Fooling Around (9 page)

Eric smiled, feeling irrationally vindicated.

He switched the channel when both Julie and the man left the view, and he waited until he heard the sound of her coming in the front door.

“Hey,” he called, so she wouldn’t slip into the hallway without talking to him. “How was your date?”

“It was good,” she murmured, stepping into the living room but not very close to him. “Is everything all right with you?”

“Oh, yeah. I’ve had a breathtaking evening of watching TV.”

She gave a little huff of amusement. “Do you need anything?”

“It’s your day off.”

“I know, but we’ve had this conversation. I can get something for you if you need it.”

“I’m fine. This guy brought you back pretty early for it to be a good date.”

To his satisfaction, she narrowed her eyes in a clear sign of annoyance. “I would imagine that your standards for dates are quite a bit different than mine.”

“If you mean I want some excitement when I go out, then, yeah, maybe so.”

“What I mean is that what you find exciting isn’t necessarily what the rest of us do.”

Her implication was clear. She was very politely casting judgment on his lifestyle—at least, what she’d probably read about his lifestyle.

It didn’t bother him tonight the way it had last night. He’d done some partying when he was younger, but the media always overinflated the nature of his social life. That was just part of the package when you lived a life like he did. He liked that he’d gotten a rise out of her, as mild as it was. “I don’t know. I think most people are hoping for more than a show and an adolescent kiss.”

“You have no idea what happened on my date.”

He could hardly admit to having spied on her through the security camera. “Did you all skip the play?”

“If you treat all of your employees to this kind of interrogation about their social lives, I’m surprised you haven’t been sued.”

Her words weren’t angry, but they brought Eric up short. Because she was right. She was on his payroll, and he should probably be careful. Not just to avoid sexual harassment suits, but because he didn’t actually want to be that kind of a guy.

It was ridiculous for him to be jealous of some nameless guy, after all. If he wanted a gorgeous woman, he could get one without any trouble at all.

Julie was intriguing to him, but curiosity was easy enough to control.

“All right, then,” he said with a smile. “No more interrogations.”

She frowned. “Really?”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Yes, but I’m surprised you let it go so easily.”

“That shows what you know. I’m very easy to get along with.”

She shook her head, now looking like she was hiding a smile. “There’s nothing easy about you.”

He never would have thought so when he’d first met her, but he could say the exact same thing about her.

She turned to leave the room. “Good night, then.”

“Good night.”

He watched her ass as she walked away and felt an intense urge to see it, to touch her.

But she had her secret fire well under control, and he wasn’t really in a position to set it free.

On Saturday of that week, Julie made up an excuse to get out of the penthouse because Eric was in such a bad mood.

After working for him for two full weeks, she’d gotten into a rhythm for her days that wasn’t quite as bad as it had been at the beginning. She was used to him now—his moods and his quirks—and the hours didn’t drag quite as tediously as they had at the beginning. But that day he was in a terrible mood, biting her head off constantly and never letting her relax.

So to keep herself from giving in to her exasperation and telling him what an ass he was, she said they needed some groceries and, since today was Kristin’s day off, she would go and get them.

She stretched the grocery shopping as long as she could, so it was an hour later before she returned. As soon as she walked in, something in the air felt strange. She had no idea what it was, so she quickly put away the groceries and then went to find Eric.

She’d assumed he was in his office, which was where she had left him. The office was empty, though.

Feeling more and more like something was wrong, she checked his bedroom and didn’t see him there either. She glanced out onto the terrace and saw that it was empty too. Since he wasn’t in the kitchen or living areas, there was only one more place he could be, given that he couldn’t make it up the stairs to the second floor of the penthouse.

She pushed open the door to the gym and saw him there.

Today was supposed to be one of his days off from physical therapy and working out, but here he was anyway, doing curls with a free weight as if his life depended on it.

He must have been working out in here the whole time she was gone. He was soaked with sweat and flushed with exhaustion, and his arm was shaking as he pumped it.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice uncharacteristically shrill. She couldn’t believe he was in here doing this, all by himself. She’d left him sitting in front of the TV.

He jerked his head over toward her, clearly taken by surprise. “What does it look like?” he grunted.

“Well, it’s time to stop.” She hurried over and took the weight out of his hand, pulling on it when he closed his fingers to try to stop her.

“I’m not done.”

