“Look who’s here.”
I glance up from my laptop, leaving the sentence I was writing unfinished. Next to me, Marianne has been helping with ideas for the story I’m working on, but we’ve mostly spent the morning shrieking and jumping up to greet coworkers we haven’t seen in over a year and catching up on office gossip.
I crane my neck to peer through the glass wall of the conference room, expecting to see someone else I can wave wildly at.
Instead, it’s the last person I wanted to encounter today. Daniel.
Our office building’s security system was updated while we were working remotely, and when I came in last week to pick up my new key fob, I managed not to run into him at all. But since our bosses have planned an after-work outing tonight at the bar across the street, it seems Daniel has decided to bless us with his presence.
I try not to glare as he drops his messenger bag next to one of the long tables in the main office area and hugs a grinning Stephanie, one of his acquisitions teammates. He straightens up a moment later with his back to the conference room and shrugs out of his leather jacket, revealing a crisp white T-shirt underneath.
Similar to a lot of tech and creative start-ups, we don’t have an office dress code, which means I’m wearing leggings, sneakers, and an oversized sweater—my standard uniform. Daniel is dressed casually in jeans, but instead of looking sloppy like the majority of the office, he’s the epitome of put together. The least he could do is take one for the team and look as shitty as the rest of us.
But of course he stands out. He’s one of two men in our combined twenty-person acquisitions and productions department, and the only straight one, which means he’s already a rarity around here. And in addition, though it pains me to admit, Daniel is…attractive.
He’s handsome and he knows it, which plays into his charm—another thing I can’t stand. He’s a salesman through and through, with the silver tongue to prove it. That particular talent has helped him seal major deals and poach self-published authors who were already making millions of dollars on other platforms. Not to mention, he’s convinced his connections at several major traditional publishers to give us the rights to post their backlist books on our app. Undoubtedly, he’s played a big role in the success of our company.
Still hate him, though.
“Oh, my favorite person,” I say dryly, glancing back at my laptop as it flashes a low battery warning at me.
Sighing, I lean down to search for the charger in my bag beside my chair, still keeping tabs on Daniel from the corner of my eye. When I’ve rooted through what feels like every pocket of my oversized purse and still can’t find it, I look away from him and focus my attention on sifting through the mess I’ve brought with me.
I’ve just wrapped my fingers around the white cord when Marianne whispers, “Oh shit, he’s coming our way.”
I nearly hit my head on the table as I sit up, mentally cursing myself for reacting like this. Maybe it’s because I’ve been not-so-secretly threatening to fight this man for the better part of two years, but I’m immediately on guard.
While Marianne smiles at him when he reaches the door, I fight back a scowl, successfully keeping my expression neutral—and pointedly ignoring the way my heart speeds up a little.
Sitting straighter in my chair, I follow the line of his bicep as he drags a hand through his thick, black curls, leaving them a little unruly and sideswept. Perfectly disheveled is how the heroines in the romance serials we write day in and day out would describe it. But perfect is not a word I would ever use to describe anything about him.
He smiles back, easy and relaxed, as he opens the conference room door. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him upset or even tense. It’s like everything rolls off him, and it leaves me itching to be the one who gets under his skin.
I want him to hate me as much as I hate him.
From the doorway, he chats with Marianne about how long she’s in town for and how her trip down from Boston was. Then he turns his attention to me.
“Hi, Selene.” My name rolls off his tongue smoother than I’ve heard anyone ever say. His voice is low and deep, but it’s his accent that does it. He was born and raised in Mexico City, and those roots remain in his words. It’s one more characteristic that makes my hackles rise: his sexy-as-sin voice. “Good to see you.”
“You too,” I reply, though it’s a lie. But I can be polite for now; our fistfight can wait until later at the bar. I don’t want to get blood on the office floors.
Although, now that we’re in the same room for the first time in forever, I’m a little less confident I can take him on. His height surprised me when I first met him years ago, so taken aback that I could barely say hello. But in those days, he was leaner, and I was certain I could take him out with a solid shoulder to his midsection and a punch to the balls.
But he’s filled out over quarantine, like he’s been working out more. That doesn’t bode well for my threats to fight him.
Or my attraction to him, apparently.
“I need to steal five minutes of your time later,” I tell him before I can think about what I’m doing. I have wanted to discuss something with him for ages now, and it needs to be done in person. My hope is that by meeting one-on-one, though I despise the notion of it, I’ll get a straight answer out of him for once. “I want to chat about the distribution deal for my books.”
