I gave him a nod of solidarity.
East chuckled. “Ah, okay, there we go. We have her. Her name is Olivia Ashong. Her mother was the Ghanaian ambassador to the United States for most of her youth, then she was eventually assigned to the UK. She was a diplomat for twenty years. Her father was English and died when she was nine. Her mother passed away six months ago.”
I forced my face into neutrality. “Rough go.” I kept staring at the photo with her and Ford and his hand dangerously close to her ass. Where my hand had been earlier that night.
My hands fisted and I forced them to unfurl. Didn’t matter that I didn’t know her. She felt like mine.
East scanned her information. “Oh, she’s been with Ford for two years. As far as I can tell, they’re not engaged.”
My chest loosened. As if all of a sudden I could breathe. Game on. If he wasn’t going to put a ring on it, she was mine for the taking.
East whistled low. “Well, what do you know?”
I sat up straighter.
He grinned. “It seems that we will have no problem finding Olivia Ashong.”
Bridge frowned before heading over to the bar and pouring himself a whiskey. “Why is that?”
“Because she works for us. She’s an admin to Kennedy Bright.”
She had been under my nose all this time? “How long has she worked there?”
East held up a finger. “Looks like she started as a temp right around the time her mother died. And then Kennedy hired her on as a full-time executive assistant three months ago.”
“Okay, great. I’ll make the approach and get back the data.” I was going to approach her about a whole lot more too, like why I was in a perpetual state of semi-arousal just thinking about her.
East pursed his lips as he slid a glance over his laptop. “I think I should make the approach. You already fucked it up, mate.”
My brows rose as I took the drink Bridge handed me. “Say what?” The hell I was going to allow him anywhere near her. Not with him looking like he could be the next Becks. No way, no how was that going to happen.
He didn’t seem to get the memo from my death-glare eyes. “Mate, you fucked it up by letting her see you in Van Linsted’s office. You flubbed the pass. I think you’re done.”
He was the one who was going to be done if he didn’t back off. “Now, just wait a minute. I made the best decision I could in the moment. And as for letting her see me, she was in the fucking closet. There wasn’t much to be done.”
We both glanced at Bridge, and he shook his head. “I’m not in this one. You two sort it out.”
I pushed out of my chair to see what East was staring at. And then I saw it. There was a photo from the event when she was turning and looking over her shoulder at someone. Her dark skin glowed under the golden light. Even in the photo, her eyes spoke to me. She was in a word, stunning.
Her hair had been pulled back up her neck, with a few tendrils escaping. Skin the color of a fawn, high cheekbones, enormous almond-shaped eyes with lashes that fanned her cheeks. Fuck, she was beautiful.
East sat back and crossed his arms. “It makes more sense for me to approach her.”
I laughed. “Over my dead body. She doesn’t know you. She’ll recognize me.”
East pointed a finger at me. “You see the look on your face right there? You’re already distracted by her. We made a pact, for Emma, for Toby… No more distractions by this side shit. We owe it to them.”
“I’m not distracted by anybody, ever. I will make the approach. We had a connection.” Total bollocks. I was ready and willing to kill East if he thought he was getting anywhere near Olivia Ashong.
I could see Bridge’s smug smirk behind his whiskey glass as he chuckled. East didn’t even bother to hide his laugh. “Oh yeah, sure. If you think you can make it work, Casanova, make it work. We need that drive. And we need to figure out if we can trust her or not. Right now, she’s an unknown factor that could be dangerous to us. To this whole plan.”
“Yeah, yeah. I hear you. We’ll get it back.”
We didn’t have any other choice.
6
Ben
Finding Olivia Ashong had been easy enough. After all, she worked in my bloody building.
And somehow you missed her all this time?
How many times had I passed her in the hallways or ridden with her in the elevator and just never noticed her before? Missed those eyes on me. Missed the catch in her breath.
No. You would have noticed her.
Those eyes would’ve locked me in place even if she hadn’t been wearing that devil of an eye-catching dress. East was right. I had other reasons for wanting to be the one to make the approach. I certainly didn’t want him to be the one. I didn’t usually get attached to women. There was a very good reason for that and a hell of a reason to be wary of this one.
Alas, all the rationality in the world couldn’t calm the buzzing in my brain at the thought of possibly seeing her again. It hadn’t stopped the dreams of her scent as I tossed and turned all night. And my rational functioning brain had apparently zero control over my body that morning when I’d managed to drag my arse out of bed.
Do this and get it over with.
I needed that drive back, and I was prepared to give her whatever she wanted to make that happen. Thanks to East, I knew enough about her background to know she was overqualified for her job, so I’d start there and stop somewhere short of the bloody moon.
The scent hit me first, crawling under my skin. Making me remember her little moan. Her office was meticulous. Overly so. Everything had its place, and nothing was out of it. She has this row of pens lined up so perfectly that I couldn’t resist the urge to nudge one askew.
She had an interior office, so no massive wall of windows, but she did have one window letting in the light. And on her desk, the only personal item was a photo of her and a woman who looked like the older version of her with a complexion several shades darker. They both wore bathing suits and life vests and held paddles over their heads while laughing like loons.
It was an image of pure unadulterated joy.
When was the last time you felt like that?
Clearly, whatever they’d been doing, probably paddle boarding, had been a hell of an adventure because they’d ended up soaking wet but triumphant.
I had to grin at that. She looked so happy. And I could tell from the photo that she laughed with her whole body. Was it throaty like her raspy voice suggested?
There was nothing else personal in the office. It was almost too sterile. As though if she chose to leave her office tomorrow, all she would take was that picture and be done with it. Always ready to run.
And that was how she found me, examining the one personal item in her office as I tried to glean as many important details as I could from that one image. That woman, whoever she was, meant the world to her. That much I knew.
“Excuse me, what are you doing in my office?”
Ah, that voice, grabbing me by the balls, forcing me to pay attention.
I’d woken up that morning with a raging hard-on just thinking about approaching her, what I was going to say and how I was going to say it. I could walk in and demand that she give me what I needed, or I could ask her nicely. Or I could try to coax it out of her, make it good for the both of us. Would she make that same keening moan she’d made in the closet?