“Yes, you are. You can’t do this to yourself. Today you were supposed to be resting. And you definitely can’t be working out like this all by yourself, with no one else in the house.”

“Tim is just downstairs.” He was reaching back for the weight.

“I don’t care where Tim is.” She moved out of his reach so he couldn’t take back the weight. “You’re paying me to take care of you, and that means not letting you do this anymore.”

He let out a resigned sigh as she wheeled him out of the room. She usually wasn’t so pushy, but she could have shaken him for being so stupid.

She’d only been gone an hour, and he’d completely fallen apart.

He was panting loudly, and perspiration kept streaming down his face and neck. She took him into his bedroom and then maneuvered the chair into the bathroom.

“I don’t know what your problem is,” Eric said, scowling at her, although more weakly than usual. “I have a broken leg. I’m still capable of exercising my arms a little bit.”

“I know you’re capable of exercising your arms. But you were overdoing it. Any idiot can see that. You don’t seem to understand that a broken leg affects your whole body. That’s why everything is harder for you. That’s why you get more tired than you used to. That’s why you have to rest enough and not overdo the stupid workouts. Your trainer told you the same thing. Don’t tell me that he didn’t, because I know it’s not true. A lot of your energy has to go to healing the broken leg. And you can’t kill yourself by pretending to be some sort of invincible superman.”

The words kept pouring out as she wet a hand towel with cool water and started wiping his face with it.

When she finally stopped talking, she saw he was staring at her, clearly surprised.

She was immediately self-conscious. What had she been thinking, lecturing him like that? He was her boss, and he could dismiss her on the slightest whim.

“What got you all fired up?” he asked in a different, softer tone.

“You did. You being stupid like this.” Feeling better, and relieved that he wasn’t going to blow up at her, she gathered up the fabric of his wet shirt and started pulling it over his head. “I’m serious. You’ve got to give yourself a break occasionally.”

“I give myself plenty of breaks.”

“I mean a break from always being the best. It’s like you’ve decided you have to be the strongest, most in-shape broken-leg victim in the country.” She rewet the cloth and started to rub it over his neck and shoulders, wiping up the sweat, trying to cool him down.

His eyes were still resting on her face with a strangely intense expression, but his voice was light as he said, “If you had my father, always being the best would be in your DNA too.”

He didn’t do much sharing with her, so she was immediately interested. “Your dad was like that, was he?”

“Yeah. He was the football coach at the high school in my hometown. If you know anything about what football means in small towns in North Carolina, you might have a sense of the kind of pressure I got to be the best.”

He didn’t sound stressed or upset about this. He sounded almost amused. But it told her something she wanted to know about him—something about what had made him who he was. “And were you the best?”

“Of course. All through middle school and high school, playing football was who I was. Injuries weren’t any excuse for not giving it your best and beating out all the competition.”

She rinsed and wrung out the hand towel and then wet it again. Because she was distracted by the conversation, her wiping of his skin became slower, softer. She stared down at the cloth sliding over his broad, firm chest, his tight skin. “I guess your dad was proud when you did so well in college and then went professional.”

“I…suppose.”

She checked his face, but she couldn’t read any expression. He was still looking at her with that expression she didn’t understand, as if his brown eyes were seeing something that she didn’t know was there. “He wasn’t proud?”

“I guess he was.”

“What did he think when you gave up playing football to do the video game?”

Eric sighed. She could see it in his chest and hear it as the air released. “I don’t know. He was dead by then.”

“Oh.”

“He would have been so disappointed in me.”

The words lingered in the air for a long time. Julie eased his upper body forward so she could wipe down his back. It was gorgeous, like the rest of him. He had hair on his chest but not on his back, and the rippling muscles were mesmerizing, taunting her to touch them.

The only way she could was through the wet towel she held, so she kept caressing him with it. “I’m sure he wouldn’t have been disappointed. You’ve made such a success of your life. You moved from the top of one field to the top of another.”

He made a sarcastic huff. “Yeah. That wouldn’t impress him.
You gave up
. That’s what he would say to me.
You just didn’t work hard enough
.”

“Maybe he wouldn’t have said that,” she murmured, wanting to comfort him but having no real way of doing so. “Maybe, at heart, he was always really proud of you.”

“Maybe.”

There wasn’t anything else she could say.

She had finished wiping him down and cooling him off, but she didn’t want to stop touching him. She eased him back and moved to his chest again, sliding the towel down to his belly.