I’ve sent him at least half a dozen Slack messages about this. And each time, it’s taken him days to respond with vague, brush-off answers. It’s yet another strike against him, another reason I should be on my feet right now and socking him in the gut.
“Steal all of my time, if you want,” he says, extending his free arm like he’s beckoning me to him. “Come find me when you’re ready.”
I flash him a tight smile. Charming bastard. “Will do. Thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
I bet it is, asshole.
The door shuts quietly behind him a moment later. When Marianne and I are alone again, I scowl and sink into my seat.
“You handled that better than I thought you would,” she commends, patting me on the shoulder. “For a second, I was worried you were going to launch yourself across the table at him.”
“I thought about it,” I tell her. “But I’ll go with the element of surprise instead. Can’t let him see the attack coming.”
She laughs. “Probably for the best. He’s bigger than I remember. You might need the shock factor on your side to take him down.”
At least I’m not the only one who noticed Daniel’s new muscles. Not that I was checking him out. Not that I’m still checking him out through the glass conference room wall.
With a shake of my head, I turn back to my computer screen and tap at my keyboard. “Come on. Let’s get back to the adventures of the doctors who can’t keep it in their pants. I need suggestions for the next place they can fuck.”
Her loud exhale sums up my feelings too. I can’t believe this is my job.
After Marianne and I outline the next thirty chapters of Under His Care, I meet with the big boss for our monthly catch-up. I update her on my current projects, and she explains the new ones I’ll be tasked with. Not much has changed, except I’m getting another book dumped on my plate soon, one of Daniel’s acquisitions.
She was kind enough to warn me that I’ll have to do some pretty significant editing to the original manuscript to make it work better for Naiad and its market. In other words, I’ll have to expand the dialogue, add new plotlines, and make sure the sex scenes are adequately steamy without violating our terms of service.
I’ve done the same for other manuscripts in the past, and while it’s not exactly difficult, it’s long and tedious work. All I can hope is that I’ll be given ample time to do it before the story goes up on the app. But, of course, those deadlines are up to Daniel and his team.
When the meeting is over and I head back to the main office space, the man himself is striding my way. I try my best not to narrow my eyes at him as we pass in the hall, but it’s a natural reaction at this point. Thankfully, he doesn’t pay me any mind as he slips into the office I’ve just left.
In the small lounge area in the center of the space, I flop into one of the oversized chairs and pull my laptop back out so I can get started on the editing tasks waiting for me.
Making sure our updates go out on time means having chapters outlined, written, and edited weeks in advance, then passing the final documents along to the team in charge of uploading them to the app. That’s how the sausage gets made at Naiad.
I’ll admit, the first time I had to write and edit sex scenes in a room full of my coworkers, I was mortified. Writing them in private is one thing, but in public? In an office? It seemed obscene. But these days, I work on them while sitting on cramped trains, in packed cafés, and even at my mother’s dining room table. When it comes to the written sexy word, I have no shame anymore. If someone has the audacity to read over my shoulder, then complain about being offended, that’s their problem, not mine.
Across the room, Nikki and Ella are discussing a story whose title I’ve forgotten, but I’m pretty sure it includes the word daddy. From what I can gather, it’s about a woman whose father’s best friend is teaching her how to give blowjobs. This is an every-day type of conversation at Naiad and the reason the room was filled with laughter during our mandated sexual harassment training. This is the business we’re in—the business of romance and sex on the page. And I wouldn’t trade it for the world, no matter how untraditional the job is.
I’m editing a scene that involves very public sex when the door to the big boss’s office swings open and Daniel strolls out…and heads straight toward me.
Fantastic.
He drops into the armchair across from mine, leaving nothing but a glass coffee table between us. Now that he’s so close, my desire to physically fight him shrivels up and dies. There’s no way I could take him in hand-to-hand combat.
Well, fine. Looks like my hate for him will have to remain internal until I can bulk up too.
“Selene,” he greets with that ever-so-calm smile that doesn’t touch his dark eyes. “I’ve been waiting to catch you. Now good?”
I smile back at him, though mine is definitely forced. “Now’s perfect.”
He nods and leans forward in his chair, forearms on his solid thighs as he stares me down like I’m the only person in the room. “What exactly did you want to know about the distribution deal?”
