CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

WOOD POV

My paperwork was ruined. Totally and utterly unsalvageable.

      I dabbed myself down with a fistful of paper towels in the kitchen, cursing that sweet little slip of a girl for her clumsiness.

      Mine too.

      I hated the holidays. The frantic wrapping up of business to account for the slack days between Christmas Day and New Year was nothing but a ball ache. Everyone was vacant and preoccupied with their looming time off, forgetting conveniently that business continued on regardless. Orders to ship out, and schedules to maintain. Fuck the downtime, and fuck the stupid Christmas jingles and Santa hats and ridiculous office decor.

My shirt was smeared to shit, but that was the least of my worries.

   More of a concern was the raging hard on in my fucking pants. So close. She’d been so close to brushing my crotch with those dainty little fingers, and I’d felt it, even though I’d managed to cut her off at the pass.

      I shouldn’t be this hard because of that girl. The girl was fresh out of university and a lifetime too young.

   Even if her pretty blue eyes were wide and filled with the kind of sweet innocence that made my balls tighten. Even if she had a perfect swell of tits under that tight little blouse, and her ass shimmied like temptation itself as she paced back and forth to the photocopier every fucking day.

      She was out of bounds. Totally and utterly. Both morally and professionally.

      Plus, she was ditsy. I didn’t tolerate ditsy in my organisation easily, even if it did look good on her.

      I ditched the paper towels in the bin and ditched my paperwork along with them. My watch informed me I was late for my own meeting, and I despise lateness, especially when it’s my own.

      I could feel the tick of frustration in my temple as I grabbed my laptop from my office and made my way into the main meeting room.

Mae Chase was already in there, seated at my right in the position usually occupied by her immediate boss. The logistics manager was on extended leave, and I only hoped my sweet little coffee spiller was up to providing me with the answers I’d need for the holiday period. It was a tough task, and I knew it. The fact that she was barely into the job, and it was her first serious position, didn’t matter at all. My demands are high and I expect them fulfilled.

      I took my seat at the head of the table, scanning the faces to make sure everyone had their eye on the ball. It was almost a full house of attentiveness.

      Almost.

  The girl from stock management, Jesse, was wearing reindeer antlers. I considered calling her out on the unprofessionalism of wearing them to a company meeting, but managed to bite my tongue and rein in the bah humbug for one afternoon.

      Aside from Jesse and her stupid novelty headwear, there was only one person who irked me on the readiness front.

    Mae wasn’t even looking at me. She was far too frantic in her quest to get with the plot.

      She had her laptop in with her, indicating that her paperwork had fared no better than mine in the body slam. I stared at her fingers working the keys, taking an audible breath until she looked up from the screen and finally met my eyes.

      And then I began.

      I started with the accounts team, demanding the current list of outstanding payers and those on the no supply list. I grilled Jesse on the current levels of filter sheets in our other warehouse, and dug deep into delivery schedules for the coming weeks.

      Mae’s fingers were still tapping away at the keyboard when I turned my attention to the client delivery schedules for the coming week.

      Her cheeks were still flushed from our clash in the corridor, and her blouse was still clinging to her cleavage here and there. Red dots and lace. The outline of bra straps. Peeks into intimacy that most certainly shouldn’t be available to my hungry eyes.

      It infuriated me to realise that my dick was still throbbing under the table, and infuriated me further to realise she didn’t have the client summary to hand.

      I repeated my request for the rundown, and still she kept clicking away behind the screen.

      “I’m sorry, Mr Douglas,” she said. “Just a second, please.”

      I gave her a second but her fingers kept on tapping.

  I gave her to the count of three and the pale blonde of her eyebrows darkened as they pitted.

      “I don’t…” she began. “I don’t, um… my laptop is…”

      I didn’t hold back the groan. “Your laptop is what exactly, Mae?”

      She shrugged, then spun the laptop to face me, her bottom lip pinched in her teeth like a naughty schoolgirl.

      And my fucking dick kept on throbbing like a piece of needy shit.