His breath hitched a little, and she suddenly realized she was flushed, a little bit aroused, just from being this close to his body.

She quickly put the towel down and went into the bedroom to get him a clean shirt.

He was still watching her, his eyes never leaving her face, and she still had no idea what in the world he was thinking.

She just hoped he hadn’t seen her reaction. How he would laugh, thinking that she was getting turned on by him, from something so innocent.

“Okay,” she said, clearing her throat and pushing her hair back behind her ears. “I’ll get you some water. You need to rest.”

“I need a lot of things,” he muttered.

Didn’t they all?

That night, when she went to bed, she kept replaying the scene in her mind, and she imagined it had ended differently—that Eric had gotten turned on too, that Eric had touched her, kissed her, taken her to bed.

She imagined it so vividly that she had to get herself off quietly with her hand, under the covers.

Maybe some women had lives where they made moves on the men they wanted, where they attracted the best man around, where they indulged in hot sex, even in unexpected circumstances.

But Julie only did that in her daydreams, as her fantasy self. Her real self never did, never would. No matter how much she might want it, it just wasn’t who she was.

A week later, Julie walked into Eric’s office with the ice pack he’d requested and heard the tail end of his phone call.

“What do you mean? I thought the guy at Duke said—” His face was tense like he was in a bad mood, something she could easily recognize after working for him for three weeks.

He’d actually been in a pretty good mood that day, teasing her occasionally and not being as abrupt as normal, so whatever news he’d received on the call must have had an effect on his state of mind.

She went over to position the ice pack on his hip—his left hip, since the cast was forcing it into positions that made it sore—and kept her expression impassive as she listened.

“So that whole ordeal didn’t do any good?” he asked. “Do they have any idea what—”

She could feel the tension radiating off him as he listened.

His eyes moved over to her briefly, but it didn’t feel like he was really seeing her. He continued on the phone, “Why is it so soon? That’s in just two days.”

“Okay, okay,” he muttered after another pause. “I’ll head up tomorrow….I know I don’t have to be there, but I want to be. I want to hear what he says and ask him some questions….I’m not going to do anything to upset her. What do you take me for?”

His tone was strange. He talked to his friends and work associates in the same manner, shifting from brusque impatience to casual good humor, sometimes within the span of a minute. His tone now was different. It was almost serious, and she’d never heard him sound so completely sober in the three weeks she’d known him.

She was dying to know who he was talking to.

“Okay,” he continued after a longer pause. “I’ll be there first thing on Wednesday morning. How’s she doing?” He shifted in his chair as she readjusted the ice pack and tried to make out the voice on the other end of the call. All she could hear was wordless murmurs from a female voice.

“All right. See you then.” He ended the call and brought his arm down, his phone still in his hand.

She discreetly studied his face, surprised to see that it wasn’t just serious. He looked almost worried.

“Everything all right?” she asked when he hadn’t moved or said anything for a full minute.

“What?” He blinked a few times and straightened up. “Oh, yeah, yeah. Everything’s fine. We need to head up to Baltimore tomorrow.”

“Baltimore? What for?”

“What does it matter? I need to go.”

Well, that put her in her place. She obviously didn’t get to know whatever private meeting he’d just arranged. “Will we fly?”

“Yeah. Driving takes too long. I’ll just get a private jet, since it would be too big a pain to fly commercial in this damned wheelchair. I’ll get Kristin to make the arrangements for the two of us.”

“The two of us? Kristin will be coming too, won’t she?”

“No. She can stay here and take care of a few things I’ll have to miss.”

“But you’ll need her, won’t you, if it’s a business—”

“It’s not business,” he snapped, scowling and looking more like himself. “I don’t need Kristin. Is there some reason you don’t want to come? I’m paying you enough to do what I say without asking twenty questions.”

She didn’t care whether she went with him or not. She just didn’t want Kristin to have any more reason to resent her. But there was no sense in telling this to Eric. He would just laugh at her. “It’s fine. Of course I can come.”

“Good. We’ll need to leave in the morning.”

And that was evidently it. She didn’t get to know any more information about the purpose of the trip—just that she and Eric would be traveling to Baltimore together. Alone.

The next afternoon, Julie was in a fancy hotel in Baltimore. More specifically, she was in the sitting area of a luxurious hotel suite, trying to focus on reading Eric his emails out loud and typing out his answers.

