Brazen Bossman: A Hero Club Novel, стр. 27

It’s him.

Why the hell is he here? How does he even know where I live? I should be horrified by this, livid in fact, but I’m not. I’m excited. A shiver of anticipation Dr. Frank-N-Furter would be proud of glides up my spine.

I pull my cell phone from the table and open the text message he sent me earlier and pound out a reply.

Me:Are you outside of my apartment right now?

I watch as the read receipt pops below my message and the three blinking dots appear then disappear not once, but twice.

Then they never reappear at all. Instead my phone lights up and vibrates, indicating he is calling me.

“Shit,” I say to myself as I contemplate answering at all. What if it isn’t him and I’ve made myself look like a complete and total psychopath?

Ida’s words play in my head.

Only one way to find out.

I slide my finger across my phone and answer the call.

“Hello?” My voice sinks into something sultry, and honestly, I want to roll my eyes at myself.

“Piper.”

That one, singular word coming from those lips is enough to make me shiver where I stand.

Christ, hormones, get it together. The man is potentially casing your house.

“Are you outside of my apartment?” I ask again. Making it clear that if he is, I’m annoyed about it.

“You left late at night, without a ride of any kind. You didn’t answer my text and it would have been in poor taste of me as your boss, and as a man, to not ensure you made it home safely.” His tone is so matter-of-fact, for the briefest of moments; it almost makes sense to me.

Almost.

“Are you fucking kidding me right now? You came to my house? Why? Don’t you see how insane that sounds?” I begin pacing my living room, staying in front of the window so I can have a clear line of sight to his car across the street.

“Like I said, I wanted to make sure you made it home safely since you didn’t respond to my attempt to reach out, and after the conversation we had, you left without a clear head and you’d had a drink.”

I sigh heavily, “This is crazy.”

“Most things you want are.”

I look back out at the car. “Roll down your window. Let me see that it’s really you.”

He pauses for a moment and I can hear rustling over the phone before the electric whirring of a window being lowered, and sure enough, the window in the car I’m staring at descends, revealing his much too handsome face.

“Proof enough?”

“Stay right there. I’m going to come down. I have something to say.”

“It’s late. I can come to the door…”

“No,” I interrupt him. I don’t trust us alone like that. “No, it’s okay. I’ll come to you. Be right there.”

I kill the call before he can argue any further.

I pull my hair into a high ponytail and slip on a pair of flip-flops. I check myself in the mirror to see if I look okay enough to actually go down.

I’m in a pair of pink cotton pajama shorts and a white racerback tank top. Thankfully, I already have a bra on so I don’t have to finagle one of those on right now and I can head on down.

The air is still warm, thankfully, when I step out of the door and make my way toward his still down window.

He watches me closely with each step, surveying me from my toes to my head.

“I’ve never seen you outside of your work clothes before,” I hear him say when I finally halt at the side of the car.

“Well, now you have.” I cross my arms over my chest, acutely aware of the fact that the gesture makes my breasts far more prominent.

“And now I have.” He releases a sharp breath. “Piper, I’m not sure what happened at the restaurant, but I think there was some kind of misunderstanding.”

“It wasn’t so much a misunderstanding as it was me being stubborn.”

“You? Stubborn? Could have fooled me.” A smile breaks over his face, which I happily return. “Piper, maybe dinner wasn’t the appropriate place to have a conversation like that. I should have suggested somewhere that was a bit more private so we could speak openly.”

“That would have been nice, but even more than that, I’m sorry for stomping out like a child,” I say with a twist of reluctance. I don’t like admitting when I’m wrong.

“I do have questions about that actually…” he tells me.

“I don’t think the middle of the street in Brooklyn after midnight is the place to ask those questions, Mr. Lennox. This needs to be a private discussion after we’ve both had some time to think.”

“Then wait for me after business hours tomorrow. Once everyone leaves, we can talk in my office without the fear of curious eyes. We’ll square everything away and decide what to do from here forward. Because, obviously, I can’t seem to shake whatever this is,” he admits in a near whisper.

“I mean, that became more than obvious when you stalked me all the way to my apartment,” I tease.

He strokes his strong, beard-covered jawline and a smile crests those lips of his, like he had a secret thought he wants to share but thinks better of it.

“Go on inside, get some sleep. It’s late,” he says.

“Telling me what to do again? Don’t you ever learn?” I bite my lip as I smile.

“Habits, Ms. Kingston.”

“Mmm hmm.” I take a step back from the window, hoping if I put physical distance between us, it’ll stop me from wanting to literally jump through the window and kiss him senseless. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodnight, Nathanial.”

“Goodnight, Piper. Sleep tight.”

He stays parked exactly where he is until I’m safely inside of my building, and only then does he pull away, driving off into the night.

And I’m left standing here, a total ball of confusion and lust.

***

Ida,

How can I even describe with words what is going on right now? After our disaster of a