“Seriously?”
Scarlett just shrugged. Why hadn’t she told me she wasn’t coming? In fact, why was she in Manhattan at all?
“Sorry,” Scarlett said. “I thought I told you. The vet called me this morning. He hasn’t had one of the injections he was meant to have.”
Amanda slouched against the wall of the elevator just as the doors opened into the lobby. “There’s no point in going tomorrow if Scarlett’s not there and I can’t ask Harper. We’ll just end up fighting,” she said.
“It will be fine,” Scarlett said.
I ruffled Amanda’s hair. “Come on. We’ll find something, I promise.” I stepped off the elevator after Scarlett, holding out my elbow for Amanda, glancing at Harper who was staring at my daughter, her eyebrows pulled together.
“Please, Harper? Come with us? I promise I’ll take no more than an hour. Just two stores, maximum.”
Harper inhaled and the elevator doors started to close with Amanda still slumped against the mirror.
“Come on, Amanda,” I said as I held the doors open. “I’m sure Harper’s busy.” I turned to Harper. “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “It’s fine . . . I . . . want you to have a great dress and I have a couple of hours tomorrow morning.”
“You do?” Amanda clasped her hands together. “You’ll come?”
My palms started to get sweaty. It was the last response I’d expected. Working with her this week had been difficult enough. I’d been haunted by flashes of her bent over the conference room table, me pushing her skirt up to reveal her high, tight ass.
“Amanda,” I barked. “You can’t expect people to just drop everything and do whatever you want.”
“Why not?” she replied. “You do.”
I caught Harper trying to stifle a giggle. “I don’t mind. Honestly. We’ll have fun.” She grinned at Amanda. “But now I have to go to the gym.”
Amanda shot out of the elevator. “And you won’t change your mind?”
“If she does, then—”
Harper cut me off. “I won’t change my mind. I promise. Have a good night.”
Harper glanced up at me as the elevator doors closed, and I had to fight the urge to peel them open, push her against the wall, and press my lips against hers.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. The thought of spending time with Harper on a Saturday with Amanda had given me a headache. What would I say to her? I didn’t want my employees to know any other side of me other than the one in the office. And although Harper and I had fucked, it wasn’t as if we’d had dinner and I’d confessed all my secrets. Despite being gorgeous, sexy, ballsy with a hint of sweetness to add to her sour, she was my employee. And Vegas was behind us—we were in Manhattan full time now.
Chapter 9
Harper
I slumped on my couch, my phone clamped to my ear. Dressed and ready to go eighth grade dress shopping with Amanda and my boss, I was just waiting for the knock on my door. “I’m cured. I’ve been dreaming about his penis and just like that, it’s gone. Any attraction I had to him has just disappeared because I never knew him.”
“Just like that?” Grace asked, her voice suspicious.
“I’m serious. I can’t find someone attractive who had a daughter who wasn’t important enough to tell me about, who wasn’t man enough to marry the woman he knocked up. I’ve lived my entire life with the consequences of that kind of selfish behavior.” Running into Max in the elevator last night had been a shock. When I’d seen the woman with him, I’d assumed I’d run into him and his wife and child and I’d almost exorcist vomited all over the place. Relief she was his sister had only lasted for as long as it took to register he had a kid.
He was a father and hadn’t told me. What else was he hiding?
It wasn’t like we were dating; he didn’t owe me anything, but the fact he was so secretive about it? It seemed dishonest. He never mentioned his daughter in interviews or around the office, there weren’t even any photographs on his desk. It was as if he was hiding her. Ashamed. It made me sick to my stomach. Had that been how my father had felt about me? Embarrassed or ashamed I existed? Poor Amanda.
“But Max isn’t your dad. I mean, when did Charles Jayne ever take you dress shopping?”
I dropped my head back on the cushion and stared up at my ceiling. “So he has his daughter on the weekend occasionally—doesn’t mean he wants his kid around. Looked like his sister was the one who was looking after her anyway.” I sighed. “But this is a good thing. It wasn’t as if I enjoyed being attracted to Max—I hated the fact that I’d slept with my boss. Now I’m cured.”
Being a controlling asshole was one thing. Turning your back on your family was quite another. Max being a tyrant in the office seemed inextricably linked to his success on Wall Street, so maybe I’d been able to forgive him that on a professional level. Maybe I even enjoyed it. A little. But his hiding the existence of his daughter changed my view of him completely.
I checked my watch. Amanda said she’d swing by at ten. She was a sweet kid, and I couldn’t begin to fathom what it would be like to try to pick out a dress with a man who resented my existence. She deserved more, so despite wanting to spend the day in bed recovering from my grueling work week, I’d agreed to go shopping.
“I still don’t get why you just stopped wanting to jump his bones because you found out he was a father. Most women would find that a turn on,” Grace said.
“Yeah, well, I’m not most women. And I doubt he’s winning father of the year anytime soon.”
Max wasn’t about to win decent human being of the year anytime soon either. He’d seemed to leave Vegas without looking back. He wasn’t affected by me at all in the office. Even that first morning after I’d turned up drunk at his door. He’d set up the war room and we’d had our first meeting about JD Stanley. There’d been no compassion in his voice, just cold calculation. He’d seen an opportunity to make money from my connections and nothing more. Well, I’d make it work in my favor, too. I’d ace the Goldman presentation so he couldn’t say no to me doing the JD Stanley pitch. If I could go in front of my father as an adult, a business woman—show him what I’d become without any help from him—maybe he’d just wither in my mind and I’d never think of him again. I’d be free.
“So no more sleeping with the boss?” Grace asked.
“Definitely no more sleeping with the boss. I’m not having my father find out and assume that the only reason I got the job was because I looked good on my back.” That was the only thing he thought women were good for.
“I thought you said you didn’t find Max attractive anymore.”
“I don’t.”
“So if you still found him attractive, you’d still be sleeping with him?”
“Why are you giving me such a hard time, Anderson Cooper? I have more than one reason not to sleep with him.”
“Does that mean you’re going to call George?”