Since Eric was naked under a sheet and occasionally moaning, she was having some trouble concentrating.

He was facedown on a massage table, which had been adjusted to accommodate his leg. The white sheet was draped over his legs and ass, but his upper body was bare.

He had the most gorgeous arms and shoulders she’d seen on a man in her life. It was very difficult not to stare at them.

But whenever he talked to her, he would turn his head in her direction, rather than keeping it facedown in the hole, so he would notice if she stared too obviously.

He would almost certainly comment on it. She didn’t need that kind of embarrassment.

The massage therapist was an athletic-looking woman in her forties. She was no-nonsense and amenable, and she’d lodged only one objection to his trying to get work done while he was massaged.

Whatever he was doing tomorrow would evidently take the whole day, so he was trying to get ahead on his email before then. He didn’t usually work when he got massages. He had someone come to his place three or four times a week, but Julie had never actually had to witness one before.

As he breathed thickly in a brief silence, she had to remind herself that he was her boss and it would be very, very silly to think about him in any other way.

The woman was working on his back, applying what looked like very hard pressure to a line along his shoulder blade.

Julie wondered what it would feel like to touch him that way. To touch him in any way.

“Did you go to sleep?” he asked gruffly. His head was facing toward the floor. “What’s next?”

She cleared her throat. “There’s a message from Amelia Holden. The subject line is ‘A Favor.’ ”

“Delete it,” Eric said. “She’s just looking for—Shit!”

“Too hard?” the massage therapist asked quietly, easing up on her pressure.

“No. That was perfect. Right there. Shit.” He extended the last word with the length of an exhaled breath.

When she heard the texture of his voice and then the moan that followed, Julie shifted in her chair. She wished he would just shut up. She was getting turned on, which was absolutely ridiculous.

But he sounded so pleased, so uninhibited. She wondered if this was how he would sound when he had sex.

As the woman worked on that one spot, Eric let out another wet breath.

Julie’s cheeks were flushed and the words on the screen of the laptop she was working on were blurred for a few seconds.

Why the hell did he feel the need to have a massage in front of her like this?

It was simply inappropriate.

“What’s the matter?” Eric demanded.

When she looked over at him again, she saw that he’d turned his head and was watching her. She cheeks reddened even more. “Nothing.”

“Well, something’s wrong. Did a buddy send me porn or something?”

Damn it, how could he read her expression so easily? Grabbing at the excuse he’d offered her, she said, “Yes. I deleted it. I’m not replying to an email like that.”

He chuckled. “I’ll dig it up later.”

She desperately hoped he’d forget about it. There wasn’t any such email to dig up.

The massage therapist pulled the sheet down a little farther, so the top of Eric’s butt was visible. Julie’s eyes flew down helplessly to look.

When she realized what she was doing, what she was feeling, she cleared her throat again, put the laptop down, and stood up. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Okay. Knock yourself out.”

As she was walking into her room—he’d reserved a two-bedroom suite for them—she heard him groaning, “Shit, I’m tight right there.”

Julie didn’t actually have to go to the bathroom. She just closed the door, stared into the mirror at her flushed face, and gave herself a firm lecture about keeping her mind in check.

She shouldn’t be thinking about sex and Eric in the same breath. She shouldn’t be enjoying the sound of his moans and sighs. She shouldn’t be imagining how he would look, sounding that way, in a very different situation.

It was wrong. And, what was more, it would just make her miserable, since he would never look at her twice that way.

He teased her, sometimes flirtatiously, the way he teased everyone he interacted with, but she wasn’t stupid enough to assume it meant anything.

So she wasn’t going to let herself indulge in fantasies that would only crush her in the end.

She might sometimes have trouble exerting her will, but she wasn’t stupid.

A few minutes after Julie left the room, she stuck her head back in, saying, “I’ve got a call. Is it all right if I take it while you finish up, or do you need me back now?”

“Take it,” Eric told her, wondering who the call was from.

It was unlike her to ask to receive a call in the middle of the day. Maybe there was a problem.

Or maybe it was her boyfriend.

Eric had been relaxing during the massage, but he tightened up at the thought. He didn’t know what the hell she was doing with that guy. She must be into him, though, since she’d gone out with him twice in the last two weeks. He’d tried to get her to tell him the guy’s name—or at least what he did for a living—but she wouldn’t tell him anything.

He didn’t care if it wasn’t his business. He wanted to know.