Right. Business. I clear my throat and set my laptop on the coffee table, wishing I’d closed my document first, because the words hard, thick cock are highlighted in red at the top of the page.
“First, what’s the projected start date?” I ask him, forcing myself to ignore the sentence flashing at me like a beacon on my screen. “I know the end goal is to have samples of our Naiad-produced works in all the big digital bookstores, but what’s the timeline?”
In typical Daniel fashion, he explains how the timeline keeps changing based on certain factors and blah, blah, blah, but ultimately, he hopes it will be completed by January. He could have told me that last bit without all the other roundabout reasons, but what did I expect? It’s how he conducts negotiations.
“And what about physical copies?” I ask next, which is what I’m really interested in.
When Naiad bought my books, I signed an exclusivity contract with them, which meant my original books and their continuations could only be posted on the Naiad app. It also means there are no physical copies available to readers.
During our original negotiations, Daniel promised that it wouldn’t be long before Naiad produced paperbacks of my original novels. My mistake was not forcing him to put a definitive date in writing. I trusted him and his honeyed words, believing he was an honorable man who would make it happen ASAP. But here we are, and he’s yet to make good on that promise.
“My readers have been asking for them for years,” I continue. “Think of the revenue we’re missing out on by not offering physical copies of not only my books, but of all the books Naiad holds the exclusivity rights to. We could even drive more people to the app by advertising at the end of the books. It’s an opportunity we shouldn’t miss out on.”
“We’re not looking into that at the moment,” he says, patronizingly calm. “We’ll reconsider in Q2 next year and decide based on how the expanded digital distribution performs. It might not ever happen.”
“Come on, Daniel.” I keep my tone polite, but my temper is rising. “You promised physical books during our negotiation. And there’s a demand. People want this.”
“So tell them to buy the e-books,” he counters with a dismissive shrug. “Then we’ll see.”
Knowing I won’t get a better answer out of him, I clench my jaw and grit out, “Fine.” Then, pulling myself up a little straighter in my seat, I move on. “But if the sales do match up and you finally realize this has been a good idea all along, how will you go about making it happen?”
Just as I expect, Daniel launches into a convoluted explanation that doesn’t even remotely answer my question, all to distract from the original topic. It’s such a smarmy business tactic, one that I might understand him using if we weren’t literal coworkers, but we’re supposed to be on the same team.
I almost interrupt, but instead, I prop my elbow on the armrest of my chair and press two fingers to my temple as I stare him down, giving soft murmurs of uh-huh and sure, right in all the appropriate places, even though all I want to do is tell him to shut the fuck up.
Eventually, I get the we haven’t quite figured it out yet I expected. Exhausted from having to listen to him, all I can do is sigh. This is his go-to strategy. Throw out a shit ton of jargon, circle back a few times, and ramble on until his audience’s eyes glaze over, all to keep them from pushing harder for answers. The only saving grace is that he’s easy to look at while he spews this mess.
And that right there is why he gets away with the things he pulls. He’s tall and handsome, with a smooth voice and the ability to bullshit with the best. It shouldn’t be alluring, and I know better than to fall for that kind of thing. But goddamn if there isn’t a weak little part of me that’s suckered by it.
That weakness fuels the fire of my hate even more, making me once again tempted to sock him in the jaw.
“Thanks,” I mutter when he finally wraps up his spiel. “That’s all I needed to know. I’ve got edits to get back to.” So you can go fuck yourself remains unsaid, but I add a heavy dose of it to my voice.
He doesn’t make a move to get up or turn his attention from me, so I grab my laptop and stand instead. The longer I’m around him, the more my fist itches to meet his face.
I make my way back to the conference room where Marianne has not-so-subtly been watching my interaction with Daniel through the glass partition.
“Your face,” she whispers as soon as the door is shut. “You had actual fire in your eyes at one point.”
I groan and drop into the chair across from her, keeping my back to the office. I don’t want to look at Daniel and his stupid face anymore. “I was seconds away from committing homicide, Marianne.”
“Judging from that look alone, I’m amazed you didn’t.” She shakes her head, grinning. “He better stay out of your way at the bar tonight. I don’t take you for a relaxed drunk.”
I let out a loud laugh. “I promise not to drink too much. I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of our bosses.”
“Not yet, at least. That’s what the holiday party is for.” Marianne winks at me. “Now finish your edits. I know there’s some voyeurism with your name on it.”