      The application windows on her screen were flashing with a life of their own, unresponsive to commands as I slammed my thumb down on the mouse pad.

      “It was working fine at my desk,” she continued. “It was totally fine…”

      “It’s not fine now.”

      The whole table fidgeted as I tried to bring her machine to order, but the sonofabitch blue screened on me before I could even pull up the task manager.

      “I’m sorry,” she said again and I managed a nod.

      I buzzed through to Nick in the IT team and told him to come and collect the sack of crap machine, and then I shunted my own laptop across the table at her.   

“It’s on the network,” I told her. “Pull up your documents from the group directory.”

      She nodded a thanks, taking a sharp little breath as her shaky fingers clicked through to the work she needed.

      And I watched her. I watched her so intently I’m sure it burned, and in those moments I took her in.

      All of her.

      Every tiny detail.

      Her dark hair was pulled up in a loose bun, one stray strand curling down onto her shoulder. Her cheeks were still pink and highlighted the smattering of freckles over her nose, and her mouth was closed tight as she battled with the hardware.

      She was beautiful.

      Beautiful in an understated way… in contrast with the more preened girls in the office.

      Jesse had red lipstick and eyelashes so long they were blatantly false. Reyna from accounts was touting yet a new shade of red hair dye, and Lily from the stock team always looked as though she was ready for a night out, not a long day in the office.

      But Mae was… different.

      Finally, she stopped with the tapping.

  She risked a smile and cleared her throat, and when her words finally came they were ordered and confident. She competently ran through the delivery schedule and addressed my concerns from the last meeting about emergency couriers over the holiday season. She told me the updated deadlines for Christmas cut off as per her conversations with the depot that morning.

      She was good.

      Poised and professional and fully worthy of the thanks I gave her when she’d done with my questions.

      Her smile in response to my gratitude was anything but poised, and it hit me with a pang of something I couldn’t quite identify. Something… warm. Gooey and tender and quite fucking ridiculous.

      She was still beaming as she slid my laptop back across to me. She couldn’t hold back the grin as I moved the discussion along to the loyalty sales I was planning on running in the new year.

      I felt it all the way through my presentation. Burning. Tickling.

      I tried to envisage her mother all those years ago, sitting at the desk opposite mine in my History class. I hadn’t seen the woman in years, but on meeting Mae I’d seen little family resemblance, even through a hazy memory.   

Her mother had been a lively one, I remembered that much. She’d hooked up with my friend, Ryan, and they’d been a thing right the way through senior year.

      I’d only heard about her pregnancy at seventeen on the grapevine. They’d long since split up by then. She’d had a few splits after him so the rumours said, but I’d never given much of a mind for gossip.

      I’d like to have claimed that Mae’s arrival in my company was a longshot coincidence and little more, but I’d have been lying.

      Sylvia Chase, Mae’s mother, had added me on social media just over twelve months previous, along with several other of our classmates. I’d accepted without a second thought, barely scanning her profile until she’d posted a picture of her daughter a few weeks later.

      It was a proud picture of Mae at the university, about to enter her final exams… and I’d paused.

      Stared.

      And then I’d clicked for more.

      Three knocks on the meeting room door and Nick from IT stepped inside.

   Mae’s eyes opened wide as saucers as I handed him her laptop straight from the table.

“Sort this out,” I grunted. “Take the documents and email history from it before you do anything risky. Don’t lose anything.”

      He raised an eyebrow like I was stating the fucking obvious and took it away without another word. IT guys get my hackles up with their tech guru swagger, but with him I let it slide.

    Mae’s eyes were still wide when I wrapped the meeting up. Her smile was all but gone as I informed everyone they were free to go. The flush of her cheeks faded to pale as everyone filtered out for lunch.

      Nervous.

      She was nervous.

 Too nervous to ignore. It was just a tickle of a thought, barely a suspicion on the edge of my consciousness, but it was enough. More than enough.

 I buzzed back down to Nick in the IT room as soon as the door closed behind the last of them.

      “Bring her machine up to me before you hand it back,” I said.