And he didn’t like her talking to that guy when she should be working for him.

He expected her back in a few minutes, but his massage was over and the woman was folding up her table before Julie finally deigned to reappear.

“Sorry about that,” she murmured, keeping her eyes down on the floor.

He wanted to know why she looked so shy. What the hell had she and that guy been talking about for so long? “What took so long? I need some water.”

Eric thanked and tipped the massage therapist while Julie went over to the refrigerator to pull out a bottle of cold water. He waited for an answer, but she didn’t give him one.

“Well?” he demanded as he took the water from her.

“Well what?”

“Well, what took so long? Was he proposing or something?”

Julie’s eyes went very wide in an unmistakable sign of surprise. “Was who proposing?”

“Your boyfriend. Wasn’t that who you were talking to for so long?”

She gave him a cool frown, which was the most disapproving look she ever gave him. “No. It wasn’t.”

Eric shouldn’t have been pleased by this information, but he was. “Then who was it?”

“It was private. Did you enjoy your massage?”

She was obviously changing the topic. Eric was tempted to go back to the question, but he managed to rein himself in. She worked for him. He needed to at least keep a few professional limitations. “Yeah, it was fine.”

“Did you want to put on some clothes?”

He was wearing a white hotel bathrobe, and he looked down at himself in surprise. “No. I’m fine.”

“Okay. Did you want to finish the email?”

“Not now. I’m not really in the mood.” His body felt relaxed after the massage, but he was suddenly hit with a wave of fear, remembering Maddy’s appointment at the hospital tomorrow. It had temporarily slipped from his mind, and it came back to him like a blow. The doctor at Duke had decided his treatment wasn’t working, so he’d recommended she see another specialist.

“Are you okay?” Julie asked softly.

She was watching him closely now. She must have seen his change of expression. He immediately schooled his expression. “Of course.” He took a long swig of water. “I didn’t hire you to fuss, you know.”

Her expression flickered slightly, like his words had hit home or something. She actually never fussed over him, and she never asked him if he was okay just because.

He wasn’t okay, and she had noticed it. But he didn’t want her feeling sorry for him, and he didn’t want to dwell on what he might hear about Maddy’s diagnosis tomorrow.

Julie had leaned over to pick up the laptop, but now she straightened up, rubbing the back of her neck.

Glad of the distraction, he asked, “What’s wrong with your neck?”

“Nothing. It’s just a little stiff.” She had her hair pulled back like normal, and no makeup on, and he couldn’t help but notice how clear her skin was, how dark blue her eyes were.

He never would have noticed if he’d just seen her in passing. He would have assumed she was just average, the way he had in the elevator. But the longer he knew her, the more he saw in her to admire, to desire, to want to uncover.

But he was her boss, which meant he couldn’t. Not the way he wanted to, anyway.

It wasn’t the best of situations, truth be told.

“I should have had you get a massage,” he said absently, trying to think about something prosaic, rather than the curve of Julie’s neck.

“What?”

“I should have had her do you too, since she was up here.”

“I don’t want her to do me.” Julie’s words were sharper than normal, and she must have heard herself, because she rephrased. “I don’t need a massage.”

“Why not?” he asked.

She frowned at him. “Because I don’t want one.”

“Why wouldn’t you want one?”

For some reason, she was looking rattled, which was unusual enough to distract Eric. “I just mean massages aren’t something I bother with.”

He suddenly realized something surprising. “You’ve never had one, have you?”

“Why would you assume that?”

“Because you’re not answering me. You’ve really never had a massage?”

“It’s not like a massage is a vital part of human experience. Why is it so strange that I wouldn’t have had one?”

“I don’t know. You’re what? Around thirty? Most women have had massages by that time.”

“Maybe the women in your world, but not the women in my world. It’s just not something I would ever waste money on.”

He didn’t quite know why this innocuous topic had provoked a reaction from her, but he wasn’t going to let it pass. “Then
I
can waste money on it.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

He held up a hand to quiet her as he picked up the phone and called down to the hotel spa. “My assistant is coming down for a massage this afternoon. What time can she come?”

Julie started to object, but he held up his hand again to stop her. He glanced at the clock and nodded. “Good. She’ll be down in fifteen minutes.”

“Eric—”

He hung up the phone, giving Julie a bland look he knew would annoy her. “It’s already scheduled. You’re not going to inconvenience them by not showing up, are you?”