.

 So why do I feel like someone pulled out my heart and stamped on it?

I know they’re all waiting for my reaction. After the intense feeling of deflation, the next one is anger, as in
What a scum! Why was he getting ready to screw me when he has her
? I squelch that inside me and say, nonchalantly, “She’s pretty.”

“She’s
perfection
,” Violet sighs. “She even has this sweet little southern twang. And she’s so . . . so . . . so nice. I met her in the bathroom before I knew who she was and she kept complimenting my hair.”

I stifle the urge to vomit. “Well, that’s nice. They’re a nice . . . couple.”

“It was a big deal when he got engaged because he’s always been one for playing the field. He dated Scarlett Johansson for a while,” Violet mentions, to add to my depression.

“The paper talks about him more than it talks about the President.” Charlotte studies me. “So when you said you were partying it up in his limo last weekend, we were hoping for good gossip. Something to show us he isn’t the Iceman twenty-four-seven. That must have been his bachelor party. Was he toasted?”

His bachelor party?
His
bachelor party? All that time he’d been so angry, I assumed someone else was the groom. “No. He wasn’t really drinking. He was kind of in a mood. Like I said. Nothing happened.”

“Boo,” Joely says. “He’s so perfect, too. They’re made for each other.”

“So you didn’t give him like,” Jacinta rubs her chin, theorizing, “A ‘Sayonara Singledom’ lap dance?”

Joely kicks her. “She’s
eighteen
, already,” she reminds her.

Jacinta rubs her sore shin and shrugs. “I would have given him one.”